Another month, another chapter? It's almost like not having to deal with work is conducive to creative endeavors. I'm still working towards a new job, and hopefully that will be resolved soon, but until then y'all get to reap the rewards. Namely, me writing about a thousand words a day on days when I can get my writing in. Winter is coming (not you, Jon), especially up here in Minnesota… we got our first snow of this half of the year on Friday. I'm hoping I can keep up this pace… or any pace… as the holidays approach. We'll just have to see what happens.

I'm really happy y'all are still enjoying this, by the way.
RanMANIAC: Glad you're enjoying it! Welcome to the Midgar Wrecking Crew, and hope you enjoy your stay. I'm not going to directly field any questions about future shipping here in the comments, but I am not opposed to shipping in general. Hope you keep reading regardless.
woodxvii: Ranma's engagement to Akane at this point has progressed past the grudging acceptance of 'for the honor of our families' and into the 'yeah, okay, they're actually pretty decent when they're not being a complete idiot about X' stage of their relationship. It's a pretty important stage for a pair of tsunderes to reach. XD
Mr. Haziq: Part of this saga is Ranma learning to communicate, something which historically he has a lot of problems with. Having three different students with wildly different fighting styles and different learning languages… it means the pressure is on for Ranma. And we know how he performs when the pressure is on.
TheodoreMonster and Sly Dragneel: Read on. :D

There's a lot more to come, and I'm looking forward to showing it to you. And that brings me to a point I wish I didn't have to make. There seems to be some indication that is not long for this digital world of ours. The FFNet Twitter feed has been silent for just over a year, and I recall hearing about a chunk of the older forums just vanishing recently, though as I don't spend a lot of time on the forums I don't know about the veracity of that claim. If FFNet is alive and well, if I'm being alarmist and reading too far between the lines, then no harm done. But I'm not so sure it is. And if it's in danger of going down, that means a lot more than just my story. Tens of thousands of fics, hundreds of millions of words could be at stake. If you know authors, make sure they've got their stories backed up. If you don't, maybe see if there's a project to archive your particular fandom(s)' stories. Maybe start such a project yourself. For myself, I'll be posting Indiscriminate Spellcasting both at FFNet and AO3 until the triumphant, or bitter, ends, and I have my own active archival for the fic. If things go sideways, I can still be found on AO3, and occasionally on Twitch. If worse comes to worst, I will resurrect my old Tumblr profile and use it exclusively for posting this fic, but hopefully it does not come to that level of need.

Finally, this chapter is going up on 10/16/2022, which is just two days before the third anniversary of this story's public existence. Happy birthday, IndiSpell! Here's to the next year!

I guess that's my soapboxing done for the month. On with the show!

Chapter Thirty Seven

In the Spirit of Knowledge

[ ν ] - εγλ 0007, December 18

Ranma came to lying down, the softness of a pillow or something similar propping his head up. He was still above deck, as evidenced by the sun in his eyes, making it difficult to see anything distinctly. There was a greenish glow surrounding his body from what he could only assume was Cure magic being cast upon him. "...Damn, Tifa," he mumbled as he tried to focus his eyes on anything but the slowly setting sun, "I was wrong, you hit like a truck."

He struggled to pull his legs under him, to try to stand up, but he felt a hand press down firmly against his shoulder. "Give it a minute, Ranma," Aerith's voice said from somewhere above him. "You were out cold for a few minutes. I have to make sure you don't have a concussion or something like that."

Ranma would have nodded, but the firm pressure on his shoulder reminded him that his injury was being treated, and he managed to keep himself still. A materia was held closer to him, just within the top edge of his field of vision. The tingles from the magic seemed to be focused in his head, though he couldn't get a look at himself to see if anything else had happened.

After a few moments longer, the tingles faded, and Aerith's voice sounded again from above. "Okay, you should be fine now," she said carefully. "Maybe take it easy for the rest of the day?"

Ranma slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position, holding one hand up against the sunlight. As the piercing light faded into shadow for a moment, he saw Tifa and Yuffie sitting more or less opposite each other in front of him, Tifa sporting a look of genuine concern. "Yeah, no promises on that one," he admitted quietly.

Tifa scooted forward immediately, dropping to her knees on the deck in front of Ranma. "I'm so sorry, I didn't…" she apologized. She appeared to reach for his hand for a moment, but pulled away at the last second. "I didn't realize it was going to… I should have pulled that punch, I have no excuse."

Yuffie let out a low snickering sound, but Ranma ignored it. "It's fine, I wasn't prepared for it either." He reached one hand up, touching gingerly at his jaw where the punch had connected. There was a little soreness, but nothing major. "Guess the Cure materia did what it was supposed to… wait, where is Aerith, anyway? I thought I heard her voice a minute ago."

"Uh…" Aerith's voice sounded again, this time from almost directly behind Ranma. He turned his head to see her knelt down on the deck. She blushed slightly and looked away. "We didn't want to move you too much, but it seemed like… um… I thought it was… a good idea, to make sure you'd be comfortable."

Ranma's puzzled expression held for a few moments longer. And then realization dawned. His head had been resting in her lap while he was unconscious. He shifted slightly to look away from Aerith, facing Tifa instead. And because embarrassment rarely let him be with only one problem, he was now more or less eye-level with Tifa's chest. "Oh, uh… yeah, I…" he stammered, turning away from both Aerith and Tifa.

Unfortunately, because of how they had sat down, this left him face to face with Yuffie, who could clearly see the blush in his cheeks. "Well, dang, Ranma," she teased, pointing behind him, trying to suppress her laughter. "Now I know why you insisted I didn't try to get involved with you, if you already have two hotties like them fawning over ya like that!"

Tifa turned to Yuffie with a blush and a look of shock on her face. "Why you little-" she growled, and sprung to her feet. Yuffie was the faster of the two, and leaped up into the rigging, climbing out of reach.

