Holy carp, you guys, I'm really happy about the level of enthusiasm this has gotten so far. I was up until eleven last night editing, and because of that push I managed to get a second chapter ready for the block. Got some good progress upcoming, too! If this keeps up I *might* have another chapter ready mid-week. If that happens, that might be the last bonus chapter for a bit, but we'll see.

Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter Four

Anything Goes

[ ν ] - εγλ 0007, November 28

"So, what does your day-to-day look like right now?" Ranma asked around a mouthful of breakfast.

"Hey!" Elmyra chastised, swatting at Ranma's shoulder. "Don't talk with your mouth full like that!" Ranma dutifully swallowed his mouthful of food.

"Aside from unscheduled dodging of Shinra cronies, you mean?" Aerith quipped, before taking a bite of her own meal. When Ranma nodded, "I usually go check on the flowers around midday, I'll go buy groceries when we need them, and I sometimes go… somewhere important to me," she finished quietly.

"And I'll be heading to work soon," Elmyra added. "And I will expect you, Ranma," she said, pointing at him with her fork, "to do something other than sit here and mope."

Ranma briefly looked taken aback, but remembered his place as a guest and nodded. "I don't suppose there's a library around I could look at?" he asked. "I'm not exactly whatcha call book-smart, but maybe I could find something that'd help me figure out a way home."

Elmyra nodded, reaching into her apron. "Thought you might say that," she replied. She pulled out a small coin purse and handed it to Ranma. "That's 150 gil in there, plus my transit pass," she explained. "My client this week is just over by Wall Market, so I don't have to deal with the trains to get there. You can get over to the station by Sector 4, that should take you above the plate. Once you're up there…" Ranma quickly grabbed a scrap of paper and began jotting down Elmyra's directions as quickly as she could. "...and the library should be across from there. Get yourself some lunch up there, and come back this afternoon."

Ranma nodded, pocketing the coin purse and the hastily cribbed directions. "Aerith, if nothing else is going on, be back here this afternoon too," he said. "We'll pick up training from there."

"Yes, sensei," Aerith nodded, smiling.

Elmyra looked between the two of them for a moment, then shrugged. "Long as you keep her safe, mind," she said in a cautious tone. "I'm off, then. I should be back before evening. Take care, you two." With that, she fastened her apron, picked up a broom and bucket, and left.

Ranma stared after her for a moment. "What does she do, anyway?" he asked.

"Cleaning service," Aerith replied. "And don't say anything about Wall Market, either."

"...what's Wall Market?"

Aerith glared at him, briefly, then shook her head. "Forgot, you're still new here," she said softly. "Wall Market is partly known as a place where there's a lot of shops and restaurants," she explained, "and mostly known for being a place where a lot of… seedier places set up. Not the kind of place any young woman should hang out."

Ranma took this tidbit of information into consideration, and revised his estimate of Elmyra's capabilities upwards. "She's probably tougher than I thought, then. So… wanna make sure I got this…" he went on, glancing at his hastily-written notes. "Clockwise goes up in number, counter-clockwise goes down, when going along the sectors, right?"

"Yeah," Aerith answered. "It's pretty easy when you get used to it. I'll walk with you to the station, okay?"

-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-

"So… what's Japan like?" Aerith asked.

They'd been walking side by side for almost fifteen minutes. Ranma had dug his hands in his pockets out of habit, the navy jacket keeping him warm. Aerith was back in her long dress and jacket, and occasionally twirled her staff slowly, trying to mimic one of the moves Ranma had done that morning as they strolled along.

Ranma thought about that hard. "It's a lot of different kinds of things," he admitted, "it's pretty hard to summarize in a few words. Tokyo is a giant, sprawling metropolis, it's like ten million people in about four hundred square kilometers. But it's… clean," he explained. "Way cleaner than here. There are parks and trees, the trains run underground, the fish markets are the freshest catches in the world…"

"Trains run underground?" Aerith asked puzzled? "Don't the train cars fill up with smoke?"

Ranma shook his head. "The trains all run on electric power, we don't use coal for those anymore. There's Fujiyama, the mountain that you can see from just about anywhere in the whole of Japan… there's kilometers and kilometers of farmland, some going right up the side of the mountains…"

The back and forth went on between them for almost the entirety of the hour-long walk. Two blocks away from the station, a three-wheeled truck rolled by and nearly took Ranma's nose off as it went by. "Hey, ya loon!" Ranma shouted, jumping backwards. "Watch where ya going!"

Aerith looked after the truck that had almost hit them, and then turned sharply to Ranma after hearing the shouting. "Uh… Ranma?" she indicated the pothole they were both currently standing in after the near-miss. Aerith's boots hadn't been bothered by it, but Ranma's karate flats, and by extension, Ranma, were currently ankle deep in water.

