Akane woke to the sounds of fighting. Flesh smacking against flesh; the cracking of dislocated bones and popping joints; the whump of something heavy landing upon the ground; the whistling of something moving through air quick enough to slice sound; and, of course, the insults.
"You're moving slow, old man!"
"Are you sure it isn't because you're losing your touch, Ranma?"
"Nah. Old age must finally be catching up with you! Ow!"
Akane forced herself out of bed. A new day with perhaps new things to learn, but the same old stupid problems to put up with all the time. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and yawned. Akane ran her hand through her hair and winced as she accidentally tugged hard at the snarls, pulling and pinching her tender scalp.
She pulled herself completely out of bed and stretched with a yawn. Nabiki, passing through the hall, stopped and looked through the empty room. "Can't sleep?" she asked.
Akane stopped in mid-yawn. "Huh?" A crash from outside drifted in through her window. Akane frowned and pointed a finger at the window. "With that going on? Of course not." Nabiki nodded in agreement.
"At any rate, you can help me give Kasumi her medicine before we leave for school. Hurry and get dressed." Nabiki departed and Akane threw a look around her room, searching for her school uniform.


Their morning fight was nearing the end when Genma kicked his son into the koi pond. "Breakfast!" he said over his shoulder as he walked to the open room where the others were gathering around to eat.
A wave of water, followed by a bucket to the head, was Ranma's response. Gremlin-Genma hissed at his son and held a sign up, which read, "Cheap shot!"
"Nyah nyah," Vampire-Ranma replied, sticking her tongue out and wagging her fingers at Gremlin-Genma.
Placing a platter of tofu at the table, Kasumi sighed. "Oh my," she said. "What do gremlins eat?"
"Vhat about me?" Vampire-Ranma asked.
Nabiki gave him a dry look. "We all know the legends. Vampires need blood to survive. I for one am not going to make it a habit to donate my blood for your appetite."
"I'll get the hot water," Akane said, standing up.


The limo that pulled up to the front of the dojo was a daily occurrence. Though cars were rarely seen in Nerima because of the high prices of gas and taxes placed upon automobiles, the Kunou family could fell afford such a luxury.
Indeed, the dark-haired, graceful figure clad in a fluffy turquoise blue jumper with white puffy sleeves that exited the limo and stepped across the threshold of the dojo and half-skipped half-walked to the entrance was even more familiar than the limo.
Kodachi Kunou entered the house as if she lived there (and with as much time as she spent there, she may as well have) and headed directly to the family room. "Akane?" she called out in a sing-song voice.
From where she was watching Genma and Ranma (now both human and male thanks to a dash of hot water) fighting over a single bowel of rice, Akane waved her hand. "In here!" Kodachi already knew where Akane would be though.
"Good morning," said the young woman as she entered the room. "Are we ready for school? Oh? Who are these two men? Introduce me, Akane!" Kodachi declared as she sat beside Akane and nudged her in the side with her elbow.
"Uh . . ." Akane and Ranma exchanged quick glares. Kodachi's eyebrows shot up.
"He doesn't like you?" she asked. She laughed and clapped her hands. "A young, vibrant male actually doesn't like you?"
Nabiki spooned sugar into her tea. "He's only male part-time," she said.
"Hey!" Ranma turned his glare at the middle Tendo daughter. She returned it with an innocent What are you looking at me for? I didn't do anything! look. Genma took advantage of the distraction and snatched up the bowel he and Ranma were fighting over and wolfed down the rice.
"Do tell." Kodachi folded her arms across the table and eyed Ranma.
"It'll cost you," Nabiki said automatically. Kodachi shrugged.
"I won't pay a single cent!" She turned to Akane with a smile. "He doesn't like you and it is because he is only male part of the time? Whatever does your sister mean by that?" Akane glared at Ranma again, who just then noticed what his father had pulled.
"Hey! That was mine!" Ranma pounced upon Genma and they rolled across the floor, each fighting for balance and to keep the other unsteady. Akane glanced at her wristwatch.
"Oh dear! Look at the time!" She jumped to her feet. "We have to be getting to school."
"Oh yes." Nabiki stood up. "Come on, Ranma."
