Chapter 2

Ranma entered the house, kicked off his shoes, and then raced up the stairs. His mother, who heard the front door slide open and shut, pushed aside the noren and poked her head out of the kitchen. She peered down the empty hallway for a moment, saw no one, and assumed that her son must have been in a rush to wash up after his duel. So, she turned around and went back to helping Kasumi prepare breakfast.

It didn't take long for Ranma to find the box and pull it out into the open. He stared at the box for a second, as it lay on the floor in front of him, before he opened it. Inside was the skin suit, and on top of that was the letter. He considered the letter, and thought about what he intended to do.

While the skin suit hadn't done anything for Shampoo, that didn't mean that it wouldn't do anything for him. However, the real problem was deciding on whether it would be worth trying out in order to win his duel, and through that victory avoid a number of unpleasantries, because he still had the feeling that putting on the skin suit would bring problems of its own.

"Well," he thought to himself, as he released a sigh, "if it works, my immediate problem is solved. If it bites me in the ass, I'll just have to deal with it — like always."

He closed the box, picked it up, then left the house the same way that he had come in, since he had no reason to abandon his shoes just yet. He made his way back to the empty lot, choosing to transform himself into a girl along the way since it would be more appropriate — and slightly less uncomfortable — to wear the skin suit on a body that was better designed for it. When she arrived at her destination, however, she discovered that Ryoga was nowhere to be seen.

"That idiot..." She muttered to herself.

Still, at least that meant more privacy. She hadn't put the skin suit on back at the house because she hadn't wanted anyone to catch her wearing it and get the wrong idea. This way, the only potential problem — in her mind — was if she wore it in front of Ryoga and it failed to do anything. Of course, unless she hurried, that wouldn't matter: because Ryoga would get himself lost, and the fight would have to be postponed. Then, knowing Ryoga, he'd think that she had run away and she'd never hear the end of it — especially if word got around about it.

Standing behind the tent, relative to the entrance of the lot, she quickly undressed. She paused for a moment, debating whether she should keep her boxers on, but she decided against it: the skin suit would fit better, and it made more sense for all of her clothes to be worn on the outside. Then, she took the skin suit out of the box and held it up for inspection, as she began to wonder about it once more. She had gotten a good look at the skin suit when Shampoo had worn it, so she knew that it wasn't exactly human, what with there being a horn on each side of its head and having a lizard-like tail above its posterior. It was odd, and made her curious about what kind of girl-creature the skin suit was based on, but she had more important things to worry about just then.

As she worked her limbs into the skin suit, she failed to notice the invisible creatures that were gathering around her. They looked like cartoonish rabbits in appearance, except they had eight legs that were configured much like those of a spider's. By the time that she had worked most of the skin suit on, they had assembled around her, in a circle, facing inward. As soon as she had everything in order, a look of concentration appeared on the face of each creature, and she froze in mid-action. The space inside the circle, with her in it, began to distort and waver, as if the fabric of space-time were a curtain in a breeze. The colors, too, were being warped and inverted.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. The creatures, finished with their task, simply dispersed. Ranma, feeling a bit disoriented, steadied herself. Not knowing the cause of it, she chalked it up to feeling weird about wearing the skin suit. In fact, now that she had it all the way on, she couldn't really tell if she were wearing it or not. She held her hand out, flexed her fingers, and was surprised by the absence of any resistance to her movements. She squeezed her fingers into a fist, but the sensation felt normal, unlike what she would have expected with any sort of glove. However, since she was no expert on skin suits, and what kind of material could allow such a realistic feeling, she opted to return her attention to the matter at hand: getting dressed, and finding Ryoga.

However, as soon as she tried to pull her boxers up, she encountered a problem: the tail of her skin suit. Since she was in a hurry, and she didn't want to run around with her rear not being properly covered, she decided that she could live with a damaged pair of boxers and pants, reasoning that she could always sew them back together. So, she tried to tear the back of her boxers open, and was surprised when she ended up tearing her boxers completely apart. Thinking that they may have been in worse shape than they had appeared, she moved on to her pants, using — out of freshly-raised caution — less of the initial strength than she had applied to her boxers before, and was successful in making a hole for the skin suit's tail.

With that taken care of, she maneuvered the tail of her skin suit through the hole, during which she could have sworn that she had felt the tail being touched. Of course, since she had to find Ryoga before he vanished, she disregarded the sensation as nothing more than her imagination, and finished getting dressed.

