Guest Ki: Chapter 24

Dojo Rules

School preparations began frantically the next morning. The sparring had done its work, almost too well. They both slept in until Kasumi personally rousted them out of their respective rooms. Akane called to check on Ryoga and Ukyo, while Barry was sprinting through a quick shower.

He skidded out in time to be reassured that their directionally challenged friends were taken care of. The morning proceeded from there at a more sedate pace. Akane prepared for her morning run, Kasumi prepared breakfast and Soun stomped in from the dojo to deliver his first demon head of the day.

"Ranma, what have you done to the dojo!"

"Back soon," Akane said ignoring him. She was over the wall in a flash for her new morning 'jog'.

"Good morning, Father," said Kasumi, smiling. "Would you like your paper now?"

Soun looked back to Ranma who was writing something furiously in a spiral binder. Ignored at all points, he deflated and sat down, accepting the newspaper from his oldest daughter. He sipped the cup of coffee she set at his place — Kasumi was serving a more western breakfast this morning — and repeated his question in a more reasonable manner. "Ranma, I was out at the dojo this morning and noticed that the wall had a huge hole in it. We are still somewhat strapped financially since the wedding and this could prove an expensive repair. Would you care to comment?" Ranma glanced his way.

"Akane promised ta fix it after school."

"Akane?" said Soun. Then he smiled proudly. "She put you through the wall again, eh?" His frown came back. "When were you sparring?"

"About 2:00 A.M. Shampoo stopped by, P-chan chased her off and we couldn't get back to sleep." Barry yawned. "Rules were no lights, no battle yells and damage fixed by whoever who broke it."

"Oh! That's quite practical and considerate," Soun decided. He beamed again. His daughter was apparently on a par with Genma's son! Her mother would have been so proud. He retreated to his paper and Barry rose and went to the kitchen to help Kasumi.

"You don't have to do that, Ranma," Kasumi said.

Maybe not, 'Sumi, but maybe I want to." Barry passed ingredients and later loaded up dishes, ala Amazon-waitressing. Barry was unconcerned about being out of character here. Ranma did little things for Kasumi all the time. The protest and sidestepping were just part of the game.

Akane came back at that point, saw breakfast was being set on the table and hurried back to get a bath. After she arrived, breakfast went at its usual pace. Barry ate like a famished wolf, finishing in seconds and glancing around for more.

"He's not here, you know," Akane said dryly. He looked at her blankly and caught a few scraps from the edge of his mouth with his tongue. "Your father?"

"Huh? Oh! Sorry 'bout that." He nodded to Kasumi. "It was good, though."

"How anyone could manage to taste…" Akane began.

"Akane, I was wonderin'," said the pigtailed boy, "I'm tryin' ta stop by Mom's before school and thought we could make it part of that morning run o' yours. Ya know, turn it inta trainin'. It can't be more than twenty minutes away at a good pace, and joggin' just ain't gonna hack it, ya know."

Akane glanced at him sideways. Barry was in for a show. "That sounds great, Ranma," she said. "But if you want to see Aunt Nodoka today, you better get moving." She tapped her wristwatch.

"Right!" He shifted his weight, began to leap up and seemed to vanish, eliciting a gasp from Kasumi and an oath from Soun.

"Show-off," Akane accused as she looked in the direction she believed he had gone. "Honestly!"

Soun, feathers ruffled somewhat by the event, snapped his paper open again. From behind its defenses, he commented to his youngest daughter on earlier events. "I understand you two were up late sparring?"

Akane grimaced. "We were. Sorry about the dojo. We'll fix it."

"It was rather obvious. The hole in the wall you made must have really hurt."

"Not really," she replied. "But watch the floor over by the weight set. I think Ranma cracked a beam and I don't know how well he was able to support it last night. He'll fix it after school."

Soun digested this information.

"Do you mean to say Ranma threw you into the floor hard enough tocrack a support beam?" Soun began quietly enough, but by the end he was showing signs of going demon head again.

"No, Daddy," Akane replied, sipping the tea at her place. "I threw him into the floor."

Soun subsided and frowned puzzled. "If you…" Soun didn't quite get it. The pieces weren't all in place for him, and it was a bit confusing to hear second-hand. He also hadn't finished his coffee yet. "I thought you were following the 'you broke…"

"That's right, Daddy. Ranma broke the floor, Ranma fixes the floor." Akane explained. "I broke the wall, he broke the floor. We fix what we break. It's only fair." She glanced at her watch and rose to her feet. "Oops, got to go." She caught up her own books, sighed when she saw Barry had forgotten his bento and gathered that in. She gave her father a peck on the cheek before leaving. "Love you, Daddy."