Ranma froze from where he was twisting his father's arm. "School?" he echoed.
Akane looked just as surprised as Ranma. "He's not coming with us, is he?" she demanded.
"I ain't going to no school!" Ranma released Genma and jumped to his feet. "I'm going back to China!" Genma tossed him a school bag, pulled from the same place he pulled his signs from as a gremlin.
"Oh yes you are, boy."
"Oh no I ain't!" Ranma shoved the bag back into Genma's arms.
"Oh yes you are!" Genma shoved it back.
Kodachi watched the actions repeated several times, and then launched into her infamous laugh. "HO HO HO HO HO!" Ranma and Genma, the only ones not used to the fearsome sound, froze and stared at her with horror. "Regardless of what is going on, we must leave now should we wish to get to school on time!" She launched into her laugh again, reached across the space between her and Ranma, and grabbed him painfully by the ear. "Come along. I won't have us late because of you!" She pulled him along; Nabiki (holding Ranma's school bag) and Akane trailed behind her. "While we are heading there, you may also explain to me why you are only male part of the time."


"This curse and engagement is quite interesting," Kodachi said cheerfully as she sipped her club soda. Ranma stared with awe at the inside red velvet lining of the limo's interior. Kodachi glanced sideways at Akane, who was sitting beside her. "Since he turns into a she, then I imagine that is why he doesn't react to your curse." Akane sputtered a couple of times as a response and then lapsed into a sulky silence.
Ranma looked at Akane. "You have a curse, too?"
"It's nothing like yours!" Akane snapped. "As far as I'm concerned, yours is better than mine!"
Ranma snorted. "Huh! Nothing could be worse than mine!"
"I don't know," Nabiki said. She was sitting beside Ranma and across from Akane. "Neither of the curses are really that bad." Both Akane and Ranma glared at her. Kodachi covered her mouth with her hand and laughed, but this laugh was quieter and somewhat gentler than her ear-shattering laugh from earlier.
"Oh come now! Let us just tell darling Ranma what the curse is and let him decide!"
Akane frowned and turned to stare at the limo's wall.
"If you won't tell," Kodachi said, "then I shall."
"I will," Nabiki cut in. Kodachi looked at her in challenge. "Akane is your best friend. Akane is my sister. Best friends shouldn't tell secrets, but sisters can get away with being annoying." The limo began to slow. "Besides, we are almost there and it is your turn to help Akane with the boys."
Kodachi shrugged and nodded in agreement.
"Help Akane with the boys?" Ranma looked at Nabiki.
"You see, Akane has this slight problem with the male species of a general age," Nabiki began just as the limo came to a complete stop. Kodachi unfolded her legs and placed the club soda in a drink holder. She placed a hand upon the door handle.
"On your call," she began. Akane took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and nodded her head.
"Now."
Kodachi's hands flew downward. The limo's door popped open quickly and silently and the two girls jumped from it.
A rumbling filled the air. A cloud of dust floated upward.
A huge mob of boys, armed with anything from hockey sticks to nurf bats to salamis and anything else they could swing, appeared from out of nowhere, stampeding in their direction. Akane plowed into them with a war cry that sounded very much like, "I HATE BOYS!" and Kodachi, laughing her ear-splitting shriek and twirling a purple ribbon, followed after her.
"You see, there was this geeky kid in fifth grade," Nabiki began as Ranma watched the mass-well, it could only be slaughter as Kodachi and Akane cleared enjoyed beating up on the male species-take place. "His name was Gosenki, and he had this crush on Akane-since first grade, I believe. Gos is a really creepy kid who likes to dabble in the darker arts-" Akane moved through the ranks of the boys, her fist flying to knock heads off shoulders and her book bag swinging out to smack into chests, stomachs, and groping hands "-and he came across this enchantment thing that would make the wearer become a magnet of the opposite sex."
Kodachi's twirling purple ribbon lashed out, leaving welts, tripping boys into other boys, and getting tangled within hands and legs.
"This is a strange charm. Anyways, something went wrong with the spell so it stuck itself to Akane. We didn't know this until she hit the age of twelve. The spell will last until she is twenty-one. It's called a magnet spell. You see, if you flip the number twelve, you wind up with twenty one. Also, there is a nine year gap between these numbers, and if you flip the number nine, then you get the number six."