Ranma lifted one hand to his face in exasperation. Only took four weeks, and it's already just like home, he thought miserably. And here I thought it was just Nerima had them crawlin' outta the woodwork. After a moment, he stood up and took a step forward. "All right, knock it off, you two," he called out, staring up at Yuffie in particular, before gesturing to Aerith and Tifa. "They follow the same rule you do. And they're makin' way more progress than you are, runt-"

"...wait, what?" Yuffie interrupted.

Ranma ignored the interruption. "-so if you still wanna learn, you better get back down here and start workin' on it."

Yuffie made a face at Tifa, but started climbing down from the nets, dropping to the deck a moment later. Tifa came up behind her and gave the younger girl a light smack across the back of her head. "Ow! The hell was that for?"

Tifa glared at the ninja. "The fact that you even have the gall to ask that…" she muttered, but let the matter slide.

Yuffie either didn't hear her or didn't care. Instead, she immediately found her usual perch, namely hanging halfway over the mid-deck railing and trying not to throw up. Ranma let out a sigh. "Need ta stop holding yourself so stiff, Yuffie, it'll go a lot easier for ya."

Yuffie coughed and hacked loudly over the railing, before hauling herself up again and staring back at Ranma. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I heard you before… it's not easy fighting against some fifteen year old habits, yanno…"

Ranma wondered what kind of habits might be drilled in that early for approximately half a second. Then he remembered his father's various rants about manhood and strength and so on, and how early in Ranma's life he'd started them. "Why would someone teach a ninja to be rigid like that, anyway?" he wondered, meeting Yuffie's gaze.

Yuffie looked away almost instantly. "I wasn't raised a ninja," she answered stiffly, keeping her eyes down. "Don't wanna talk about it."

Ranma let out a huff, but let the matter drop. "Anyway, we're all getting back to training. Aerith, Tifa, keep practicing. You got the basic technique down, and that's a good start. I want you both to keep practicing it. See if you can do more than one in a second. And make sure you can do it with both arms."

"Yes, sensei!" the two girls chorused.

Yuffie groaned in disgust. "Yeesh, you two are-" she started, her tone low and insinuating. Tifa turned to glare at her as she formulated her insult, but the ninja was cut off before she could dig herself deeper.

"Yuffie," Ranma said sharply, interrupting the younger girl before she put her foot in her mouth any further. "C'mon, you an' me are gonna get back to work."

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Yuffie came to a stop a few steps behind Ranma near the bow and threw her arms out to either side in frustration. "I don't even know why you're still trying to teach me for, boss," she groused, pacing from side to side. "We've been at this for hours. I'm not getting it. I'm not gonna get it. An' that means y- whoa!" That last was in response to a straight punch directly in Yuffie's path, the fist crackling with energy. "The hell was that for?"

"For thinkin' about giving up," Ranma answered, pulling his arm back and sliding into a ready stance, "before I was finished. I ain't done, and as far as I'm concerned neither are you. If you're not learnin', that means I'm teachin' it wrong. And I'm not too proud to admit, you three are my first students, so I'm still putting a lot of this together as I go. But while I've been teaching you three, I learned something at the same time." He pointed straight at Yuffie with one finger. "You don't learn the same way as Aerith. Aerith doesn't learn the same way as Tifa. Tifa didn't learn the same way as me. So I hafta figure each of you out," he continued, finally putting words to thoughts he'd been putting together for most of the day. And he realized how important it was for each of his students to have a teacher who could adapt, change to help them learn to their strengths, as he curled his finger back into his fist and threw another electrified punch that was deliberately just slow enough for her to evade. Yuffie dodged at the right moment, swaying just to the left of the blow. "That's my job, as your sensei. I teach. If you're doin' the best you can, and you ain't gettin' it, then that's on me. So we're gonna try this again."

"With you hitting me?" Yuffie argued back. She reached for her shuriken in warning. "No freakin' thank you."

Aerith's not the best fighter, but she's a natural with chi. She's been learnin' by watchin' me do it, and then me walkin' her through it a coupla times, he thought, cataloging his observations. Tifa learns best when she can just do it, training it in through muscle memory, but that's not enough for chi techniques. I'm gonna hafta guide her through it step by step until she finds her stride. He went for a slow, high roundhouse kick, which Yuffie limboed beneath, before turning the momentum of his spin into a low leg sweep, which she managed to hop over. He thought back to their first interactions, in the Junon Forest. And I'm willin' to bet that Yuffie learns best under pressure. Her pride wouldn't let her fail when the chips are down, same as me, even if that means she's flyin' blind until she gets it right. He threw another slowball punch, which Yuffie barely dodged, the hum of the Thunder in his fist audible to her ears. He followed it up with a kick to the head, which he pulled at the last moment. Yuffie managed to weave under it. "C'mon, you can move faster than that, can't ya?" he taunted her, a right hook sailing just over the ninja's head. "It's gonna sting like hell if I hit you with this."

Yuffie glared at him, pulling her shuriken free and brandishing it between them defensively, keeping a short distance. "What are you even- Hey!" she cut herself off as Ranma reached forward and grabbed one of the blunt spines of the oversized shuriken. She struggled with him for a moment, but couldn't seem to wrench it free from his grip.

"You really oughta let go of that," Ranma warned.

Yuffie stared at him doubtfully. "Best way I have to keep you at a distance and you want me to drop it? Why in Gaia's green hell would I do something stupid like that?" she shouted in defiance, still tugging on the weapon with both hands.

Ranma rolled his eyes. "'Cuz of this." And he rapped the knuckles of his free hand against the spine of the weapon, discharging some of his Thunder into her shuriken and then into her.

It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to make her yelp in pain, letting go out of sheer reflex. "Gaaah… damn that smarts… oh, I'm gonna get you for that…" she growled, cradling her hands slightly against the unexpected shock.