Soun sat there pondering how strange it was sometimes. Then it occurred to him how Akane 'broke' the wall… "rrrrrRRRRRRAANMA!" (Demonhead)

Kasumi t'ched and sighed, "Father, father, father…"

"Pops! I gotta… whoa! Eeep! Ki-yah…get to school!" Genma ambushed Barry as he watered Nodoka's garden. Already a slightly dicey situation, both had gone to their cursed forms within seconds of the initial attack. "You jerk! Now I'm gonna be soggy all morning!"

"Growf! Grrr, grrr, wuff!" Genma whipped out a sign that declared, A martial artist must be prepared for discomfort in the pursuit of his Art. Barry kicked the sign into Genma's face.

"Ya mean like that, old man?"

"Dearest," Nodoka stuck her head out the window, "I don't mind you playing with Ranma, but if you damage my plantings I will be most annoyed."

Barry promptly moved in close and got a grip on the panda's out-flung arm as he tried to knock her into last week. A twist and a boosted throw, and panda-Pops flew over the fence and into the alley. "Weren't you listening? She said don't hurt the garden, old man." Crashing sounds emanated from beyond the wall at Genma's impact.

"Ranma, what have I told you about being respectful to your father?" Nodoka chided, gently.

"Growf! Urf, grouw, growf!" agreed said panda, sticking a banana peel-bedecked head back over the fence. Angrily he batted at flies before holding up a sign. This is all your fault, boy!

"Oh, dear. Next Tuesday, could you toss him the other way? The garbage hasn't been picked up yet." Nodoka looked at her husband with a sigh of resignation. "And panda fur is so hard on the drains."

"No problem, Mom." Ranma picked up the hose and turned it on the black and white face, the power of the stream causing the panda's lips to flap and billow from the attack. The banana peel went flying. "That better?"

She leaped to the fence top as Genma dropped out of sight, continuing the attack. "Take that, 'honored father'!" From beyond came strangled protests and muffled roars.

"Oh, my!" Nodoka looked at the clock on the wall in the house then stuck her head out. "Ranma! You're going to be late!"

"Nuts!" Barry contemplated the sloshy, sagging panda in the alleyway. She had allowed her dislike of Genma to distract her. With a sudden smirk, she sent loops of hose to wrap about the disgruntled figure; a twist and smooth jerk brought Genma back into the yard and left him spinning like a top. "You get to finish watering the garden, 'honored father'. First honest work you'll have done in weeks." Tossing the hose down she raced into the house, grabbed her bags and gave Nodoka a passing peck on the cheek, as Ranma's memories dictated was expected.

"Wait, Ranma! The kettle…"

"No time, Momma! I'll get it at school!"

Nodoka came back to the garden and watched her transformed husband slowly spin to a stop. Staggering, he took three hopping steps sideways and sat down hard. Breathing heavily, he held his black and white head between his hands to stop the spinning.

"Dearest? What did I say about the garden?"

Genma looked up at his wife then looked around. Sticking out from under his left hip was a plant he couldn't identify. He swallowed and glanced, cringing, at his wife. All she was doing was standing there, her arms crossed and frowning slightly, but he would rather have been standing before Soun doing a full demon-head projection. Jumping to his feet, he set about watering and repairing minor deficiencies in his wife's garden.

He, or rather she, was late by two minutes.

"Good morning, Ranma," Mrs. Morisato said as she skidded through the door. "You know where the buckets are."

"Yes, ma'am." Barry answered. "Could I stop at the nurse's office for some hot water first?"

"Of course. But hurry!"

Barry barreled away, wondering. As far as he knew, this was the first time Mrs. Morisato had seen him in his cursed form, yet she had not reacted at all. She must have seen photos of Ranma in her briefing when she was hired. Yeah, that was it. Still, she was much calmer than any other person who had run across the curse for the first time. Barry skidded to a halt and the nurse, after a single glance, held out the kettle.

Male again, he blazed back to class, got the buckets and took up position in the hall. To pass the time, he juggled the buckets, working out patterns and movements in an attempt to expand his understanding of Ranma's skills. This kind of thing was becoming a constant waking habit. Another habit was the constant scanning of the surroundings with ki-vision.

