Warning: I'm not pulling any punches with these, as they're SCRAP FILES. This is my raw, personal edits and not screened for much other than my own inner grammar nazi. You can expect just about anything, and I know there are a few scenes of mature and violent content. Some of it harsh. So, be warned.

Premise: Not sure. Just felt like this should happen, somewhere.

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Terms of Victory

His hand lightly swirling a mix of juice and some unknown alcohol, Ranma watched as Nabiki tried to push her angle from half a room away. The noise made it nearly impossible to hear her, other than a bare syllable here or there, and the light made it difficult to read her lips, but he managed well enough. The bar in Roppongi wasn't the best place to play covert bodyguard/observer, but the alternate choices weren't too much better. Use one of the sealed forms to hide closer? Too crowded, too much distraction. Maybe one of Konatsu's ninjutsu tricks... no, he didn't practice those, out of respect for the crossdressing kunoichi. The cursed martial artist actually snorted at his next suggestion to himself – offer his services directly.

"Yeah, like I want to put myself in that position," he muttered irritably. Oddly, he was only a few steps from it, but the difference was stark. At the moment, he was watching over someone who was something like family, for his own peace of mind. At Nabiki's whim, he'd just be another commodity, a different grade of pressure, influence, power, and potential. "Just another tool to be used."

"Not much wrong with that," a voice murmured nearby, and Ranma turned to regard a woman with cinnamon toned skin who looked to be in her early twenties, possibly. It wasn't the maturity of her face, or style of dress that lead him to that conclusion – those were deceptive. Taken from those hints, she should be maybe eighteen and thirty-something, respectively. Her face was young, if lacking the roundness of youth, and her dress seemed to exude a sense of quiet, firm competence. No, it was the way she carried herself, and the carriage of her body that he noted, something almost like a sixth sense to him with so much familiarity in the martial arts. That personal grace was smooth and fluid, well-practiced, long honed, Ranma noted in the fractions of a moment he afforded everyone on first meeting them. He'd learned very early on in life to assess everyone, having had too many ambushes, random challenges, and 'honorable' attempts on his life to assume a stranger wasn't a threat.

As he took in her appearance, so she returned the regard. The young man to her left was fit, and looked to be in his late teens, though there was a heaviness to his demeanor that spoke of recent, heavy sadness. Also very apparent in every motion was an economy and grace that seemed nearly unnatural, but at the same time, so very fitting. Raven-black hair framed his face in a fall of loose bangs, while the rest was pulled back in a long braid that currently sat draping across his shoulder to rest across his chest. Said physique was clad in an off-white silk shirt, that seemed a size too big in the arms, but on second glance seemed more tailored for movement than snugness. A similar pattern repeated with the black slacks, that seemed more along the line of loose-fit silk hakama. Beyond bearing and clothing, however, she noted the young man's eyes. Brilliant, stormy blue so clear that she paused, startled for a moment.

She knew those eyes...

Ranma endured the woman's assessing glance with stoic grace, before a slow nod passed between them, sparking a slight smile below deep red eyes. How interesting, he thought, something about those eyes settling in his mind heavily. They seemed familiar, but he simply could not place them. Uncertainty aside, her earlier remark demanded a response of some sort. "Being a tool for someone to use? Not sure I could live that life." He managed to keep a straight face, despite the irony of that statement in regard to his own life at that moment.

"Purpose," she began, hailing the bartender for another drink, turning her gaze back out to the dance floor. That same painful apparition remained, at once uplifting and crushing in its reality. "Stability, surety of interaction with the one you trust, or at worst, whose using you. Knowing your place. There's security in that kind of situation."

"Maybe," Ranma admitted hesitantly, before shaking his head, considering the woman's words. For the briefest moment he allowed his mind to consider Nabiki and what she'd do in that position – again, really. When Akane has been in the middle of one of her fits of calling off the engagement, it had been moved to the middle Tendo, and despite Akane's more physical negative tendencies, he preferred her to being whored out like property. "But, in this case, I don't want to be a tool to this person. Not all that appealing, considering how she treats her 'tools'."

The woman nodded, and with the shifting light Ranma realized her hair was a deep green that seemed nearly black in the bar's intermittent gloom. Setsuna allowed herself to preen slightly under the young man's open attention, before returning to the conversation, memories of her own service clear in her mind despite the current day's... lack. "One must pick their masters carefully," she murmured before tipping back a glass of what looked like milk, but smelled of sake.

