Disclaimer: The following is a fan-written fiction, the views and opinions in this story are not intended to be viewed as those of the author. Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura, Inuyasha, and Five Pound Gospel are the creations of Rumiko Takahashi, property of their respective rights holders and publishers. Please support the official releases.

CW: This story will contain violence, strong language, sexual humor and situations, drug use, Moroboshi Ataru, and Happosai. You've been warned.

|Renovation|

"So, what's up?"

It was after school, and Ryūnosuke stood in the firm dry-packed earth yard of the Sherman family compound, wearing well-worn slippers, athletic shorts, and a well-worn orange tee advertising a brand of milk tea not seen since the wall went up.

"Well, I said we were going to work on improving your skills, and ain't no time better than the present," Nick replied. He stood to her left, dressed in some sweatpants but rockin' a white dress shirt with a few buttons undone, looking like a random sensei from a Yakuza themed game. "So, you're going to show me what you know."

"A little exhibition, huh?" Ryūnosuke didn't look at him, but Nick could tell her gaze had sharpened at the prospect.

"That's right. And once I see where you're at exactly, we can decide where you're going to go," Nick said it as though he was going to whip out the Dragon Balls and wish for her to be a Saiyan as soon as they were done.

"Really?" As such, she did not sound convinced in the slightest.

"Now, I understand you're all skeptic about it, because you already know how to kick, punch," Nick continued, "But it's all in the mind. Anyone can throw a few punches, take somebody down to the ground, and start stompin', but them's the basics–the tools of the trade."

Unpleasant memories of her sperm donor trying to teach her how to fight against the ocean flitted behind her eyes. Yet another stratagem to suppress her femininity over the years and wasted effort as far as making her a better fighter at all was concerned.

"Like any trade, there're details and intricacies that separate the competent and the expert. It's time to for you to move on from what you know, to what you can learn."

The man standing in front of her was the father she had always wanted, and he was determined to prevent her from being hurt again. A smile crested her face as she turned and looked at Nick. "Sure, let's do it."

Before she got ready to spar, Nick only smirked a slight bit and held his hand up. "Now hold on a quick minute; yer not scrapping with me."

He turned his head and called over to the house. "Hey Nicky! Get on out here, I need to borrow you for a second!"

Ryūnosuke did a double take as Nicole emerged from inside the house and trotted over. She was dressed in a pair of purple yoga pants and a white t-shirt thrown over a matching sports top. It was about this time of day she would be practicing her yoga, Ryūnosuke realized. "Yeah, Dad?"

Nick gestured from the redhead to Ryūnosuke. "Do me a favor and spar with Ryūnosuke. Show her what you can do."

With a shrug of her shoulders, Nicole began to roll them and limber up as she turned to face her new sister. "Sure, sounds better than yoga right now."

Ryūnosuke looked at Nicole, looking sharp and fashionable even in her workout clothes, before turning to Nick. "This a good idea?"

He waved her concerns off nonchalantly, as Nicole took a loose horse stance from karate-something recognizable through pop culture osmosis to his charge if nothing else. "Go on and swing on her a bit. You ain't gonna land a hit, but it will tell me what I need to know and what you could learn."

Ryūnosuke refocused her attention on Nicole. "I'm pretty sure I can land a hit."

Nicole smiled. "I bet five hundred yen you won't."

Letting out a small laugh, Ryūnosuke got ready. "Make it a thousand."

There wasn't even a microsecond of hesitation as Ryūnosuke rushed to close the distance between them. or those unaware of this martial arts realm, her speed was truly remarkable.

Her haymaker, however, may as well have been a bus creeping to the bus stop as Nicole swept her left hand up and parried it away; Ryūnosuke dashed back–the redhead mirroring her movement to open the distance between them.

Nick leaned in, impressed, as he watched the opening play out. "Excellent step-in!"

Nicole taunted. "What was with that swing, though? I was waiting for like a week!"

Ryūnosuke assessed the fashionista once more and reconsidered her competition. "… All right, the next one's coming same day!"

