"All right, you! Fess up! Where is my fiancee?" Ukyo demanded.

She took the apple out of Dr. Tofu's mouth just long enough for him to shout, "I'll never tell!"

"You won't, eh?" Ukyo growled. "Then I guess I'll have to beat you around a little more with my spatula!"

"Please, not again!" Tofu yelled before having the apple shoved back in his mouth.

Ukyo raised her huge battle spatula and was just about to strike when Akane walked back into the dojo.

"Ukyo, what are you doing?" she gasped, horrified.

"Being the 'bad cop'," Ukyo replied matter-of-factly. "Remember? You were the 'good cop', so now I get to be the bad one."

"Honestly, I leave her alone for five minutes..." Akane thought, mortified. "Ukyo, come over here."

Ukyo put down her gigantic cooking utensil down and walked over to the corner with Akane.

"Look, Ukyo, this isn't working," Akane whispered. "Dr. Tofu is a tougher nut to crack than we thought. This calls for drastic measures!"

"I gotcha..." Ukyo nodded, rummaging through her purse. Finally, she found what she was looking for.

"This oughta do it!" she beamed, pulling out a taser.

"NO! NOT THAT!" Tofu screamed, spitting the apple out in panic.

"WHAT HE SAID: NOT THAT!" Akane squeaked. She yanked the weapon out of Ukyo's hand and gave her a dirty look. "Ukyo, what in the world is the matter with you?"

To Akane's shock, the tomboyish chef's eyes began brimming with tears. "I--I'm sorry, Akane. Sorry, Dr. Tofu (the M.D. gives a nervous nod). It's just... I have this horrible feeling that something terrible has happened to Ran-chan. When the guy you love is in danger, you tend to do crazy things, and..."

Akane finally realized just how hard this situation was on Ukyo, and she simultaneously became aware of her own worry. She gave Ukyo a little hug and whispered, "I know you're worried. I am, too. We'll find Ranma and bring him home in one piece, I promise. (Haha...) No tasers, though, okay?"

Ukyo laughed a little through her tears. "Okay. (Takes a deep breath) All right, enough gushy stuff. I'm gonna be strong for Ranma! Well, what do you have in mind for 'drastic measures'?"

Dr. Tofu was still adamant about his 'vow of silence', declaring, "I'm not going to talk, no matter what you try. Do you hear me?"

"Sure, Doctor, sure..." Akane retorted, an enigmatic smile on her face. "KASUMI! COME HERE FOR A SECOND, PLEASE!"

As the eldest Tendo daughter rushed outside to see what her sibling wanted, the befuddled M.D.'s glasses began fogging over...


"OH HO HO HO HO! Oh, Ranma darling! Come out, shnookums!"

The "shnookums" in question was curled up in a fetal position in a dark corner, covered in a cold sweat. To say that Ranma Saotome was one panicked individual would be... an understatement, to put it lightly.

"I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die!" he thought with a shiver. "Why did it have to be HER? Kuno, I can outsmart. Sasuke, I can beat up. Heck, I can at least run away from Mr. Turtle! But Kodachi..."

He heard that haunting laugh again, much closer this time, and desperately fought the urge to break and run.

"OH HO HO HO HO! Ranma darling, you're such a Romeo!" Kodachi giggled. "To come over to my house on Halloween, in full costume no less, just shows what a cutie you are. Come now; don't be shy! I want my big bwave werewolf to pwotect me fwom the spooky wooky dark..."

Ranma truly felt like a cornered animal. Kodachi was blocking the only way out, and it was only a matter of time before she discovered her "big bwave werewolf" and smothered him in love as only she could.

"There HAS to be some way out of here!" Ranma thought, his eyes searching frantically for some means of escape. Suddenly, he noticed a door on the opposite side of the hallway from where he was crouching. It didn't exactly look friendly; it was covered in heavy chains and had a large sign posted above it that read:

"WARNING: Certain death lies beyond this door. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Ranma sweatdropped. "This is my one and only exit? I have a bad feeling about this..."

Just then, the stressed-out wolfman heard steps coming closer. A sickeningly sweet voice called, "Get ready, my sweet little wolf-hunk! Your 'trainer' is coming to find you!"

His eyes went wide with horror. "Y'know, I have a much worse feeling about out here! Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!"

Ranma's powerful punches demolished the chains in seconds, and he slipped inside the door just as Kodachi rounded the corner. The Black Rose was sporting a rather interesting getup, which I suppose could (in some circles) be considered that of a trainer... She wore a skimpy dominatrix suit, a "Lone Ranger" mask, and was carrying a large whip.

"Sweety? Are you here?" she inquired. Finding that Ranma was nowhere to be seen, she put her hands on her hips and pouted.