Ah. Unfiltered sake, then, Ranma realized with a grimace. For all it was traditional in Japan, he just couldn't stomach the stuff without memories of Tatewaki Kuno ruining the moment. Her words however resonated in him, shaking him badly despite his observation. "Masters?"

Setsuna rocked her hand, swirling the sake in her glass lightly before she answered. Though she had another name for the woman who she had served, her words seemed appropriate just the same, "What else would a tool consider their wielder?"

"...I suppose so."

An uneasy silence drifted between the two of them, then, and it was only a matter of a moment's attention for Ranma to see the woman was watching her own quarry, as he was keeping a vigil on Nabiki. The dusky-skinned woman nearby rarely took her gaze off of what looked to be an intimate couple, judging as he could on their willingness and lack of reaction to hold and he held by the other. For a moment he frowned at the picture, before dismissing his reaction – sure, the man looked to be a few years older, but not enough for it to be a real issue, he figured. What was four or five years in the larger scheme of things, if the two of them loved each other? The spark of jealousy remained, however, in seeing a couple so in love and without troubles, blithely dancing the night away. A petty, small, hateful part of him that rarely saw the light of day swelled into the fore briefly, and he fought down the surge of dark emotions with a vengeance that left him cold and feeling wasted. With that impulse's passing, Ranma snorted in derision, throwing back his light drink to order another in a single motion of a raised glass.

Though she could sense auras weakly like most of her companions, Setsuna rarely felt someone who's emotions were strong enough to impact her without even focusing on that ability. What she'd just felt off the man nearby could have paralyzed someone, if focused on them directly. In the wake of it, she shivered. "Something wrong?"

The martial artist considered those words, not bothering to turn to the woman at his side. She knew he'd heard, and he knew she was listening. "Just thinking about love. The great cosmic joke."

It was the woman's turn to react as if struck, and Ranma turned to note her strangely intense flinch from his words. In a moment, she was back to watching her charges, but the tenseness around her eyes was new. In defense of one of the primary tenets of her long and inglorious life, she asserted, "Love can be a powerful force."

"It can also be a trap," Ranma replied immediately, leaning back against the bar with his new drink in hand. A quick check against his ki told him this should be his last – he was burning it up quickly, but that lapse in emotions earlier had been a problem. He wouldn't remain drunk or even tipsy for long as his metabolism burned the stuff out far too fast, but that reaction condensed all the effect into a shorter period. His blood was getting just high enough in alcohol content to leave him with a rather foul headache, and he wanted to avoid that if he could. Politeness to the bar had been achieved, with his purchases. He could stop acting like he was enjoying his drinks now.

The woman mulled his words over as his attention wandered. A small, bitter part of her agreed with him, but at the same time, a spark of hope had lit in her breast at seeing that familiar, stormy blue. Irony seemed thick in the air that night – here, she'd thought to find a place to escape the knowledge that all she had worked for was at once achieved and lost, it had only served to drag her face-first into the consequences of the moment. On top of that – seeing Usagi and Mamoru together, oblivious to her – she now had the stinging reminder of a love she'd nearly given up on, haunting her while she looked out on a childlike dream from 15,000 years before dying in another woman's arms. Somehow, she mustered the will to respond through her dry mouth and stinging eyes. "Yes, I suppose it can be. But it can also be the key to any door or cage."

"Just another tool," the young man muttered, shaking his head. All the times Ukyo and Xian Pu had used that word to trap him, to manipulate his feelings and get their way rose up in his mind. Even Akane had skirted that taboo once or twice. "Something else for people to use, to manipulate you."

"You seem too young to be so jaded," Setsuna remarked, the cynicism in the young man's voice so biting that it seemed to stab at her.

"And you seem too young to be commenting on it," Ranma replied, his customary half-grinning smirk present for a fraction of a moment, though it never reached his eyes. It faded as he watched one of the men Nabiki was talking to start looking defensive and angry, his expression stony still, but his body betraying him. Focusing further, Ranma took a moment to confirm some of his earlier observations, his expression turning grim.

The sound of someone moving at his side drew his attention, and Ranma noted that his companion at the bar had turned to face him while he kept his gaze on Nabiki. "That was an entirely too serious look."