Akane and Kodachi finished off the last of the boys. A rose flew through the air and Akane plucked it up as it passed her. Kodachi groaned upon looking at it.
"Ah, if it is the fair and beauteous Akane," began a light male voice.
"So, until she is twenty-one, there will be this unnatural magnetism that Akane gives off for boys. And ever since Tatewaki Kuno," the young man who threw the rose stepped from the shadows of a tree and bowed to Akane, this Nabiki pointed out, "announced that whoever beat Akane could date her, we've had a problem like this daily."
"That's rough," Ranma grumbled.
"Brother dear," Kodachi said as she stepped forward, "you are a duck."
Tatewaki blinked. "Huh?"
"Yes dear, you are a duck right now."
Tatewaki was a tall, roughly handsome young man wearing a traditional kimono. A muscle in his cheek jumped. "A duck?"
"Yes dear. Today you are a duck."
The muscle jumped again. "Quack?" And then Tatewaki was upon the ground, flapping his arms to the side. "Quack quack!" Nabiki grabbed Ranma's arm and pulled her over to Kodachi's and Akane's side.
"I've told him," Nabiki said. "Now he can tell you about his curse." She looked down at Tatewaki. "Is it any wonder why he is on medication too?" Tatewaki "fluffed" his "feathers" (which consisted of him shaking his clothes and their becoming poofy), and began to waddle over to Nabiki's side. "Follow me to class," she said as she walked slowly toward the school.
"Quack?"
"Yes, ducks do attend school. Now come along." Kodachi laughed her ear-splitting shriek as she watched her brother waddle after a patient Nabiki.
"You are cruel," Akane said, though her tone was light as if she didn't mean it. "But I'm afraid Ranma's curse will have to wait to be told. We do need to get to school."
"Of cour-" And that was when, right on time, the skies which had been so bright and sunny only minutes ago, clouded up and it rained.
Kodachi and Akane found themselves staring at the red-haired girl with fangs.
Vampire-Ranma's skin, in the pale light, began to turn red and smoke. "Gah!" Akane grabbed her arm.
"Come on!" she called, dragging Vampire-Ranma to the nearby shed even as the remaining students, knocked over, bruised, and basically sore, ran into the school away from the rain.


"So you're a vampire?" Kodachi grinned, and then turned to Akane. "I agree with Ranma. Your curse is better." Akane grimaced at the mention of her problem. She was currently leaning against the open window within the dark shed as Ranma sat in the middle of the shed amongst the boxes, her legs folded beneath herself.
"But she's got is easy!" Akane replied, handing Ranma the teakettle she had fetched as Ranma told Kodachi about the curse. "She's just a vampire."
"You call being allergic to the sun and garlic and sharp things and holy water and crucifixes easy?" Ranma shot back. Akane gave him a startled look and he shrugged. "Look, western vampires aren't the same as the eastern vampires here. If I had to be a vampire, I would much prefer being an eastern one. I mean, the only sort of problem they supposedly have is a thirst for blood. As a western vampire, I'm stuck with a whole lot more problems than a thirst."
"Is it true that if you get hit with direct sunlight, you burst into dust?" Kodachi asked.
"You just revel in my pain, don't you?" Ranma grumbled. She grinned again and he sighed. "No, because that would mean having to kill my regular, non-cursed form. They are linked together, you know. That is a where a perpetual and very painful sunburn comes in."
"Perpetual?"
"You don't want to know."
"Yes I do."
"I just get redder and redder and the sunburn gets worse and worse over time."
"Until you're like, peelings and bloody and all that?"
He grimaced. "Yes."
"Has it ever occurred to either of you," Akane began impatiently, "that we are late for class?"
Kodachi waved a hand. "Who cares? This is much more interesting than ancient history!" She leaned forward. "Is there any way in which to cure this?"
"I could find the spring of the drowned man, but I don't think one exists."
"Oh? Why?"
"Because they are called Spring of the Drowned SUPERNATURAL for a reason."
"Ah. And a man isn't very supernatural. Well, maybe there are some other things that you would rather be."
