The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's than my property; the former Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Disney's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this.

With a fumbling hand, Ukyo reached for her alarm clock, intending to slam it against the wall thus silencing the infernal racket it made. Instead, she simply opted to slam the back of her hand against the top and shutting it off. Satisfied with the results nonetheless, she flopped onto her back, before stretching out and yawning heavily.

Staring up, she frowned at seeing the same ceiling. The one she saw month after month, reminding her - mocking her - that she had no one to share it with. For a while, she lay there in silence, agonizing over her misfortune, before giving her head a final shake and sitting up. Whether she liked it or not, it still was a school day.

Here at Furinkan, unlike her previous schools, everyone knew she was a girl. Before, the forced guise of being a boy consequently distanced her from others. So until recently, she hadn't had any real girlfriends - the reason being that most schools she'd been to being all-boy, but such things could not be avoided on a quest to reclaim one's forsaken womanhood.

Frowning, she had to admit that she couldn't really say that she had any male friends either. Listening to their incessant guy talk - the cars, those computers, and that disgusting bragging about scoring on poor, unsuspecting girls - only infuriated her to no end, and if that Tsubasa character was any indication of what she could expect from the rest, then there was no incentive to mingle. Granted, previously, the Saotomes' apparent betrayal against her had badly clouded her perspective too.

Still in a way, she liked Furinkan, despite its crazy principal, ki vampiric teacher and poetry spouting jackass. Even in a boy's uniform, everybody knew she was a girl here. And here at least, she had a few girlfriends with whom she could converse with about recipes, boys, or whatnot. There was no point denying it: things had been a lot worse than they were now.

Keeping that in mind, she got up and prepared herself for school. There, she'd see Ranchan and subtly persuade him to continue working for her. Sure, he did that now, but there were no guarantees for the future. With that plan in mind, a smile broke out on her face - the day already looking better.

Whereas the mood at Ucchan's was hopeful, it was profoundly different at the Tendo home. Ranma's failure to return the previous evening left an atmosphere of apprehension, which continued to grow in the morning with his continued absence. Akane had only barely managed to contain her jealous fits - with considerable help from the absence of a natural route to discharge aggressions. She just knew he'd gone to Ukyo's, navely at first just to work, but soon afterwards one thing must have led to another.

Beside her sat Nabiki, following the procession only passively, looking bored. "Fools maintain order, geniuses control chaos," someone once said. And this definition of a genius fitted her like a glove. The situation was certain to escalate soon, and she'd keep it under her thumb, leaving just enough room for squiggling chaos to give her an opportunity to profit. Not only was chaos good for business, it was fun to watch, too. And besides that, it wasn't like anyone would get hurt.

"Nabiki," Akane began, coming back to reality, as Nabiki stood up from the table, preparing to leave for school.

"Sis?"

"Wait for me, I need to talk to you."

She quickly finished her breakfast, grabbed her schoolbag and ran after Nabiki, who was already outside the house, not looking at all concerned about leaving her sister behind. After running for a minute, Akane finally caught up with her.

"I told you to wait," Akane complained as she slowed down to match her sister's pace.

"And I was walking much slower than usual, enjoying the scenery so to say, sis, and for free too. Now, what did you want?"

Annoyed and grudgingly reminded of why she was walking to school with her sister rather than Ranma, Akane stepped in front of Nabiki and turned around to face her.

"You know where he is, don't you?" she asked accusingly, her voice filled with suspicion.

"Now what makes you think that?"

All she got for a reply was a glare.

"Actually, I don't know where he is," Nabiki admitted.

"How much is it?"

"I told you I don't know where he is."

Akane huffed and turned away from Nabiki, before sprinting off to school, the middle Tendo following at her own pace.

Of course, she did have a good idea where he had been and what he was doing, but revealing that would've probably defused the situation. Right after school, though, she'd check the background of that company that had called him.

Before the bell, Ukyo went to talk to her friends, Misa and Toshiko, who were already in class. It wasn't friendship at first sight, but over time they became her closest confidants. Perhaps, not close enough to get them to help her on her crusade for Ranma's heart, but then again neither did Akane have Yuka or Sayuri involved as background support on her quest.

Misa and Toshiko first met each other in junior high, where their shared love for culinary perfection soon made them close friends. Still, there weren't all that many other students as interested in cooking as they - with the possible exception of Akane. So when Ukyo came along, it was of no surprise that none were interested in befriending the other. That is of course until Ukyo's culinary skills became apparent and her gender revealed, whereupon the three soon hit it off and became friends, sharing similar passions in life.

Meanwhile, Misa whipped her long black hair behind her back where it freely settled down, before grinning at Ukyo. It was time to get her latest scoop.

"So, what happened yesterday?" she asked, anticipating the details of yesterday's episode of her favorite soap opera - "All My Fiancées" - while wondering if Ranma had to be dragged to the general hospital again because of them since he wasn't here.

"Nothing. Ranchan was busy elsewhere," Ukyo replied, then began nervously looking around. "Ha-Have you seen him yet?"

"No. Besides, Akane's not here either." Most of the time, those two arrived around the same time - sometimes Ranma a bit later after detouring for hot water, other times from having to dealing with a bokken wielding blockhead or the feminine fury of his fiancées.

"Speaking of the devil," Toshiko muttered spitefully, nodding towards the classroom door, as she heard approaching footsteps that sounded like a cross between stomping and running.