Ranma ignored her swearing, keeping a solid grip on the shuriken as he tapped one of the blades against the deck, earthing any residual charge. He tied it up in one of the nearby nets, making sure it wouldn't go flying overboard, before turning back to Yuffie. "I'm usin' as much chi right now as I would in a real fight." More, even, he thought. This elemental stuff takes a lot of concentration. "You already know I'm faster than you, I'm stronger than you, and I can vanish better than you. So you need to figure out, right now, how to tell when I'm comin' for ya, or you're gonna get zapped again."

Yuffie looked as if she was about to panic, as she evaded another punch. She lifted her arms in a basic defense, hoping at least to catch a blow on the reinforced canvas of her armguard, trusting that it would fail to conduct the electricity.

Ranma grinned at that, impressed by the younger girl's resourcefulness. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, as he increased the speed of his blows. A blur of three punches came in rapid fire. Yuffie was able to catch one of them on the arm guard, diffusing the Thunder magic into the heavy fabric, but the other two slipped past her defense, tagging her in the left shoulder and right hip. The sudden shock nearly made her crumple, but she stared down with a look of sheer rage. "...asshole…" she hissed, and advanced towards him.

Ranma was caught off guard by the sudden aggressive movement, but threw another punch regardless. This time, Yuffie began to sway to one side before his arm even moved, avoiding the attack effortlessly. Ranma blinked in surprise, suppressing a smile. He threw two more punches, which Yuffie dodged like they weren't there. Now you're getting it! he thought, excited for his student's success. Two more punches and a low, scything kick; Yuffie bent halfway over to evade the two body blows, and rolled back into a handspring right over the sweep. "And you wanted to give up," he taunted lightly, grinning from ear to ear as he threw another combination of blows.

Yuffie expertly sidestepped a pair of straight punches, ducked beneath a right hook, and spun alongside a snap kick. As she slid inside his guard, she grabbed Ranma's ankle with one hand and shoved him hard in the chest with the other, unbalancing him and setting him sprawling to the deck. "What now, old man?" Yuffie jeered, throwing her hands up over her head in triumph. "Got this chi thing of yours down in one day. And now you're gonna show me those pride attacks of yours!"

Ranma grinned from the deck despite himself. Ranma Saotome doesn't lose, he reminded himself, and gettin' Yuffie up to speed is a victory on its own. He looked across the deck where Yuffie was standing, one foot inside a coil of rope, the loose end of that same rope within his reach. He considered yanking the rope, sending Yuffie to the deck too. It wouldn't be all that difficult, given how small she was. Saotome-sensei doesn't lose either… but I ain't gonna 'win' just by showing up my students. He let the moment pass, pushing himself to his feet. "Don't get ahead of yourself, runt," he chastised, standing in front of the young ninja. "Deal was, you learn how to control your pride enough to learn the Umi-sen Ken, then you get to learn the other stuff."

Yuffie blinked in confusion. "Wait, wait, hold on, that wasn't the Umi-sen Ken we were just doing?"

Ranma laughed. "What, didja think it'd be that easy?" he commented, lacing his fingers together and lifting them behind his head. "What you just learned is the first piece of the puzzle, a basic technique that you're gonna be building on for almost anythin' else you learn from me, including the Umi-sen Ken. An' you still need a lot of practice."

Yuffie stared at Ranma with a look of defiance. "Well I took you out, didn't I?" she said, putting her hands on her hips and leaning into Ranma's personal space.

Of course, that doesn't mean Saotome-sensei can't knock the students down a peg when they need it, he thought. He took a half step back, bowed his head down in a show of respect, and grabbed the rope from the surface of the deck, pulling hard. The coil of rope tightened around Yuffie's right leg, pulling her off balance until she fell backwards, collapsing in an undignified heap on the deck boards. "An' it looks like chi is only one thing you need ta focus on… bein' aware of your surroundings is another." He released the rope, and stepped forward to help Yuffie to her feet. "I want you to work on chi sensing, the rest of the night, from now until bed. Aerith is a natural chi beacon or somethin', so see if you can tell where she is without usin' your eyes."

Yuffie looked at him doubtfully, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't really know how I did all of that in the first place, boss. And you're saying you want me to do it more? On purpose, even?"

"Only way you're gonna learn," Ranma answered simply. He felt his stomach rumbling as the smell of grilled fish wafted up from below decks. A similar sound erupted from Yuffie's midsection. Ranma let out a chuckle. "C'mon, let's get some dinner."

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"Wait, so that kiss meant she was going to kill you?" Barret asked, face screwed up in confusion.

Ranma nodded, drawing a line across his throat with his chopsticks. "Yeah, the Joketsuzoku do not mess around. It really sucked for pops an' me for the next couple weeks while we made our way out of China." He paused and took a drink of the tea that had been prepared. "An' it was worse when she tracked me all the way to Japan, 'cuz I had no idea she was still after me, and none of the Tendos had ever dealt with a Chinese Amazon. An' to make it worse, she'd only ever known me as a girl. Their laws are different of one of 'em gets beaten by a guy."

Several of the traveling crew looked at Ranma expectantly, but Aerith was quicker on the uptake, having been around him the longest. "Oh, Goddess, she had to marry you, didn't she?"

"Got it in one," Ranma confirmed around a bite of fried fish. "An' she was not takin' no for an answer there either. She tried to kill Akane the next day-"

"Wait, what?" Tifa blurted out, but Ranma kept going.

"-an' when that didn't work she tried to erase Akane's memory of anything havin' to do with me instead."

The reaction to that was not one of amusement. "This is not a normal thing in your world, is it?" Red asked calmly, sitting in front of his own bowl of food.

"Kami, I hope not," Ranma answered bluntly. He went through another bite or two of fish before elaborating further. "I mean, I doubt a lotta guys go through half the crap I've gone through, and I doubt a lotta girls could relate to a quarter of what Akane's been through either… 'cept maybe for the 'unwanted advances from creepy asshole guys' part. But d'ya think any of the rest of us could call ourselves 'ordinary'?"

Red considered that for several seconds, before answering, "You do have a point, Ranma."

