I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi or Steve Jackson Games.
As the 8-ball thunked into the corner pocket, leaving the cue ball the only ball on the pool table, Win straightened from his shot and reached for his mug of beer on the nearby waist-high table against the wall. Across the table Stacy and David groaned, and Win hid his smile by drinking from his mug—even with how long it had been since his wife—his first wife—died, he still had it.
He blinked when he realized that he had thought of Mandy without that stabbing pain of loss he had grown accustomed to ... that he had actually been enjoying the the evening with his friends, without the same despair that had made the world around him seem flat and dull—that had had him walking home alone from his last attempt to enjoy a night out with his friends ... the cold, snowy night he found his wife dying in a doorway. He really was getting better, Toshiko had brought him back to life—her problems, yes, the way the need to deal with them had jerked him out of the rut of despairing what-ifs he'd fallen into, but just as much her very presence filling a hole in his life Mandy's absence had left. Their apartment—their home—was no longer silent.
He lowered his mug so that his friends could see his smile, and that smile grew when he imagined he saw them relax, just a little. "So, one more game?"
"Why not?" Stacy agreed, returning his smile with a wry one of her own. "I still have some of my paycheck left."
"Hey, you didn't have to come along," David pointed out as he lifted his own mug. "You could have gone to the baby shower instead."
Stacy shuddered. "They have Sergeant Baker for the obligatory adult, they'll have more fun with just her keeping an eye on them. No, I'd rather be here losing money." Her smile turned mischievous. "Just think of it as my contribution to the diaper fund."
Win winced as David laughed and emptied his mug, then set it on the table and picked up the square of chalk. "Well, rack 'em up, let's see how much we can grow that fund."
/oOo\
Toshiko finished the last bit of kanji on the last of her diapers and set it aside with the rest for reboxing before capping the neon green marker she'd been using.
Mercedes looked over her shoulder at the to-her-indecipherable writing. For a moment her hand landed on Toshiko's shoulder before jerking away. She ignored the way Toshiko had flinched at the brief contact, though when Toshiko glanced over her shoulder with an apologetic smile she thought there was a wistful look to her friend's eyes. Mercedes simply hadn't been herself since Toshiko had asked her to cool down the flirting in public.
Her friend asked, "Okay, what's this one's joke?"
" 'Budding politician'."
That drew a laugh from the other girls at the various tables filling the high school cafeteria, now made cheerful in spite of the dark night beyond the wide windows by blue and pink paper flower bouquets in the middle of the tables and balloons bobbing at the end of strings taped to the corners, and multi-colored paper streamers draped around the walls and from hanging light to hanging light. Enough girls had joined in the fun—and to Toshiko's surprise there was real fun involved—that the school had agreed to let them use the cafeteria for the party, so long as a member of the faculty was present. Which explained Ms. Davis' presence as well as Ms. Baker's. Toshiko looked around at the amused crowd, and her smile was bittersweet—while she liked all the girls, had enjoyed her time with those in the swim club, and joked around with some at school, even if the effort they'd all put into the party had made her misty-eyed at first, except for Mercedes she couldn't really call them friends. She could imagine how Akane, Kasumi, maybe even Ukyo would be laughing with the rest.
As the laughter died down, Paige stood up. "Okay, that should give Toshiko enough personalized diapers for, oh ... a week, maybe?" That drew fresh laughter, even if Toshiko's was on the rueful side as she looked around at all the boxes—so many she was wondering where in the apartment she and Win would store them all. "So before we get to the cake and ice cream, now let's do the time capsule. Everyone got their contributions?"
"What's a time capsule?" a puzzled Toshiko asked.
"It's a collection of mementos sealed up in a box, that you don't open up until the kid's grown up," Paige explained. "They can be personal things like photos, letters, discs of your favorite music, or things like newspapers or magazines, that can give the kid some idea of what the world was like when he was born. I take it Mercy didn't mention it to you?"