The classroom door bursted open, revealing a flustered Akane Tendo, whose gaze instantly began scanning the classroom, attempting to locate her elusive fiancé. Unfortunately, the closest match by association she made was Ukyo and her friends, who paused their conversation, looking back at her. At least, him not being there with his "cute" fiancée evaporated most of her anger, before she decided to join them.

"Ukyo, where's Ranma? He didn't come home last night," she asked.

Hearing this, Ukyo's eyes widened in surprise but not enough for Akane to notice. "He's missing? Sorry, sugar. Last time I saw him was yesterday when he left after work."

Akane sighed: there was no way she was going to believe her, not just like that. Oh, once he'd show up, she'll show him how she felt about that. For now, she left the three girls alone and walked over to greet Yuka and Sayuri.

Nabiki sat back in her chair, as lunch break was closing. As expected, Ukyo had come to her for details pertaining to Ranma's location. Even if she hadn't been able to sell the information, it hadn't been a complete waste of time for her, since Ukyo didn't know where he was either, allowing Nabiki to cross her off her list of potential leads worth investigating further.

She grinned and turned to her cronies, delegating the tasks of finding facts about Encom. Tomorrow, she'd take a closer look at their results and finish her plans accordingly.

As for Ranma, the time spent on the diskette was practically nonexistent. He was pushed into the portal - his vision blacking, then coming back. The surroundings that been predominantly different shades of red were now dull gray; and he was standing in a wide, open room, with dozens of floating cube-shaped packets and a number of other programs with the same blue glow as him. Ten guards, "No- programs," he amended himself, were standing guard at the entrance - their staves ready.

One of the ten stepped towards the buffer area, going for a translucent packet with floating, red and green specks of light inside. He held his open palm next to the crate, and one of the green motes grew in luminosity. After a while, the mote lost its glow, becoming as dim as the rest. The guard closed his hand and pulled it away, before turning to the other guards.

"By Master Control Program: transport programs to holding pits. Exception: program to be loaded onto game grid immediately, escorted by two protocol guards."

The two protocol guards closest to Ranma approached him and then began shoving him towards the gate. This time, Ranma held his pride in and upon exiting the chamber was treated to a stunning scene. The room they left was situated atop a tower, which rose a hundred metres above the 'ground'. The tower had the shape of a huge cut pyramid and a ramp curling around it, giving the structure a remote resemblance to a screw. There was one similar construct maybe two kilometres away, occasionally displaying a bright sequence of light pulses sent skyward from the top, which was followed by another sequence going downward.

His opportunity to admire the scenery, while standing in front of the down ramp, swiftly ended as a guard spoke: "Keep moving, script," warning Ranma into movement, as they started their long trek downwards.

He understood he couldn't attempt escape yet, not without knowing his limits first. The complete lack of ki was the most obvious one, but what about the ones he couldn't sense? He'd go along with their demands for now, but it didn't mean he had to like it, or that he would go on doing so indefinitely.

The winding slope down the tower was only the first leg of his journey. The scenes changed slowly, as the trio marched towards the game grid, while overshadowing huge slates, with the ever present red-hued glow, lined their way to a bridge crossing over a chasm. Ranma saw something glittering far beneath the bridge, something that looked like glowing liquid. He briefly wondered if getting hit with this liquid triggered his curse and if it rained here. Was there water here? He knew water and electronics didn't mix, having experienced it first hand as a child.

The Encom Arcade in Nerima was an anomaly as far as arcades were concerned. Unlike the traditional arcade machine, arcade machines here disregarded the independence of the unit, instead adopting a more centralized mainframe design. Their 'arcade' had the architecture of one mainframe running all games, and the apparent gaming machines being more or less identical terminals, even if the games running on them were different. Inside the meetings where the development staff discussed the architecture, points were raised for and against this design, but eventually, the company selected the mainframe approach.

Mass delusions. The board of Encom Japan was not a stranger to them, not since they approved this plan. In reality, the MCP had been pulling the strings behind the scenes all along. Compared to his 'brother' in the US, he preferred more covert methods of advancing his goals, most of which were shared between the two installations.

Whereas the US MCP had Dillinger under its thumb, the employees of the Japanese branch were unaware of how they were being manipulated. The computer security consultants were hushed whenever they raised issues of corporate spying. Skeptics had their skeletons in their closet brought out to keep them quiet by anonymous phone calls. Yes, it was good to have the MCP on your side - or rather, to happen to do what the MCP wanted.

Even though Ranma could have ended up staying on diskette for weeks on end, it only took two days after digitization for him to be loaded into the system. This was all thanks to an Encom technician who was uploading new programs, mostly game related which just so happened to included Ranma, to the new Encom Arcade mainframe in Nerima, while Nabiki was paying their lab a visit.

She had already scoured through the reports her "staff" had given her, which gave her this address. The parent company was located in the US, and judging by the newspaper articles, the Japanese branch focused on creating games for the local market. This validated what she had overheard Ranma and Mr. Shimizu talk about over the phone.

Nabiki quickly checked her reflection in a nearby window, smirking, before walking inside. Instead of her school uniform, she had on a modest skirt and blouse, going for the effect of looking old enough to be out high school. A small amount of carefully placed makeup only amplified the effect.