Once she had all of her clothes on, sans the ruined boxers, she crouched and prepared to make a leap, knowing that she would have an easier time finding Ryoga by rooftop. She chose the nearest roof and jumped for it, but — to her surprise — she quickly realized that she was going to overshoot it. When she landed, she turned around to look behind her, and she was amazed to see that she had somehow jumped four rooftops farther than she had intended.

"Maybe there's something to this thing, after all," Ranma mused, as she considered the skin suit that she was wearing.

Shaking her head, she turned back around and began her search via rooftop. Well, not just by rooftop: she also jumped into the sky, to find out just how high she could jump, and peered down at the ground from there. It was during one of her aerial observations that she caught Ryoga running around, several streets away. So, she altered her course and made her way to him. When she got close enough, she could hear him calling out her name, as well as accusing her of running away from their fight.

Aggravated by his behavior, she landed on the street behind him and yelled, "Hey, pork breath!"

Ryoga stopped in his tracks, whirled around, and angrily replied, "Who're you calling—!"

Realizing that the source of the insult was a stranger, Ryoga paused, furrowed his brow, and asked, "Who are you?"

"Who do you think?" Was Ranma's sarcastic reply, as she folded her arms beneath her bosom. "I told you I'd be back, you idiot."

"Ranma...?" Ryoga queried, with a look of confusion on his face. He proceeded to point to the side of his head, then to his rear, as he asked, "What's up with...? And...?"

"Does it matter?" Ranma responded, as she grew impatient. "Do you want to fight, or not?"

Ryoga's eyes narrowed, and he adopted a fighting stance as he said, "I don't know what you're playing at, but I'm not going to be made a fool!" He then jabbed his index finger at her and proclaimed, "Ranma! Today's the day that I slay you!"

"'Slay' me?" Ranma replied, with an eyebrow cocked.

"It's just that you look—" Ryoga caught himself, shook his head, then vehemently said, "Nevermind that! We're fighting!"

"Could have fooled me," Ranma wryly retorted, as she got ready to fight.

Ryoga calmed himself down, and thought about all of the times that he had been defeated by Ranma. How could someone like Ranma get the better of him, and what kind of person was he to allow it to happen? The worst, that's what! Such thoughts quickly helped him to achieve the appropriate mood for creating the amount of heavy ki that he needed. He raised his head, and the expression on his face — which reflected his mood fairly well — was more than enough to indicate that he was ready to engage Ranma in combat once more.

Ranma, knowing that now would be the moment of truth, got ready to attack. However, if jumping far above a bath house's chimney — in a single bound — was any indication of the strength that the skin suit had bestowed her with, she didn't think that she had anything to worry about. Still, she thought it best to focus, and be prepared if things didn't work out.

She sprinted forward, faster than she had intended, but she was able to compensate for it and prepared to strike Ryoga. When she got close enough to him, with her fist on a collision course with his face, she felt no resistance from his heavy ki. Her fist met with his face, perhaps before he even realized it, and he was sent flying — like a rocket — down the street. She could only gawk in surprise as Ryoga plowed through the roof of a car over a hundred meters away, only to crash through a wall beyond that.

However, surprise quickly turned to concern, so she raced to find Ryoga. It also seemed that she had attracted some attention, as one head after another popped out of windows and doors to investigate the disturbance, or appeared around corners on the street if they hadn't been there already. She ignored them, of course, and ran through the hole that Ryoga had made in the wall. She found him shortly thereafter, plastered against the side of a house. She pulled him out of the indentation that he had made, and proceeded to roll him onto his back.

"Damn," Ranma muttered under her breath, as she looked over his injuries. "This doesn't look good."

Aside from the usual damage that she had expected, from crashing through various things, it seemed that the blow to his head had rendered him unconscious. However, it could be worse than it looked, considering how much power must have been needed to send him flying as far as he had gone. She checked his pulse, and frowned when she found it weaker than she had expected.

"I better have him looked at," she decided, as she cradled him in her arms and got to her feet. "He's tough, but... It shouldn't hurt to make sure."

She carried him as carefully as she could, which meant sticking to the road instead of the rooftops, since jumping about would jostle him around a lot more violently. She ran down one street, then another, until she found the building that she had been looking for. She knocked on the door urgently, and hoped that would incite a quicker response.

Dr. Tofu appeared a few seconds later, dressed for the day, and with a toothbrush in his hand. He looked down, saw what he was presented with, and — with a serious expression on his face — said, "Bring him inside."

