"Today we have yet another of Ranma's teachers here to give his special insight as to Ranma's behavior and offer more clues! May I present Professor Jadeite!"

The dark general was seated off to the side sipping some tea, and he nodded curtly as Shizuka gestured to him.

"Thank you, Miss Nekonome. Indeed, I've been observing Saotome for some time in my class, and I believe that my long experience in dealing with supernaturals, as well as my superior tactical acumen and intellect, have given me all the information I need to reveal Saotome's true form."

"Ooh! Sounds like you're pretty confident!" the nekomata purred, her tail perking up.

Jadeite nodded again. "Indeed. For you see... Saotome is... a youma."

Shizuka's tail immediately drooped. "A youma? Based on what?"

"Well... based on... Saotome's resilience and his... abilities..." Jadeite hedged, stopping to take a sip of tea. "Also, I sensed his... uh... is 'aura' the term that the kids are using today? Yes, let's go with that. So he's definitely a youma, which as you know, is actually a wide sub-class of youkai native to-"

"Youma are the only monsters you know of, aren't they?" Shizuka deadpanned.

"You are correct," Jadeite said shamelessly. "Well, them and witches. You don't think he's a witch, do you?"

Shizuka sighed and turned around, ignoring the dark general's new musings. "That's all we have for now! See you next time!"


Black Dragon Productions proudly presents
a Ranma and Rosario Plus Vampire crossover

Disclaimer: You know those crazy dances that they hold at night at anime conventions? The ones that combine the headbanging debauchery of raves with cosplaying and J-pop? Who the hell goes to those? What kind of nerds go to a convention about games and cartoons to DANCE?

Key: Writing/Emphasis, Sounds, 'Thoughts', "Speech", (Comments that you can freely ignore)

Big Human on Campus
Chapter 5
How Much Curse is Too Much?

"All right lowly students, pay attention," snapped Jadeite harshly as he started scrawling on the blackboard. "Ensure that your notes are complete and precise. I am still recovering from the... accident the other day, and even minute amounts of stress - like, say, the effort required to implode your chest cavity for example - could cause a considerable increase in blood pressure."

The class mumbled half-hearted affirmations at the reminder that they were, as always, stepping a fine line between safety and annihilation now that their professor was in good enough shape to host his class.

"Remember now that the typical devil hunter is a teenage girl suffering through puberty and a long string of pointless personal melodrama. To that end, you'll usually find them most active not in the nesting places of proper monsters, but rather at high schools, malls, fast food restaurants, arcades..."


Amongst the rows of students taking careful notes to avoid any excuse for torso implosion, Ranma frowned at his mostly empty notebook - it wasn't completely blank, as he had used it to doodle pictures of his new pet spiders and list more prospective names - as his pen scratched uselessly at the surface of the paper, leaving not a mark.

Closing the notebook and standing up from his desk, he calmly walked up toward the front row of the classroom, ignoring the curious and startled gazes of his classmates.

Yukari, who was taking notes just as studiously as the rest of the class, if more calmly, let out a surprised squeak as she felt someone tap her on the shoulder, and her entire body tensed up once she turned and realized that Ranma was standing right behind her.

"What do you want?" the young witch hissed, well aware that she was within melee range, seated, and surrounded by unsympathetic peers.

In response, Ranma held out his pen in front of her. "My pen won't work. Can I borrow yours?"

Yukari gave him a look that asked, quite clearly despite the lack of speech, if he was an idiot. "No! Why would you even ask me?"

"Well, it's not like I know anyone else in this class," the pigtailed boy reasoned, still holding his pen out.

"Ahem!" Jadeite cleared his throat loudly as he glowered at Ranma, his chalk held still against the board. "Mister Saotome, you're interrupting my lecture."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Ranma murmured without a drop of sincerity, still looking down at Yukari. "Come on, I know you have a spare; I don't have anything else to write with."

"Not my problem!" Yukari said defensively, clutching her own pen tightly. "Go ask someone else!"

Ranma rolled his eyes and turned around to head back to his seat, and Yukari let out a relieved sigh once he finally sat back down.

"All right, then," Jadeite mumbled, his eyebrow twitching. "It's important to note that devil hunters often enjoy a social network of other humans that they use for information gathering. The most common - and insidious - method of doing so is to befriend one human that inexplicably and constantly ends up being kidnapped, attacked, or otherwise victimized and then track her to the offender..."

Yukari grit her teeth in annoyance as her pen scratched the surface of her notebook uselessly. 'What's wrong with this thing? It was working fine a moment ago!'

Making sure to keep careful note of what Jadeite was saying, Yukari tried furiously clicking the button at the end in vain hope that it would restore the implement's ink.

It wasn't until the button popped off and a jet of ink blasted in her face that she recalled that her pen had no switch on the end. Splurch!

Ranma smirked as Jadeite halted in mid-sentence at the noise, his hand inadvertently drawing a wide slash across the chalkboard. All around the classroom there was stifled giggling, the other students trying to hold back for fear of angering their teacher.