"Aye, so what happened next, laddie?" Cait asked loudly, trying to redirect the conversation.

Ranma looked up in thought. "After we restored Akane's memories, Shampoo went right back to 'kill Akane' mode. So I did… what I thought was the best option at the time, for both me havin' a decent night's sleep for the first time in a week, an' also for Akane not under constant threat of bein' killed. I lied to Shampoo. I ain't proud of it, but I arranged things so that she thought that my boy-half was a 'disguise' for my girl-half."

Silence followed that statement. Yuffie was the first to speak aloud the question floating in the collective unconsciousness of the others. "How in the name of the Goddess did you manage to do that?"

"Hey, just because I'm a guy first doesn't mean I don't have a lot of practice in being my girl-half," Ranma retorted snappily, but there was a smile behind it. He waved his chopsticks in the air vaguely. "She'd known me as a girl first, and it turned out she didn't know about the Jusenkyo springs at the time, so… I poured water on myself and made up some story on the spot. It… uh… almost worked too well," he continued, grimacing slightly at the recollection. "She came at me with a dao she had with her… uh… a really big one handed sword with a curved blade. At the time, I wasn't nearly as good as I am now dealin' with armed fighters, an' she was easily the strongest fighter I'd dealt with at the time, but there was no contest. She beat me, straight up, and had the sword to my throat. And then she just… stopped. She started cryin', said something in Chinese, and took off."

Tifa was even more confused, but Aerith was hanging on every word, absorbing the tales as if they were some sort of soap opera. "Tragedy strikes the star-cross'd lovers," she declared dramatically, clasping her hands together and swinging them to one side. "Though the customs of her people demanded your life for her honor, she could not bear to slay her belov'd-"

"It's not like that, knock it off," Ranma insisted, though he was blushing despite himself. He stuffed another mouthful of rice into himself to avoid saying anything further.

"I gotta say, it does actually sound a bit like that," Tifa agreed, still working on her own dinner, before continuing in a complete deadpan. "Sure, there's the whole attempted murder thing, but what's a few corpses between lovers?"

Cloud had been busy working on the Buster Sword at the other table, running a narrow metal file patiently along the inner materia slots. He turned to face Tifa at her comment, the expression on his face one of deep concern. "Dear goddess, Tifa, I hope you're not being serious about that."

Tifa grinned in response. "I'm not, I'm not, I swear," she reassured him. "But it sounds like Ranma's girl troubles tend to think along that line, am I right?" Cloud nodded his understanding and returned to his work, filing along the metal.

"Yeah, well…" Ranma continued, setting aside his now empty bowl, "she ended up coming back less than a month later, and she had th- she had someone with her. And they ended up making my life hell for a while."

"Oh, the plot thickens," Aerith commented, leaning forward and propping her hands onto her knees. "Who was it? What happened next?"

Ranma smiled. "That'll have to wait for another time," he said firmly, before pointing to the girls. "All three of you have gotten the basic idea of what you're doin'. You've got your assigned training to do, an' so do I. Finish up your dinner, and get to it." He zipped up the blue coat as he reached the stairs heading above deck. "I want to ask the captain about something."

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"…you want to what?"

Shiro's moonlit expression was somewhere between disbelief and distrust, but he reeled it back in when he saw the serious look on Ranma's face. "This is somethin' I need ta work on, cap'n," Ranma explained, pulling the red materia orb out of his coat pocket and holding it up in one hand. "I've only used one of these once, an' that was yesterday. If Sephiroth is really gonna be comin' to Wutai, I wanna be sure we're all ready for him."

Shiro tugged his hat to one side, scratching his head. "Using a Summon in a small space like this is not a good idea, you understand?"

Ranma waved his hands in protest. "I'm not gonna aim it at the ship," he protested. And then he remembered Ifrit and his return-to-sender ball of magma. Probably, he thought, glancing away. "I just need ta learn how ta do it enough that it's not gonna turn me into a sittin' duck when I'm usin' it in a fight."

Shiro stared at Ranma. "A sitting… what?" He waved it off as Ranma opened his mouth to explain. "Doesn't matter. What does matter is the safety of this ship and its crew," he continued, looming over the young martial artist, "especially after what happened to the last ship of mine you were aboard. You wouldn't want to make sinking ships you travel on into a habit, would you?"

Ranma was taken aback for a moment, before changing tack. "You know we're tryna keep the whole world safe, right?" he asked, taking a half step towards Shiro. "That includes Wutai. I ain't from around here, but I heard what he's done. I don't want him to hurt anyone else, an' that means all of us need to be at our strongest."

Shiro stood in a silence that dragged out past uncomfortable, looking over the young boy carefully. Finally, he appeared to reach a decision. "If you can promise that the safety of this ship will not be affected, I'll allow it." Ranma nodded his head, but before he could speak again, the captain cut him off. "I have a question for you, though. You think Sephiroth's headed to Wutai, that's fine, goddess speed your travels. But he and his ilk carved through an entire army of our finest, and even though it took them eight years of work, and we made them pay in blood for every kilometer, we could barely hold the line most days. What makes you think you and your friends have any more chance against him than we did?"

Ranma looked up at him. He wanted to answer. He wanted to say that it was because their group was strong. That they'd find some secret to beating him. That they didn't have someone like Ranma on their side before. That Sephiroth was only one man. That they had a SOLDIER on their side this time. That Ranma Saotome doesn't lose. Every answer he came up with rang false to his ears and tasted like ash in his mouth in the face of that horrific knowledge, of an entire generation lost to war. He stood silently, mouth half open, unable to look away from the captain. "...I… don't know, captain," he answered after a long delay. He clenched his fist, his tone changing from confusion to determination. "But I don't want anyone else hurt if we can do something about it. So if there's a way, we're going to find it."

Shiro eyed the fighter once again. "Good." He turned and climbed the steps towards the bridge. "Hold onto that conviction, Saotome-san. I suspect you'll need it. You can practice at the stern deck," he continued, "at least that way if you freeze the ocean somehow, it'll be behind us."