"Don't try it, Fruitcake." Still juggling, he turned around and faced the principal of Furinkan.

"Dee buckets ain't fo' jugglin', Ranma! Day fo' hangin' on de ends o' yo' arms. Yo don' wannabe de-lin-quent, do ya?"

"Deez buckets day gonna land on de principal's head, day will, if de principal, he ain't a good kahuna!" Barry mocked.

Kuno growled. It was obviously going to be another one of those years. Maybe he could fail the little bastard and torture him again next year? Hmmm… Would it be worth it? Probably not. All the people that fought with Ranma would be gone. Now, where in Nerima could he find some uninformed but skilled underclassmen?

Not having a clear advantage, he sneered at Ranma and edged past. "Yo one bad keiki, Ranma. I'll see yo at de assembly Friday. We see who laugh den!"

"Whatever." Barry continued to juggle and wondered what Kuno would do if they ever got a transfer student from Hawaii. Probably warp the poor idiot for life. Either that or go into a depression when he found out what a real Hawaiian thought of his garb, attitude, and affected speech.

So next Friday was an assembly, hmmm?

Classes went smoothly until just before the final bell. Miss Hinako was doing roll again, in case someone left early. Barry had left, in spirit if not in body, and Shampoo stared in fascination at his bobbing pigtail. Barry was still operating with his ki-vision, if not in a conscious manner. Shampoo reached to tug at his pigtail. Barry unconsciously dodged. She tried again, faster. Same result. Curious and becoming excited, she tried to trap that bobbing, weaving object.

Akane answered the call for her name and turned toward Barry. Ranma's name had been called early on and he had answered with the muffled snort that Akane recognized. The baka was falling asleep. She turned to deliver a scathing comment and saw Shampoo snatching at the deceptively bobbing braid of hair on the back of his head. Class dismissal suddenly became exciting.

"Shampoo! What do you think…" she began, outraged yet intrigued by the interplay.

Barry woke with a snort, the braid still for a moment.

Shampoo excitedly grabbed the braid. And having gained this advantage, she put it to good use, yanking him over backwards and trying to kiss him to his tonsils. "MmmRGF, FAMPU!"

"Happo-go-en-satsu!" piped a shrill, childish voice. "Delinquents," the voice added in similar, but mature, tones.

"What were you two thinking?" Akane growled, while supporting two totally wiped out individuals on the way home from school. "Miss Hinako won't put up with that!"

"Ranma?" Shampoo groaned. The only good thing about this was that her left arm, flung across Akane's shoulders, rested across the back of Ranma's neck and his right arm, flung across Akane's shoulders dangled his hand over her shoulder to occasionally brush against the side of her breast. "Ranma," she repeated, "Japanese high school worse than warrior training. Vampire-teacher scary."

"I'm tryin' ta sleep over here," he mumbled in return.

Akane dropped him. "Grow up," she said in disgust. "And as for you, you hussy, I thought we agreed the Amazon training you had was flawed?"

"So sorry," Shampoo giggled weakly, obviously not sorry at all.

"Honestly!"

Mousse dropped off a rooftop and joined them. He stood there, silent and enigmatic, mysterious, if you didn't realize that he was trying to figure out who was who without his glasses. With one chance in three to glomp the right girl, and three chances of three that he'd get punched out regardless, this could be a difficult choice. If one must endure pain, it should at least be rewarded with pleasure as well.

Finally deciding that the two figures standing so close together must be the hated Saotome and his lovely Shampoo, he pointed dramatically.

"Ranma, prepare to meet the righteous wrath…"

"Is Shampoo, Mousse."

"Wa—! Sorry! Ranma prepare…"

"Mousse, use your glasses. I'm Akane and I'm not in the mood to play."

Mousse took a step back in consternation. Akane and Shampoo were… It didn't make sense. Finally, he put on his hated specs.

"What happened to you?" he exclaimed at the totally drained looking figures before him.

"Was wonderful…" drawled Shampoo lazily as if sated from passion.

"What?" Mousse grabbed the sides of his head. Did this mean…? "Saotome, prepare to die!" So enraged was the young man that he didn't even wait to use his weapons, but went after his foe with his bare hands. To his surprise, he succeeded.

"Mousse!"

"Gaak!"

"Aiya! No hurt airen!"

(Bam! Crunch! Wham! Punt-punt! Wham!)