"Nope, I forgot," Mercedes admitted, "sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry about," Toshiko said. "It's not like I really have anything to add, when Win found me all I had were the rags I was wearing. Even if they weren't long gone, I wouldn't want to include them."
"Not even photos?" one of the other girls asked (whose name Toshiko had forgotten). She was one of the ones that got starry-eyed at the 'romance' of the story of Win and Toshiko's marriage, what little the school knew about it, and Toshiko had to suppress a grimace.
"No, neither of us are much with cameras."
"Well, me and Mom are," Mercedes said. "In fact, we have a photo of you and me to contribute. We'll just have to leave the box unsealed until we can take and print out some." She handed the photo to Toshiko and looked around at the rest of the party. "So what do we have?"
"I've got a couple magazines!" another girl on the swim team—Jecky?—all but shouted, waving them. "Since you don't know the sex yet I grabbed Dad's latest 'Deer and Deer Hunting' to go with my 'Teen Vogue'."
As other girls offered their own contributions—other magazines, menus, toys, CDs of their favorite bands, tourist brochures—it almost seemed as if Toshiko could see another pair of young faces in the excited crowd, wistful smiles to match Mercedes' a few minutes ago. She wondered what Akane and Kasumi would have offered.
Suddenly, she decided she'd had enough. Maybe she couldn't do anything about the friends she'd left behind, but she could do something about the one she had right here. Once the last of the offerings for the time capsule were handed over (and explained, in a few cases—Toshiko had never even heard of a 'Rubik's Cube' before), as Paige began to announce the dessert, Toshiko rose to her feet.
"Hey, everyone, before we get to that I have something to say!" she called out. Paige stopped and turned to look at her, along with everyone else. She quailed a moment under the weight of all the stares. Come on, ya faced Herb without flinchin', you can do this. Taking a deep breath, she stepped up onto her chair and grinned. "Okay, so you all probably know how flirty Mercy can be." A laugh rose from everyone around her, and she grinned. "Yeah, no 'probably' about it. But most of you probably noticed that she's stopped, over the past couple weeks." The laughter vanished, replaced by surprised murmuring—apparently, a good number hadn't noticed. "Well, that's 'cause some kids in the school noticed how I reacted to the teasing and were beginning to ask questions about me. But she's just not the same, so I figure let's get it out in the open. Yes, I'm attracted to her. No, nothing's happened, or going to happen—I'm ... what's the word for sticking to one person?"
" 'Monogamous'!" a blonde she barely recognized called out.
"Right, that's the word. I got Win, I take my marriage oath seriously, so that's that. You all spread the word, and Mercy can go back to trying to make my face match my hair." The fresh laughter that swept the room was enough to make her cheeks begin to heat up, but she just grinned and finished with, "Now let's get enough sugar to keep us high for a week!"
As the laughter crescendoed she hopped down off the chair, sat down, and began to shake. When a misty-eyed, sniffling Mercedes pulled her into a one-arm hug, she lay her head on her friend's shoulder and murmured, "That had better take care of the rumors, 'cause I am not doing it again. I'd rather have a rematch with Herb all by myself." She grinned at Mercedes' startled laugh and straightened. "Now let's get the ice cream, I don't even need to scam it off the vendors!"
/oOo\
Ku Lon was weary to the bone. Her and Shan Pu's return to Japan had not been as easy as her first. That time, it had been a simple matter of bribing some fishermen that moonlighted (literally, at times) as smugglers to take her along. (Mu Tse had had an even easier time of it, he'd simply flown.) It hadn't even been as easy as their return from Japan to their home—this time, it had involved being smuggled first into Vietnam and then into Australia, and from there onto a US-flagged freighter bound for Japan with a tiny—and spartan—hidden compartment. The Japanese government had gotten serious very recently about interdicting illicit trade with China, and she had had the sinking suspicion that it somehow involved Ranma. When she had learned about the attempts to 'acquire' the now-girl by burying her under the bodies of common thugs, she was sure of it.