She went in again, opening with much tighter and quicker jabs. Nicole reacted with her–hands raised, and chin tucked, her whole body moving in quick but controlled bursts to dip and weave beneath the first two rights, then under the left hook Ryūnosuke lashed out to finish the combo.

When Nicole came up the third time, it was into the path of a spinning back kick Ryūnosuke salvaged her whiffed hook to build momentum for. The redhead leaned away from the kick, her green eyes wide as the breeze coming off Ryūnosuke's attack causing her hair to be blown up and back.

"Oh, I actually felt that one!"

Nick hummed in approval as Ryūnosuke launched into a salvo of quick snap kicks targeting Nicole's head that the other girl ducked under rather than attempt to block. "And you're coming with this off the street? I'm liking it so far."

After Nicole ducked under two more head kicks, Ryūnosuke swung her foot up like she was punting a football, then brought her heel down like the head of an ax that Nicole sidestepped from. The short-haired girl stayed with her, lashing out with a crescent kick before going in immediately with a hard and fast cross Nicole knocked away. Her jabs were quicker but weaker, and Nicole demonstrated all the confidence in the world by parrying them with the palms and backs of her hands.

"However!" Nicole announced as she ducked back from a diagonal swung kick and broke her rhythm. "You're too predictable! I can count the seconds between your hits and it's making me sleepy!"

Despite the harshness of Nicole's rebuke, Ryūnosuke only felt a fire light under her. "Don't blink!"

She switched to an alternating set of spin kicks, but Nicole weaved in a u-shape beneath the high right kick, stepped back from and batted down the mid-height left kick, then went down low underneath the returning right high kick to catch her planted left foot and yank it out from under her.

Ryūnosuke was quick enough to catch herself as her world went spinning, and she abruptly launched herself into a midair kick that Nicole only narrowly slipped clear of.

"Outstanding!" Nick cheered as Ryūnosuke stuck the landing.

Nicole hopped from one foot to another, her attention tightening. "All right, that was slick."

"Aren't you glad I warned you?" Ryūnosuke bantered back as the two circled each other.

Nick called over, pumping his fist. "Get in there! I know you got more to give!"

Ryūnosuke's life was so different, now.

Before, sparring was a fight for anything she wanted–be it food, clothes, or permission. Every fight was one filled with a caustic mix of frustration and desperation topped with anger; her emotions high and her stress at the limit to eke out every bit of strength they could provide.

Fighting was something done with burning blood and searing fury, with something on the line; that was how men fought, and men won.

As she struck out at Nicole again, advancing on her with a trio of roundhouse kicks before going in with close with her fisticuffs–Ryūnosuke was realizing why anyone would throw hands for no reason at all.

This is fun! She thought with a growing smile as Nicole parried her hooks. Instead of continuing the combo, Ryūnosuke dropped and tried to sweep her feet, but the agile redhead jumped and somersaulted over her.

Ryūnosuke came up fast, nearly uppercutting Nicole as she landed, and her evasive opponent stumbled backward, nudged off her footing before she smartly recovered. And I'm getting closer!

Nick scratched his chin as he watched Ryūnosuke press on, a smile on his own face. There was no mistaking that she was putting in the effort, but that form was not closing the distance between her and Nicole.

This was down to the gap in both fighting and life experience, the kind of mistakes people of a certain level made were always the same. The self-taught street fighter, the genius brawler, the prodigal murderer–they all came from the same place and fought with the same hallmarks:

Instinctive, direct, fast, and unsubtle.

To the untrained eye, such a style induced fright, seeming for all the world prescient in how it moved. For the more discerning observer, however, the brawler was easy to expose.

She's too reactive, focused so much on her own blows in the moment that she's not planning for the next one–whether it's hers or Nicole's.

At the very least, he could tell she was reactive enough to quickly move from one missed blow to the next–but it was insufficient to overcome Nicole. With time, a lot of time, Ryūnosuke could get closer, but that was a luxury she only had now because her opponent wasn't swinging back.