Ranma shrugged. "Like what? A werewolf?" He snorted. "I don't think so. The last thing I want to do is go around scratching my fleas and peeing on the carpet."
"Hmm." Kodachi looked thoughtful. "Well, how about a werecat? Cats are cleaner."
Ranma stiffened and his eyes grew wide. "C-c-cat? No, thank you." The girls exchanged knowing looks and then leaned closer to him.
"Why, Ranma," Akane began in a teasing voice, "do you have a problem with cats?"
Ranma flinched. "C-c-cats? Why no! Absolutely not!" He gave them a nervous smile and tried to look as innocent as possible. Kodachi and Akane merely gave him a look that said, "You've got a secret, and we'll wring it out of you. If not today, then tomorrow."
Ranma gave them another smile. "Shouldn't we be going to school?" he asked.
Kodachi sighed and twined a lock of hair around a finger. "Oh, I suppose. Though it really isn't as interesting as this! HO HO HO HO! Well, we best be going if we don't want people to wonder."


"Oh?" Akane's sarcastic voice drifted through the empty hall. "And our standing outside in the hall with buckets isn't going to have people wondering?"
Kodachi shrugged. "We would have gotten away with my story of how the limo had a flat tire if Ranma hadn't open his big mouth about our morning fight."
They sent identical glares at Ranma, who was standing between them with a pair of buckets from his hands. "Water," he grumbled. "Why is it always water?" He then eyed the buckets the girls were holding. "Do you two think you'll get into trouble if you sort of set the buckets on the floor?" he asked.
Akane leaned forward. Ranma jumped back as the water in her buckets sloshed over the edge onto the floor. "Why?" she demanded hotly. "Don't think we're capable of handling ourselves?"
"Well no, not really," he began, still eyeing the bucket nervously. Akane stomped her foot angrily.
"You are just impossible!" she snapped. Kodachi rolled her eyes.
"Drop it Akane," she said. "Before I laugh."
Akane snorted and looked away from Ranma.
A long moment of silence followed. Ranma spoke. "So, how long have you two known one another?" he asked.
Kodachi shrugged her shoulders. "Akane and I have been friends since her mother died."
"Ah. I'm sorry," Ranma replied automatically.
Akane shrugged. "It's okay," she said softly. "Mom has been dead for eleven years. She was killed in a car accident."
"Oh." Ranma blinked. "That's strange. My mom died eleven years ago in a car accident too. That why me and Pop went on our training trip."
Another long moment of silence followed. This one, however, was broken by a war-like cry from the throat of Tatewaki Kuno.


Nabiki watched as her homeroom teacher argued with Tatewaki. "No, you are absolutely not a duck!" he said. Kuno just stared at him as he perched upon the top of his desk, his arms folded against his sides as his clothes fluffed out to the sides.
"Quack?" he asked curiously. He looked over at Nabiki for support, who glanced the other way. "Quack quack?" He cocked his head the teacher.
"You are not a duck," the teacher said again.
"Quack?"
"You are not a duck. You are human. You are in a classroom. You are here to learn."
"Quack!"
"You are not a duck!" The teacher looked over the class. The students were being quiet and solemn. "Is he a duck?" he asked the students. A collective shake of head in the universal sign for no followed. Tatewaki craned his neck to look over his shoulder at the students.
"Quack?" he asked again.
Nabiki sighed. "Kuno," she began, "Akane has a fiancé."
The change that overcame Tatewaki was almost startling to watch. Human awareness snapped to his eyes as he leapt to his feet to the top of the desk. "What foul low life would have the nerve to steal the beauteous Akane from myself?" he demanded loudly.
A piece of chalk smacked him between his eyes and Tatewaki toppled off his desk onto the floor.
"Tatewaki . . ." The teacher's hand trembled as he clenched it into a tight fist. "That is enough of your absurd behavior! Go stand out in the hall right now!"
Nabiki opened a book before herself as Tatewaki trudged past.
A few moments later, she heard the sound of running footsteps and knew that Tatewaki had decided to see this fiancé of Akane's for himself. And a few moments after that, Tatewaki was yelling.