Akane and Shampoo looked at one another across Mousse's prone form.

"If anyone asks, you beat him, understand?" Akane said tensely. "Do you have to tease the poor guy that way?"

"Am sorry. Mousse too-too easy."

"I'm the only one in shape to walk home, Shampoo," Akane shouted. "I am not carrying all of you!"

"What happened to you?" Cologne stood in the kitchen door of the Nekohanten and watched Akane Tendo, carrying a duck and a cat and dragging a red-haired girl by her pigtail, walk through the front door. Akane's face looked as stormy as the kamikaze of legend. After meeting her eyes, the Matriarch composed herself and nodded understandingly. "I understand; I don't want to know."

"…The monk related his experience to his abbot, who had it set down as a cautionary tale. The monk had nearly drowned crossing the swollen stream. In the sickness that followed, his spirit left his body and crossed a great divide where he lived another life. Great chariots floated in the sky and men communicated over great distances at will. The air was choked with poison and…"

Barry nodded and listened to the translation Mousse was giving of a copy of an ancient Shaolin chronicle. It was marginally similar to his own case and had, as part of the chronicle, a method of recalling the astral self and a ceremony of binding that insured that the victim of these astral travels would not float away again. The Amazons were understandably interested in the binding, and he was interested, though he couldn't show it, in the recall of the astral self.

"Why do I have to translate this for you, Saotome," muttered Mousse.

"Aw, c'mon, Mousse. Ya know yer doing this for Shampoo." Barry barely contained a yawn. Duck-boy recovered from his pounding far faster than he or Shampoo did from the ki-draining. "Stop whining."

"To think that an outsider like you has been blessed with a gift from the gods themselves is too much to bear!" Mousse snarled, clenching his fists.

"Yeah, yeah!" Barry was unimpressed. "The real problem is that you wanna be upstairs watching that animé with Akane an' Shampoo." Mousse reddened and stuttered. "Never woulda taken you for a senshi-fan though."

"Ran-ma!"

(bap!) "Ow!"

"Just shut up and translate, Mr. Part-time," Cologne said in passing. She paused as laughter came faintly from upstairs. She pogo-ed swiftly over to the steps.

"Shampoo, study first! Then you can watch your show. Tape it!"

"Yes, Grandmother," came the faint reply.

"Children," muttered the old woman. She turned back to Ranma and Mousse. "I'm almost surprised at how studious you are, boy."

Barry eyed her suspiciously. "You know about me and martial arts…"

"Indeed!" Apparently, Cologne was not suspicious. "When are you getting your homework caught up, by the way?"

"After dinner. Akane helps."

"Hmmm. Since you've discovered that Shampoo has been playing dumb, does her intelligence… detract from her appeal?"

"No, why should it?" Barry knew that Cologne was trying to assess Shampoo's chances for Ranma. The problem was to maintain the status quo. And with Akane going and openly declaring she wanted him…

"Some men are suspicious of intelligent women," continued the Matriarch.

Barry smiled easily. "Cologne, a guy's suspicious of any woman if he has reason ta think that the gal ain't actin' in his best interests. It's one a the reasons yer both at the top a my list."

"Hmmph!" The matriarch was unimpressed. "Shampoo could probably help you far better than Akane could. She really didn't need to go to school here."

"Not surprised at all after I saw her tearing through 'Moby Dick' yesterday. Which reminds me… Any chance I could learn that delayed study technique? Ya know 'read now, study later'?"

"Perhaps we could talk about it sometime," Cologne said too easily.

"Can we have some service out here?" someone yelled from out in the restaurant.

"I'm coming!" Cologne's look was one of disgust. She pogo-ed away.

Mousse glanced at Barry with an amused look. "You know how expensive her techniques can be?"

"Pity. Shall we get back to the chronicles of Shanghai Soon or whatever his name is?"

"That's Hsi Shang Tsu! And I hope you're remembering the information far better than the name, Saotome."

The shadows outside were getting long when Akane and Shampoo came down the stairs to the kitchen. Barry was arguing possible alternate meanings of the chronicle and Mousse defending a single interpretation. Apparently, the writers of the piece had some reason to couch it all in symbolism and the literary clichés of the time. Mousse was beginning to fall back on 'I'm Chinese so I should know what I'm talking about' with respect to the passage. Barry wasn't contradicting him so much as trying to get a feel for whether a different interpretation might be more reasonable. Akane glanced down at her watch and jerked in shock.

