AN: Chapter 2, remarkably quickly. Thanks for the reviews, good calls 'Blinded in a Bolthole', I've given them a shot.

Ryoga, Tristain Academy of Magic, Halkeginia

A trained martial artist can go from deep sleep to entirely awake quickly enough to dodge assassination attempts, random lightning strikes and, in Ryoga's case, glasses of cold water thrown at his face. The cold liquid landed safely onto the pillow where Ryoga's head had just been, to the annoyance of the girl who had just thrown it at him. Her voice raised in an obviously annoyed shriek,

"How I miss!" Ryoga stared at her, his body tensed and prepared to dodge at the sight of more water from the obviously temperamental girl. This seemed to annoy her even more, and she flung the now empty glass at him, a vein in her head throbbing in poorly hidden rage. Ryoga was used to having things flung at him, and caught the glass with one hand, letting it move his hand back slightly to make sure he didn't smash it on his hand as he caught it. She stared at him for several seconds, before her shoulders dropped and the anger seemed to fade into a dark expression. She threw herself onto a chair next to the bed where Ryoga had been asleep, and proceeded to brood silently.

Ryoga swallowed nervously and placed the glass down on the nearest table, his gaze shifting around the room as he tried to find out where he was. It wasn't a particularly small room, with walls made of well fitted stone and woven tapestries covering over most of the stone. The floor was covered over with thick rugs, and the pieces of furniture were made of deep brown wood. The edges of the furniture were artistically carved into flowing lines, and the wood itself was smoothed over with some kind of varnish.

The whole setup screamed of money and taste, which hammered down into Ryoga's hindbrain, lighting off subconscious warnings. A look at what was on the furniture brought the warnings screaming into the front of his mind, as the clothes, brushes and toiletries said two things to Ryoga. He was in a bedroom. He was in a girl's bedroom. His gaze skipped back to the girl slumped in the chair. He was in this girls bedroom, she had kissed him on the cheek, and he was male. Even a passing glance at Ranma's life would have warned someone that this wasn't good, and Ryoga had had more than a passing glimpse at the insanity involved in Ranma's life. A thought bubbled up loudly into his brain. I'm screwed.

Ryoga forced down the nervousness the girl caused in him and cleared his throat before speaking up in his shaky Belgian.

"Who.. er.. you?" The girl ignored him, her body tensing in on itself in annoyance. Ryoga furrowed his brow before trying again.

"I Ryoga. Where we?" He could see the muscles in her jaw flexing, and Ryoga resolved to give talking one more try.

"This Japan?" The girls composure broke with a scream of annoyance, and she whipped out a short stick of wood, pointing it at him as she shouted a word that Ryoga didn't understand. He started to dodge whatever it was she was doing, but was a fraction too slow and was again the centre of a violent, yet brief, explosion. When he opened his eyes again he was still standing where he had been, but with a scorch mark burnt onto the rugs at his feet. He stared at the pink-haired girl, who was breathing hard as she kept what could only have been a magic wand pointed at him.

"Kami, fine, I won't speak to you then," Ryoga muttered in Japanese. This seemed to make the girl stand up in shock, her eyebrows tightening toward the centre of her face as she opened her mouth and spoke in a tone of surprise,

"You mean you can actually speak proper Tristainian? Then why were you speaking like a pig-man!?" The girl shook her head even as the martial artist looked back at her in shock. From his point of view she had suddenly started speaking perfect, unaccented Japanese, which was a far cry from the faux-Belgian she had been speaking when he woke up. The girl steam-rolled on, however, though she seemed a bit happier now that she knew he wasn't incapable of speaking her language fluently.

"Doesn't matter anyway, you're still a useless commoner anyway. And one who fainted during the summoning to boot!" The words were spat at him, though Ryoga could hear that some of the anger was aimed at herself. Still, he would not be accused of fainting, as if he was weak or something.

"I didn't faint!" The lost boy raised his voice to make his point, only to be whacked across the face by the end of the stick that the girl still held. It didn't hurt, but it was a surprise to Ryoga.

The girl stalked away after smacking him on the face, and sat back down in the chair. Her posture was much better now, mused Ryoga, back straight, head up. There was some training there. She met his eyes for a moment, then drew breath.