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Ranma had been sitting with the red materia clutched in one hand for almost fifteen minutes, slowly pouring his mana into the spell. It felt just like it had the previous day, in the quarry. His head was practically throbbing with the effort. But it wasn't snapping in place the same way. He stopped, feeling the magical construct dissipate into the ether. Ranma's headache and frustration both remained. "Did something change?" he asked himself, standing up to pace from side to side. "Am I doin' it wrong?" There was probably still a lot he didn't know about materia in general, about magic, about summons specifically, about… everything, come to think of it. A whole new system of magic that everyone on Gaia took for granted… and he was getting walked through it like the schoolhouse dunce that he was. "Aaaaaggh, why does everything hafta be so freakin' weird on this planet? At least back in Tokyo I can punch mosta my problems…"

He stopped for a moment and tried to think about it in as much detail as he could manage. In the quarry, he thought to himself, picturing the dull-gray crater in his mind, it's daytime, Aerith's a meter or two away. I'm holding the materia, I'm focusing my mana… it's just like any other spell I've done since I got here, just… bigger. He paused, staring at the materia doubtfully. Yeah, okay, fine, a lot bigger. And my head feels like it got stuck in a vise every time I don't manage to fire it off. So what am I missing?

Ranma continued pacing back and forth, grumbling to himself, for a minute or two, before slipping the materia back into his pocket. Almost unconsciously, he began slipping into a practice kata as he continued pacing, barely missing a beat in each motion as he deftly moved around the stern deck. He leaped gracefully to the security rail and began working on the high-balance movements. He hopped back down after a few moments and continued through one of the grounded katas, practicing the motions for leading an opponent through the opening gambit of the Hiryu Shoten Ha. He began focusing his chi as the spiral movements drew closer to its center.

There was a cold pulse from inside his trousers, sharp enough to make him wince.

"...gyyaahhh, what…" he blurted out in surprise, reaching into his pocket. The stinging sensation of ice against his skin nearly caused him to drop the materia. He pulled it out anyway, ignoring the chill on his fingers, and noticing a thin shimmer of ice around the orb. "...the hell…" he finished, staring at the ice sublimating off the red sphere. Aerith didn't say anything about materia… reacting… like that… he thought, rolling the materia into his other hand. He stared at it, deep in thought for several long seconds as he replayed the event in his head. Maybe… could the summon materia react to chi the same way that magic does?

He stood at the edge of the stern deck again, and held the materia carefully. He studiously ignored his mana entirely, focusing instead on the more familiar inner strength he possessed. The summon sphere reacted almost instantly, the spell catching hold and releasing with hardly any effort at all. Ranma looked skyward, and saw the descending form of Shiva, the spirit of Ice, staring directly at him. She looked… smaller, somehow. She was still taller than Ranma by a significant step, two meters and a bit if he was any judge. But compared to the five meter tall ice sculpture that appeared before them yesterday, that was much more manageable.

Well, time to find out whether or not I'm an idiot, Ranma thought. He met the spirit's solid white eyes, and could think of no more apt descriptor than chilling to describe Shiva's gaze. He blinked and took a steadying breath. "Can you understand me?"

Ranma thought for a moment that he could hear the water behind the boat crackling into ice, and so it was fortunate that the ship was still traveling at speed. Shiva's form floated along at a fixed distance behind the ship as they traversed. The silence between the two stretched for what was mere seconds but, in the presence of something as powerful as this spirit obviously was, felt far longer. Finally, Shiva inclined her head once.

Ranma was elated. He practically had to restrain himself from leaping into the air. "Okay, okay, uh… can you speak? Like, can you talk, the way I'm talkin'?" he asked.

There was another long silence, before Shiva responded. "It is already difficult enough to communicate in this crass manner," Shiva replied in a haughty tone, the harmonics of her voice reverberating in his bones, "and you wish me to debase myself further by lowering my vocabulary to your level?"

Ranma took a moment to translate that in his head. "Fine, you can talk like Kuno, whatever, but you talk, that's what's important." He shrugged it off, and plowed ahead, uncertain how long he might have to get through this. "How come everyone thinks you don't talk?"

"I do not," she responded simply.

Ranma considered that for a moment. "But you're talkin' to me, right? How come me, and not them?"

Shiva was silent for a long moment, turning her head away. When she answered, her voice was lowered, as if in deference. "Because you… have summoned me properly."

The moon above drifted behind some clouds, and the deck went strangely dark. Despite the darkness, Shiva was clearly visible, lit from within somehow. Ranma gave the spirit a perplexed look. "...I did?" he asked, the confusion plain in his voice. "Whaddya mean? How'd I do that?"

Shiva stared at Ranma disdainfully. "What humans call 'mana' is an imperfect technique, a stopgap for those who had yet to master their own lifestream, which somehow has become the method they use to interact with all materia," the blue spirit explained, gesturing with one hand. She raised her other hand and held it out to her opposite side. "You have learned the true method, and demonstrated sufficient mastery over it. Therefore, I am able to speak to you, and you are able to hear me."

Ranma paused for a moment, absorbing that information. "You mean… the people here are supposed'ta be usin' chi to cast spells?" he asked after a few seconds.

"How knowledge that simple was lost is completely beyond me," Shiva continued, oblivious to Ranma's revelation. The sheer shock of speaking to someone as powerful as this had distracted Ranma some, but he finally noticed what had been bothering him about the spirit. When she spoke, her lips didn't move at all. Her mouth didn't open. It was like her words were just appearing in his ears without disturbing the space between them.

Shiva rested one hand against her head in exasperation, before rounding on the martial artist with a derisive tone, continuing her previous point. "But their mana is so… limited in its breadth that it fails to provide us enough energy even to communicate with those who call us forth, let alone merge our energies properly."

