Storm's Eye Disclaimer: Characters and setting are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.

Thanks for the feedback: glazedlookineyes101, Jayrock5054, obsidian-fox, Wonderbee31, Shinigami, ikari shinji, Katie, ranger5, Jerry Unipeg, Hououza, A.Nonmyous, dogbertcarroll

Cologne hurried back to the Nekohauten, the news paper article she'd seen was like a whip at her back. Six dead, four parallel blades of impossible sharpness: the Nekoken. She'd been just fourteen years old the first time she encountered someone trained in that forbidden technique. That boy, and every other that came after him, hadn't been able to deal with it as well as Ranma had. After what she'd read Cologne was afraid that Ranma had become like all the other victims of the technique.

She liked her Son-in-law; he both amused and impressed her on a regular basis. Cologne knew her responsibilities though and she'd never shirked them, no matter how distasteful they might be. Still she wouldn't act until she was certain, but if it were the case, how could she not act? She knew what could happen.

"You have to leave me behind Kun Lon! You're my little sister and my student, it's my duty to watch out for you!"

"Ba Rei, we can fight it together. I won't run away and leave you." The younger girl argued. For hours they'd been stalked through the forest near their home. They'd yet to get a good look at the creature, but after it had cut through a hundred year old tree with a slash of it's paw they hadn't needed to see it to be scared of it.

It knew they were afraid and it used that to herd them away from the village. It had driven them into a box canyon. The eighteen-year-old Ba Rei wanted Kun Lon to climb out while she kept the creature occupied below. Kun Lon knew she'd never forgive herself if she left her older sister behind. The fourteen-year-old planted her feet and gave her sister a determined look.

A moment later it slunk out of the trees toward them and made their argument a moot point. It was small, its head and torso were covered by fur like an animal, but it's arms and legs looked human. It didn't move like a human though, it was fast and fluid. Half a dozen feet from their position it stopped and crouched, it wriggled its hindquarters like some bizarre cat then pounced. Ba Rei intercepted its path and it cut her into pieces.

Kun Lon was too horrified to scream as the thing batted her sister's head around like a ball. She was too scared to stand and fight like the Amazon Warrior she aspired to be. She slipped past the distracted monster and ran. Her movement caught the creature's eye and it chased after her. Having seen its speed Kun Lon knew it could catch her at any time, instead it played with her. It let her keep just one step ahead. Occasionally it would leap at her, knock her off her feet, then back off and let her run again. After the first few seconds she was in a blind panic, she never even saw the man until she ran smack into him.

The man wore Dragonscale armor, which marked him as a member of the Musk royal family. He roughly shoved Kun Lon behind him and signaled his retainers. The six warriors spread out, two of them carried heavy nets that shimmered with mystical powers.

When the creature leapt after its prey, one of the men threw his net over it. At the last minute it twisted out of the way, then leapt at the nearest warrior, a battle scarred warrior whose armor was decorated with the tusks of a wild boar. The warrior deflected the creature's claws with a rune engraved shield, despite the protective wards on the shield it came out of the clash with deep grooves in its surface.

The Musk Prince sent a blast of pure ki at the creature and managed to knock it off its feet. The second net-wielder made his cast and while the creature sought to free itself of the coils of enspelled rope the Musk warriors fell on it with spears. When it was over the Musk Prince offered Kun Lon a hand. "I'm sorry you were caught up in this."

Kun Lon stared past the Prince at the creature that had killed her sister. In death she saw what it truly was. A boy, no more than six years old, clad in a leopard skin.

Prince Basil of the Musk and his men had escorted her home after they'd collected her sister's body. They brought the boy's body with them as well. Prince Basil went before the Council of the Elders to make his apologies to her people and to explain that it hadn't been a deliberate act of war, merely a mistake. A sect of the Musk had been experimenting with a new technique and something had gone wrong.

Over the next decade nearly two dozen more young boys had escape the Musk after being trained in the Nekoken and made their way to Amazon lands where her people had been forced to hunt them down to prevent more deaths like her sister's. The oldest of the Nekoken maddened boys had been eleven, but they'd had no choice but to kill them. The Amazon people never learned how many other children were killed or driven insane before the technique was sealed by the Musk.

Cologne had hoped to never see it again, but leave it to a fool like Saotome Genma to unearth that ungodly technique. Still Ranma had so much promise and unlike any of the others he had returned to himself. She didn't want to see another child killed for having been made a victim of the Nekoken. She wanted the six dead in the park to have been a justified killing and to forget that it ever happened, but before she could do that she needed to know the circumstances and if it were likely to happen again. It was her duty.