"We're going to be late for dinner!" To punctuate her exclamation, Barry's stomach growled like a wild thing.

"Comin'!" He turned to Mousse. "Never fall back on authority in an argument, Mousse. It tells anyone listenin' that yer not thinkin'. Even authority had to have somereason for doin' somethin' a particular way." He pointed to the debated passage in the scroll. "Even if they don't say so. Give the reason, not the authority. And if ya don't know, find out, okay? It might be the break we're lookin' for."

Mousse frowned, but had nothing further to say. As they moved to leave, Cologne intercepted them. "Perhaps you would like to stay for dinner some night," she offered. "It could give you more time for research, and Shampoo and Akane can do homework."

Barry looked at her and half smiled. "Whose treat?"

"Scamp!" Cologne laughed. "Ours, of course."

"Akane, too?"

"Considering how little she eats compared to you, we'll hardly notice her. Why not!"

"How about tomorrow, then? I seem ta remember Wednesday being a slow day around here."

"Good choice." Cologne hopped away leaving them to depart without further interruption. As they left, Akane could be heard to wonder whether the Nekohanten could survive such a drain on their resources. Ranma said something uncomplimentary, and the voices faded in a full-blown argument.

""Is this truly a wise course?"" Mousse asked in their village language in the comparative silence that followed.

""You know who is most likely to have been involved, Mousse."" Shampoo walked up beside him and stood almost touching. ""It is a terrible thing, the betrayal of trust within a family."" The fading light dropped mysterious shadows across their features.

"I'm happy you two have time to stand around," snapped Cologne moving swiftly past. "Get to work, children; it's the dinner rush! Be inscrutable on your own time."

Barry and Akane arrived home in time to receive a brief lecture on promptness from Kasumi before being sent to the showers, literally. After dinner came a bout of carpentry, a siege of homework and finally some peace and quiet to do a little sparring before bedtime. Besides, they both knew Ranma would have kept up Akane's training.

"Might as well," grumbled Akane standing up from where she had smashed her obligatory set of concrete blocks. "Besides," she rationalized, "we're not sleeping otherwise."

She took her position across from Barry and set herself, scowling in what he privately thought of as Akane's Demon Mask. So predictable. That thought sparked a series of related subjects and he straightened up again. "Time out, Akane." He tapped palm and fingers together in a 'T' shape.

Since Ranma was known to attack during time-outs, Akane did no such thing. She attacked. Barry yelped and dodged, tumbling to another stance at right angles to her original attack. "I really meant 'Time out!" he yelled, crossly.

"What?" Suspicious, she didn't lower her guard.

"You really give yourself away that way, Akane." He pointed to her face and his. "Your face could scare a gargoyle when you do that."

"Well, excuse me!" she said, hotly. "I thought we're supposed to intimidate our opponents."

"Now, Akane, you have to admit that there are times you don't want to do that. But I've never seen you not try to scare 'em ta death first." Hetapped his chin,considering. There was so much Ranma had planned to cover. "Ya waste time gettin' set, too. Let me show ya."

He crouched and, during the next ten seconds, let his face twist into a horrible snarl. She looked doubtful. Whimsically, he then crossed his eyes, stuck his tongue out and his thumbs in his ears, wiggling his fingers.

Akane coughed in surprise, then sat down trying to choke off laughter.

"Sorry, but everyone gotta laugh sometimes," he said. "Seriously, though, the time it takes ta set up and the effect it has on yer opponent can be detrimental. Some opponents aren't going to let you get set.

"Your point is?"

Barry raised his hand with the thumb and index fingers sticking out. "Bang!" he said loudly.

A spark leaped from the end of his finger to scorch Akane's gi. "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" he continued.

"Hey!" She stumbled back looking betrayed, and slapped at the scorch marks on her clean gi. "Do you have to ruin my clothes to make a point?"

"If I were an armed enemy, you would now be dead, Akane," he said quietly. "All your hopes and dreams, and the dreams anyone had involving you, would be dead with you." Akane looked down at the pattern of marks on her gi. Five marks just over her heart that a hand could cover. "Now let's see if you can do better.

"But we don't have guns in Japan," she said protesting. "It's not like America. That wasn't fair!"

"You don't have legal guns in Japan, you mean. There's no point arguing America's gun problem. I'm sure some people over here think your martial arts training is a bit unfair, too." He stared her down. "They're the ones who'll use a gun as an equalizer and get some innocent bystander killed as they let fly."

