Kodachi leaned over her table to carefully examine the work so far, calligraphy brush carefully held away from the strip of paper she had been working patiently for the last hour or so.

She glanced from her own work to the scroll her shrine's priest had lent her for practice and then to the book she'd acquired from the collector's bookshop some time ago during a mild fascination with the occult in her junior high years.

All the individual symbols looked correct. Fortitude, fortune, elements, exorcism, holding…yes, there it all was.

The marks of fortitude were the most difficult of the set, though that was understandable. Such spirit-wards were meant for lasting blessings and protections and it took a lot of effort, Kodachi was finding, to even draw the symbols correctly. She hadn't yet tried to put anything in the way of energy into the ward yet.

In truth, had she been anybody else, she'd probably have been a bit worried about trying to do that.

The miko-in-training was supposed to be practicing basic exorcism wards and funeral moneys. Five formulas in all.

Simple matters indeed.

The Black Rose had made two of each, and wasn't yet certain they worked, before she had gotten bored and went looking for the old tome. If simply repeat practice on these basics was supposed to be helpful, then certainly something more advanced would do wonders for her understanding.

The girl looked about cautiously, not noticing as the sleeve of her school jacket brushed over the marks of holding, and then, with a slightly superior smile, she took a deep breath and settled herself into the stance she'd been taught for gathering energy from around her.

Eyes closed and anticipating her success, she bent downward and bringing her hands together, proceeded to push her spirit into the work.

****

"So you've got jobs then," Megumi said cheerfully as she and the Tanakas walked down the street.

"I'm working at the university financial aid department," Nabiki said. "And Ranma sounds like he's got a security job at an apartment complex."

"Yeah," Ranma said, nodding. "We should be good to help you for a while it seems."

"And that's why we're celebrating!" Megumi declared happily.

"Yay!" Midori shouted along with her.

"Shouldn't we wait until we were a bit more solid?" Ranma asked.

"That's not the way you celebrate," Megumi protested.

"Celebrate good times," Midori agreed happily. "Are we going to McDonalds?"

"No, better!" Megumi said.

"There's better than McDonalds?" Midori asked.

"Well, there's…anything else, really," Nabiki muttered to herself in amusement.

Midori paused a moment and looked back to her parents with a worried expression.

"Something wrong, Midori?" Ranma asked, bending down.

"Dachi-chan is doing something that'll hurt," she said quietly.

"Who's Dachi-chan?" Megumi asked. "Imaginary friend?"

"That's…" Nabiki speech stopped mid-sentence as she started to feel what Midori already had. "That's a way to put it."

Ranma could feel it already too, and was leaning forward on one hand as he listened to Nabiki try to cover for the situation. The other goddesses were right, this connection thing was a lot clearer now that he knew what it was. He could feel what Kodachi was doing, she was tapping her chi, but what she was trying to do was a lot beyond her own abilities.

She wasn't going to have enough and she couldn't stop.

He closed his eyes and tried to think of a solution.

"Dachi is a friend of ours," Nabiki said obviously concerned. "We haven't seen her in a while. She needs to sometimes. Why don't you give her a call, Ranma, see if she needs anything, Megumi and I will take Midori and find a table."

Ranma slowly stood up and nodded.

"I think you'll Need to take things slow," Nabiki said as she gathered Megumi and Midori to leave Ranma where he was. "You know she can get out of her depth pretty fast."

Ranma nodded again and waited as long as he felt he could for Nabiki to get Megumi and Midori clear. He didn't have exactly much time, though. Kodachi was going to reach the end of her safe ability quickly. His first impression was to give her as much energy as he could, but he'd heard what Nabiki said.

Nabiki had a better sense for what was needed most of the time, even if a lot of the how was his purview. Plus, it had reminded him that Kodachi's chi was much smaller than his had been.

His god-marks started to flare as he let his energy move down the connection towards Kodachi, just enough to keep her inner-most reserves untouched and doing anything lasting to herself. The young-man felt a trickle from Nabiki as well, and his daughter's worry was there too.

The urge to help Kodachi more forcefully was still there, and Ranma's own concern was about to get the better of his respect for Nabiki's feelings on the matter when the drain on the Kuno finally stopped and he could feel a mix of weary relief and prideful accomplishment before the Black Rose passed out, her life-force tired but still strong.

Ignoring the people that were still somewhat staring at him, Ranma wiped the sweat off of his forehead and then jogged down the street to the restaurant he'd seen the rest of his family and his friend had headed for.