Ranma, Kodachi, and Akane dodged Tatewaki as he barreled past them. Tatewaki whirled around, pulled a bokken out of nowhere, and faced the three. "Never," he yelled, "in my life should the one beauteous Akane be forced into marriage with such a horrendous fiend when said beauteous Akane deserves the best, and as I am such, then she deserves me!"
"Brother," Kodachi began, but was cut off when the point of the bokken swung around to her.
"I shall not listen to your fiendish lies anymore, sister!" Tatewaki snarled. He faced Akane. "Who is the vile scum who would force your hand in marriage?"
Akane glared at Tatewaki. "He's fifty years old, fat, ugly, and stupid. He wears glasses too."
"Hey!" Ranma set the buckets down with a clatter. "Pop is forty-two years old! Not fifty!"
Tatewaki looked shocked. "A delicate flower," he cried unhappily, "forced, in the prime of her bloom, to marry a geezer!"
Ranma sighed. "My father isn't a geezer, okay! And he's not the one who's supposed to marry Akane, I am!"
Kodachi slapped her forehead with a groan. Tatewaki's face grew redder and redder the more he stared at Ranma, and sound finally burst out of his frame in a deep roar. "Never! I shall not permit it!" He launched forward to attack Ranma, but Ranma leapt over his head. Tatewaki tripped over a bucket and pitched forward in his face.
The door of the classroom Akane and Kodachi stood beside burst open. Students crammed themselves forward to see what the ruckus was about. Ranma turned to Kodachi. "Who is he?" he asked.
Kuno answered for him as he stood up. "I," he said, his voice laced with vanity, "am the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High! Tatewaki Kuno!" Thunder boomed in the distance. Ranma ducked and hid his head beneath his hands as he peered upward at the roof. Akane rolled her eyes.
"I thought he was the Shooting Star last week," she whispered behind her hand to Kodachi. Kodachi shrugged.
"He got tired of my calling him Twinky Toes."
Tatewaki struck out at Ranma again, but Ranma, still covering his head with his arms, wove around the blow.
"Come on!" he called to Tatewaki, running for an open window. A quick look at the skies told him that they were clear. "Let's take this fight outside where no one will get hurt! Here's a shortcut!" He leapt out the window.
"That's the third story window!" Akane called. Kodachi laughed her ear-splitting laugh.
"How lucky that the swimming pool below will break his fall!" she laughed as Tatewaki jumped out of the window after Ranma. At that moment, Ranma screamed in what could have been fright, or perhaps it was rage.
"WATER?! WHY IS IT ALWAYS WATER?!"



Author's notes
It's me! =) I'd just like to thank those of you who have reviewed the story. Some of you echoed the ideas that I had, and some of you gave me some new concepts to work on. For the person who brought up the bit about Gremlins and Slavic vrs. Scandinavian accents, I do have a couple of things to address about.
Firstly, Gremlins weren't truly given an actual appearence until, during World War Two, when airplanes all over the world suddenly had stimulous engine trouble, one German over his radio was heard shouting, "Gremlin! Gremlin!" Because of the size of the engine, it was then concluded that Gremlins had to be small. However, before that, they were only known to be vicous creatures with a very vile temper. The Gremlin I based Genma off of came mostly from a Super Nintendo game called, "Air Raids 2."
Secondly, I do know more about mythical creatures than I have actually let on, and some people might scream about the situation of Ranma and his perpetual sunburn. I did think of him turning into dust, being blown away into this pot of hot water, and then appearing. I might change what I have written and still do that, but frankly, it has always been one of my theories that the cursed form and the real form are tied into one and the other. It's like animorphs and their subzero reasoning of where all the extra mass goes.
And by the by, while I am discussing curses, I may as well put a word in about Akane's. Akane is not one of my favorite characters, but still, she deserves a chance at being mature. The thing about the numbers were purely coincedental (the backwards twelve being twenty-one and the differences between six and nine), and I just grabbed the coincedence they presented.
That's all the notes I can think of putting together, except to state that yes, it was a Slavic accent and not a Scandinavian accent, thoough that mistake was wrought upon by my unable to recall the proper S word for the accent, but knew the country was in that vincinity of the continent.