"Well, commoner, it seems you have an opportunity that most of your ilk will never have. Somehow you are my familiar, summoned through a magical ritual. I am Louise Françoise Le Blanc de la Vallière, one of the Noble families of Tristain. You may address me as Master. Now, follow me, and I may allow you to eat something today." Throughout Louise's speech Ryoga's eyebrows had been rising up his forehead, and Louise's bearing seemed to come back to her. As she finished her speech she stood up, raised her chin, and gestured imperiously for him to follow her. Ryoga watched as she marched past him, then shrugged and followed. She'd said something about dinner, after all, and he had no wish to get lost before he got something to eat.

As the pair walked through the stone corridors of the castle Ryoga stared left and right at each new sight. They were using burning lamps for light, and the glass in both the windows and the lamps seemed thicker and more warped than he was used to at home. He found this quite odd, as last time he was in the Belgian-speaking part of Africa they had electric lights, along with a distinct lack of stone castles that actually saw use. As they passed through the corridors Ryoga noted several people that had been present at his first introduction to the small girl walking in front of him. They jogged his memory of the events that had led up to his entirely manly and understandable loss of consciousness.

He looked down at his left hand, noting the thick black lettering that decorated the back of his hand. His wandering had taken him to most places throughout his cursed life, and this had given him a working use of most spoken languages. His writing was less accomplished, but the symbols on his hand were nothing that he had ever seen before. They were formal letters, however, and he considered that they might have just been from a language that he had never seen before. He ran his fingertips over the runes as they walked, and noted that they didn't either hurt or seem to tighten his skin when he made a fist. He figured that they wouldn't affect him, and therefore left them alone.

The other memory he had was much more worrying, and a lot harder to investigate. His ki had been pulled on, twisted out to touch the girl he followed through the halls, and this worried him. He had never been a fan of meditation, but he had used it to master the shi shi hokodan, and could at least feel his ki flow through his body without too much effort. He willed his mind to calm, and reached out to the flow of his life force. In an instant he knew that something was wrong, and a second later he knew what it was. The shock knocked him out of the brief meditation, and distracted him from where he was. Unfortunately, he and Louise had been walking down stairs, and this distraction caused him to topple down the last few to the bottom, where he landed in a heap.

Louise let off a sigh of irritation, and stalked down the last few steps to where the heavy-set boy was climbing back to his feet. As he stood and looked at her, he seemed to shy away from her, his hands and arms tensing towards himself. She shook her head at him as he stood watching her.

"Are stairs an issue for you?" Her tone was caustic, and Ryoga shrank a little under her gaze. He'd never been good with angry females, he knew that much, but the sheer level of anger the little girl could seem to summon at the slightest provocation was truly scary.

"Hmph. Come on." She walked past him, her mind clearly on other things as she nearly walked into someone stood just beyond Ryoga.

"Watch your step, Zero." The voice sneered a little as the taller girl avoided being walked into by Louise. Ryoga looked at who it was, and had to focus himself, lest he be thrown backwards from a vicious nosebleed.

The red-head from his summoning was stood in front of them, backed up by a pretty hefty lizard. Not quite as large as the sumo pigs that Akari kept, Ryoga mused, but not much smaller either. She was wearing a similar uniform to Louise, a white shirt with a cloak clasped at the throat, a black skirt and dark shoes, but as Ryoga was occasionally made aware, the devil was in the details. The shirt seemed to be a size too small for what it contained, and enough buttons had been left undone to make sure that anyone looking would find themselves taking a second, and a third, look. The skirt was a normal length but the legs were not, leaving the impression that if the skirt were any smaller it would be more appropriate to call it a belt. And the shoes were leather boots that stretched up the length of the girls legs, stopping just short of the skirt and being leather trousers.

All in all, a sight many men would have killed to be summoned by, a small part of Ryoga's mind whispered. He snapped his eyes to the girl's face in an effort to avoid passing out from girl-induced nosebleed, only to find her staring at him with an entirely too amused expression for his liking. As he considered his options, he became aware that an explosive hissing was coming from his side, and glanced left to see Louise with an expression of rage on her face, and her hand had a white-knuckled grasp on her wand as the hissing turned into words.