Genma glanced at the empty futon beside his and sighed. He headed up to the roof. For several moments Genma just stood there and watched the boy huddle under a blanket as he stared out into the dawn. "You should sleep more."

"I slept this afternoon; after I went cat."

"You've hardly slept all week. It's going to tell on your reflexes."

"You want to try me old man?"

"That's the spirit boy." Genma smiled, he was happy to have their relationship back on familiar ground. He leapt to the yard below and assumed a beginning stance.

Ranma shrugged off the blanket and joined his father. Genma frowned at his son's overly formal posture; it was a far cry from his normal, deceptively careless fighting stance.

The pair exchanged blows. Genma refrained from offering criticism. He also avoided any throws that would dump his son in the pond. Genma's awareness of danger was one of his most sharply honed senses. With the general air of something being off about Ranma and the ease with which he'd been slipping into the Nekoken Genma was paying attention to his instincts.

Genma blocked a series of attacks and tossed Ranma across the yard. He flinched when Ranma smashed into the outer wall of the house; he hadn't meant to throw him that hard. The boy assumed that as long as no one saw him not eating they wouldn't notice, still Genma hadn't realized just how much weight Ranma was loosing until that moment. The boy didn't eat, he hardly slept, he practiced the art like a lifeless automaton and all his father could think to do was goad him into a sparring match Genma thought in an odd moment of self-loathing.

Ranma launched a flying kick at his father. Genma countered with the one move in his repertoire that should never have come automatically. Afterwards Genma could only explain it by saying his thoughts had been more on the past week than on the fight; after all, the Cradle from Hell was a specialized type of move, dependant on the overwhelming embarrassment suffered by a teenage boy in the face of parental displays of affection. Ranma might be the premier martial artist of his generation but he was still Genma's child and that insane, ridiculous move had reminded them both of that fact. Genma had needed that reminder when he first realized that his son had surpassed him in skill, but that should have been the end of that particular attack. It happened in an instant. Genma redirected the force of Ranma's attack then pulled the boy out of the air and into an enfolding hug. For a moment Genma felt like he was holding a statue then Ranma collapsed against him. The boy was sobbing silently.

Genma imagined he felt the caress of a blade against the back of his neck. He glanced around the yard as if he expected his wife to materialize out of thin air. He loved Nodoka dearly and still didn't have a clue as to why she'd agreed to marry a lout like him, but Genma knew better than anyone that Nodoka possessed her share of quirks.

She'd been a very nervous young mother, utterly terrified that they were somehow raising Ranma wrong. She'd been completely unable to listen to advise from either friends or doctors when they told her it was natural and healthy for babies, even boy babies, to cry. From the first, Ranma's tears had the power to send Nodoka running for the nearest sharp object. Genma had known, without a shadow of a doubt, that there was no way any of them would survive teething if half the things Soun said about his girls were true.

So when his sixteen-year-old son unexpectedly broke down in tears Genma's first reaction was to make sure that both his wife and her sword were elsewhere. Once that was accomplished Genma leaned back against the garden wall, settled Ranma into a more comfortable position and just let the boy cry. Nodoka wouldn't have approved but personally, Genma didn't give a damn. Ranma was one of only three people in the whole world whom he cared about; a few tears couldn't change that. The purpose, the original purpose, behind the training journeys had simply been to separate Ranma and Nodoka until the boy was old enough to understand that he had to humor his mother's peculiarities. They could have gone home any time after Ranma's seventh birthday but Genma had been having too much fun.

There'd been a time when Genma had believed that he and Soun were cut from the same cloth but the day Soun met his future wife, Himiko, was the day when Soun's wanderlust had taken a fatal blow. Once Genma realized what had happened he set out to find a wife of his own on the assumption that the same thing would happen to him. Traveling by him self just wasn't the same. So he'd married Nodoka, settled down and started teaching at the dojo with Soun. Genma quickly realized that he hated the indolent little brats he was supposed to teach. They had no aptitude and less dedication to his art. He got bored listening to Soun prattle on about his daughters. And Nodoka's presence in his bed had never stopped him from dreaming about life on the road.

Having a child had been Genma's last-ditch plan to find contentment at home, instead Ranma turned into the perfect excuse to escape the trap he'd built for himself. Nodoka gave her stamp of approval when Genma suggested taking their son on training trips. She got more reluctant as the trips got longer and longer but she always agreed in the end. The promise of a male heir to join the two branches of Anything Goes had satisfied Soun. Genma told himself it was the only possible way to keep Nodoka from acting rashly… The truth was Genma would have taken any excuse to get away from the settled life he'd created for himself.

