"You're pregnant."

The words rattled around inside Ranma's head for a few seconds. A small frown appeared on his (currently female) lips. Cologne noticed this and dove for cover. Amazon history would later record this as 'A Good Call'.

The fireball was a relatively small one. The devastated area was a one meter bubble centered on Ranma's female form. The table was gone, as were three chairs, two lighting fixtures and a small chunk of the floor. So were Ranma's clothes, but he was far too angry to be embarrassed.

Ranma noted the damage he had caused. For something that wasn't a formal attack, it was impressive enough. But the distraction provided by observation was enough to allow him to shunt his burning anger to the side of his mind. He realized it was far too dangerous to let run wild.

"Sorry 'bout that," Ranma stated in a voice that was far calmer than it should have been.

"Perfectly understandable. I might have done the same in your position."

"I'll make it up to ya." Waves of heat, along with wisps of steam and smoke, rolled off Ranma's body as he pulled himself from the small hole he had created.

"Thank you. Will you require any assistance in taking your revenge?"

Ranma turned his right hand palm up and focused his mind. Letting a tiny fraction of his anger loose, a brilliant red aura sprang into being, stronger around his hand than the rest of his body. Cologne, with over a century of experience with chi phenomena, had seen more raw power on a few occasions but never that much generated that quickly. "No, I think I can handle it."

Ranma clenched his hand into a fist as he banished his aura. Finally noticing his nude state, Ranma said, "I seem ta have fried my clothes. Do ya got anything I can wear home?"

"I'll see what I can find."

As Ranma dressed himself in mismatched odds and ends from both Shampoo and Mousse's closets along with a few items kept on hand for any visiting Joketzu, Cologne very carefully filled Ranma in on some of the lore involving Jusenkyo and pregnancy. Apparently, even the Cursed Springs respected the sanctity of motherhood. Ranma would be stuck as female as long as he was pregnant.

"That's while I'm pregnant right?" Ranma asked. "I don't havta actually give birth."

"As far as I know, no," Cologne responded.

"That's a relief."

Cologne managed to hide her disappointment. Joketzu law was quite clear that a rape victim had sole authority on whether or not to bring any resulting pregnancy to term. Ranma clearly had no intention of carrying the child. Which would be a shame because it would mean the loss of the Hibiki genetic line entirely. Cologne already considered Ryoga dead. While she didn't consider the young man's potential as great as Ranma's, the Joketzu could have used Hibiki's strength, assuming his navigational disability wasn't genetically linked. The loss would be a shame. Unless...

"I will have Mousse and Shampoo search for Hibiki. If they find him, I will inform you," the Amazon matriarch said. A truthful statement, if not complete.

"You don't have to do that Cologne. I'll find that pig bastard when I'm damn good and ready," Ranma replied as he completed dressing.

"Considering the circumstances, it is the least the Joketzu should do."

-----

As he headed home, Ranma considered what to tell the Tendos and his own parents. Or whether to tell them anything at all. As he entered the neighborhood where the Uc-chan stood, he quickly dismissed the idea of saying anything to Ukyo. What happened was none of her business unless she was harboring Ryoga and he was still a bit angry about what she'd done during the wedding fiasco. It was comparatively nothing compared to the rage he held toward Ryoga, but there was no need to potentially confuse targets.

Approaching the Tendo Dojo, he reached his decision. He would tell the Tendos nothing, or at least as little as possible. It was not their problem and he most definitely did not want to hear the reactions he would get from them. He might be able to tolerate Kasumi's pity. Nabiki would attempt blackmail or treat the whole thing as some sort of twisted joke for her personal amusement, neither of which she'd survive. Soun Tendo would have an emotional outburst of some sort and cry that 'The Families Will Never Be Joined'. Something Ranma was sick and tired of hearing.

Akane would call him a pervert for getting sexually assaulted while unconscious. And beat him for blaming Ryoga. Any mention of what happened would also trigger Akane's morbid fear of rape. Something which had taken him almost a year to figure out that she had in the first place, thank you Tatewaki Kuno. She'd probably break the engagement again, which bothered Ranma for some reason he couldn't quite define.

No, the Tendo family would not be told the truth. His own parents were another story. Family honor, personal honor, duty and the overwhelming desire not to be like his father all pointed towards telling them what happened. If he went to prison for his intended future events, they had the right to know why.

Ranma entered the house proper after exchanging the ill fitting shoes Cologne had provided for house slippers. As he headed up the stairs toward his room, he met Kasumi coming downstairs with a load of laundry.