"But we were talking about facial expressions!" she fairly screamed at him.

"Bang!" he said again. She saw his arm come down and dodged, but the spark tagged her shoulder solidly. "A forty-five-caliber would've ripped your arm off. Smaller than forty-caliber …and you might be conscious and alive enough to make me regret it."

"What does this have to do with facial expressions?"

Barry sighed. He raised his other hand up and gripped an invisible body by the throat. "You have to make a gun-armed opponent want to hold his fire. Hostage situation. An out-of-luck salaryman has flipped his wig and tried to rob a bank in desperation. He got the gun from some idiot yakuza or maybe it's one his grandfather never turned in at the end of the war." The 'gun hand' came up and pointed toward an imaginary head. "Now what do you do?"

She scowled.

"Bang!" he said simply, making her start and open her mouth to complain.

"Wait a minute…"

He cut her off. "Akane, you scared me."

"I scared you?" Tones of disbelief and outrage were in evidence.

"Okay. You scared the imaginary hostage taker. C'mon, Juliet! You can do better." He set himself again as the panicky gunman.

"Please!" Akane said suddenly, her eyes huge her voice trembling. "Please, don't hurt me." She moved closer. "I… I don't want to…"

As she closed on him, he pivoted slowly away. As she got within striking range, he turned his finger toward her and she flashed into action. She took his 'gun hand' past his shoulder and used the leverage to throw him heavily to the floor, which gave off a resounding boom.

After catching his breath, he smiled at the triumphant girl. "Much better. But not always the best technique." She scowled again and he ducked in imaginary terror.

"Baka! I'll be the 'gunman' and you show me how much better you can do this."

"Okay." He watched her set herself again about six meters away. "Ready?" She nodded. He turned and walked quickly and quietly out of the dojo.

"Barry?" She was left alone and feeling ridiculous in the center of the dojo. "Barry? What are you up to?" She spun around trying to watch all the windows at once. "Barry, this isn't funny! What is the point of all this?" She stomped to the door and poked her head out. "Barry?"

"BOO!" Fingers poked her ribs. "Gotcha!"

"YAAAH!" (Mallet!)

"Ow!" He reached up and peeled Akane's extra-large-size meat tenderizer off his skull. "Mousse taught you to hide that thing, didn't he?" he asked painfully.

"What did you do that for?" she demanded, ignoring his question.

"Another application of the Saotome special technique — run away until you can win." Barry smirked painfully. "Worked pretty good, didn't it?"

"Why you…" Her anger was replaced by something else. "Why didn't Ranma teach me this stuff? Why didn't my dad?"

"I'm sure they know it. Most of this is from Ranma's memories. I think he believed you already knew this. As for your dad…" Barry shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want to think of his 'little girl' in a situation like that. I don't really blame him." He watched her face register his assessment. "It's easier for a stranger to see some things than it is for a loving parent, Akane."

They re-entered the dojo. "Another thing I catch you doing in Ranma's memories, though not as much since he trained you, is that you go on the defensive as soon as you're attacked." He turned and launched a series of probing attacks her way. "You rarely counter aggressively until you get mad or scared." He intensified the attacks, forcing her back. "All the martial arts are arts of 'gentleness'. It's hard to develop fully, if you're thrashing around in a frenzy." She grabbed an arm, kicked at his weight-bearing leg and swung him into a hip throw. He landed and rolled, attacking again almost immediately.

"I do not thrash around in a frenzy!" She blocked two punches, slid a kick aside and brought her knee up. He slipped the knee, landed a punch on her ribs, and received a glancing blow as her other leg arced around in a heel strike. She used the momentum of her failed knee strike and his punch against her ribs to flip away.

"Really?" He cartwheeled into contact again, striking but not connecting with multiple kicks from his right leg as he came upright. "Why do you think you used to miss Ranma when you two sparred? Your attacks were rough, telegraphed and had so much power in them that it threw you off balance. And those poor idiots every morning — thrash, crunch, pow... Ow!"

A back-fist slipped his defense and hit his forehead. He barely blocked the subsequent elbow strike that tried to slip under his arms. Barry counterattacked with a leg sweep. Akane bounced back a step to regain balance, and began to circle. "I did fine against those boys!" she snapped.