And now that she had arrived, even before she had had a chance to shower and eat, her employers had plunked her down in front of a TV and were playing Tendo Nabiki's recordings (many of surprisingly poor quality) of sparring matches. It wasn't hard to realize where those matches had taken place, and wouldn't have been all that much harder to realize if she hadn't recognized a number of the participants—to her knowledge, no other town in Japan was home to so many high end martial artists. And these were high end martial artists, even if ...
She leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "Replay that last match." She watched it again, and leaned back in her seat (much too big, but what seats outside of Joketsuzoku weren't?) with a sigh. "They are hiding their true skill."
"You are certain of that?" one of her current two unnamed minders—all male, to her disgust—asked.
"Yes. I knew Konishita Tomomi and Oinuma Tsutomu. She may look like a simple housewife, and he like nothing more than a manual laborer, but I have sparred with both. Those spars were much more ... vigorous ... than what you just showed me."
The men exchanged glances, then the other asked, "Were they all downplaying their capabilities?"
"I don't know. I only recognized what was happening so easily with the last one because I know the pair sparring. I will need to watch the others over again now that I know what to look for."
"Very well." The man pointed the remote at the TV, and Ku Lon stood up on her seat.
"Tomorrow. It has been a long journey, I would like a bath and something to eat before I seek my bed. Now."
The two men exchanged glances, then the one holding the remote pressed a button and the TV went dark. "Of course."
/\
The decent meal and night's sleep had done wonders for Ku Lon's outlook. Yes, the men that had come to the rooms she and her great-granddaughter had been assigned were rude, but they were men and barbarians at that so no better could be expected. And this time, as she watched the recordings—several dozen of them—her great-granddaughter sat close beside where she balanced on her staff, watching intently as well.
Finally, the last of the recordings came to an end. "So, Granddaughter, what do you think?" Ku Lon asked in the village's own pure Mandarin. The debased form spoken by the modern Chinese had deviated from its former purity enough that, so far as their minders listening were concerned, it might as well be another language entirely.
The purple-haired girl frowned thoughtfully. "I think Mercenary Girl isn't as mercenary as she might be pretending to be, this time. Many of those recordings were of suspiciously poor quality."
"Yes, I noticed that as well," Ku Lon agreed. "It seems she may be as unwilling a participant in this farce as we are—something we will not be mentioning to the Mandarins' slaves. But what of the spars themselves?"
"For most I couldn't tell—the styles were unfamiliar, the Martial Artists unknown, the quality of the recordings too poor. But the ones I could ... those weren't spars, they were performances. The true capabilities of the Martial Artists are higher, maybe much higher."
"Well done, I agree." Ku Lon twisted on her staff to report their conclusions to their minders, wondering what impact those conclusions would have on the men's plans. Of course, it would help if they'd told her just what those plans were...
The men listened to her report, then held a quiet discussion for a few minutes before the one Ku Lon had tentatively tagged as the senior turned back to her. "Could you defeat all of these Martial Artists?"
"One on one, yes—most easily," she replied without hesitation. "More than one at a time? It would depend on who they are. Some of the styles synergize better than others."
"And what if you and your granddaughter weren't trying to defeat them, simply escape with a captive?"
"Has Son-in— Has Ranma returned to Nerima, then?"
"No, the captive would be Tendo Akane."
Ku Lon managed to keep from showing her shock, though Shan Pu's gasp said she'd have to have some words with her later. Though in retrospect she didn't know why she was surprised, the youngest Tendo would make excellent bait, if some way of alerting Ranma could be discovered. "That would depend on the timing and speed of her capture, and which of the town's Martial Artists respond. And the form of the ... extraction. You would be better served arranging for an escape by air, if possible."
The man considered her words for a moment, then said, "I will pass on your suggestion. We will return when more recordings arrive." The pair collected the disc holding the recordings and left, leaving their reluctant hirelings to find some way of relieving the boredom they would face for some time.
A bit of a filler, but it does move the plot along. The chapter title comes from the song by Kenny Chesney. It doesn't quite fit, but close enough.