Kasumi gave her sister's fiance what could only be considered an odd glance. "Ranma, is something wrong?" she asked. The concern in her voice sounded genuine, even if the look on her face seemed out of place to the eyes of one Ranma Saotome.

"Nuthin' that wasn't wrong yesterday," he admitted. True, although what he had learned earlier had cast the problem in a much different, much harsher and much more personal light.

Kasumi didn't let it go that easily. "I know some people think I'm oblivious. Or that I'm too busy cooking, cleaning and being polite to deal with the 'real world', and maybe that's true sometimes. But I know, as certain as sunrise, that something is bothering you more than being stuck as a girl."

"That obvious?" Did Kasumi's connection to the wa of the household give her some quasi-mystical insight? Was she really that much more observant than Ranma gave her credit for? Did she know, or could she guess, what Cologne had told him?

"The clothes you're wearing sort of gave it away."

Ockham's Razor had finally managed to function in relationship to Ranma's life for one brief shining moment. If Ranma had known what Ockham's Razor was, he'd have appreciated the irony. Assuming he knew what irony was because a fish doesn't notice water until he is removed from it.

"Just a new chi technique that got outta hand." Truthful yet incomplete statements were becoming quite the rage in Nerima. Although Ranma noted that it was rather odd how he kept avoiding direct lies when talking to the eldest Tendo daughter. He wondered if anyone else was subject to the effect.

"Oh my," Kasumi said inevitably. "It is nice that being a girl isn't interfering with your martial arts training, but please try to be more careful. You don't want to hurt anyone by accident."

"You betcha," Ranma answered cheerfully as he headed toward his room to change clothes. When he got to the hurting people portion of his plans, the last thing it would be was accidental.

-----

Ranma got through the rest of the day with minimal annoyance. At dinner, Akane feigned disinterest, but Ranma knew she was still upset over the whole 'stuck as a girl' thing. Nabiki made snide comments about the situation until Kasumi scolded her for it. Soun managed a vague inquiry about how long Ranma's current condition would last. When Ranma replied that he should be unstuck in a few days, he noted considerable relief from everyone present except Nabiki. Her relief was as phony as a wooden 50 yen piece.

Had Ranma been the inherently suspicious type, he might have thought it worth investigating. As it was, Nabiki's involvement in the events that led up to fight with Ryoga remained unknown. By such things are lives kept or lost.

As Ranma did his homework that evening, it was a surreal experience. Not that he cared about school or anything related to it. But there was something satisfying about alternating one math problem with one note on how and where to dispose of a corpse. One sentence of a history essay with one idea of where Ryoga might be hiding, if he were hiding and not just lost. One conjugated English verb with one thought on how to draw out a fight so as to inflict maximum pain. Ranma mastered conjugation before he fell asleep.

-----

It was time to tell his parents why he'd become trapped in female form. Ranma found himself on a generic looking fog covered street. His parents' newly rebuilt home stood in a gleaming ray of sunshine while everything around it was indistinct and hazy. He entered the house, not even remembering to take off his shoes.

Apparently, the house had been completely rebuilt. The place was laid out differently than what he remembered from his last visit. Unsettling how something that should have been familiar was so completely strange.

Ranma wandered through the place looking for his parents. He heard voices coming from the far side of a sliding door. Pushing the shoji aside, he saw his father standing there, ten meters tall.

His features were a horrid combination of panda and human with a trace of cat thrown in for bad measure. "YOU INSIGNIFICANT WORM!" the apparition bellowed in a voice that reverberated in Ranma's bones. "YOU'RE A WORTHLESS AND WEAK LITTLE GIRL! HOW DARE YOU SHAME THE SAOTOME NAME BY ALLOWING YOURSELF TO BE RAPED! I'LL TEACH YOU THE PRICE OF FAILURE!"

A giant panda's foot came down to crush Ranma into paste. He dodged left, thankful for his female form's greater speed. An enormous sign of the type his father used to communicate while transformed, bearing the words "Failure: 54,837 Yen", whistled past Ranma's head in a near-miss. Ranma leapt over the return swing, a brilliant red aura enveloping his right fist. Into the punch, he put all his fury, all his rage, all the anger he had ever felt over the things his father had done to him in his entire life.