"Thanks Yukari! This one works much better!" the pigtailed boy said happily as he waggled Yukari's pen about in the air. Then he re-opened his notebook to the appropriate page, figuring that he should make at least SOME attempt to take notes on whatever Jadeite was going on about.

"Eh?" he mumbled to himself as he stared at some unfamiliar writing amongst his clumsy paragraphs and crude doodles. "I don't remember this. Did the teach ever say anything about 'explosive runes'?"

BOOM! The more magically-inclined students winced and covered their heads as they recognized the activation trigger to a magic trap, and there was even more giggling as Ranma coughed up a cloud of smoke, he face charred.

"Sendo. Saotome," Jadeite snapped, causing the two black-faced students to break off their mutual glare and face their instructor, "if you're QUITE done interrupting my class-"

"I doubt it," Ranma said suddenly, causing Jadeite to twitch as his irritation swelled, "I've still got at least one trick I could pull off before class ends."

Yukari held her silence as a crackling black aura appeared around their instructor, and she winced as she felt some of her magical energy and even a trickle of her life force seep into the man.

"Get. Out. Of my. Classroom," Jadeite growled, his eye twitching.

Ranma sighed, but did as he was told, picking up his things and strolling out the door calmly even as Yukari scurried by him trying to remain unnoticed.

"You'd better hope that this isn't recorded as an absence from class, for your sake," Yukari threatened as she and Ranma walked down the hall away from Jadeite's class. "I have a status to maintain as this institution's top-ranked student, you know!"

"Yeah, that must be real tough in a place like this," Ranma mumbled, glancing over at a large student who was lying unconscious in the hallway with writing all over his face. "Half the students are drooling idiots, most of the rest are psychos."

"Some of them are both," Yukari said snidely, giving the pigtailed boy a rather pointed stare as she finally wiped the last of the ink from her face. "Anyway, don't think you have the edge just because you've lasted longer than I thought you would! You'll never be able to compare to a genius like me!"

Ranma snorted, leaning against the wall as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeah, yeah, keep talking big. Don't worry, I won't hold it against you when you exhaust yourself and give up."

Yukari grit her teeth. "Just you wait, Saotome! You haven't even seen a fraction of the witch's true power!"

"I hope not," Ranma agreed, "if this was really all you were capable of, I don't think I'd be able to live with the guilt of actually taking you slightly seriously."

Yukari fumed angrily. "All right, fool! But I'll remember those words when you're on your knees, begging for mercy!"

"The day I beg on my knees is the day Moka turns vegetarian," Ranma countered, sticking out his tongue.

Shwoooh! Ranma and Yukari ducked as a crackling black orb of destruction sailed over their heads, detonating a few moments later with a fearsome roar.

"Be QUIET and leave!" Jadeite snarled, smoke wafting from his hand as he turned around and re-entered his classroom.


The pair waited for a few seconds, and then Yukari cleared her throat.

"You'll soon feel the full measure of my brilliance, Saotome," she said calmly, her voice nearly a whisper.

"Yeah, and then I'll top it, same as everything else so far," Ranma whispered back, his hand cupping his mouth.

Their final taunts exchanged, the two quickly veered off in different directions.


It wasn't long before Yukari heard a cry of surprise and relief, and a confusing moment later she was enveloped in a hug as Moka plucked her off the floor and mashed the witch's face into her cleavage.

"Oh, Yukari! Thank goodness you're all right! I came as soon as I heard!"

Yukari blinked. "Eh? Heard what?" As happy as she was to be getting face time with Moka's breasts, she was fairly certain that the vampiress had class, and she wasn't in any sort of situation that her beloved should be shirking her studies for Yukari's benefit.

"The explosion!" Moka said, holding Yukari at arm's length. "The entire building shook! What did Ranma do this time? Did he actually use an explosive trap? I've heard about humans that do that!"

Yukari shook her head. "No, no... the explosion was... not entirely unrelated to my altercation with Saotome, but he was not responsible." Then she snorted. "That aside, please don't indulge that cretin's delusions of humanity. The way he touts his disguise is something to be abhorred, not admired," the witch insisted, her face serious. "Though I have to give him credit for being by and large the only student to actually abide by that rule..."

Moka sighed as much of her tension left her. "Well, as long as you're all right. I hope you two don't take this silly game too far."

"As I said to Saotome once already, this is no game; this is war," Yukari said firmly. "...... Albeit, a war outside the bounds of ordinary martial conflict. Anyway, my point is, it would be a mistake to take this conflict so lightly. Even so, you needn't worry about me."

"Well, as long as you're careful," the vampiress mumbled reluctantly, patting Yukari's hat down over her head.

Crack!

Moka blinked as she heard a soft cracking noise, and Yukari's eyes widened as she felt something thick and wet dribble down her hair. "Gah! What in the hells?"

Snatching off her hat, Moka was surprised and dismayed to see the squashed remains of a single egg sitting on Yukari's head as its internal liquids spilled over the witch's head.

"How? When did he..." Yukari growled, wiping some yolk away as it threatened to run down into her eyes. "GAH! He'll pay for this humiliation! No more Miss Nice Witch! I'm going to the library!"