Still, with a little reinforcement, structure, direction, and enlightenment to the nuances of the craft… she could be devastating.

His smile turned into a smirk.

She'll even give Katie a hard time.

A crisp snap filled the air, then another, as the form of Ryūnosuke's punches solidified. Nicole's footwork was quick to compensate, but the margin was narrowing, and both knew it.

"Oh, you almost got me!" Nicole teased as she opened the gap again.

Just a little more! Ryūnosuke thought as she made the full use of her aggressive pursuit and kept striking at her. "Get my thousand ready!"

Nick leaned forward again, his focus sharpening and a chill running down his spine as Nicole swayed from a crescent kick. "You ain't getting it!"

Ryūnosuke stomped her foot down hard then reversed direction with snap kicks from her other foot.

More!

The bursts of air cracking near her head tossed Nicole's mane of red about, as she kept clear of the kicks. But with her attacks defeated again, Ryūnosuke only found the determination to go on. In the heat of the moment, in the zone, she could see it, she could win! Her heart was a burning fire, erupting outward to fuel her swings to tighten just a bit more, adding a cutting sound as they rent through the air at startling speed. Not through anger, not through stress, not through the promise of a thousand yen.

Just from the sheer thrill that she knew she could do it!

C'mon! She urged herself as that fire in her heart burned to the edges of her body, driving her for one final kick that ripped through the air like a rifle shot.

MORE!

Nicole ducked down, as the slipper on Ryūnosuke's extended right foot exploded from the force of the kick–followed by a smacking sound against stone the air displaced by the kick slammed into the wall surrounding the compound.

Ryūnosuke gawked at the sight of the shockwave spreading from the wall, before the burning in her blood spread to her muscles. With a weak whimper she dropped onto her backside in an overexerted heap.

"Oof!" She stared at her bare and stinging foot, gasping for breath. "What… what the heck…?"

Nicole looked back at where the air struck the wall. "Wow… we haven't even gotten to that yet…"

Still panting, Ryūnosuke turned from Nicole to her father. "How… how was that?"

"Well, for people who view success in terms of landing hits, that was an abject failure. But those people are stupid and suck at fighting, what you showed me was pretty dang good."

Ryūnosuke lit up. "Really?"

Nick folded his arms and hummed affirmative with his exaggerated nod as he walked over.

"What we have here in your case is a fantastic talent, and even more potential. Any ol' mother-hubbard can swing until they hit something, and it falls over, but that's it. Most of them meet someone like Nicky here, get styled upon, and only succeed in striking up an intimate conversation with the dirt."

He extended his hand, and when Ryūnosuke took it, he pulled her up onto her feet. "You've got what it takes to be better than that by leagues. It'll require some polish on your basics and have a few of those subtle nuances drilled into your noggin, but it won't take long for you to be swinging with the best of 'em."

"It won't take that long to teach your style?" Ryūnosuke asked as she gestured over to Nicole. "Like her?"

"Ah, you noticed the similarity. Well, to put it in arithmetic terms, you're competent in basic maths, but my style's evolved over the years to the point it's more like Calculus." He explained. "Nick Jr. and all your other brothers and sisters have been learning it since they can walk, so there ain't much point in wasting time when you don't have the grounding to understand it."

Ryūnosuke looked at Nicole in surprise. "Seriously?"

"Yeah," Nicole said with a shrug. "I'm not even really all about that life, but it helps to have something to get me out of a situation that words can't."

Nick continued. "You don't need much to improve what you have, as I said: Polish, subtlety, and nuance. In fact, if we get started on building some of that up today, you'll have an edge on those unseemly fellas who had one over on you."

Ryūnosuke's mind flashed a picture of Kamaitachi for a moment, the disgusted sneer on his face making her rage simmer. The thought of revenge against the creep who spat on her femininity without knowing the hell she went through to protect it made her miss the tone of how he said it. "All right then, sounds good."