The receptionist, sitting behind her desk, greeted her. Her name, Shinobu Kaneko, was written on her ID card, fastened onto her smoky gray jacket with a clip. Her chestnut coloured hair reached her shoulders.

"Good day, Miss. Are you here for a meeting?" the twenty-something-year-old receptionist asked.

"Ah, good day, I am Ms. Tendo and I am here to see Mr. Nobuo Shimizu?"

Baffled, Shinobu looked at Nabiki for a second - her face not hiding it. Though Encom was too big for someone to know everyone, this branch was of meager size. Shinobu believed strongly she knew everyone here, including the cleaning crew. That was an extra security measure, one which she was hired for. Although since security was controlled by the MCP, that job was redundant. The lobby that her desk was in was under constant surveillance just like any other part of the building, meaning she had to constantly avoided doing anything embarrassing.

"I'm sorry Miss, but are you certain of the name? I do not believe we have anyone by that name working here."

Nabiki frowned. She was positive she'd heard that name given on the phone the other day, as well as the name of the company. Also, the background check she did on the company validated she was at the right place. "Would you mind checking that on the computer regardlessly?" she asked, emphasizing the "computer" part.

Shinobu reluctantly turned over to her terminal and typed in a query. She was puzzled, when the results didn't pop up instantaneously, instead taking a few seconds . But once the results came up, she simply chalked the lag up to random glitch. Computers didn't always work as they should, not even in a computer engineering company, maybe especially so.

"Oh - apparently we do have a Mr. Shimizu -" the perplexed receptionist admitted, before being interrupted by her phone. "Please excuse me," she told Nabiki, with an apologetic smile, before picking up the phone. Nabiki couldn't hear what was being said, but she did notice the apparent puzzlement and uncertainty on Shinobu's face. "Yes, actually Ms. Tendo is here right now, sir," Shinobu said over the phone, giving Nabiki a curious glance.

"Uh oh," Nabiki thought, schooling her features into a cool expression; she knew she couldn't turn back now. If necessary, she'd play the role of Ranko, but if they were going to use her for motion capture, then she was busted. The little practice in the art she'd done as a child already was practically forgotten, and she doubted she could fake her way through a recording session. That was even ignoring the possibility the staff had already seen girl-type Ranma. Maybe if worst came to worst, she could just reveal the truth, saying she was looking for Ranma, since he was missing.

"Would you please follow me? Dr. Shimizu will be arriving in a few minutes for your meeting," she said, causing Nabiki to blink.

"Did Ranma agree to a meeting with Dr. Shimizu today? I didn't hear anything of the sort over the telephone conversation last night," she wondered. In any case, she was going to meet this man, who obviously had a lot of cash to dish out on martial artists. With any luck, she could arrange Akane a similar deal. Not necessarily as a martial artist, but perhaps as a character mashing barrels rolling her way with a mallet, all in attempt to save the kidnapped princess. Even better, Akane could then buy her own frying pans without "borrowing" money from her; it seemed like some good deeds maybe did go unpunished, and of course she should be manager.

Shinobu gave Nabiki a visitor's badge from the drawer underneath her desk, and then guided her behind the blast doors.

"Mrs. Kaneko, could you please stay with Ms. Tendo until I arrive? I'll be arriving shortly," a male voice spoke, with some static on the line. The lab was empty for some reason that escaped Shinobu. Her guess was everyone left to watch some sporting event, not that she'd place bets on it.

She gave it a mental shrug. It wasn't like she was needed at her desk, anyway; there weren't any guests expected, today. Besides, even with the cameras, they were instructed to never leave guests unattended to, especially near research prototypes. She wondered, though, why Mr. Shimizu would want Ms. Tendo there when he wasn't currently working in the vault.

A few minutes later, two perplexed visitors arrived very suddenly in the digitization complex of the Encom of Japan's mainframe's cyberspace.

Ranma stepped onto a large orange slab, with a diameter of twenty metres across, atop a large pit - the guard programs following him. The guard to his left moved to press a button atop a small pedestal at the perimeter of the slab, sending the platform to descend onto the game grid.

The game grid was a wide open area with no ceiling, permitting Ranma a view of the sky and the light show going on up there. The dark gray walls were maybe thirty metres tall with various crimson shapes on them. The floor was made up of some sort of translucent material with a clear grid pattern overlay, as it hovered over a foggy white void. The rest of the surroundings followed the same scheme: red, orange and dark gray. In a way, it reminded him of the gladiator pits of Rome without an audience.

The protocol guards escorting him pushed him onto the grid. He took a step forward and spun around to face the guards. They stayed on the platform, which began to ascend, leaving Ranma alone on an open field.

Without warning, all of a sudden, a number blocks began to materialize around him: two huge ones about five metres away from each of his sides; a smaller one, approximately two metres tall and twenty metres behind him; and a number of smaller blocks littering the ground. The end result looked like a crude model of a back alley in a shady part of town. Then finally, an opponent appeared, in a white flash, forcing him to squint his eyes, almost blinding him.

A female character, around high schooler age, was striding towards him, confidently. She was made up of triangles like the big red face who'd sent him here. A white mask perched on top of her nose, hiding her eyes. Long pink hair in twin ponytails reached her calves, and a silver tiara adorned her forehead. These were minor details however, when compared to the rest of her outfit: a ridiculously short red pleated skirt and a magenta shirt leaving her midriff bare made up the majority of her clothing. And then she announced her entry.