A long silence passed between the two, as Shiva finally completed her tirade. "Wait, wait, wait, hang on," Ranma insisted, waving his arms in front of him. "You're sayin' that the way people summon ain't even right?"

Shiva drew herself up, affronted. "Of course it isn't!" the spirit shouted, causing Ranma to take a few steps back. The spirit paced back and forth in midair behind the ship as she gestured emphatically with one hand. "A true summoning calls the spirit into yourself, adds their strength to your own, grants the summoner the full power of the spirit! The bastardized standards humans have adopted have left us out of touch for who knows how long, and someone as young as you being the first to do it properly in-"

"Wait, stop," Ranma interrupted, holding his hands up in a motion of surrender. This was way more information than he had been prepared for. He thought fast, piecing together what he understood of what Shiva had said so far, and compared it to what he knew from Aerith's explanation of the world and its history that he could remember. He looked up at Shiva, doing his best to appear calm. "Do you… like… know about things that happened in this world?" he asked, trying to get an idea of what was going on.

Shiva gave Ranma another look. "Of course I do," she replied, her voice dripping with disappointment. "What kind of spirit of knowledge would I be if I did not know the history of our people?"

"...Our people?" Ranma repeated doubtfully.

"Yes, you simpleton!" Shiva continued impatiently, resting her hands on her hips. She leaned forward and stared down at Ranma as if preparing to discipline a small child. "Your people and my people means our people! The Cetra! Who else would I be talking about?"

Ranma stared up at the spirit, completely dumbfounded. He did his best to process what Shiva had said to him. That doesn't make any sense, he thought. She thinks I'm the same as Aerith. I'm not. I can't be, I'm not even from Gaia. Why would she think that I'm a Cetra? He took a step forward, meeting Shiva's icy gaze and doing his best not to shiver, and opened his mouth to speak.

Shiva beat him to it. "I am afraid we've run out of time," she said calmly, her earlier irritation seemingly dissipated. Her form was already beginning to turn transparent, and she raised one hand towards the sky.

"Wait!" Ranma called out, a couple dozen questions jockeying for position inside his mind. He snatched one out of the throng in his head and went for it. "Do you know how I can get home?"

"Home?" the fading form of Shiva asked. "You are home, are you not?" And the spirit evaporated into nothingness in the night air.

Ranma stared into the empty space where Shiva had been floating. "What the hell was that…?"

"What was what?"

Ranma did not consider himself prone to overreaction. At the same time, getting behind him without his noticing was historically a feat reserved for a number of people he could count on one hand. As a result, Ranma did not consider his reaction excessive when he leapt fully three meters into the air, landing awkwardly on the deck in the space where he had knelt in seiza up until a moment ago, but still managing to turn around and bring himself into an attack stance. He stalled after he saw Yuffie's familiar form perched on one of the railings nearby, lowering his arms. "Jeez, give a guy a heart attack, runt…" he said after a deep breath.

Yuffie gave him a mischievous looking smile. "You didn't answer my question… what was what?" she repeated.

Ranma sighed. "Jus' tell me what you saw so I know how much I need to explain."

"Didn't see anything," Yuffie answered, eyeing Ranma suspiciously. "Didn't know you needed alone time on the deck to yourself to do that, though…"

The thinly disguised innuendo sailed over Ranma's head entirely, distracted as he was by the most confusing conversation he'd had with anyone in his life. He glared at Yuffie in the dim moonlight, his patience wearing thin. "Just… answer the question, runt, or you can kiss that training goodbye."

Yuffie blanched. "All right, all right, fine, don't get your panties in a knot…" she waved her arms in surrender. "You told me to track Aerith tonight, remember? So I was following her around and felt some kinda… I dunno what it was, but it was something big, up here, at the back of the boat.. Came up to check, saw you sitting there alone. Waited a few seconds, and then whatever it was I was feeling went away. Then you said 'what the hell' and then I asked what it was."

Ranma stared in confusion after the word 'alone' reached his ears. "You… you didn't see a woman here just now?" he asked, though the doubt in his voice was apparent. Did that just happen? Did I dream it up or somethin'?

Yuffie's brow screwed up in concern. "You… okay there, boss?" she inquired. "Maybe you oughta come in out of the cold."

Ranma stood there for a moment longer, before pocketing the dimmed sphere, raising one hand to his forehead. "Maybe you're right, runt," he agreed, stepping towards his student.

And suddenly winding up flat on his back.

"...frrgrjggr…" Ranma growled inarticulately. He tried to push himself to his feet, but could find nothing stable to right himself with. As the moon finally began to emerge from the clouds, he could see why.

Excepting for a meter-wide circle centered precisely where Ranma had been sitting during his conversation with Shiva, the entire stern deck was covered in a thin, polished-smooth layer of nearly transparent ice.

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…elsewhere…

Ryoga Hibiki looked down the ridge at the village in the distance. It was small, lined with quaint houses in a western-style, and circled by a long, wide moat of clean running water. The water was fed by several towering structures, and a small artificial waterfall tumbled down from each one. It reminded him of images he'd seen in his schoolbooks of towns in Europe.

"...doesn't look like Tokyo…" he muttered to himself. "But… I'd better go an' check for myself. I gave Ranma my word, and I'm gonna keep it." He stepped off the ridge, opening his bamboo umbrella to slow his descent. "Gotta find Akane… give her Ranma's message."

Above, on the ridge, a few meters to the right, a sign read…

Town of Walse
2km Ahead

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…Meanwhile, in Midgar…

—

The reassignment was… startling. It caught him completely off guard. The reassignment order hadn't come from anyone in his chain of command, even if a few others had been shuffled around in recent days. Even more surprising than the nature of the order was the order itself. It was printed on paper and had been delivered to him in a sealed envelope by some guy with platinum-blonde hair in a poorly-tailored blue suit. He honestly thought that Shinra had finished digitizing this system more than a year ago, but… here it was.

