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* Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction * Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction * Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction *
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Switch: Herbs and Spices (Chapter 13 / 22) by Nikholas "Switch" F. Toledo
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Please do remember that Ranma 1/2 is a trademark and a copyright of and
by some big name people and companies I am not even worthy to introduce.
Anybody who says that I took any of their stuff better not find me
hiding. Also, great thanks to whoever reads this and likes it, good
thanks to whoever reads it anyhow, and teeny thanks to whoever saw this.
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Day 2


 The Empty House



 Most houses have legends all to their own.
 Since the massive exodus of prehistoric man from the trees, there
have been stories, passed from generation to generation, of the Earth, of 
its origins, and its history, and of time itself.
 Many a night was spent around a fire (which, no doubt, had had, by
itself, stories of note) with the organization of a storyteller (or more)
and of an audience, held captive by the epic and often apocryphal myths
of the Cause, the Reason, or the Other Things That Had Never Happened.
 The only thing that had really changed was the size of the matter.
 In time, the history of Man had increased in volume. In such, so
had the stories of Man, and the domicile of Man. The world had grown, in
a shrinking of units, of an enlargement of capacities, and the homes of
all of Man's aspects grew in the same manner.
 But the Human House did not just enlarge, appending as a random
function of time. Much as the Legend was its Soul, the House Matured.
 In the silence of a much dimmed room, one can almost believe that a
larger, deeper soul breathes.
 Listen. It speaks.

 It wouldn't be hard to believe that the Tendo residence once housed
nobles and warriors of revered blood. It stood luxurious and expansive,
simple in design, yet austere and regal in bearing.
 Of course, during the feudal era, Nerima was a mere valley, a
disinteresting waterhole, whose high point was a set of springs much like
their mother-springs across the sea. (To which, despite being closed,
are still connected there: did you think that the carp pond was just a
carp pond way back when?)
 There was once an inn, though, but that's another story, another
time.

 In the best-selling and highly regarded reference book "The Hair of
Care" (Toiletries Press, 489), there is a mention of a tradition of more
barbaric tribes of yore partaking in the hair of their opponents to have
insight into the plans of the opponents. (The more sophisticated of
then-current tribes had the traditions of finer dining, a.k.a.
cannibalism.) This it attributes to the belief that hair grew out of the
head, and contained much spiritual and ethereal power.
 It also states a superfluous number of recipes for hair for this
particular reason. The simplest recipe for hair follows:
 Get hair.
 Get container of soup.
 Place hair in soup.
 Drink in one gulp.
 Belch.
 The recipe was, unsurprisingly, named "Mongolian stew" (some if the
more interesting Mongolian recipes are for other types of facial hair,
charred or otherwise boiled off).
 Strangely enough, it makes no mention of love potions from hair.

 In the basement of a building, a small window was spraying the
afternoon light into a small corner of the room. The corner was empty,
bereft of life as it was of cover. The grimy floor still has fresh
tracks, but these were slight, even unobvious. What was more obvious
though, were the open crates nearby, emptied of their contents. Several
footprints weren't visible on the steps, trailing the grime, up...

 What is the home?
 It is the fruit of the seed.
 It is not the rind which makes the fruit, it is the soft and spongy
cushion in which the chrysalis of the heart lays, not dormant yet not at
all in control.
 What is the home? It is what the mind envisions when at peace.
 What is the home? It is the oasis on the journey that is life.
 What is the home? It is that part of the house that resides in
Man.

 The midafternoon sun sent tendrils of light into the windows of
three rooms on the second floor of the only house on the block that was
also a tactical target. A dusty air scurried into and out of the probing
strobes, receding into the corners.
 In the room with two sets of windows, the curtains stayed closed.
A calendar overlooked a neatly fixed bed, a silent airconditioner on the
other side of the corner. Not too long ago, the potted plant stood
witness to a written confession in that self-same room.
 On the opposite wall, a bookcase provided much-needed space for odd
books on first aid, cuisine, herbalism and fairy tales. One would not
see the space one occupied by rows of lightweight fare; they were just
displaced, without any intention of returning.
 The drawers were empty: indeed, there was nothing to hide.
 Several flat-soled shoes, plus one pair of simple heeled shoes,
were lined up under the shelves.
 A cabinet stayed closed, sentry to the openings and closings of the
door. Aside from that, and a almost unused dresser, the room was nearly
empty, a mere waystation and lodging.

 A door slid open noiselessly.
 In the unlit room, the hallway light casted a pillar onto the wall,
then the television set, then the playstation, then the floor, lightly
touching several books scattered on the floor.
 "Hunh, still in the library. I wondered why it was so quiet."