She would definitely maybe not regret this… probably.

Nicole held her hand out, and Ryūnosuke looked at it. "Huh?"

"Where my thousand?" Nicole asked.

Ryūnosuke looked at Nicole's extended hand, then reached out and slapped the back of it. "Where's my thousand?"

Nicole stared at her hand, then at Ryūnosuke, her mouth agape. "… Ah!"

Nick looked at her. "Pay her up, she landed a hit."

The redhead turned to him. "… But!"

"Nobody said the fight was over."

Ryūnosuke nodded and gestured to Nicole. "There you go."

Frozen for a moment more, Nicole finally groaned and went through the pocket of her yoga pants to pull out a fistful of yen notes and shove them in Ryūnosuke's hand. "Not even a month and you're already one of us, dang!"

Ryūnosuke and Nick laughed as Nicole folded her arms and pouted in mock indignation.

With the day off from class, Nabiki normally would be home right now, either scrolling the web or watching television with Kasumi. However, due to the nature of the job she took up assisting Kodachi like she was an advisor out of the Three Kingdoms, she was stirred from her slothful routine.

She didn't mind it, a quick check of her private account showed enough reason to shake off her innate desire to laze about and tend to her own whims. However, as she stepped out of the car provided by Kodachi, she found the school was swamped with workers who seemed more akin to a swarm of ants than people from sheer volume. It was genuinely impressive, the speed at which Mendou moved despite his personal shortcomings.

"It is a sight that entreats a sense of ambivalence, does it not?" Kodachi summed up the less grand thoughts of Nabiki with perfect lady-like eloquence. "That someone so incapable could still produce such results."

"Let's be real, this is his bare minimum and even he knows that."

Heavens above help the people trapped in the SAD with him should he ever manage to start overcoming those shortcomings.

Kodachi smirked. "And that is why he's the money, and you are the hand that guides it."

Nabiki returned the smirk but demurred away after a second. "Perish the thought that the retainer fee you pay me even warrants a worry on the bottom line."

"It could, had you the desire for it," Kodachi remarked, very casual like, a dangerous kind of tone taking her over.

Katie's declaration still burned at the back of her neck, but it wasn't hot enough to make her sweat when added to the heat in front of her. "Tempting, but there are better places to spend that money, even if I would enjoy having it attached to my name."

Nabiki's voice felt like the cool breeze chilling the morning dew as it made her intended audience shiver. "Really now?"

"A better faculty, a school that doesn't look like crap, and new uniforms to increase morale and fashionability is a good start. It won't mean a thing if the whole world inside these walls doesn't know we're moving."

Kodachi already figured it out when Nabiki started in on cleaning the faculty out. "Nothing we do matters if everyone still thinks of this school's students as trash."

"It won't be won with good grades or killing it in sports even if we could get district level games going again." Nabiki continued since Kodachi showed she didn't need to be brought up to speed again. "We'll have to do it the hard way."

"I already intended to bring war to my enemies' domain," Kodachi noted, as she realized that the girl was seriously bringing it up.

"That's not what I'm talking about–we're not ready to be taking swings at your peers when my peers are still circling the school thinking it's sweet around here."

Kodachi was given pause as she remembered. The very day after her brother was removed from the school, it was set upon by one of the groups of delinquents he'd ousted.

And just as quickly they saw the folly of their assault.

"Do you not have faith in your sister and Izurando-san as aces of this school?"

Nabiki fired back. "Are you satisfied with having just two aces?"

She wasn't, but that circled Kodachi back to the subject of her first question. "Is there even anyone among the students here besides them with the capacity to be an ace?"

"We're in this mess entirely because no one bothered to look and see. Frankly, we all got really cozy with the idea of leaning on an ace as the top student at the school. Your brother was the guy before, my sister and Katie are the new aces now, and if the boys weren't the walking dead, they'd be buying the idea of Mendō freaking Shūtaro being their ace. Lord knows the girls are already tempted to."