"Yeah, but they mostly weren't in your league." He grimaced and swayed out of a snap kick, encouraging her into over-extension with a jerk on her ankle. "I have to admit I'd have run if forty idiots jumped out at me like that." He looked her in the eyes. "I think Ranma would have, too."

"Really?" Akane asked, surprised.

"Akane, sometimes you have more guts than common sense." He went airborne then and began using the force of resistance to his blows to keep him elevated. "That's my opinion, not his, by the way." Akane slipped away, forcing Barry to the floor again, where she struck a single calculated blow to the upper stomach, sending him skidding out the dojo entry.

"It wasn't like that." She said more easily as he flipped back in. "They started out in individual challenges, then small groups." By unspoken consent, they met at the dojo center and crossed wrists like fencers in en garde. Barry moved and reached in, not with a blow, but to tweak her nose. "Oooh! Keep serious! After a couple of weeks they started joining up into larger groups. I just kept getting madder." Barry's blow slipped in from the set position, but only slapped gently against her cheek. "Barry, if you don't stop that and do it right, I'm going to hurt you! By the time they had all joined the Let's beat Akane Club, I was so angry…" Her blow beat Barry's this time and rocked him backwards.

"Anger again, you see?" He said rubbing his cheek. "You might see Ranma get determined, but he rarely actually loses it in a fight. He keeps his anger controlled. You don't."

She stepped back and glared at him. "Then why did Ranma do all those things up at the lake? They weren't designed to make me feel happy!"

"No. They were designed to get you past your feelings of inadequacy. You didn't believe that you could be better. He made sure you attained your goals and felt as if you earned every bit of your new skill. Your anger helped you there, but left your actual forms rough and sloppy."

"I did not feel inadequate! I was the best in Nerima till he came…"

"And a distant fourth among the people who chased him here and settled down, with others wandering in and out who were uniformly competent enough to ignore you." He watched her quiver in rage and mortification.

"Anger again. You still feel inadequate, Akane." He paused to let her anger grow before his next verbal attack. "What you are, though, is good, very good. Right now, you're nearly on par with Ryoga or Shampoo. You might well become strong enough and fast enough to give Ranma or Taro a run for their money. Just keep in mind there is always someone, somewhere who's better than you are." He smirked. "At least, temporarily."

They did one last set and Akane went skidding across the floor in a loose sprawl. She shook her head and rolled automatically to her feet. "That… hurt."

Barry glared at her. "What did I tell you yesterday about that? You've been winning partly because I won't use lethal techniques. You left yourself open because you forgot how your defense could be used as a pivot for that crescent kick. Mutsabetsu Kakuto, tomboy! Anything can be used to your advantage, or used by your opponent for theirs." He paused. Anything goes?It was evolving art form. It sought advantage through what was available and possible to create the new and unexpected. He continued less forcefully. "Attacks must strike and withdraw quickly, defenses must be strong but yielding and gentle to frustrate and misdirect your opponent's blows. We are going to be spending more time on that," He nodded thoughtfully before catching her eyes with his,"but not right now."

Akane limped over, puzzled at his emphasis. "Why not?"

"We're gonna concentrate on ki techniques. Ranma and I thought they'd be the key to sending me home. They should also be the key to getting him back." He smiled at her. "And you're the only one I can completely trust to help make it happen."

She stared at him for a long time. She finally licked her lips and spoke. "Barry, I'm only calling up a little spark. I can't even project ki, yet! Why do I…"

"Feeling inadequate again?"

Her jaw snapped shut, and she glared. "It's not the same."

"It is the same. You have comparable ki structures to Ranma's girl-form. Mousse and Ryoga also show structures that indicate they could learn far more than they know now. Tatewaki does it, though he doesn't realize it. Are you saying you can't do what the Blue Blunder does without realizing?"

He smirked at her and Akane boiled. Then she looked past her anger and realized that Barry was pushing buttons the same way Ranma had. "Let's get started, then."

"Good girl." Barry smiled. "Better than I expected. The key to the techniques is the ki-vision. I think I can show you how it works. Once you have that, you can essentially watch how your body uses ki and flex those areas that you feel need development." He watched her closely. "Think you're up to me messing with your aura? I don't think I'll need to physically touch you, but it may get uncomfortable."

"Barry, I want Ranma back. I've been around you enough that I think I trust you. Do what you have to do."

Barry bowed low to her in profound respect and gratitude for her trust. "We will get Ranma back," he said when he met her eyes.

"Let's do it."