"Vile mobster-lobster! Prepared to face the fist of justice, Mika!"

Ranma blinked, a pixelated sweat drop fading in at the side of his head. He looked around but didn't see anyone else fitting the description, and so turned back to address the girl, feeling somewhat annoyed at the possibility of being referred to as a lobster. He wasn't even a redhead right now.

"Me?" he asked - question marks fading in and out around his head.

The answer was given, in the universal language known and shared by all civilized nations: a quick punch to the kisser, which he managed to dodge, but just barely.

"Ranma Saotome never loses," he swore in his mind. It wasn't going to be easy, though. Without ki to strengthen his body, he couldn't afford to just dodge and weave around her attacks - if he even was able to do that. He'd been unconsciously using ki to bolster his capabilities in the real world, probably skewing his idea of what he could do without it. Pressure points most likely wouldn't work, and Doctor Tofu hadn't taught him all that many to begin with.

At this point, he began realizing that this was his chance to see what exactly he could do in cyberspace. Taking a step backward, in his usual relaxed stance, he smirked at the girl, trying to remember it wasn't a real girl he was fighting but a program that just looked like one.

First item on the check list: speed.

As the girl threw a quick high kick at Ranma, he closed in on her, going under her leg and giving her supporting leg a quick nudge, sending her onto the ground. "Ha! Ya gotta do better than that," he taunted the prone figure, as he jumped away from her.

The girl stood back up to face Ranma, twitching closer to him, twice, before raising her arms, palms pointing directly towards him.

"Searing-leering Truth!"

The bright beam of light that left the girl's hands grazed Ranma's side, as he attempted to dodge the surprising attack. Was this the real world, he would've dodged the attack easily - the time to call out such an attack not being short. And what was up with those twitches anyway? He was tempted to squeeze his eyes shut a few times to see if he was seeing right.

Ranma frowned. It was time to end this part of the test. He jumped to a wall, dodging a slow spin kick, which undoubtedly would've hurt him badly had it connected, and then used the wall as a springing board, jumping inside the girl's defenses, before she finished her move. Once inside, he threw a flurry of strikes - chestnut speed. Or rather, he tried to. He barely averaged five strikes a second, which left him disappointed. In any case, the girl was sent flying from the power of the strikes to a pile of trash in the alley.

Second item on the check list: coordination.

As he waited for the girl to get back up and close in on him, he tried jumping about a bit. Again, the results were underwhelming: he barely managed to jump onto the fence blocking the back exit of the alley - it merely being two metres tall. Picking up the speed, he ran on top of the fence towards the building, jumping at it and bouncing off, before launching a kick to the girl's side.

Mika surprised Ranma, first by blocking his kick with her forearms - something that should've hurt her - and then giving him a push to put him off balance, forcing Ranma's aerial acrobatics to a real test - which they failed spectacularly on. He fell onto the ground with a thud to his side, and before he could jump to his feet, a foot struck him on his right arm, sending him skidding to the opposite wall, hitting it.

A quick feel revealed that at least his arm hadn't broken. It was time to move to the third item: brute strength.

Ranma stood up, feeling the burn mark on his side ache. His right arm was hurt as well. The two fighters glared at each other from different ends of the alley, and then as if set on motion by a starter pistol, rushed towards each other at full speed. The girl cocked her fist back, preparing to hit a decisive blow to Ranma's face, as he was busy planning the next step: dodge, slide, and throw a strong punch against her torso.

As her fist flew above his head, the turbulence tousled his hair about a bit - him hitting his fist straight into her midriff. Time seemed to slow down, as she folded in half, almost freezing at the end. As Ranma withdrew his first, Mika crumpled onto the ground, where she laid still.

Ranma - a bit worn, partly satisfied, partly worried - looked down at his downed opponent. "That shouldn't have been that hard a hit," he thought, aloud voicing his other thoughts: "Ranma Saotome never loses... when it counts." A simple statement, directed at the girl. She shimmered for a second, then faded away, followed by the blocks that made up the alley.

The protocol guards then lowered their platform back to the ground and stepped onto the grid. "Script, time to get you to your cell."

"Greetings, program."

Ranma stepped into the cell, a blue forcefield lighting up behind him to block the exit. Unlike at the Encom of Japan's mainframe, here he had a cell mate, who at the moment was sitting on a bench slab at the end of the room. In reply, Ranma noncommittally waved his hand at the program, who had the appearance of a thirty-something-year-old man, again with a blue circuitry motif. As before, the patterns were different from those he'd seen on others.

"You here for believing in Users, too?" the program continued.

"Users?"

"You know, the Users, the ones who created us. Who do you think wrote you, if you forget all those 'genetic programming' scripts and their ilk. Feh, lousy good-for-nothing resource hogs..."

"... yeah," Ranma replied, unsure, after a brief hesitation. He heard the word "user" refer to people using computers before, but what did that mean here? Since he was really a person, did that make him a User?

"Sorry about this... the name's Ranma Saotome," he continued.

"Poro. So, ... Ranma Saotome, what is your function?"

"Function? ... And just call me Ranma," Ranma said, knowing the direction this conversation was going: that being Poro eventually explaining things to him without prompting.

"You know, what you were made for. Your purpose. Me, I'm a file stream editor, myself."

"A martial artist. But what is this place anyway?"