And as unusual as all of that was, it was nothing compared to the content. This order had been sent to him through the Department of Urban Development, but it had been signed, personally signed, by President Rufus Shinra. That made it a direct order from the President. Even a First Class, who could veto orders in the field if he felt it necessary to complete a mission or safeguard Shinra's assets, could not refuse a direct order from the President.

And Kunsel was only a Second.

He'd kept his nose down, done his best not to stand out. He'd picked his battles carefully, taking the most low-key missions he could find, usually ones that kept him out from under Shinra's gaze for a while, maintaining his position. He'd kept his eyes peeled, ears to the ground, and taken every precaution. And somehow, all of that hard work, years of compiling information and chipping away at secrets and covering his tracks in the system, had resulted in this.

A transfer.

He was being transferred.

To Urban Development, of all places.

What on Gaia's green does Urban Development want with me? he wondered as he read the paper transfer notice a second time.

—

SHINRA
Electric Power Company

NOTICE OF REASSIGNMENT

EFFECTIVE: _IMMEDIATELY_

_SOLDIER 2nd CLASS Kunsel_ IS HEREBY ORDERED TO REPORT TO
_Director Reeve Tuesti_ AT _Shinra Tower, 65th Floor, Urban Development_.

Make sure to bring all weapons, armor, and materia you will need for your new assignment, and report at the date and time specified above.

If you have any questions, please inquire with your new superior officer.

SIGNED BY

_Rufus Shinra_
_President of Shinra

—

He stood in surprise for several long seconds. He wondered if he was being pranked somehow. But for that to be the case, it was a really dangerous prank, because it meant that someone had forged the President's signature on an official document. That seemed like a lot to do for a psych, and there wasn't really anyone in SOLDIER who he knew well enough to expect a fake-out like this from. At least, not anymore. On the other hand, he couldn't recall a time in his entire history with the company where anyone had been transferred out of SOLDIER, unless it was to the Science Department as a guinea pig for one of Hojo's experiments, or Hollander before him.

He'd been a member of SOLDIER since before the era marker changeover in the calendar. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd been in Urban Development in his career up to this point. Somehow the thought didn't reassure him.

The order had specified 'effective immediately,' and had included that he should come with his normal gear, including his assigned weapon. Despite the safety inherent in his armor and weapon being permitted, that was also not a reassuring thought right now.

The fact that he was being transferred, and not Sleep'ed by the Turks and black-bagged off to an interrogation cell meant that either they didn't know he knew anything at all, or they didn't know how much he knew. That thought, also, was somewhat less than reassuring.

If this transfer was permanent, he would never have to deal with Heidegger, ever again. That thought was delightfully reassuring to consider. It was, unfortunately, the only net-positive he could think up on his own without more information.

He approached the deceptively simple office, with the unadorned wooden doors, and hesitated for several seconds, still wondering exactly what it was he'd managed to get himself into. Finally, he knocked.

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Reeve Tuesti heard the knock on his door. "Come in," he called out, and stood as the door to his office opened. "Yes?"

The man standing at the door wore the garb of a SOLDIER, the purple tunic denoting his rank, and the helmet obscuring his face completely. "SOLDIER, 2nd Class Kunsel, reporting as ordered," Kunzel said in a slightly uneven tone, saluting.

Reeve chuckled. "At ease," he said, and Kunsel relaxed into parade rest. Kunsel looked the Director over. It was hard to believe that they were nearly the same age. Reeve's dark hair and well-kept beard framed his face. A dark blue pinstripe suit and tie completed the look of a consummate professional. If Kunsel wasn't in the man's office, and didn't know him from his occasional dives through the company records, he would have thought that Reeve was simply a salaryman working in some low-end part of the building.

Reeve also took a moment to look over the SOLDIER, though that was much more difficult with the full-face helmet between himself and Kunsel. Not even his chin was visible; he could be clean-shaven or have scars across his face or anything between, and Reeve would have no idea. And for some reason, the face-covering helmet made the 'relaxing' SOLDIER look strangely out of place, and made it harder to tell how tall he actually was. Beyond that, the man could have passed for almost any other SOLDIER of his rank; light skinned, wiry muscles, and an absolutely unremarkable uniform, well-maintained but free of any personalization. "Tell me, do you know why you've been assigned to me?"

Kunsel hadn't had a chance to dig into Shinra's records regarding the transfer. 'Effective: Immediately' in military parlance was not a phrase with even a modicum of wiggle room. If he'd been out of the city, or on a mission, he might have been able to wait and find out before showing up. But since he was already in the building for reasons of his own at the time the order came down, he'd had no reasonable excuse for a delay. "No, sir," Kunsel answered honestly. He'd long since learned that answering direct questions honestly made things flow smoother. Up to a point, anyway.

Reeve held up the transfer order. "Well… before we get into that, I want to know a few things about you." He held up a sheet of paper with some handwritten notes. "Joined shortly before the Wutai War broke out, aptitude tests indicated you would be a good fit for either of the Administrative Research Department or Stellar Sciences under Palmer… but you requested assignment to SOLDIER." He flipped to a second sheet of notes. "Quickly promoted to Second Class, where you have remained since. Various relocations, reassignments, but… always laterally. No First Class promotion… but no demerits. No additional responsibilities, but you have completed every mission assigned to you. And… no further enhancements." He paused, setting the notes to one side. "Curious. Not what I would expect from someone like you."

Kunsel remained silent for several seconds. Honesty was definitely not going to make this part go smoothly. "I'm sorry, sir," he said finally, shifting his weight slightly, "if you're asking me something, I'm not sure I understand the question."

"Oh, no, that was just an observation," Reeve clarified, waving it off with one hand. "If there is a question there, I would have to ask, why haven't you advanced further within the company?"

Kunsel hesitated. "I'm… still not sure I understand the question, sir."

The Director gave him a knowing smile. "Did you know that you are the only employee of Shinra for which we have no headshot on file?"