Ranma nodded to his charge, across the room. There would be no harm in cluing the woman in to what he was doing, at this point. "Smirking girl, third table from the left support, with the three suits around her."

Affirming a suspicion, the woman sighted Nabiki in only a few brief moments. He could feel the tension in the woman ramping up slightly, as she took in the situation he had noted developing. "That... isn't very bright."

"Sometimes she outsmarts herself," the martial artist commented, getting an unladylike snort for a reply. "Hang on a second." Instead of standing and making his way over, Ranma took up the glass he'd been nursing for part of the day, downing what water was within from the ice melt quickly. Dumping what ice remained in his hand, he weighed it for a moment, before that fist blurred three times. Over the din of the dancing, three separate cracks snapped against the wall behind the suited Yakuza Nabiki was speaking with, startling them into putting their hands on their weapons. The sudden motion and change in demeanor caused the middle Tendo to pale dramatically, before she could reign in her reaction to something more normal.

Nodding at his work, Ranma sat back down and watched as the young woman he'd come to watch over shifted her apparent approach with the men she was meeting with, clearly nervous about their concealed weapons. Ranma wasn't sure if they were guns – massively illegal and hard to get in Japan – or some kind of baton, taser, or something else, but suspected the worst. He knew from his travels with Genma that high-ranking Yakuza were well-capable of paying off local police, and that it was only a matter of bad luck that Nabiki could have found herself tangling with such a group. Taking up his newly refilled drink, the martial artist paused, noting the woman beside him eying him intently. "Hm?"

Cocking her head to the side slightly, the woman graced him with a slow smile. "That was very well handled. It got the point across to her that those men were armed, distracted conversation enough to let her back up and diffuse her own possible overstepping, and was essentially untrackable with the speed and melting ice." Lifting her small glass of unfiltered sake, she offered him a brief salute. "Well done."

Not used to praise from strangers, Ranma ducked his head for a moment before smiling. "Thanks." Nodding to her own charges, he hazarded a question. "They seem pretty relaxed, for someone with your training to watch over them. They know you're here?"

The woman went rather still for a moment, before relaxing, taking another sip of her drink as she mulled over an answer. She should have expected the man beside her, his training quite clear in his demeanor and how he carried himself, to note her own skill and focus. "No, they don't know. And I'm not really watching over them as..." the pause was longer this time, and looking askance at the woman, Ranma noticed the pain clear in her eyes, that didn't reach her face. "So much as sending off a dream, I suppose."

As blunt as he usually was, Ranma was a fast and capable learner. Tact was something he'd been getting lessons in from a number of sources, among them Kasumi Tendo and Hinako Ninomiya. Both had managed to get their meaning across well enough for the martial artist to realize following up on the woman's comment would cause her unnecessary pain, and that honestly, it wasn't his business despite the conversation.

Ranma remained silent a moment before nodding slowly. "They're lucky to have a friend like you watching out for them, and wishing them the best."

Setsuna masked her reaction well to those words, but the echo of what had happened was still too raw for her to keep her stoic mask in place without small breaks. A tenseness around her eyes, which had started to sting. Weight, as if the world were dragging at her lips, bending them into a sorrowful bow. A shivering of her brow, as her resolve strained and groaned.

When a napkin was passed to her without comment, she took it in the same silence it was offered, dabbing at her eyes delicately. The young man's voice seemed abrupt, but vastly more welcome than silence, when it broke through her melancholy. "Smoke and lights in here play hell with your eyes sometimes. Don't worry – I'll keep an eye on them till you're sorted out."

A laugh bubbled up from deep within her, from a place she had thought mirth had become alien to, managing to come out a strangled sound more resembling a cough. "You... thank you," she offered quietly, shuddering again as the incredulity of the situation hammered at her again.

"No problem," Ranma demurred, keeping his gaze on the couple or Nabiki while the woman worked through her lapse. He'd seen it – been there – too often to not recognize the signs, and what was happening with the pretty woman to his right. That didn't mean he understood what was going on with her, however. She acted like someone had died, or broken up with her, or something equally as awful, but that seemed to clash badly with watching a happy couple spin across the dance floor, their eyes only on one another.

Still, it wasn't his place to grill the woman on what was going on. It might just give him something distracting to think about later, rather than the mess that was his own life, when all this was over and the regular mad routine of his life began again.

AN: Simple and clean.