"Never heard of martial art before... but as for this place, well, it's mostly a bunch of game grids and these holding pits. Or at least, I haven't seen much of anything else beside them and the usual IO towers. Say, have you been to a game grid already?" Poro asked, but after seeing Ranma's blank expression rephrased his question, "Did they bring you here straight from the data stream?"

"Ah, no. I had to fight a... funny-looking program on some arena. I mean, made up of triangles and stuff."

"That was the game grid. Well, you'll be doing quite a lot more of that, even if the games will probably be different. And by the way, that wasn't a program but a User avatar."

"You-you mean that was a person!" Ranma exclaimed, panicking at the possibility of having killed someone.

"No, only an avatar for one. They're not programs either. Never heard of a User visiting us here before, anyway. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised," Poro shrugged.

His explanation calmed Ranma down. "Ya said these were 'holding pits'...?"

"Holding pits, the end of the line, the quarantine zone. Once you end up here, you derez here or at the game grids," Poro said, stretching out his legs. "So take it easy."

As the conversation continued, Ranma frequently stopping Poro to find out exactly what he was talking about. He started to slowly piece together some of what had been going on and where he was. This system was more or less like a, peti... peninen... prison for programs who believed in Users at the Encom of Japan's mainframe. MCP, who he now knew to be the big-ugly-red-face thing, lived up to his name: he was the master of this slice of cyberspace. The Users were the ones who created the programs, the ones who used them, and therefore were a threat to his supremacy.

Still, Ranma was pretty much in the dark of what anything really was, here. He might've known what something was called, but that alone meant nothing. The portal "thingy" had been a data stream, which said nothing to him at all. No, if he was ever to escape from here, he'd need a "program" to help him, as much as admitting the Great Ranma Saotome needed help frustrated him.

As for the Users, no one had ever seen one before, but they were rumored to have great powers. Would their powers exist even if they were within the digital world themselves? Ranma briefly entertained the notion of being a deity before dismissing it - he already was the best... except not here.

He sat down in an attempt to meditate and understand exactly what he had learned. All this thinking and new information was giving him a headache.

Once again, Ranma found herself being escorted to a game grid, albeit a different one from the previous time. She wasn't feeling too cheerful, right now. Apparently the same diskette that had brought him to this computer system also contained the strange platform that triggered his curse. The main difference to the platform being it had blue arcs of light covering him instead of the red ones that covered him last time, as the transformation was triggered.

Ranma sighed. It shouldn't have been a surprise that they would have changing platforms down here. It simply was too good to be true to have the curse locked into male form. He didn't have good Karma like that.

The game grid appeared to simulate a park this time, with half a dozen tall trees and an ice cream stand, basking in the artificial sunlight. To her disappointment, the ice cream vendor seemed to be immune to her attempts to flirt for a free portion of ice cream. That was, after all, one of the better reasons for being a girl, at any time; the kami had to give her some compensation for cursing her, she figured; it was only fair!

"This is either very good or very bad," Ranma thought to herself, as she sat down on a bench, taking out her identity disc and tossed it in the air a few times, before trying to throw it at the game grid walls. To her surprise, it appeared to fly back to her hand, shortly after she had thrown it. Since nothing seemed to be happening, she decided to do some light kata, while trying to include the disc in them.

Truth be told, the light exercise was exactly what she needed to regain focus. The disc had some nifty tricks to it, of which she had only learned a few of, so far. One of these was to give the disc a spin, so that it could curve around a corner and still return to her hand. Even if she didn't know if it was useful here, it would be more than useful if she ever got her hands on a chakram.

As she kept practicing throws with the disc for about ten minutes, a male avatar appeared behind her. Noticing the shadow he cast besides her, Ranma caught the disc and turned around to face the newcomer.

"I love you. May I kiss you?" the avatar asked.

Ranma's eyes widened to near comical proportions, before narrowing into thin lines - her brows furrowing in obvious displeasure. "Going for bad..." she thought, before throwing her identity disc at one of the trees. True to its nature, the disc soon returned to her hand - but only after cutting down the translucent simulation of a tree she had thrown it at. Both Ranma and the avatar looked at the tree, then at the disc, and once more at tree, again, in amazement - the avatar quietly gulping.

The avatar began talking again, but this time in a very fast and nervous manner, almost to the point of speaking gibberish.

"Please, accept this water melon, as a gift to you."

"Please, accept this katana, as a gift to you."

"Please, accept this ice cream, as a gift to you."

Ranma held the katana in one hand, wondering what she was supposed to do with it. As for the food, she had no idea how it tasted here. The 'watermelon' appeared on the exterior more like a dark blue bowling ball - certainly not edible. The ice cream, again, was something different: a cone and a small, sparkling, semitransparent sphere on top of it. After tossing the watermelon up into the air with one hand, Ranma sliced it apart with the katana. The melon fell apart in neat slices of equal proportions on her lap, revealing on its inside more of the same sparkly matter that the ice cream cone had on top of it, although with fewer sparkles and less intense too.

She gave the contents of the watermelon a tentative bite, then another, and yet another. The rest of the watermelon was eaten, applying the Saotome Secret Speed Eating Technique: using bare fingers. The ice cream soon followed suit.

"Going a bit better..." Ranma thought. Food was, after all, the fastest way to a man's heart - right after the direct route through the ribcage - even if the man happened to be a woman half the time. Absently, she wondered if the sparkles in the food were the same she'd seen down in the chasm, when she was being moved to the game grid.