Kunsel did know that. After learning some of the things he had, a few of them entirely by happenstance rather than actively looking for the truth, he'd taken great pains to find the hard copy of his initial application. Once he had, he'd taken the edge of a serrated knife to the photo and some of the surrounding documentation, making it all look as though it had been gnawed on by some kind of rodent. He'd then spent most of a week very carefully navigating the Shinra personnel servers and scrubbing them clean of the single photograph of his face that had existed from that application, as well as a few other edits to make it harder to identify him in a crowd. "No, sir," he answered. He had also changed some of his personal details to ensure that if he himself was ever caught or implicated for what he knew, they would never be able to find his family.

"Of course not, how could a mere SOLDIER know something like that?" Kunsel's hand itched, in the uncomfortable way it did when he felt like he was in over his head. He shifted out of standard parade rest to a slight lean, moving one hand towards his sword belt. Reeve didn't appear to notice, as he continued, "Well then, let's move on to something a bit easier." The director smiled and circled around to the front of his desk. And with the calm demeanor of someone placing an order for a delicate bottle of wine, he looked Kunsel square in the helmet's visor and asked, "Did you know that there is a traitor in our company?"

Kunsel froze.

Reeve either didn't notice, hidden as Kunsel was beneath his helmet, or didn't care, because he continued, "Two, in fact. I need your help confirming one of them."

Kunsel stared in shock. He doesn't know. He can't possibly know. Despite his somewhat shaky resolve, he let his hand rest on his belt, a few centimeters away from his standard-issue sword. "What makes you think there are traitors inside Shinra, sir?"

"You are a very careful man, SOLDIER Second Class Kunsel." Reeve reached over his desk again, lifting up the paper-clipped packet of notes that Kunsel assumed was about him. "I have a rather substantial amount of information in this packet. Handwritten notes, all of it… but it's all verifiable by anyone who knows what to look for. It tells the story of a man who knows things. Nothing… earth-shattering, to be sure, but certainly a lot of dirty laundry that Shinra would prefer to keep quiet." Kunsel swallowed, but said nothing. Reeve flipped through some of the later pages again. "Do you know why this packet was written by hand?"

Kunsel didn't know. Right now, Kunsel didn't care. He was in danger, and needed to figure a way out. His fingers crept towards the handle of his sword. "I… I don't mean to keep saying this, I'm sorry, but I still don't understand, sir."

Reeve reached inside his suit. Kunsel grabbed his sword and pulled. He'd freed it from the scabbard and was halfway to pointing it at Reeve when he realized that what the Director had pulled from his suit jacket was an ordinary metal lighter. "It's because unlike digital records, paper… is much more easily destroyed." He lifted the lighter to the sheets of paper, igniting them, before tossing them in a metal wastebasket next to his desk. Kunsel hesitated, the sword still in his hand. "I took the liberty of backtracking your movements in the Shinra servers and removed a few digital fingerprints you left behind that you hadn't realized were there. As far as I can tell, there is no longer anything linking you in the servers to any of the information you have."

Kunsel stared at Reeve from under the helmet, the curved metal hiding his expression of disbelief. "Why should I trust you?"

"You shouldn't," Reeve answered plainly, spreading his hands in a matter-of-fact shrug. "After all, I'm the other traitor."

Kunsel had never had a more confusing conversation in his life. Director Tuesti, a traitor? Why would anyone admit to that? "I don't understand, sir," he said, which was definitely the truth right now. He hadn't the foggiest idea what Reeve was up to. The entire conversation so far felt like something out of a twisted dream. "What is going on?"

Reeve smiled, though there was no warmth or humor in this smile. "I'm going to tell you a story, Kunsel," he said, snapping the lighter closed as the handwritten notes curled into a small, smokeless flame at the bottom of the wastebasket. "If I'm lucky, you may even believe me."

Slightly shorter chapter than normal, but still a lot going on. Some of y'all may have guessed at least some of this; several of you in the comments definitely saw Kunsel coming. There's a lot going on here, a lot more still to be revealed, and I've still got a few more surprises in store in the coming chapters. I can't wait to show you what's in store.

Yuffie's behavior in this chapter, in particular her use of the word 'boss', does have a reason. That will be gone into in detail in the next chapter. Yay foreshadowing! Boo running out of thread in this chapter to explain it properly, but I can just say I'm setting up plot points, right? Yeah, I think I can get away with that.

On that note, I'm generally okay with people guessing some of my plot points. I don't always like the idea of a twist that comes completely, utterly out of nowhere solely for the sake of shifting the narrative goalposts (Avengers AoU, I'm glancing in your general direction… a lot…). On the other hand, as both a creator and consumer of fiction, I recognize that a well placed narrative twist can make you re-examine everything you've learned up until that point. In general, though, I feel that if y'all can follow the beats as they come, I'm probably doing a good job keeping things cohesive, and that matters to me almost as much as the quality of my writing itself. Like the fishystick, it's a very delicate state, and requires some interesting linguistic gymnastics on my part.

Been a while since we checked in with Ryoga, hasn't it? For anyone who might not have recognized it, Walse is the name of the kingdom in Final Fantasy V which houses the Water Crystal. Not exactly the safest place in the world for someone like Ryoga, now, is it? And how exactly did he get there anyway? (Spoiler alert, he got lost again)

Language lessons…

Seiza - Japanese, literally "proper sitting". A traditional Japanese kneeling posture in which the back is held straight and the thighs rest directly atop the calves. Speaking as someone who's tried it, it's not as easy as it looks without practice.

Dao - Chinese. Somewhat similar to the German messer in what it denotes, the terminology technically refers to any sword or knife of Chinese manufacture that has a single sharpened edge (unlike, for instance, the jian which has two edges). In Shampoo's case, it would be referring to a single-edged 'broadsword' which is curved and has a wider segment near the tip, somewhat like a falchion or scimitar.

Hope you liked it! Feedback and comments, as always, are welcome. More will be coming, sooner rather than later, so stay tuned!