"Kirche." Ryoga was honestly surprised by the anger in the pink-haired girls voice. Then again, if he remembered correctly, this Kirche had been the first one to pass comment after his arrival. Louise continued, still sounding less than happy.

"What do you want." Kirche let a smirk onto her lips, as she answered with more than a little viciousness of her own.

"Why nothing much, little Louise. Just wanted to see if you were going to trail around this commoner you've conned into pretending to be your familiar. Mind you, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of him." Ryoga blushed at the implication from that last statement as the meaning hit him. Louise, by contrast, was more concerned with the first part of her words.

"Why would I con anybody, Kirche? I did the spell, and he's what came!" The words came out with more than a little anger. The taller girl rolled her eyes and started to walk away as she responded to Louise's retort.

"Of course. Louise the Zero managed a spell, how cute..." Kirche trailed off into a chuckle as she walked away, and Louise stared after her, mumbling angry curses under her breath until the redhead left her sight.

Louise snapped her gaze over to Ryoga, who backed away from the anger in the girl's eyes before it dulled away to a smouldering irritation. She jerked her head, indicating that Ryoga should continue to follow, before speaking over her shoulder to the martial artist.

"Familiar, you would normally be told to eat with the familiars of the other students, however I doubt they would have the right food for a commoner..." Louise was interrupted by Ryoga letting out a startled yell, and the sharp sound of glass breaking. She turned to see what was happening, only to be greeted with a face full of water as the water from the glass Ryoga had batted away from himself splashed straight into her. Ryoga stood frozen, hand still outstretched from where he had batted the falling glass away, and the maid who had dropped it stood similarly frozen.

"Familiar..." Louise's voice had dropped to a growl, and the white-knuckled grasp on her wand had returned. The water dripped down her face and shirt, and Ryoga prepared himself to be the centre of another explosion.

The preparation was well warranted, and the blast seemed to be sufficient to dry off Louise and somewhat scorch the hapless maid standing to the side. As the maid passed the little noble another napkin to finish drying herself the pink haired girl kept her gaze on the smoking body of Ryoga as he levered himself back to his feet.

"You will not be eating today, familiar. Stay with the other animals until I fetch you, dog." The words were said with precision, and the venom on the last word seemed to be capable of eating through the stone walls surrounding them. Louise turned on her heel and stalked angrily into the main hall, and Ryoga shook his head again, trying to clear the ringing from his ears.

The maid tried to clear her throat in the quietest way in order to get the martial artists attention.

"Sir?" The word itself barely made it from her lips as the maid attempted to ascertain if the recently exploded man would be able to make his own way onwards. "Are you okay?"

Ryoga coughed and held a thumb up at the maid before waving her hands away and brushing the soot off himself. When he judged himself to be sufficiently cleaned he looked at the girl quizzically, drawing in a breath to speak.

"Er. Hi. Sorry about the scorching." Ryoga gestured at the black streaks on the maids face and apron as he spoke. The maid ducked her head, clearly embarrassed to be apologised to, and made a quiet noise that seemed to be an acceptance. Seeing nothing else was going to be forthcoming, and that Louise had disappeared, Ryoga decided to ask for directions.

"You don't happen to know where the familiars are, do you?" He asked hesitantly. The maid bobbed her head slightly, then pointed towards one of the passageways leading off from their corridor. Ryoga nodded in acceptance, replying to her non-verbal gesture with a grin and another thumbs up.

Ryoga looked at the passageway the maid had indicated, and set off walking down it, keeping his eyes peeled for more unexpected water. He really didn't need to become a pig right now, not while he didn't have his kettle. Eventually he reached the end of the corridor, which opened into a large hall. The hall was filled with as many different types of animal as Ryoga had ever seen, and in groupings which seemed off to him somehow. There was a leopard sitting next to what appeared to be a small bear, and what appeared to be a strange cousin of a peacock eating from a tray next to where a fox was grooming it's tail. Predators next to prey, with no indication of any issue, or of one eating another.