 There is a house, somewhere in Tokyo, which is often empty.
 A woman lives there, a mother and a wife.
 She sometimes wonders if the house would come crashing to the
ground; she fancies herself a believer in the "a house is not a home"
theory.
 She rarely dreams of the house. The house rarely dreams of her.
 In fact, the house rarely dreams: when it does, it is usually the
same dream, over and over.
 The house dreams of the night: not just any night, it is a night
which it is not empty.
 It dreams of the night of the other people.
 It dreams, over and over, wondering about the children taken away
from their parents.
 It dreams, and sleeps.

 For once, the Kuno mansion was completely empty.
 Principal Kuno, of course, was in Hawaii, a much-unlamented fact.
He was rarely missed in the household; indeed, he was rarely missed in
Nerima. His penchant for causing construction sites endless trouble
(what with surfing down rubble-waves, from gravel piles) and his frequent
barber-shop raids have already made him notorious throughout companies in
the district.
 Tatewaki Kuno was struck by a scheme by which to claim the heart of
either Akane Tendo or the pigtailed girl, and thus could not be bothered
by housesitting.
 Kodachi Kuno was not available for interview at this point.
 Sasuke, the head (and only regular) manservant, has been busy
chasing the escaped Mr. Turtle, who, as soon as it was revived and freed
from its bonds, fled to find food through the plumbing of the hot springs
of the Kuno estate (which should be noted as being artificial, and have
never had magical shapechanging properties). However, since Tatewaki
Kuno was concurrently questing, it was a surety that Sasuke would drop
the hunt in order to aid, abet, and generally be accomplice to whatever
was necessary to see it through.
 Mr. Turtle was, in fact, washed out to the river.
 The other, unnamed househands (unique only up to laugh quality),
shared two singular qualities: one, having been victimized the explosion
of Kodachi aphrodisiac experiments of yesterday, and, two, being all
female. These two traits caused them to follow the first male in the
household they could find: thus, unbeknownst to him, Sasuke was being
chased by the rest of the aforementioned household help.
 Thereby, the Kuno estate was completely empty, from end to end. Of
course, there was no fear of burglary, as the house itself was a virtual
deathtrap.
 Nonetheless, it is crucial to mention that, because Kodachi (along
with Tsubasa) came home a little after dinnertime, no one was able to
view or, later, locate the meteorite that fell smack-dab in the middle of
Mr. Turtle's pond.

 A few steps, and: "AAGGHH!"
 Immediately, the scream stopped. Outside the door of the Ucchan's,
the sound of a head hitting wood slowly, deliberately.

 As in any tight knit neighborhood, people moving into and out of
the area would always attract attention: after all, it's kind of hard
not to notice those moving trucks as they crowd into the small streets.
 "Yes, I think that that's all of it. Thank you very much."
 The young woman wrapped her arms around the young man's muscled one
as she stared at the lot beyond the tall gates. He, on the other hand,
was busy outlining his plans for the wide space in the back yard of the
house, possibly a training hall or some such. She sighed into his arm:
at last, their marriage seemed completed short of the pitter-patter of
small knees crawling around their feet.
 People started coming into the knot that was building in front of
the old inn that old lady Tendo was housekeeping. She hadn't exactly
been the housekeeping type, actually; some of the Nerima parties were
passed within the confines of the lot. It showed: the grass grew wild
in the backyard, but trampled in spots. Even the pond seemed neglected,
as moss was covering the bottom, giving it a greenish tinge. But it
seemed healthy, alive... the foliage was coming for vengeance. They
would only find that out later, but find out they would.
 The young man felt a tap on his shoulder.
 With his martial arts reflexes, he immediately swiped his wife from
off her feet, and turned to his tormenting mast-
 "Hello."
 They blink-blinked at the short-sleeved-kimono-wearing old lady.
She waved her ladle in the air with a flair and pointed at them. "BOO!
Heeeeeeh, heh, scared you, didn't I?" She laughed loudly.
 The young woman clambered down her stiffened and shocked husband,
who was crying through unclosing eyes. "Uh... we're sorry."
Straightening, she bowed at the waist. "We must introduce ourselves.
We're..."
 "The Tendo newlyweds. Yes, yes. Congratulations, of course." She
made swish-swish movements with her ladle (spraying layers of minute
drops) and flashed a toothy grin, in a way to gesture... something.
"Well... Nabiki..."
 "Yes..." He finally fell out of his stupor, recognizing the name.
"Yes, grandaunt did write about her friend... so, you're the famous
Storyteller of Nerima?"
 "Shuckin's," the Storyteller replied demurely, "I knew Nabiki would
do that. Now, my reputation's in shambles."
 "Why's that?" the younger woman played along.
 "Well, you can't be a storyteller with being a visionary. And here
I was, trying my hand out at prediction-making." She tsk-tsked at her
apparent loss.
 The young man followed his wife's lead. "Of course, of course, we
realize. Forgive us. Um... are you making daily horoscopes?"
 She belted an even fiercer laugh into the young man's face. "Stop
confusing astrology for clairvoyance! Science is a very heartless
oracle, the stars even more! No, no... what was I saying?"
 The couple had little sweatbeads on their napes. The young woman
was the one who recovered faster: "uh, Grand-aunt Nabiki..."
 "Oh, yeah, that's right... Nabiki and I have this little wager
going..."
 The young man goggled, "betting on the future?"
 His wife bonked him some.
 "Actually," the old woman said morosely, "yes. We're betting on
YOUR future."