As Ranma got older the trips eclipsed Genma's earlier travels with Soun. Ranma had an unparalleled talent for the art and he was a quick learner. He accepted harsh living conditions and worse training methods with a trusting smile… Well, until the Nekoken training anyway. Best of all traveling with an outgoing and adorable child opened possibilities Genma had never dreamed existed.

It had been great, the best time of Genma's life, but time accomplished what nothing else could. After more than a decade on the road with Ranma, Genma started missing Soun and Nodoka. He started to think that the guarantee of food in his belly and a roof over his head every night was worth giving up the excitement of the life of a wandering martial artist. The trip to China had always been intended as one last adventure before he took the boy home and started praying that Ranma was more suited for a settled life than he'd been.

Genma smiled a little sadly, he shouldn't have worried so much; it seemed Ranma would never suffer for lack of excitement. The boy drew chaos like a lodestone drew iron filings. The elder Saotome stroked the silky black hair pressed against his shoulder; he just hoped Ranma hadn't been found by more trouble than he could stand.

Holding the boy felt marginally more constructive than sparring with him had but Genma was still at a loss. The only sort of people problems he had experience with solving were the sort he could run away from or bury under a mountain and lately he'd began to question how effective those techniques really were. Happosai had dug himself out and too many of the problems Genma had left in the dust had arrived in Nerima lately. The only thing in Genma's experience that compared to the broken look in Ranma's eyes was the change Himiko's death had wrought in Soun. Genma had become resigned to the fact that he'd lost all but the barest remnant of his old training partner. Now he felt like he was loosing his son as well and he didn't even know why.

Nabiki stared at the list she'd made.

No more cheesecake shots. It would cut into her revenue but it wouldn't be hard to accomplish. In fact getting a picture, a good picture, of Ranma's girl-form would be damn near impossible. Ranma hardly slept and when the water magnet part of his curse kicked in Ranma's entire body radiated shocked distress. Nabiki didn't have the stomach to photograph that. Pictures were out for the time being.

No displays from over amorous admirers. That one would be harder. Akane wasn't capable of admitting, let alone showing, her emotions. Ukyo wasn't that demonstrative to start with and she knew enough about what was going on to know that now wasn't the time to push. Shampoo, now there was a problem. Nabiki figured that if she dropped some hints around Cologne Shampoo could be backed off. Then there were the Kunos: no common sense, no connection to reality and no restraint. At least Kodachi didn't have a romantic interest in Ranma's girl-form. Ranma wasn't playing around anymore, Kodachi hadn't been anywhere near his class for a long time. It wasn't likely that she could make Ranma loose control while he was in his natural form, but she could add unwanted and unwelcome stress. Tatewaki, on the other hand, was dead; it was only a matter of time. The True Blunder was grabby and aggressive, he targeted Ranma's girl-form, he was obnoxious about it... He wasn't the type to let a little thing like a hundred and forty stitches keep him from the object of his affections. Nabiki groaned; Kuno-baby was going to take careful handling or a body bag.

No attacks from rivals. It wouldn't take much to convince Cologne to douse Mousse and lock him in his cage for a month or so. Ryoga could be expected to show up any where at any time but he hadn't taken advantage during the strength sapping moxibustion incident. If she could talk with Ryoga he might be willing to lay off for a while. Ranma wasn't running around in his girl-form, hopefully 'her' rivalry with Kodachi would never come up. Kuno-baby was a pain in the rear under any circumstances. Principal Kuno, well he was a thorn in the side of every Furinkan student, but Ranma wasn't going to school and Ranma had hacked his own hair off. Nabiki felt a bitter laugh rising in her chest; wouldn't the Principal be happy, his number one delinquent was toeing the line. All it had taken was rapist managing to grab Ranma's pigtail during a fight. Gosunkugi wasn't a martial artist and from the last report he hadn't left his house since the last time Ranma had spoken with him but his habit of stalking Akane wouldn't be looked upon as a joke anymore. Tsubasa hadn't been around lately but since the last thing Nerima needed was another stalker he'd probably show up. Pantyhose Taro was utterly uncontrollable, he operated on his own agenda and everyone else be damned. He was powerful enough to shake Ranma's confidence and he never passed up a chance to activate Ranma's curse. Then there was the constant parade of freaks that came to Nerima and ended up challenging Ranma; not much could be done about them and kidnapping a bride was one of the top ten reasons to visit Nerima. According to Akane's account of the showdown with Mao Mo Lin, Ranma now equated bridal kidnappings with rape.