"I could have sworn that my darling Ranma came this way. Perhaps he made his way to the kitchen; he does so like to eat, after all..." she said with a sigh. With that, Kodachi turned and left the way she came.


"Let's see," Ranma muttered, "there must be a light switch in here somewhere..."

Finally, his keen eyes made out a slight bump on the wall. He flicked it into the on position, and he shielded his eyes as the room was flooded with bright light. When he opened his eyes, however, he began to wonder if perhaps ignorance really was bliss.

Apparently, Ranma had wandered into some sort of deadly gauntlet! The room was some ten feet wide and forty feet long, painted white from top to bottom. The five feet adjacent to the door through which Ranma had entered was a "safe zone", with no discernable dangers. The rest of the room, however, was another story entirely...

From the ceiling hung huge blades that swung back and forth in a pendulum motion, with no common pattern. The ceiling-mounted sickles were hardly the only danger; occasionally a section or two of the wall would shoot out from both sides, meeting in the middle. Naturally, this would crush whatever or whoever was unfortunate enough to be walking there at the time. To complete the "try it and die" atmosphere of the room, spikes would randomly shoot upward from the floor and mobile punching bags flew this way and that, ready to knock any challenger into one of the afore-mentioned traps.

Ranma's skin became clammy as he took in this portrait of impossibility. "Wh-what in the world IS this room?"

"Ranma Saotome, is that you?" a voice boomed, causing Ranma's heart to skip a beat.

Once he had recovered from his momentary shock, the wolf-man cautiously raised his eyes to find the source of the voice. He didn't have far to search; there was a wall-mounted TV to his left, and the face on the screen belonged to none other than Sasuke!

"Sasuke?" Ranma said, releasing his held breath. "Geez, you almost gave me a heart attack!"

"Sorry, I apologize," the Kuno family ninja replied, bowing slightly. "My surprise at your... new look made me forget my manners."

"Ah, don't sweat it," Ranma replied, his composure regained. "Well, since you're here, howsabout telling me where I am? For that matter, where the heck have you been all this time?"

Sasuke cleared his throat. "Well, let me answer the first question first. In regards to your location, you're standing in Master Kuno's abandoned training room."

"Training room?" Ranma asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, yes..." Sasuke answered hesitantly. "You see, about three months ago Master Kuno got fed up with losing to you, so he ordered the construction of this training room. He had experts from all over the world flown in to design it. Near the end of the planning stages, they realized that they had outdone themselves..."

(Flashback)

DESIGNER: "I'm telling you, Sir, that we must redo these designs! We didn't give enough thought to human limitations, and--"

KUNO: "Then you have done your job well. The opponent I must face will require nothing less than the most strenuous training imaginable to defeat."

DESIGNER: "Do you have putty in your ears, young man? I'm telling you that there's no way in the world that anything human can run this gauntlet and live!"

KUNO: "Finish it with the current plans, or you shan't get paid a single yen."

DESIGNER (sweatdropping): "Right away, sir..."

(End flashback)

"I know where this is going," Ranma muttered, rolling his eyes. "The big goof tried it anyway, almost got himself killed, and ran out of here screaming like a two-year-old."

Sasuke blushed slightly. "In a word: yes. He ordered the room sealed off, and you're the first one that's been in it since."

"As much as I like a challenge, I think I'll pass this time..." Ranma frowned, glancing at the menacing gauntlet. "Open the door and let me out."

A rather embarassed look came over the ninja's face. "Well, about that... I can't."

Ranma faceplanted, but he quickly recovered and began shouting angrily at the TV. "What the heck do you mean, 'I can't'? What kind of screwed-up answer is that?"

Sasuke's face hardened into the very picture of seriousness. "I mean just what I said: I can't. You see, the answer to your other question from earlier is that I'm being controlled by some sort of black magic. That Gosenkugi fellow barged right in, tossed some sort of powder in my face, and now he's controlling me like a puppet! The only good news is that my mind doesn't seem to be affected, only my body."

"Let me guess," Ranma said with a weary sigh, "Gosenkugi put you in charge of this little torture chamber and told you to not let anyone escape."

"Hey, you're batting a thousand tonight, Mr. Saotome!" Sasuke answered, surprised at the young man's intuition.

Ranma slapped one hand over his eyes. "Figures... just my luck..." he moaned.

"Well, I guess there's no use whining about it," he said, stepping toward the gauntlet. "I guess I'd better--"

SHWING!

Ranma panted heavily, his body shaking like a leaf. In between his teeth he held a small throwing knife that had been hurled from the opposite end of the room. A quick glance at the far-away wall on the other side revealed that it was riddled with holes, just large enough to throw small objects (like throwing knives, for example) through.