 The second room over in the second floor of the Tendo household has
the air of being in the exact middle of change. Strewn about in some
places were pieces of paper and assorted cloth and clothing, overlaid on
the order underneath. The bedsheets were as straight as a ruler's edge,
but the blankets left waves that lingered.
 A bookcase stood over the bed, filled with all sorts of tomes on
actuarial science, abstract algebra, life contingencies and differential
calculus. In between these heavy texts, several smaller, lighter novels
sit comfortably out of plain sight. And in between those, important
information on unassuming corners of paper, in-between words of burning
passion and righteous love.
 A clipboard unobtrusively hung on the side of the case announced
the "Things to Be Done", but the slate was clean. The desk from which it
was most visible had a smaller line of books on it and an imposing
painting hanging right above it. Most of the time, the desk was
cluttered will little notes and all, scribblings of... well, things best
left unknown. Now, it lain pristine and, most of all, storiless.
 The cabinet on the other side was tall enough for the box on top to
be obscured from anyone who isn't looking for it, most importantly the
owner of the contents. As they say, out of sight, out of mind. The said
owner was only peripherally aware of it, much in the way that she was
aware that it took up space and shifted the path of the currents in her
room and in her life.
 A medium-height-backed chair, a cassette player/recorder, and the
occasional boxes and rugs littered themselves in an upright manner in the
room. Framed pictures studded the walls, as though in an effort to
surround the room with faces and memories.
 All of it, epitomized by a small doll inside the box, which did not
and was not what it seemed, but was that way, anyway.

 A few steps, and: "AAGGHH!"
 Immediately, the scream stopped. Outside the Ucchan's, the sound
of a head hitting wood slowly, deliberately, on the second floor.
 The sound of running water, and porcelain.

 Kuno's mind worked in mysterious and easily controlled ways.
 While not exactly your high speed processor, the neural links are
there, it's just that there's so much traffic. Not because there are so
many things running through it, just that the roads are kind of skinny in
parts.
 Be that as it may, there are still some creative enough connections
that would make the ride pretty interesting. For example, the only thing
connected to "watermelon" was a clump of complicatedly bunched together
motor neurons. "Family" would shunt a reduction of endomorphine in the
hypothalamus, and "magic" was well-associated with "science", as were the
concepts of "poverty", "weakness" and "oompah-loompah". His ego was very
in touch with his superego, but the latter rubbed elbows with his id,
which made for a somewhat dysfunctional set-up. A whole bunch of words
were in linked lists to the tune of Shakespeare's sonnets, and the verbal
part of his right brain was locked into that pool.
 The way that it stored information was through stories: it would
create, word for word, a new linked list, as the story unfolds. This
causes two problems: the download time for information would be kind of
large, and cross-referencing would be troublesome.
 Three actually; that would mean that all information was to be
taken in the literal and chronological arrangement that it was given.

 A corner stood in the darkening atmosphere, the target of one, and
the takeoff of another. Thus, they were unable to meet.

 The blue moon is the Western astrological concept of the rare (once
in every 33 months) occurrence of two full moons in a single month. As
the moon has an effect on the tides and has often been cited to cause
crazy sicknesses like lunacy and lycanthropy, as well as aiding the
powers of witches and warlocks through the Greek goddess Hecate (or is
that vice-versa?), such changes in the phases of the moon have caused
enough ruckus to make them see rabbits in it. It bases itself quite
unfairly on the way that a month is named (much is a difference of the
Western based Julian and, later, Gregorian calendars with the Chinese
lunar calendars, which are based on the phases of the moon, and quite the
fashion in Asia during the 16th and 17th century), and actually did not
exist during the feudal period of Asia. Straighter to the point yet, a
shugenja could not possibly name an arbitrary full moon a blue moon.
 Needless to say, changes in culture prescribe an updating of
stories. Also needless to say, that night's moon was actually waning
gibbous.