And was now female.

"Oh for Kami's sake," she muttered, backpedaling out of the pothole. She lifted her feet, shaking them dry as best she could, and walked around the edge of the puddle. "Well, guess I'll be going to the library like this."

Aerith couldn't help but giggle a bit. "You certainly take it in stride," she observed.

Ranma nodded. "Not much choice, most days," she explained in a put-upon tone. "Also, it's been going on for more than two years now. If there was ever any novelty to it, it's long gone by now."

"You'll be okay?" Aerith asked, genuine concern in her voice.

"I'll be fine," Ranma confirmed. "Go take care of your flowers, I'll see you this afternoon."

Aerith smiled, turned and skipped a couple steps before resuming a normal walk back down the road they'd both came from. Ranma stepped across the street, careful of any other cars coming out of nowhere. She stepped up the four or five stairs to the elevated sidewalk, moved casually towards the heavy wooden doors that led to the interior of the station, and pushed the door open.

And stopped cold.

Something was wrong.

The door bounced back against her outstretched hand, as Ranma considered her surroundings. She lowered her hand, stepped out of the path of the entrance, and leaned casually against the outer wall. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, and reached out with her senses. The energy here was chaotic, with the comings and goings of so many people. She could perceive the wake of her own energy leading back down the road she and Aerith had just walked. Aerith's energy itself felt strong, a greenish hue tinged with white, but was already well down the road and past the row of nearby buildings. Everyone else felt… dull, uninteresting. There were a few stronger sources nearby, but nothing felt out of the ordinary.

Ranma exhaled. She was being paranoid. Two years of dealing with every single problem her old man's scheming and thievery had dropped on her head had maybe left her a bit suspicious when things started going smooth. She took another breath and turned towards the station entrance.

There.

Ranma stopped once more, worried that if she moved before she had a fix on it this time she'd lose it for good. She held her breath, keeping her eyes closed, and let her body relax. There was a moment where she felt like she could identify every person within a kilometer by their energy alone. And in that moment, she felt something she could only identify as red. She focused hard on that, and locked onto the aura in her mind.

Gotcha, she thought, opening her eyes.

She started moving.

-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-

It took her ten minutes of weaving in and out of the crowded streets to be certain of the source of the energy. An unkempt man, wearing a suit with no care for how he looked, and a shock of short, spiky red hair atop his head. Once she found the man, it had taken her all of five seconds to realize what about him had set off her senses.

He was following Aerith.

And now, she was following him.

She briefly considered simply sneaking up behind him and taking him out without anyone noticing, least of all Aerith. However, in that moment of consideration, she realized that the smarter option would be to find out if anyone else was stalking Aerith as well. The man was tailing Aerith at a significant enough distance that she could tell Aerith would be hard pressed to spot him, even if she was aware of him. Even so, Ranma was having trouble understanding how he was keeping track of Aerith from that far away.

He must have support, she thought. Someone else… ah.

The red-head cocked his head to one side, a motion he'd been repeating every so often. Someone was feeding him info. A spotter or another tail he was tagging out with if one or the other got too close. She pulled her cap out of the jacket pocket, tugging it low over her hair and obscuring her eyes, then zipped up the jacket. She was already nearly invisible in the crowd, but decided to take one more step to make sure she could see and not be seen.

Ducking briefly into an alley, she centered herself, releasing her emotions, as her arms raised to shoulder height, wrists limp. "Umi-Sen Ken…" she whispered. And for all intents and purposes, vanished completely.

She stepped out of the alley, barely visible except on a subconscious level to everyone around her. The people around her would avoid running into her, but wouldn't be aware she existed beyond that. She weaved her way through the crowd, passing straight by the redhead, finding another vantage point about halfway between him and Aerith, and looking around. It didn't take her long to spot the second man. Tall, built like a boxer, with dark skin and a bald head, wearing the same suit and shirt the redhead was, but wore it like a professional. Either he was actually better at staying out of sight than he looked, or Aerith had no idea she was being followed at all.

Baldy rounded a corner, and Ranma followed. As the new street came into view, she recognized it from their earlier trek together, as being one of the last roads before the abandoned church Aerith grew her flowers in. She decided it was her time to make a move.

Baldy reached his wrist up and muttered something into it. Waiting just until he finished speaking, she stepped right up behind him and snaked one arm out, both a gold watch and a small two-way radio slipping into her palm. Ranma slid to one side, stepped into the next alley, and dropped the watch right at the mouth of the alley. She then picked up two small rocks, aware that this would be pushing the limit of the Umi-Sen Ken, and turned to hurl one up into the air.