There was the sense of something big moving near him, and Ryoga whirled to see the lizard that had been following Kirche sidling along a wall toward a pile of rocks. Ryoga looked properly at the pile, and noticed that what he had taken for a large mound of stone was breathing in a regular time, swelling and shrinking very slightly every few seconds. A chill ran down Ryoga's spine as he contemplated exactly how big a lizard the pile would make, and came up with an answer that he didn't like in the slightest.

Suddenly, Ryoga was struck with another thought, delivered straight from his stomach. He had now not eaten for around a day, and his body decided to let him know that it disapproved of this with a loud rumble. Ryoga rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment, looking round to see if he could see anyone who looked appropriately chef-like. He caught sight of another maid ducking through a door with a pile of dishes, and decided to follow her. Moving through the door he came to a short corridor, and wandered down it to find one of the busiest kitchens he'd yet to be in.

As he walked in a man in a chef's hat zipped up to him, and barred his path, wringing his hands nervously.

"Ah no, honoured student, the kitchens are not for folk as you, please, allow me to escort you back to the dining hall." The man was bowing reflexively in front of Ryoga, and he attempted to usher the martial artist from the room, only to run into something many others had learnt. If Ryoga Hibiki did not wish to move, then Ryoga Hibiki did not move.

"Ah, sir?" The chef looked at him with wide eyes, and Ryoga held his hands in front of him, attempting to calm the man down.

"All I'm after is some food," Ryoga said slowly. "And I'm not a student here. I'm a..." he paused briefly. "Well, I guess I'm a familiar." The chef straightened up, the nervousness vanishing as he realised he was not speaking to a noble.

"Oh! Well, that's not a problem then. Food you said?" Ryoga nodded in response, prompting the man to break out into a smile. "Follow me then friend!" Ryoga followed the man to a short table, where he was given a bowl of stew, and a hunk of still warm bread, and left to his own devices. Ryoga took a bite, and decided that he could get to like this place. The stew was almost exactly as he cooked it, only with some different spices than he normally chose. The meal disappeared as Ryoga relieved his empty stomach, and by the time the last bit was gone he was feeling a lot more like his normal self.

The business of the kitchen carried on around him, and Ryoga watched them moving around, noting again the differences to what he'd thought the Belgian people used to cook. After all, he was fairly sure that they knew about electricity and gas, and used them to cook. Maybe they were traditionalists, he thought. Surveying the room again he found the door he had entered by, moving back through it to get back to the hall of familiars. As he entered the room he heard Louise shouting for him, and clearly getting agitated about it.

"Familiar! Where are you!?" Ryoga winced. The last thing she'd said was 'no food'. Better not tell her where he'd been then. He cleared his throat as he came up behind the pink-haired girl, causing her to spin round and pin him with a sharp glare.

"And where have you been, hmm?" The words conveyed no small amount of displeasure with his actions, and he brought his hand up to his hair in discomfort as he answered with a touch of hesitation.

"Ah... I got lost." Her eyes narrowed, and she sniffed imperiously, apparently accepting his words as reasonable, if annoying. She jerked her head at him, before walking towards a large door set into one wall. Ryoga took that to mean that he should follow her, and hurried to catch up to her before she reached the door. As they reached it he thought about what he'd just used as his excuse. Odd. Hehadn't got lost. He'd followed directions, picked the right door, and managed to get back to where he needed to be, all without taking a single wrong turning. He filed that to be looked into later, after all, if his curse was gone then his life would be taking a significant turn for the better. Then all he would need to lose would be the pig, and he'd be the happiest man on earth.

The door in the wall led to the outside, opening into a field which had several long tables set out in the sunlight. Several people in uniform were already sat at the tables, some with friends, some alone, but all talking animatedly at some kind of animal. He looked at Louise in confusion, who just blew out her breath in a quick sigh, and sat at an empty stretch of table. He stood for a moment longer, before she pointed at a seat on the other side, and he moved to sit at it. They sat in silence before Louise spoke up.

"This is supposed to be a time for master and familiar to get to know each other, so I'm going to lay down the ground rules. I am your Master. So what I say goes. Got it?"