"GROW... UP!!" Ranma shouted as he landed his blow square on his father's gigantic nose. The release of emotional energy didn't quite blind the young martial artist to the results of his punch. Genma popped like a soap bubble. After landing, Ranma spun around to prepare himself for an expected onslaught. Nothing.

Ranma was wary. There was no doubt his father would use the Umi-Sen-Ken if he thought his life was truly in danger. The forbidden stealth techniques would remain forbidden only as long as it was to the older man's benefit. Still nothing.

Without dropping his guard, Ranma scouted around the larger than he remembered yard. All he found was a paper bag with a caricature of a man drawn on it. The man was undoubtedly his father, although the longer Ranma looked at it, the more he felt there was something of Happosai in the image as well.

"You see your father for what he truly is," Nodoka said from her kneeling position in front of the family shrine. Ranma had failed to notice her there during his fight and subsequent searching of the yard.

Nodoka rose and turned toward her son. Ranma saw she was dressed as always, in a formal kimono with properly tied obi. She carried the Saotome Clan sword, not in the bundle she habitually toted around, but tucked through her sash and slung to the side where it wouldn't interfere with the slow walk she began toward her son.

"I had hoped that during his travels with you, your father would transcend his nature. That he would become more than a bag of hot air with the goal of living off the sweat of someone else's brow like his so-called Master."

Ranma saw his mother walking toward him, but she wasn't getting any closer. Instead, she was changing before his eyes.

"But he failed in that, just as he failed in making you into a man among men. Had you not already destroyed him, I would have been forced to do so myself."

Ranma wanted to speak, but his tongue wouldn't function. He wanted to move, but his feet wouldn't obey him. His mother had doubled in size. Pointed fangs protected past her lips. Sharply curved horns sprouted from her forehead. The creature that had been his mother drew the sword she carried. Its blade gleamed wickedly in the increasingly harsh light.

"I understand that he did his pitiful best. I realize that Genma could not make you a man among men because he had no idea as to what that truly meant."

Slowly, ever so slowly, Nodoka approached her son, her skin turning green while her hair went from a red only a little darker than Ranma's own to pitch black. If Ranma could not speak and could not fight this thing his mother had become, he would at least die facing his fate, not cowering from it.

"So don't worry my son, I'm not going to kill you for that. You are not responsible for your father's failure."

Nodoka reverted to her normal appearance faster than an eye blink. But Ranma was still paralyzed and his mother still carried the clan sword. She raised the katana high, as if getting ready to swing a baseball bat.

"But being raped? I know that I could never live with such a stain on my honor. Therefore, the least I can do is make sure you won't have to."

The blade flashed and Ranma woke screaming.

-----

As he sat up on his tatami gasping for breath, Ranma heard bare feet clamor down the hall and stop just outside his room. The door flew open and silhouetted against the hall lights stood a nightmarish form with three heads and six arms. Ranma was ready to punch first and ask questions not at all when the figure resolved into the separate forms of Akane, Nabiki and Kasumi.

"Are you all right?" the eldest girl asked.

"Sorry. Just a nightmare," Ranma answered while trying to pull himself together.

"It is too early in the morning for this crap," Nabiki grumbled tiredly before returning to bed.

Akane was getting ready to launch a major tirade when Ranma said, "Ain't had one that bad since I'd dreamt that Saffron killed Akane."

Instead of an angry demand that Ranma be more considerate, Akane decided to let him off the hook. She simply stated, "Go back to bed Ranma."

Kasumi watched her younger sister walk back down the hall and enter her room. Afterwards, she turned to Ranma and said, "You never answered my question. Are you all right?"

"No," Ranma admitted.

"Would you like to talk about it?"

"No," Ranma replied firmly.

"Are we going to talk about it?"

Ranma hesisitated. Of the entire Tendo family, Kasumi was the easiest to talk to and the last person he wanted to burden with his troubles. Maybe there would be a time and place to discuss things with her. But 3:45 AM on Friday morning wasn't it. So it was with some reluctance that Ranma shook his head negatively.

"If you change your mind," Kasumi said, "you know where to find me."

"Thank you."

After Kasumi left, closing the door behind her, Ranma realized that the rape, and the subsequant pregnancy, bothered him a lot more than he had admitted to even himself. Talking to his parents could wait. Getting an abortion would come first.

-----

End Part 2

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Author's note: To the reviewer 'anonymous'... I would bloody well hope it was obvious to the reader that Ranma was pregnant. Anyone who couldn't figure it out probably shouldn't be reading this story in the first place. Now go teach your grandmother to suck eggs.