"Oh, that reminds me!" Sasuke exclaimed. "I almost forgot to tell you: from that row on, each floor tile activates some sort of trap when you step on it."

"Wrrya mnh amst?" Ranma growled through clenched teeth. (Translation: "Whaddya mean, 'almost'?")

Spitting out the knife, Ranma silently turned around and walked several feet back. He stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

"Okay, man..." he thought. "This is it, so you have to toss everything else on your mind out the window. On the count of three: 1... 2..."

"Three!" he yelled, turning and running full speed toward almost certain doom. As soon as he hit the afore-mentioned row, the far wall exploded with dozens of shiny blades. To his own amazement, the wonder-wolf somehow managed to dodge them all! The knives weren't his only concern, however, as he leaped left and right to avoid the pendulum sickles.

As Ranma zig-zagged past all of the flying knives and swinging blades, he couldn't get over his amazement at how well he was doing. "This is unreal... I was sure I was going to get chopped to shreds before I made it five feet, but I'm already a quarter of the way there without a scratch! Is this what my werewolf body is capable of?"

As Ranma stepped on one of the tiles, his sensitive ears picked up a slight clicking sound. He leaped upward just in time to avoid the three jagged spikes that erupted from the ground below. After this close brush with death, Ranma's cockiness quickly evaporated.

"Crap..." he gasped, dodging a punching bag, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say that this place is getting harder as I go!"

As if in answer to this statement, the walls, pendulums, and punching bags suddenly doubled their speed.

"I've gotta learn to keep my big mouth shut!" Ranma muttered. He picked up some movement with his peripheral vision, springing forward just in time to avoid a crushing defeat (pun intended) at the hands of two colliding walls. Everything became a blur of color as Ranma dashed on all fours down the remaining twenty feet of the room. He vaguely made out what was going on around him: he dodged a wall crusher here, leapt over a pendulum there, jumped over spikes rising from below, ducked a punching bag to his left, and avoided some throwing knives to his right. It wasn't that he had allowed instinct to take over; instead (and more incredibly) his body seemed to be keeping pace with the speed of his thought!

Suddenly, Ranma realized that he was mere feet away from the door. His joy was dampened, however, by the realization that he was caught between a pendulum behind him and a wall crusher in front! Using one last surge of energy, he shot forward with inhuman speed, making it just in time... sort of.

SLAM!

"YOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW!" Ranma wailed as his tail was crushed flat. The walls parted a split-second later, allowing the teary-eyed wolfman to crawl the final three feet to the door. Ranma stood up slowly and painfully, leaning on the door for support. Looking down, he quickly noticed that he had several throwing knives sticking out of his chest, arms, and legs. He found it extremely odd that they hurt so little, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. As he began pulling them out, another wall-mounted TV (identical to the one on the other side of the room) flashed on.

"Mr. Saotome, that was amazing!" Sasuke exclaimed excitedly. "I've never seen such--"

His sentence trailed off and his skin turned pale as he beheld the weeping werewolf, removing the knives from his wounds.

"Oh, my! Sir, those knives... are you going to be all right?" the ninja asked, very concerned.

"Forget the knives!" Ranma choked. "It's my tail that's killing me! I had no idea it was that sensitive... I feel like someone slammed my nuts in a car door!"

For a second, there was awkward silence. Then, Sasuke started laughing uproariously! At first Ranma was ticked off, but within a few seconds he found himself guffawing as well. When they had both calmed down, Sasuke gave Ranma a warm smile.

"Well, despite the squashed tail, I'm glad you made it through safely, Ranma Saotome," he chuckled. "When you see Mr. Gosenkugi, give him a punch in the nose for me, okay?"

"Will do!" Ranma replied, pulling the last knife out. He stared in amazement at his wounds as they healed before his very eyes.

"Y'know, except for the fur, tail, and yellow eyes, this werewolf thing ain't so bad..." he thought whimsically. "The cons still outweigh the pros by a longshot, though. No matter what that geek throws at me, I will ditch this curse before morning. Better get ready, Gosenkugi, 'cuz you'll be 'monster mash' by the time I get through pounding you!"

"Sasuke, I'll see you later," Ranma stated, waving at the TV monitor. With that, he opened the door and ran into the waiting darkness.

END OF CHAPTER 6

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Hidey-ho, neighbors! I hope you enjoyed this chapter; I had a LOT of fun writing it.

I know a lot of you are probably starting to wonder, "Where the heck did Gosenkugi go? Isn't he your title character?" I have only two words for these people: you're right. I'm afraid he's gone a little by the wayside in these past two chapters, but rest assured that he'll be back "en force" for the next installment. Till then, don't take any wooden nickels! (Or voodoo dolls from pizza delivery boys...)