Ryoga straightened his back as she spoke, his eyes narrowing as he considered his findings from earlier against what she was telling him. When he had checked his ki he had found a string of it leaving his body and cycling through somebody else. By the sound of it she had linked the two of them through their life force, and this knowledge felt like someone had just rammed a rod of ice into Ryoga's spine. Ki bonds were supposed to be impossible without a long, long relationship first. It was handing a piece of your soul to someone else, a profoundly intimate and personal act. It was something that was supposed to need active participation from both people, as there would now be a bit of each in the other, unless they could break the bond. Ryoga licked his suddenly dry lips, the cold down his spine refusing to leave.

"I think I have a problem with this." His voice was steady, which was more than could be said of his head. "You've linked our lives. What gave you the right to..."

"The right?" Louise interrupted Ryoga with an affronted look on her face. "I'm a noble, you're just a commoner, you can't argue with me! I don't need approval for what I've done."

"A commoner? What does my birth have to do with anything!?" Ryoga was heating up into an argument, unable to believe that this little brat thought she had the right to tear him out of his life.

"Your birth has everything to do with it! Brimir handed down the right to rule to the nobles, it's your moral duty to follow our commands! Now stop arguing with me, or I'll be forced to punish you!" Louise had shot to her feet with that, Ryoga's words incensing her. Ryoga imitated her, towering over her short frame with his own bulky one.

"Moral duty to obey? I've seen enough to know that slavery is one of the furthest things from moral! And it'll be a cold day in hell when I..."

CRACK. Louise had snatched a short riding crop from the belt she had put on this morning, and smacked the large boy across the face with it. The pair of them paused to look at the offending item, Ryoga to see what she'd hit him with, and Louise because she hadn't expected it to break on the first use.

Ryoga tilted his head to the side as he looked at the little piece of inflexible wood she'd used to hit him, then looked back at her. For a moment his jaw tightened, and his hands curled up, before he shook his head and stalked away from the table. Louise, in contrast, slowly sat back down, staring at the remains of the crop. She'd used similar on the horses at home when being taught to ride. The only way they could break was if the thing they hit wasn't moved at all by the hit. So he hadn't even turned his face, and there wasn't even a mark. She shivered a bit, wondering exactly who her familiar was.

Ranma. Lost.

There was a light in one direction. That's all he could see from the top of the mound of rock and ash he'd spent most of the last few hours climbing. Looking everywhere else was just more of what he was standing on. Ash and rock, with a few scattered pillars and mounds jutting out of the monotonous flatness. There were some moving figures, scattered a little way off towards the light, and Ranma was reminded of the creature he'd been forced to kill. It simply hadn't stopped. He'd broken bones, dislocated joints, but even when he'd driven one of it's vestigial bone wings through it's back the creature hadn't stopped trying to kill him. It had simply healed itself and set off after him like a bloodhound. He'd made it a clean death, at least, using the creature's own axe to bring it's life to a close. The body had disintegrated a few seconds after death, leaving Ranma holding an axe embedded into the floor. He'd left it there, unable to look at it.

Since then he'd avoided several more, slipping into the skills he'd learnt from the umisenken school his father had created. But he was losing strength, he could feel it. He needed to eat, or he'd run too low on ki to be able to invert it successfully enough to hide himself. So he gritted his jaw, and began heading toward the white light on the horizon. He just had to hope he would make it.

Nabiki, Nerima, Earth.

It had been over 24 hours now since both Ryoga and Ranma had disappeared into a green oval, and Nabiki was starting to worry. Not that she let that show of course. After all, for all the damage that Ranma could cause to the house, he was good for so much income. And the house needed that, badly. After all, the fathers Tendo and Saotome spent most of the money that fell into their hands on sake, Akane was still at school and Kasumi had taken over running the house when mother passed away. So the only people in the house with the time to gain money were Ranma and her.