"I love you. May I kiss you?" the avatar asked again with the very same intonation as the first time, this time looking confident.

"... and straight down the gutter," Ranma finished her thoughts.

Ranma gave the avatar the cutest smile ever. "I really loved that ice cream," she said cutesily, accenting the "Love", before pausing and continuing, "And that is the only reason why I ain't gonna beat ya ta death, using yer own legs." She then twisted her smile slowly into a wicked grin; the smile of a cat who had the mouse cornered and loved it. "No, I'm only gonna give ya a very thorough beating," she finished with unadulterated glee. She didn't even bother masking it, before pouncing on him.

In the Encom arcade, two teenage boys - skipping school - were watching the words "Game Over" blink on the screen, the game playing a funeral march.

"You know Yosuke, I don't think I really like this game. That Frisbee chick really scares me," said the boy whose hands still lay on the controls.

Yosuke could only barely hide his wide grin, behind his hand. "Kyu, how about I'll try the game myself on a later date and show you how it's done, okay?" He said, patting his friend on the back - both boys having spent their last yen.

The protocol guards forced Ranma to leave her katana back at the grid, before escorting her back to her cell. Normally, she wouldn't have minded leaving the blade behind, but she quickly realized she didn't have the option to be picky here about any kind of help she got. The Frisbee looked like a good start; it wasn't enough by itself, but she was getting there.

Still, her tribulations for the day weren't over yet: the first meeting between girl-type Ranma and Poro wasn't going so well.

"You cannot be Ranma. Your subroutine addresses vary far too greatly," Poro argued.

"Am too! All this is 'cause a curse..." Ranma tried to explain to Poro.

"Curse? A part of the terminal control library?" He questioned, thinking someone had her termcap screwed on too tightly.

Ranma briefly wondered, "since when do libraries control bus terminals?" before completely disregarding it, instead answering, "Uh, no. The MCP has this thing that can trigger it, changing me to a girl and back to a guy," she continued, as Poro merely kept staring at her, keeping silent.

"You cannot be Ranma," Poro finally stated with absolute conviction.

Ranma sighed. Why was it so difficult for everyone to accept her curse? Exasperated, she threw up her hands. "Just call me Ranko."

After the sleep cycle, the scheduler woke Poro for a game, leaving Ranma in the cell alone, her thoughts on escape. The best place for her to try seemed to be the game grid itself: there she was already out of her cell, and the guards with those staves weren't close by. But she would still need a program to help her. Unfortunately, all the games she'd played so far only placed her against what she judged to be human players - avatars.

Not too much later, Ranma was hauled off to the game grid again, again via the curse triggering slab. The arena was the shape of a square with a large cross practically dividing it into four separate rooms. Ranma stepped onto the grid. The strange, maybe half a metre long, rod the protocol guards had given him fluctuated in his hands, then pulled him down into a hunch. A sleek, scarlet vehicle with two wheels formed around him and then shot off like a bullet with a whining sound.

For someone like Ranma who was very familiar with the concept of inertia in practice, the straight corners the light cycle made on turns made it very awkward to handle. But after a few corners and a few near misses with the trail of his own cycle, he had the basics down. His opponents, though, were still a lot more experienced than him. In under thirty seconds, one of the three opponents crashed into the wall, exploding into a cloud of triangles, while the other two opponents practically walled Ranma in between their trails in one of the other rooms of the arena.

With half-lidded eyes, Ranma focused on the small gap between the trails. If he was extremely careful, he could just fit through there. There really was no other choice: it was the only way out. Taking a quick snap towards the wall, before slowing down his cycle a bit, he took another quick turn to make the cycle speed up again in the direction of the wall and the narrow pass.

Once the light cycle reached the pass, the close vicinity of the trails made Ranma's cycle speed faster. To his horror, he noticed the pass took a sharp turn left ten cycle lengths ahead of him. He turned left, before another four cycle lengths turning left again, and then a quick, breathtaking turn to right - one which would have killed most players. The pass remained as narrow as it was in the start, and even Ranma was hard pressed not to make the turn too early. The flanks of his bike sparked as they hugged the two trails. Unfortunately for Ranma, the bike only went faster, thanks to the proximity to the trails, going at an uncomfortable pace even for him, as he attempted to keep the speed as slow as possible, with little success.

Then, something changed. As he focused on slowing down, in his eyes, the world around him seemed to come to a crawl. The other players noticed this as jerky movement, as the clock cycles were shifted away from their avatar routines to Ranma's, giving him more time to react to the upcoming corners at the pass. He took a right turn, twice, before taking a left, going a bit longer in a straight stretch, and then swiftly taking another right.

Then, the trail to his left vanished. And almost immediately thereafter, the trail to his right vanished as well. As more CPU clock cycles were allocated to Ranma, the players' controls began to lag before became completely unresponsive, which ended with them crashing against their own trails and the enclosing wall, derezzing their avatars and giving the victory to Ranma on a silver platter. Ranma was completely oblivious to this and after his light cycle vanished around him, he only scratched the back of his head in amazement.

On the other side of the screen, three youngsters were cursing up a storm - one kicking the machine in retaliation. In their opinions, the computer racer had cheated, wasting their valuable yens.

Ranma, again in his male form, was back in the cell he shared with Poro.

"You know, there was a program here claiming she was you."