Folding her arms, Kodachi shook her head. "That isn't an issue money can solve. That is a weakness of the spirit, not the wallet."

"That's why we need someone who can raise that spirit. Not just the girls… but the broken-down boys with no one to look up to. The students don't need aces to hide behind, they need leaders they'll follow through the hallways or the battlefield." Nabiki shook her head. "I hate to say it but… someone like Sōban of all people."

Kodachi knew enough about Sōban from the rapport Akane and Katie had with him and the young men of Butsumetsu High School. He was an example to strive for, even if he wasn't aesthetically or intellectually appealing in the slightest–the ability to turn pure strength into charisma was a rare one indeed.

"It would need to be someone…" Kodachi began, pondering the requirements she desired. "Who could not only inspire every student, if not developed to be, but still be able to stand in the same spotlight as your sister and Izurando-san as a physical leader."

Nabiki nodded. "It can't be anybody like your one-pump-chump of a brother, and definitely not the yen-paper tiger prancing around our school now."

"A young man who the students can relate to because he isn't looking down on them from some lofty precipice."

"Who can thrash any of the losers who haven't been chased off by the Sicko Gang."

"And good looking, too."

"That's just something you want."

Shrugging her shoulders, Kodachi owned that accusation. "Well, if we're asking for a main character, then let him be an attractive one and not a same face drawn to save time."

Nabiki held back that laugh.

Kodachi smiled a little at her reaction. "Most importantly, I think, this person needs to be as ambitious as you and I. Someone who will want more than they have, and the determination to reach for it even if it is far above their head."

There was no disagreeing with that, as Nabiki nodded. "Because it doesn't end here at this school, now, does it?"

"Not in the least," Kodachi replied.

A sound neither expected filled the air. The steady beat of hooves and grind of wooden wheels against pavement heralded the passing of a black oxen pulling a cart with a purple and gold decorated palanquin atop it. As it crept past at a sedate pace, Kodachi and Nabiki both followed it slowly, the former scowling while the latter lifted her eyebrow.

Flanking the oxen and its cart were two middle-aged men dressed in tuxedos, walking with their noses up to the sky despite their proximity to the livestock they escorted.

"Is that a…?" Nabiki asked as she raised a finger to point after it.

Kodachi sniffed dismissively and regretted it–she got a nose full of bull. "Yes, a Mendō oxcart. It's not the style of the men of the family to travel by such means, and since my hair isn't standing on end as it would in Ryōko's proximity, I presume it's the Lady Mendō."

Noting the direction it was headed, Nabiki tilted her head as she grew curious. "She's headed for Tomobiki."

"Possibly to have a strong word with the faculty over her son now being here."

Nabiki did some quick math. "Wait, at the rate it's going, she might not even get there until tomorrow morning."

"And she probably left the Mendō estate several days ago when word got back that he was first expelled."

Turning to stare at Kodachi, Nabiki had to ask. "Why not use one of the like a hundred air fortresses that they have?"

As if she'd been dying for the prompt, Kodachi shot back. "Like a peasant?!"

Nabiki had to repress the laughter that almost roared out of her with all her might, her body shaking heavily as she closed her eyes and turned away from Kodachi. With her smug employer looking on with satisfaction at getting such a reaction from her, Nabiki regained her composure and turned back.

"You know, this is the point where someone might feel something in the realm of pity for Mendō Shūtaro. But having met him? No."

"Wait until you meet Ryōko."

"That's inevitable, isn't it? I just hope he's out of here before then, so future me doesn't actually come to feel sympathy."

The girls looked on at the slowly retreating carriage, and one of the servants escorting it actually going out of his way to sweep up the mess left behind by the contentedly strolling oxen.

"These are the people who make living in this place such a headache," Nabiki said aloud.

Kodachi dropped her head in mock contrition. "My sincerest apologies."

Nabiki glanced at her. "Don't apologize for anything. I think you're the first person from the Taian side of things to consider giving a damn about everyone else."

And both agreed that was a little sad.

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