And yes, quite a bit of her money came from Ranma. Both Kunos would pay good money for photos of both of Ranma's sides. There were the fights, the fiancée pool... He'd slid so well into the running of Nabiki's little kingdom that she'd almost forgotten that he might leave. So, quite simply, he needed to come back. And not just because he brought in the money, but also because he could deal with the martial artists who caused a great deal of money to be spent. There'd been a visit from almost every power in Nerima, all trying to find out if the rumours were true, or celebrating the fact with a little detour through the Tendo household. And without the self-proclaimed 'Best martial artist in the world' in the house, removing them was turning out to be... difficult. That was it, Nabiki thought. He was needed, and needed here.

Still, there was one power who was yet to visit, and Nabiki had a feeling she was waiting for a bit of peace before she took it upon herself to come in. She'd managed to finally roll the last of the invading martial artists out, with a few choice threats about some compromising pictures, when there was a polite cough from behind her. Nabiki turned her head, feeling slightly frazzled at the effort she'd had to put out to clear out the house, and saw Cologne perched on her stick in the middle of the kitchen.

"Couldn't you have stuck your head out a little earlier, Cologne?" Nabiki said with more than a little exasperation in her voice. "Maybe moved some of the more rowdy ones on a bit faster?"

The wizened Amazon matriarch laughed at the vastly younger girl, murmuring her reply,

"Privilege of age, young one. One day you will enjoy it too." Nabiki rolled her eyes, and gestured at the table, inviting the sometime ally, sometime enemy, to sit.

"Tea?" Nabiki asked, running off what Kasumi would have done had she not been asleep already. It would have taken more than a horde of martial artists to put off Kasumi's routine, after all. Cologne nodded, perching herself at the side of the low table and watching the teenager pour for both of them. The mismatched pair sat for a few moments, sipping the tea and allowing them both to relax for a moment.

Nabiki broke the silence with the obvious question.

"Do you know what happened?" Cologne sipped her tea pensively, before placing the cup on the table, and calmly replying.

"Describe the scene for me again. I may have misheard earlier." Nabiki nodded, and went through the events of the last day, noting the green oval that appeared and stole both martial artists without a sound. Cologne hunched over her tea cup, sipping it as Nabiki spoke, and as her tale wound down she seemed to look her full age.

"I believe I know what has happened." Cologne stared down into the tea as she spoke, clearly struggling to recall what she spoke of. "It has happened before in our legends. An oval of green light, swallowing up one of our sisters and vanishing in a flash." Nabiki was leaning forward, entranced, and bit her lip as she asked the matriarch a question.

"Can we get him back?"

Cologne paused, meeting Nabiki's eyes over the rim of her teacup as she considered the girls question, before sighing and answering.

"I know of no way to bring those summoned back from this side." Nabiki's eyes widened at this, and she drew breath to respond angrily, before being stopped by Cologne's raised hand.

"However," the matriarch continued, "There are methods that can be used to follow those who have been summoned." The ancient Amazon stood and paced back and forth beside the table as she considered what needed to be done. "Ranma and Ryoga have been summoned to another world, one both at the other end of the cosmos, and yet barely the thickness of a cat's whisker away. The worlds are closest when the sun is in eclipse, and if you know the path then you can step between worlds as if you were stepping through a door."

Nabiki stood too, pacing on her side of the table.

"So," she said eagerly, "we just need to know when and where the next eclipse will be. Then we can go there, step through, and bring him home."

"Them." Noted Cologne with a slight tilt of her head. Nabiki flapped a hand at her, and then nodded.

"Give me a moment," she muttered, before vanishing upstairs. Cologne watched her go, then sat back down at the table, pouring herself another cup of tea. She had drunk half of it when Nabiki appeared through the door, clutching a scribbled set of notes. The girl spread them out on the table, pointing at the top-most line. A date, time and place, two weeks from now. Cologne looked at Nabiki, a curious smile playing around her lips.

"You have two weeks to teach me how to walk this path of yours, and to tell me everything you know about this place. I'm bringing them back." Nabiki's tone was commanding, and Cologne raised an eyebrow at this new development. This was something she might have expected from Akane, not the fabled ice queen of Nerima. Thinking for a moment, Cologne decided to test this new facet of Nabiki.

"And what will you give me for this help?" Nabiki's eyes narrowed in response, darting from side to side as she thought about it. She wetted her lips, swallowed and quietly answered the woman.

"What do you want?"