"Is your friend all right?" Megumi asked as he joined the table with them.

"She'll be fine," Ranma said. "She was just trying something a bit over her head."

Megumi looked about and noted that neither Midori nor Nabiki seemed that surprised, and both had been much more relaxed even before Ranma had rejoined them. She frowned and then shook her head, something to deal with later.

"All right!" she said. "Back to the celebration then!"

****

Kodachi woke up the next morning, or at least she thought it was morning, with a splitting headache. She blinked and looked around, trying to remember just when she had fallen asleep.

"The last thing I remember was…" Kodachi muttered, looking about and down toward her work table and the strip of blessed paper marked with special inks before her.

Smiling broadly she lifted up the strip and bounded out of her room in quickly curtailed triumph as her head protested. Walking, near hobbling, much more sedately, she worked her way out of the Kuno mansion and made a bee-line for her shrine.

The majority of the headache was gone by the time she reached the shrine and presented her accomplishment to her shrine's priest.

"Higurashi-sensei!" she called out. "You shall not believe what I have accomplished, with the help of the kami, of course."

She beamed as she presented the strip of paper before her like a puppy with a stick.

The woman with her long, dark hair turned to look at Kodachi and then looked down at the spirit ward in the girl's hands and twitched as she saw what was written there.

"There are signs here that you can't safely empower yet, Kodachi-chan," she said firmly, also noting the smudged holding symbol. Even empowered this thing would stay in one place long. "Half of these did not come from the scroll I gave you access to."

"Well…I did make it," Kodachi said.

The woman felt she could take a moment and see if there was any power to the object, but as Kodachi was currently standing in front of her and not dead, she didn't feel it was necessary.

"But…" Kodachi protested, feeling a bit smaller. "I checked."

"Now, don't get me wrong Kodachi-chan," the woman said. "Being able just to draw most of these symbols is an accomplishment for someone of your experience, but you're damn lucky you didn't try to empower this."

"But…" Kodachi said, wondering if she should mention that she had tried. "I did."

"I'm sure you think you did," the female priest, currently dressed in everyday clothing similar to Kodachi, said. "But watch."

The woman turned and dramatically stuck the ward to a nearby wall and then watched as it so very anti-climatically fell to the ground, gliding gently all the way down.

"See," Higurashi-sensei noted. "Now, I want you to keep practicing with those simple wards. But, I think we might test you soon and then I'll teach you some exercises to build up your spirit."

"But…" Kodachi said. "Ahh! My ward."

The young miko moved forward to dive at the piece of paper she'd spent so long working on, only to be forced to watch as the wind carried it away.

"Damn it," Kodachi's teacher noted. "I was hoping to keep that, it was a damn good plan."

Kodachi beamed at that praise, then the woman turned about to stare at Kodachi through narrowed eyes.

"By the way, Kodachi-chan, where'd you find the other signs and symbols?" she asked. "I can't be having one of my mikos trying to kill herself again."

****

Gosunkugi smiled the third of his spirit-bound statues started to stand up and walk over to join the other three such creations. It wouldn't be long before he'd bound a spirit into every one of the statuary pieces in this little warehouse. Then he could start using them to quietly perform other duties.

Yes, this was a small step, but it was a definite step toward power.

First a few small rituals that build power toward his corner as the book and his master suggested. Rituals to cloud the area and give him the cover he'd need to do anything bigger and set up his public rise.

He wondered, should he admit to being a growing warlock as he worked to take over Nerima, or perhaps just a budding businessman?

Maybe yakuza.

He would want to be feared and respected regardless.

As the young warlock considered his brightening, or perhaps darkening, future, he failed to note as, through a drafty window, the wind blew in what appeared to him to be a simple scrap of paper.

The scrawled on piece of paper smacked right into one of the four moving statuettes and almost immediately the dark-light behind the things stone eyes vanished. The wind was already picking up the paper, and smacking it into the remaining statuettes and then, it was carried on out through another window.

As the fourth of his statuettes stopped moving a fumbled to a fall, Gosunkugi finally noticed that something had gone wrong.

"What the hell?" he demanded, walking over to examine the fallen statuette.

Grumbling as he couldn't find anything wrong, the warlock turned to the other three and pointed to the one in front of him.

"Bring it back to the circle," he said irritably.

As the statues refused to do anything, he grew more irritated and walked over to poke at the things until her realized that none of them were bound with spirits any longer either.

Confusion on his face, he scratched his head and walked back to the warehouse.

"Each of those took my a day to animate," he complained. "What did I do wrong?"