AN: I have 60 reviews!!! Thank you all so much!!! Especially Lady Modokane- check out her stories Guiding The Fallen Angels, and her new one Choices Not Given. Keep it up Lady Modokane!!! Please r and r.

Thanks a lot t my prereaders Lilli Boom and Liezel! you guys rock!

Sry it took me so long to update = /

Ranma's POV

'What is going on with that girl!?' Ranma thought to himself as he shook his head dazedly and chased after his ex-fiancée. He continued running and reached the door of his training gym, now ripped of one of the hinges and hanging haphazardly. He slowed down and entered the gym hesitantly. The gym was a dead end, the end of the tunnel. There would be nowhere to go from here. She was trapped.

Ranma was not an idiot. He could add things up.... the ropes; He would have seen her rip them apart, she'd broken them in a way besides her brute strength. The way she'd snarled and growled, the way she'd attacked the door AND him. Ranma felt gashes on his face. They were deep, probably crimson with blood, but they weren't bleeding. They'd been cauterized. Chi claw cuts.

Ranma knew, he knew. Akane had learned the neko-ken, and not just the regular terrified, mindless neko-ken. She had learned the perfected neko- ken, the controlled, the exponentially more dangerous version. Ranma had realized this in his rooms, but hadn't acknowledged the thought until he'd reached the slashed door to the gym.

'Of course she knows it you idiot! She trained that girl you fought the other day! How could she NOT know it?' Ranma mentally berated himself for not having realized it earlier and prepared for it. Now he would have to fight her all-out, a thing he would rather die before doing. He would have to hurt the girl he was in love with, before she would speak to him, and maybe, even then, she would refuse.

And of course the fact that she was stuck in the gym would make her much, much more dangerous. She was a cornered, furious, wounded lioness, and few things are as dangerous.

Ranma had entered his perfected neko-mode back in the room when he'd been holding Akane down and had heard her yowl in anger. He reinforced it as he stepped in the gym, his chi claws unsheathed, and his fingers curled in the customary "paw," of the technique. He pulled his shirt up over his head and tossed it beside him. His muscles rippled underneath his skin as he put his arms up in a fighting stance, and bared his teeth. He was going all-out and was showing his opponent there would be nothing held back this time.

Suddenly he threw his head back and let out a roar. His challenge, to the feline, the woman he wanted....

Back at Chez Akane....

Nabiki flipped her phone shut and handed it to a grateful Kasumi. She walked over to Nodoka who was standing at the window.

"You did a good thing back there, you know. Your sister deserved that beating." Nabiki said, breaking the silence.

"I suppose. She's no longer my sister though. She's like a weak dog. So different from the proud lioness she used to be...I am not that mangy dog's sister."

"I've been meaning to ask. What's up with all the cat references? Akane's told me how she learned the neko-ken and trained her "elite" with it. But still. It's just a move. I mean, you guys also know the Hiryu Shoten Ha. Why don't you call yourselves dragons or something?" Nabiki said curiously.

Nodoka did not respond immediately. She stared contemplatively through the window, into the night. After a minute or two of silence she began to speak slowly.

"The perfected Neko-Ken is much, much more than a move. It is a way of life. It is a way of thinking, a way of behavior, a way of moving and breathing. It is not, just a technique. Your sister is the grand master of the neko-ken. She IS the cat-fist."

"I don't understand" Nabiki said after a minute. She loathed those three words.

"You understand how the cat-fist works right?" Nabiki nodded, as did Kasumi, who had finished talking to her husband and joined the other 2 women.

"Ok, well the shinzebi Neko-Ken is like that, except infinitely more powerful. There are several differences, but the MAIN one, is that you're conscious. You know what you are doing, and you can control it."

"Well yes, but it's still just a move. I don't understand how it's a way of life." Kasumi said confusedly. She'd overheard Nodoka's view of he neko-ken before she'd arrived.

"For TRUE students of it, it is a way of life, because it never leaves you. You are always in neko-mode. Your senses are always enhanced, your way of thinking even changes. It becomes more animal-like, primal. That doesn't make you primitive though, it's more like there's another voice in your head, except it doesn't speak to you with words. It talks in cat, it's like a super-powerful sixth sense. It tells you if you're about to be attacked. There are other effects. You can understand cats to a degree.

Your chi claws are always present, but they can be sheathed. You can't see these things though. The biggest way to tell, is that your eyes. They change color. If you lose the neko-ken, and it is possible, they change back to normal I suppose. If you lose the neko-ken though your probably dead, and after it you probably wish you were dead."

Nabiki looked stunned at Kasumi, a look her sister shared as they thought of their blue eyed imouto-chan.

"I thought they were contacts..." Nabiki said.

"Yes, so did I. Oh My. And you Nodoka? Were your eyes purple like your sisters? Is that why they're brown now?" Kasumi directed at Nabiki and then Nodoka.

Nodoka smiled faintly.

"No. These are contacts." Nodoka put one finger to her eye and removed the small lens from one of her eyes. She looked up to reveal one amber eye, and one brilliantly green eye. After showing it to her Lady's sister she put the contact back in, and leaned on the window sill, clutching it tightly.

"I have to go train now."

She let go of the window sill and walked out of the room stiffly. Nabiki leaned forward to examine the claw marks in the wood.

"I think she's upset about something."

"Oh my."