Nabiki fought the urge to bang her head against her desk then she heard it.

Visions of hearts danced in her eyes. Ranma-darling hadn't shown such open concern for her since the night they met.

For the last week Kodachi had been busy watching over Mr. Green Turtle; he had an upset stomach, she never should have fed him exotic food like that German Shepard, but today she was free to pursue matters of the heart and pursue them she would. Why, if she played her cards right her beloved Ranma might actually volunteer to walk her home.

Her eyes haunted his dreams and not in the manner he preferred. His Pig-tailed Girl was injured, her normally lively eyes spoke of some terrible hurt done to her and he, Kuno Tatewaki, had failed to defend her. He was failing to even offer her his comfort and support. This state of affairs was intolerable.

Since that morning the Pig-tailed Girl had vanished from the face of the earth. The only sure method Kuno knew of for contacting her was through Saotome Ranma, but the cur had been absent from classes as well. There really was only one place to go for answers.

The steady thwack of sneakers against pavement filled her mind. There were days when this was Akane's favorite part of her morning jog; the way it cleared her mind of everything except picking up her foot to take the next step. She didn't have to think about a sex changing fiancé with a number of other girls after him or the way he twisted her emotions into knots. She certainly didn't have to think about the undercurrents swirling around him for the last week; dark, frightening and painful, nothing like her Ranma. She didn't have to think about coincidences like the fact that Ranma changed immediately after a night when it had taken him too long to get home after she'd sent him flying. She could forget all that for twenty minutes while she ran.

Akane didn't appreciate it when she turned back toward the Dojo and found Kuonji Ukyo leaning against the gate waiting for her. The complications in her life should have the curtsey to wait until she'd finished her jog before jumping her.

"Why are you here?" Akane demanded. "As if I didn't know."

"Easy sugar." Ukyo held up her hands in surrender. "I wanted to talk to you, about calling a truce."

"A… What?" Akane eyed Ranma's so-called "cute fiancée" suspiciously.

"I saw Ranma-honey yesterday. I've heard the gossip around school and I've talked with Nabiki. Ranma isn't doing so well. Ranchan's my oldest friend and I'm not gonna leave him to deal with things on his own, but if I come over here you and I'll just get into it and make everything worse."

"So you're giving up on marrying him?" Akane asked incredulously. The idea was too unbelievable for her to even add a token protest about how she didn't want a pervert like Ranma for a fiancé anyway.

"In your dreams sugar. I said truce, not surrender." Ukyo declared. "Until Ranchan's back to his old self he's our friend, not our fiancé. I'll swear on my honor that I won't do anything to try to cause problems between the two of you. I'll even promise I won't try to get you and Ryoga together… even if I do think he's a much better match for you than my Ranchan."

"In exchange for what?" Akane asked. If nothing else, living with Nabiki had impressed the knowledge that you don't get something for nothing on Akane.

Ukyo gave Akane a self-depreciating grin. "Well sugar, I'd like to ask for the same considerations from you, but seeing as you'd never admit to wanting Ranchan for yourself I'm gonna ask that if the Panda and your dad come up with some harebrained scheme, you'll derail it and you'll do it without resorting to screaming at Ranma or hitting him."

"I don't get it."

"You don't have to sugar, just agree to it." Ukyo replied. "Oh and if you don't mind, keep it quiet until I can get Shampoo to agree to the both of us laying off for awhile. She doesn't need to know I'm already doing it, whether or not she agrees."

"Why are you asking me for something I do anyway?" Akane demanded.

"I'm not, I'm asking you to deal with those two idiots instead of shoving it off on Ranchan like you normally do."

"But…"

"Look Akane, nothing you'd do to win Ranma worries either Shampoo or I, what worries us is the fact that you haven't driven him away yet. You want my personal theory? That bastard Genma raised Ranma-honey; he's probably got no idea what a loving relationship is supposed to be like. He sticks with you, because you're the closest to what he's use to."

"And who are you to imply such things about my husband?"

Ukyo spun around to face her challenger. A dozen thoughts simultaneously flashed through her mind: Great timing, Kuonji, hell of a first impression to be making. She's married to Saotome Genma? Looks just like Ranchan's girl-half, always wondered where Ranma-honey got his looks. Wonder if the Panda pulled some sort of a fast one on her. She not only married the panda, she's defending him!?!

None of that made it past Ukyo's frozen vocal cords. Akane, however, knew just what to say. "Auntie Nodoka!" She also made sure to say it loudly enough to rouse the whole neighbor hood.