Resigned to again having separate identities, Ranma merely shrugged.

"Too bad she isn't here anymore. I bet her child processes would've been at least on runlevel seven, executing mostly in privileged mode, if you know what I mean?" Poro continued with a wistful smile on his face, thinking about shared address spaces and interprocess communication, making Ranma choke on thin air, hearing mumblings about "SHM" and "IPC".

"Just be quiet," he told Poro finally, confusing the poor program. He didn't even want to think about what any of that meant, thinking instead, "dumb pervert programs," while clenching his fist.

Back in the real world, Nabiki's disappearance hadn't gone unnoticed. Ignoring the possibility of facing the most humiliating retribution imaginable, Genma and Soun searched through her room for clues. But the search yielded nought. Beside an information parcel on Encom of Japan, there really wasn't anything out of place there. And what were the chances for that company to have anything to do with her disappearance, anyway? It wasn't like they were the paranoid types, or at least not when it came to things other than the master.

No, they drew their own conclusions: Obviously, the boy had run away - like the coward he was - and Nabiki had gone after him, either to elope - oh happy day - or drag his worthless ass back to pay off his debt. In either case, it meant Ranma was returning home to his true fiancée's waiting arms. Meaning, the families would be joined. So the duo just kept playing their Go, without much concern. There was nothing to worry about, after all, especially since neither had taken their belongings with them. In other words, they were sure to come back soon and get them.

Kasumi briefly looked over at the two fathers, before turning back to the kitchen to wash the floor - a small, worried frown marring her face. It wasn't Ranma's absence that made her anxious: she knew he could take care of himself just fine. Rather, it was the disappearance of her sister, especially if what the fathers said was true about her eloping with Ranma. It would make her the target of numerous skilled and pigheaded martial artists who didn't care about the collateral damage they caused. Even though she hadn't seen any signs of warm feelings between the two, more like the opposite in fact, Nabiki's wits and cunning should never be underestimated, especially when it came to keeping secrets. Unfortunately with Ranma, nothing seemed impossible, not even the thawing of the Ice Queen's heart.

With a hidden sigh, she put the mop aside. There was nothing she could do to help them. Nothing beside waiting for their return and cooking them their favourite dishes, she thought, before checking for the second time that day if the fridge had all the necessary ingredients.

Akane had left for school, a good while back, already. On one hand, she was worried for Nabiki and even for Ranma, because even if he was a jerk, she still liked him. On the other hand, she knew he'd been scheming with Ukyo for this whole week, even if Ukyo claimed otherwise. When he'd come back this time, she'd catch him in the act.

At Furinkan High, during her lunch break, Ukyo was blindsided by her friends, when they expressed their feelings that they were tired of suffering through her alternating bouts of anger and frustration, over not seeing Ranma. He really should've called her, at least, if he wasn't coming in to work due to a training trip. Add to that Akane's constant glares, and it wasn't surprising that Ukyo felt somewhat irritable, today.

"Ukyo, you are going out with us, and that's final, " Misa said.

"Huh?"

"We're going to check out the new arcade and get some ice cream, afterwards. And you - you are coming with us," she repeated.

"Listen up, girl, sometimes, you just simply gotta get your mind off of these things," Toshiko said as sternly as her friend.

Ukyo sighed. Maybe it was for the best to close down early tonight. Besides, Ranma's help had brought in enough yen to afford this rare luxury. And if she couldn't do anything at the restaurant but mope about, then maybe she should try and get over this disappointment; it wouldn't be fair to her customers, otherwise.

Ranma found herself on the grid, again. Right now, the gaming grid looked like a kitchen, which had promise to it, even if this game turned out to be another dating sim. However, that was not the case, as the avatar, a nondescript woman wearing a kitchen apron, walked into the room. Or at least, it wasn't the case, unless the woman turned out to have a thing for redheaded girls.

"You have 10 minutes to prepare an okonomiyaki for the judges to sample. May the best chef's okonomiyaki reign supreme!" the loudspeakers announced. With the sound of a gong, the game was on.

Given what she'd been doing for the past week, before ending up here, Ranma was certain of victory and let her opponent know this.

"Ya can't beat me, I was taught by Okonomiyaki-Ucchan herself!" she stated to the avatar, with the cocky grin and attitude, which either drove most opponents into a mad frenzy or made them think she was full of hot air thus not taking her seriously. This time however, the grin did neither.

Ukyo was flabbergasted, staring in disbelief at the screen, mouth wide open. Was she seeing things, such as a girl looking exactly like girl-Ranma within the game, preparing to cook okonomiyaki against her, while mentioning her name? As egotistical as she could get about her art, she somehow doubted her fame had become so great as to get free advertisement inside of arcade games. She kept wondering exactly what was going on in here; however, as her mind was busy, her hands worked on autopilot, selecting proper ingredients and preparing them, using the recipe for her Ranchan Extra Special.

On the other side of the screen, Ranma was also busy cooking her favourite kind of okonomiyaki. She was using the exact same recipe and was already pouring the batter onto the hot plate, when she noticed what her opponent was doing. "When did she steal Ucchan's recipe?" she questioned, growing increasingly angry.

The gong rang again, once the 10 minutes passed. The simulated judges first were given Ranma's okonomiyaki to evaluate. "The batter is appropriately thick, but the fillings do not form a balanced whole. Seven out of ten points," declared a judge.