The rock traveled in a perfect arc, soaring over the crowd, and striking Baldy in the shoulder just hard enough that he'd notice. The second one, thrown just a moment later, hit him in the back of the head. He reached up to brush it away, turned to see who was throwing dirt at him, and paused, suddenly noticing his arm feeling a bit lighter. His eyes scanned across the crowd, and noticing the glint of metal at the edge of the alleyway, strode towards it to retrieve his watch.

Ranma leaned back against the opposing wall as he approached, letting the Umi-Sen Ken reassert itself for the moment. She took a deep breath as Baldy knelt down to pick up his watch. At that moment, Ranma tapped the man companionably on the shoulder. The man turned to look up, probably assuming it was his companion. She dropped the Umi-Sen Ken, and the bald man had a fraction of a moment to react. Which was not nearly enough time, as Ranma's fist was already traveling towards the man's face by the time he noticed her.

She did her best to not take joy in the pain of others, but her expressions of restraint tended to end when someone she knew was in trouble. As a result, the look of confusion on his face, followed by said face being struck into unconsciousness, was a moment that Ranma would cherish for some time afterwards. His sunglasses slid off his head with the impact and bounced on the loose gravel.

Ranma didn't bother resuming the Umi-Sen Ken, her emotions were now too riled up for it to have any real effect. Instead she took the two-way radio receiver, slipped it inside her hat band, and started moving again, keeping her distance.

"Rude, where are ya, I've lost sight of her," an uncultured voice drawled into one ear a moment later. Silence, as she moved at the same pace, shoulders hunched and hands in her pockets, keeping herself looking like one of the masses. "Rude, turn your mic on, yo," the voice remarked in a teasing tone. More silence. Ranma supposed the man's name could be Rude, but it sounded odd to her. "Shit! Tseng, it's Reno, Rude's down. Dropping a beacon, I'm going after the girl."

Rude, Reno, and Tseng, she mentally catalogued, surreptitiously tugging at her hat, causing the radio speaker to bounce free. She let it fall on the street, and kept walking. A moment later, she saw the redhead sprint past, all pretense of stealth having been dropped. The man flicked his left arm, and a small baton slid out of his jacket sleeve into his hand as he ran.

Ranma's eyes widened briefly, but she hesitated for just a moment, in case the third one was watching. She turned at the next intersection, took three steps out of the main road, and then began running herself, turning again at the first opportunity to get back on the path.

Less than a minute later, she caught sight of the redhead again. He'd caught himself up to Aerith, and had her against the wall of a building, leaning over her with one arm casually blocking her way, talking to her. She couldn't hear him, but judging by the expression on Aerith's face, she could take a guess as to what was being said.

Ranma pulled off the hat and coat, tossing them down nearby, picked up one more rock, palming it away, and strode towards the two. As she approached, she heard the redhead's drawl "Look, lady, my partner's lyin' on the ground back 'dere and you hafta know we were followin' ya. Who else in their right minds would take on a Turk?"

"Well, that explains why you'd waste your time bothering her," Ranma spoke up, causing the redhead to spin around at the sudden interruption, "seeing how your names rhyme with 'jerk'."

Despite herself and the situation, Aerith outright laughed at that, which set off the redhead. "Fine, girly," he said. "You wanna butt in, you'll get what ya ask for." He spun, holding that same short rod in his left hand. Pressing a button, the rod extended to about the length of his arm, with a weighted metal tip and the unmistakable hum of excess voltage. "You the one who took out Rude, yo?"

Ranma attached the name solidly to the face in her memory. Leaves Tseng, who this guy does not look like, and… "Yeah, Reno," she taunted, holding one palm out casually, examining her nails. "Wasn't much of a fight either. Whole thing took about three seconds."

Reno gritted his teeth, his grip on the handle of his shock baton visibly stiffer. "So, ya know who we are," he tossed back. "Think that gives you the advantage?"

"Nah," she replied casually. "I just know I'm better than you."

"If you're so good, girly," Reno taunted, "then why don't you already work for us?"

Ranma took a deep breath, and spotted exactly what she'd been expecting with her senses. She turned and heaved the rock as hard as she could, striking the pistol that another suited man had just drawn, knocking it out of his hand and sending it flying into the junk pile in the distance. She turned to face Reno again. "Cuz," she repeated, "I'm better than you."

Reno had clearly reached his limit. "Tseng!" he shouted, giving a jerk of his head. Then he charged, brandishing his shock baton. Ranma assumed a ready stance, but realized that neither of these two were taking her seriously. Reno was telegraphing his first attack so hard that it might has well have been delivered by post, and she could tell by his approach and his stance that Tseng simply did not have anything like the melee training Ranma was privy to. She was privately quite happy she'd gotten that gun out of the equation.