Ranma followed Dr. Tofu into the examination room and placed Ryoga onto a cot, which the doctor had indicated by way of a gesture. He then pulled up a stool, and sat at Ryoga's side. He leaned over him as he examined his prone body carefully, and touched an area of interest on occasion as he did so. Soon, he reached Ryoga's head, and he hummed thoughtfully as his attention fixated upon it. He carefully felt around Ryoga's forehead, applying no more than feather-weight pressure to the area. In the meantime, Ranma had quietly stood off to the side of him, a bit anxious over what verdict the examination would reveal.

After pulling away from Ryoga, and flexing his fingers, Dr. Tofu went back in and began to apply accupressure to certain spots on his head. When he was done, he sat up, rubbed the back of his head, and said, "Well... Aside from being in a coma, the external injuries can be treated easily enough."

"I see..." Ranma voiced, not really knowing what to say. So, instead, she asked the obvious: "Will he be okay?"

"Well, he only suffered some minor trauma," Dr. Tofu informed her, as he turned on his stool and faced her. "Something must have really knocked him for a loop. I've done what I can to help him recover, but I can't really guarantee anything when it comes to something like this... But his chances of making a full recovery should be good."

Ranma breathed a sigh of relief and said, "That's a relief."

"By the way..." Dr. Tofu continued, in a conversational tone. "I don't believe we've ever met before."

Feeling a bit embarrassed about having to admit it, Ranma scratched the side of her face, looked away, and said, "Ah... Well, I'm Ranma. I'm kinda wearing a disguise right now."

"You don't say," Dr. Tofu responded, looking surprised.

"You couldn't tell?" Ranma inquired, her curiosity piqued.

Dr. Tofu adjusted his glasses and peered at Ranma more closely, for a few seconds, before he shook his head and said, "It's a very good disguise. Very realistic."

"Don't I know it," Ranma admitted, as she considered the lack of tactile interference from her skin suit. Then, once she brought her mind back to the matter at hand, she apologetically said, "Oh, yeah... I'm sorry for bothering you so early in the morning, doc, but..."

Dr. Tofu held up his hand, signaling for her to say no more, and it was with evident amusement that he said, "Don't worry about it. This is what I'm here for, right?"

"Anyway," he went on, as he stood up, "I've still got a mouth to rinse out. Would you like me to give you a call later, and give you an update on his condition?"

Since she'd had something else in mind, Ranma awkwardly said, "Oh, uh... I was kinda thinking of coming back later. That is, if you don't mind if I bring his stuff here?"

"No problem," answered Dr. Tofu with a smile. "I'll be expecting you, then."

With a mixture of relief and gratitude, Ranma said, "Thanks, doc."

They said their goodbyes before they parted ways in the lobby. Ranma stepped outside, paused once she reached the sidewalk, and raised her hands up for inspection. It was still unbelievable to her, the kind of power that the skin suit had given her. For weeks she had put it out of her mind, more convinced that it had been a part of some perverted joke than anything else. However, now that it had worked for her, which was contrary to its performance for Shampoo, it proved to be something more than just a disturbingly-realistic skin suit. And speaking of disturbingly-realistic... It was time for her to remove it, since it had served its purpose.

In another dimension, where the gods and goddesses dwelt, a phone rang. On a nearby bed, a figure stirred beneath the covers, as the phone's incessant ringing continued. Then, a hand darted out from beneath the covers, grabbed the receiver, and pulled it into the murky depths from which it had come.

"What is it?" A male voice groused.

A few seconds passed in silence, before the owner of the voice sat up in his bed, cast aside his covers, and shrieked, "What!?"

While another figure stirred and groaned in his bed, the man quietly listened to what was being said on the other end of the line. Eventually, he closed his eyes and considered something — for a time — before he said, "Get someone from the Divination Division on it. Have them make preparations for... Hino Rei. Yes; I think we'll start there."

While he leaned over to hang up the phone, a naked woman, who had the marks of a goddess on her forehead and cheeks, crawled out from beneath the covers and sidled up beside him. She let out a big yawn, and looked up at him with bleary eyes as she asked, "What was all that about?"

"It was nothing," was all that he was willing to say to her about it.

However, in reality, Kami-sama knew that he had a real problem to take care of; one thought to have been phased out of existence a long time ago. Since that no longer seemed to be the case, he knew that he had some work ahead of him. So, as intent on resolving the matter as he was, he decided to get up and get started on it.

Noren: A curtain-like divider that usually has one or more vertical slits; they have multiple uses.