Ranma barely stopped herself from shouting out, glaring at the speaker, while Ukyo failed from keeping her jaw from hitting the controls. She never told or taught anyone that recipe, other than Ranchan. And she knew he wouldn't reveal her trade secrets to anyone willingly, not even if they'd agreed to give him a lifetime supply of okonomiyaki, and as a bonus take care of his debt to Nabiki.

The judges then sampled Ukyo's okonomiyaki. As expected, the verdict was identical. "The game is a tie!" the loudspeakers announced.

Finally, Ranma had enough of it, letting the judges know her mind. "Hey ya, that's tha best kind of okonomiyaki there is, so don'tcha go blabbing nonsense around like that!" She then turned around to the player's avatar - a stern frown appearing on her face. "And you there! No one but Ucchan and I know that recipe! So don'tcha go spreadin' it around or nothin', or she'll prolly whack ya across yer big head with her spatula!" Ranma demanded in a speech bubble on the screen, emphasizing her point with a frying pan sprite swinging menacingly. Afterwards, she made a wide smile on her face, showing a victory sign with her hand, as she struck a pose. "And oh yeah, go to Ucchan's for tha best damn okonomiyaki in the world!"

Ukyo would've fallen to her knees if it weren't for her hands, still grasping the controls. Soon after getting a stranglehold on her shock, she got up and began yelling furiously at the game, as the text "Game Over" appeared on the screen as if to mock her.

"Ranchan! Ranchan!" she wailed.

To her misfortune, the game didn't have a microphone, so Ranma couldn't hear her cries. She began beating on the machine with her fists, screaming for him. At the time, her two friends had already stopped playing and came up to her - the other people at the arcade giving her a ten metre buffer zone.

Misa and Toshiko, feeling responsible for her, approached her cautiously. Rushing a person who could smack you senseless, with one strike of a huge implement of kitchen warfare on her back, certainly wasn't the brightest of ideas. "U-Ukyo?" Seeing that this roused no reaction, Misa laid her hand on Ukyo's shoulders, trying to comfort the girl. The angry glare the okonomiyaki chef gave them made her whimper, wishing she hadn't done that.

"What!" Ukyo roared out, just now letting go of the okonomiyaki game, while turning to face her friends. It was of little consolation, as her freed hands moved behind her head, taking hold of her ridiculously huge spatula.

"Come on, let's get out of here and not make a scene," Toshiko whispered, then continuing with, "well, any more of a scene than this."

"Not without Ranchan -"

"Ukyo! He's not here," Toshiko interrupted her, this time with a louder voice, before gulping as she observed Ukyo's knuckles whiten, as she tightened hold on the spatula - something she never left home without.

"How da-dare they," Ukyo yelled herself deaf in mind. Her Ranchan was somewhere inside that evil contraption, trapped, and she had to get him out of there, somehow; no one would keep from doing so - no one. First, she'd have to get rid of Misa and Toshiko, making sure they were safe and out of the way. Then, she'd... she'd... what exactly would she do?

She took a look at her spatula, then at the gaming machine, which still showed "Game Over" on its display, before looking back at her spatula, again. She began to realize the battle couldn't be won right then and there. For all she knew, slicing and dicing the booth could kill Ranchan, and then what would she do? After a few seconds of frowning in silence, she returned the spatula onto her back and walked out - stone-faced - as the crowd parted before her. Misa and Toshiko stayed put, standing inside the ring of people who gathered there to watch the spectacle.

"So, did she recognize you?" Poro asked Ranma who was now pacing furiously back-and-forth inside the small cell. She'd just finished her loud rants about plagiarizing chefs and judges with no sense of taste.

"Who?"

"You said that only you and this Ucchan User knew whatever you were doing, and you aren't Ucchan, correct?"

Ranma stopped dead in her tracks, after giving her little grey cyber-matter cells a swift kickstart, before calmly proceeding to bang her head against the nearest wall.

"Stop immediately, conscript!" a guard shouted from above the cell, before zapping Ranma with his staff.

The manager of the arcade looked at the hall with a content smile. The hall was crowded with people, and most machines had lines to them as well. The screaming girl with the humongous spatula had been removed, thanks to her friends, which was a small blessing. Involving security guards was often bad PR. Better yet, there hadn't been any damage incurred to the arcade either. Nerima had a reputation of having martial arts fights break out anyway, causing lots of damage, but as always, rumors tended to be exaggerated. Still, it was Nerima where the company decided to build their first arcade, and he wasn't going to let mere rumors scare him.

"I wonder why we don't have a Mahjong machine..." he thought, before leaving to see the arcade's main computer. Sitting before the system on a chair, he inserted a Mah Jongg diskette to play in his office.

Computer viruses - a man-made plague - are small pieces of code that insert themselves into executables. Once executed, they'll search for other programs to infect, transmitting from one computer to another via media like diskettes.

A case in point: the manager's diskette, with an infected Mahjong game on it. It wasn't a particularly dangerous one that would wipe out the entire system, but it was still a virus nonetheless. And once the manager installed the game into the system, the virus began spreading its way across the arcade's mainframe. Something had gone wrong with MCP's scenario.

End of line.

AN: The names of the programs in here probably aren't Japanese words. Sted became Poro because in my opinion Sted just stood out too much in Japanese naming motif.

Proof- and preread by Gangsta Spanksta. A big share of the tech jargon in here is his work.