Reno swung a fierce backhanded strike, intending to overpower Ranma in the opening salvo. It was a good strategy, Ranma thought as she analyzed his movements, but it wouldn't work here. She took two rapid steps forward just as the swing was fully committed, the baton itself swinging harmlessly behind her, and leaving Reno's arm exposed. She braced against his wrist with one hand, and pushed hard with the other inward at Reno's elbow, using the momentum of his attack to add to her own. There was a popping sound, a scream of pain, and the shock baton spun away into the dirt as Reno's left arm fell uselessly to his side.

In a flash, Ranma raised one leg, and stomped down hard on Reno's knee, nearly dislocating that joint as well. The incapacitated redhead crumpled to the ground, as Ranma rounded to face Tseng. He froze, suddenly very uncertain of any chance of victory. He glanced between the fallen Reno, clutching at his dislocated elbow, and the shock rod laying far closer to the girl than to him. Coupled with the effortless takedown of Reno, and the lack of support nearby, Tseng decided on the better part of valor. He raised his hands in surrender, and stood aside.

Ranma looked down at Reno, still cringing in pain. "Looks like your friend there is the brains of the operation," she taunted, stepping over to the baton. She slipped one foot underneath it and flipped it up to her outstretched hand, before turning back to Tseng. "Try to keep up with me here, buddy," Ranma began. "I'm a little new in town, I see a bunch of guys in uniform, they're stalking a girl. I'm sure you got your reasons. I'm sure they might even be good ones.

"For the life of me, though," Ranma went on, "I can't understand why you want to do… whatever it is you want to do with her, when she clearly doesn't want anything to do with you. So… enlighten me, Tseng." She paused briefly, then gestured with the still-charged baton. "I can call you Tseng, right?"

Tseng shrugged. "Orders," he replied simply.

"'Orders,'" she repeated coldly. Her eyes flickered dangerously, and she took a step closer to Tseng, letting the tip of the shock rod dance in front of his face. "Not gonna be worth my effort to suggest you switch sides, would it?"

Tseng gave a curt shake of his head. "Don't even know what side that is yet," he answered. "How could I know the side is worth switching to?"

Ranma paused for a moment, considering that. "Fair enough." She turned her back on him, shouldering the shock rod. The tip of the baton continued weaving back and forth just over an inch from Tseng's face. "Since you're busy following orders, I've got one for you." There was a click, and Tseng was certain he was about to get a face full of cattle prod. Instead, the baton collapsed back into the handle, and the girl dropped it into her pocket. "I'm sure you're already aware, but your boys are gonna need some medical attention," she said. "Make sure they get it, will ya?"

Tseng blinked, swallowed, and nodded. Ranma walked back over to her coat and picked it up. "I'm sure that nothing I could say or do will make you and your boys leave the girl alone," she called out behind her. "But, next time you do, remember two things for me. First, remember this moment, with all of your friends on the ground, but very much alive and in one piece each. And second, remember this: Ranma Saotome doesn't lose." She shrugged the jacket back on, and walked away, Aerith trailing behind her.

A/N: Umi-Sen Ken (Thousand Seas Style), one of two 'forbidden' martial arts developed by Genma Saotome in his youth. These will be elaborated upon later, but short version is that the stance Ranma entered here allowed her to erase her chi presence (which is not quite the same thing as being invisible, but it can be pretty close). Coupled with the nondescript hat and jacket, and she's basically a hole in the crowd.

Reno's frequent 'yo' is the best transliteration I have of an apparent verbal tic of his that didn't quite make it into the original game, but seems to have appeared in a lot of side stories and expanded universe material. In my head I kind of hear him as a Brooklyn street tough in the 20s; capable, threatening, but not the most expansive vocabulary (which is not the same thing as 'stupid').

I'd originally considered naming this chapter after the Paul Simon song "You Can Call Me Al", but decided against it here.

The Turks are most emphatically professionals. If they know what they're up against, if they're prepared, they can be formidable. The fact that they can remain a significant challenge for the party in late-game FF7 speaks volumes to me, when you're basically at the point of theoretically one-shotting gods and the like. But, like most characters in the series, they're still human, and that can be taken advantage of if they think some rando girl in the street is trying to be a hero. Reno in particular is a good foil for Ranma; cocky, self-assured, and laid back right up until the point where you get on his nerves.

Aerith probably could have fought off Reno on her own, but Reno wasn't on his own. Trust me, she will have her moment to shine.

Hope you like it! Comments welcome!