 "Now, there, Nabiki... have some fun with Akane, now..."
 "Yes, Mom..."
 "Yes, Mommy..."
 Nabiki looked at the receding back of Kimiko Tendo, and pulled out
the scissors she was planning to play with. Akane's eyes widened,
fascinated by the glinting metal edges as they caught the afternoon sun.
 "Ooohh..."
 Nabiki pulled the shears from her youngest sister's vicinity.
"Akane, you know you're not allowed to play with these."
 Akane pouted, "you're not supposed to..."
 "If," Nabiki said, pulling out the newspaper, "you keep quiet, I'll
let you use it..."
 Akane widened her eyes, and nodded wordlessly.
 Kasumi was just outside Akane and Nabiki's room when she heard the
bawl.
 With heightened/frightened senses, she opened the door wide.
 "WHAT'S WRONG??"
 Nabiki didn't turn.
 The scissors lain on the floor, as though dropped.
 Akane cried, as though in pain.
 "NABIKI!"
 Nabiki turned sheepishly. "Aww... Kasumi..."
 Kasumi looked stunned. "I can't beLIEVE you're taking this so...
dumbly!"
 Akane increased her pitch, apparently forgotten by her elder
sisters. Kasumi calmly put a hand on their baby sister's shoulder,
unable to make "there, there" noises, mostly because her mouth was geared
in another direction.
 "You... your..."
 Nabiki put a hand to the side of her head. "It's not that bad..."
 Akane redoubled her efforts.
 "Not that bad?" Kasumi whispered, out of Akane's earshot.
"Nabiki, if you wanted a free haircut, you could have asked me." Putting
down the book she was holding, and took up the scissors. Licking her
lips, she took her last look of Nabiki's well-cared-for ponytails, and
made decisive cuts.
 Akane stopped crying, fixated on the bonding occurring. Because
she was only five, and didn't know squat about bonding or the importance
of hair to a girl, so: "Me! Me, too!"
 Nabiki shushed her. "Your hair's already short, Akane."
 "But I want Kasumi-neechan to cut it!"
 Kasumi gave the final touch on to the sides. "There." She started
picking up the hairs which piled itself at their feet. "How about you,
A... Akane?"
 The black-haired girl held the two endpieces of ponytail. Bound,
they looked like hula skirts topped with round pink coconuts. "I'm
sorry."
 Nabiki smiled, a wistful grin. "It's okay. Hey, look, I'm sure
Kasumi-neechan can make some pretty dolls out of those..."
 Akane looked askance from Nabiki to the eldest. "True?"
 Kasumi nodded. "True."
 Akane turned to Nabiki, handing out a piece. "You have this one...
it IS your hair."
 Nabiki took it, sharing a look with Kasumi, and they hugged their
little sister.

 The young lady didn't quite hear. "You're betting on what?"
 The Storyteller laughed. "Yours." She took out a folded piece of
paper. "Seems that Nabiki doesn't really believe in predestination, and
all that. I just think that things don't really change."
 The man pointed at the paper. "Is that...?"
 "The list of predictions I made regarding this empty house that
stands before you. What would happen to its next owners, that's you
folks, listed in chronological order." She opened it, revealing a rather
long list, indeed.
 The young man sighed. "Well, it seems like we'll live long,
fruitful lives here, eh?"
 "Oh, yes, yes. You, your children, your children's children... the
name Tendo will prosper in this house, for generations to come. Says so
in line #361." She gave the list to the young newlyweds, the young man
taking it.
 The younger woman wondered. "How did you make these predictions?
Not without any astrological devices, that is?"
 "Simple," she said, simply, "I asked Nabiki what happened to your
family as far back as she could. It's all fractal, you see. Recursive,
detail mimics portrait."
 "Come again?"
 "History repeats itself."
 The young man scratched his nape. "I don't recall anyone in the
family who's gone to China."
 "Ah... the process is reiteration, not repetition. It doesn't need
to be exactly the same with anything that has happened, it just has to
seem so." She yawned, then pointed to a line in the list. "I don't
think anyone in your lineage has been offered a royal marriage twice,
now. Neither has there been anyone who became younger, or made insane."
 The male nodded, committing the data to memory, not really
concerning himself with the authenticity of the information. Half good,
half bad, not that bad, then.
 The Storyteller took back the list, gingerly folding it. "Oh,
well. It's getting late, and I've got to cook some dinner." She waved,
winking at the settling-in couple. "I'll be keeping a close eye on you,
count on it."