Moka stared at the shorter girl in concern as she stalked off, and then stared at her longer in confusion as Yukari returned, stalking in the opposite direction.

"That is, I'm going to the showers, and THEN the library," Yukari murmured, idly wiping some egg white off of her nose.

Tsukune swallowed nervously as he followed Ranma through the barren yard behind their dorms, his eyes flitting back in forth as he took in the numerous expanses of spider webs.

"You're sure this is safe, right? These spiders are trained?" the younger human asked, a shudder crawling down his spine at each sighting of glistening black eyes.

"Not all of 'em are trained, but it should be safe," Ranma explained as he strolled heedlessly deeper into the dead forest that surrounded Youkai Academy. "If you don't give 'em a reason to bite you, spiders won't mess with humans. Would YOU wanna attack an elephant just because you saw it walking around?"

Tsukune thought about the analogy for a few seconds, and then shook his head reluctantly as he straightened a bit. "You have a point... but still... how dangerous are those things?"

"You can't show fear to animals," Ranma said seriously, walking up to a small tree and idly smacking it with a backhanded strike.

Plop! A tarantula about the size of Tsukune's hand landed square on Ranma's head, and the martial artist simply continued onward like nothing was wrong.

"Animals can sense tension in people, and it gets 'em all excited," Ranma continued explaining, ignoring the slight tickling sensation within his hair as the spider tried to steady itself. "If you're calm, they'll stay calm too. If you're scared, then they'll get scared, and a lot of animals tend to fight when they freak out."

"Okay... fair enough..." Tsukune murmured, trying to focus on the spider on top of Ranma to avoid looking around. 'It's not THAT big... I've seen bigger in pet shops. And it's not attacking Ranma at all, so how bad could it be?'

"That kinda empathy is what I like about animals, really," Ranma went on to explain as he picked his way through some patches of bone-dry, leafless bushes. "It'd be nice if people were that easy to deal with. Or monsters, for that matter."

"Ah. Point." Tsukune thought back to the times in which he had approached his classmates amiably and had been rewarded with violence. "So... what was it, exactly, that you were looking for out here?"

"Well, you know how I'm training all these spiders to keep away all the cats?" Ranma asked as he hopped up onto a branch about eight feet over his head and then looked around.

"No, I didn't know that. You never told me that. Why would you do that?" Tsukune deadpanned.

"Not important. Anyway, they do the job as far as normal cats go, but what about cat monsters? What if someone like Miss Nekonome comes after me?" Ranma hopped down from the dead tree, the spider upon his head clinging tightly to keep from flying off.

Tsukune was silent for several seconds. "I have no idea. What WOULD happen if Miss Nekonome comes after you?"

Ranma shuddered, and the spider atop his head hissed at the sudden agitation. "Never mind that. The important thing is that it never happens."

"Okay, fine. I don't know what's so scary about Miss Nekonome, but you seem to know what you're doing," Tsukune admitted. "But that still doesn't explain what we're doing out here, exactly."

"Right, right," Ranma mumbled, turning around toward the younger human. "Have you heard the rumors across school?"

"Which ones?" Tsukune asked. "The ones about all of class 2-C being held hostage in Professor Richard's 'Orphan Club'? Or the ones about Professor Jadeite putting together a field trip to Juuban with all of the most violent monsters from the different classes? And then there are the ones about a transfer student-"

"No, no. Stop," Ranma said suddenly. "And remind me later to take care of that thing with Richard. But no, I was talking about the ones about the tremendous spider that's been crawling around the dorms."

Tsukune stopped dead in his tracks. "Uh... HOW tremendous, exactly?"

"Hard to tell with rumors," Ranma admitted, "but I have it pinned down to somewhere between car-sized and small house."

"And... you want to do WHAT with this thing?" Tsukune asked, droplets of sweat crawling down his forehead.

"The same thing I do with the little ones," Ranma said simply as he considered the question. "Well, that's the plan, anyway. Really though, I'll probably have to kick some sense into the damn thing before it'll listen to me. That seems to be the way the bigger freaks work."

"Ah. I see," Tsukune mumbled, looking very nonplussed. "Why the enormous spider? Isn't there any other way to deal with... well... big cats?" Really, the entire situation seemed ridiculous to Tsukune. As it was, he was only able to take Ranma's concerns seriously because the older boy was so much more experienced with fighting and dealing with the supernatural.

"Uh huh, right," Ranma said sarcastically as he turned around, crossing his arms over his chest. "And what else around here can I possibly use to get rid of giant cats?"

"WOOF! WOOF!"

Tsukune nearly jumped in surprise and Ranma casually glanced backward over his shoulder at the sound of a roaring bark. Stepping through some dead bushes some distance away, the dry branches burning down to cinders in seconds, was a giant canine nearly eight feet in length and almost a match for Tsukune in height. Its fur was an ashen black at the roots, but turned red and then fiery orange as it reached the tips, and a constant cloud of embers and hissing smoke whirled about the creature.

Ranma and Tsukune stared as the burning canine sniffed about in the distance, only visible to them through the dim light and thick (if not lush) foliage thanks to its size and the considerable amount of light it was generating.

"So... can I go back to our room now?" Tsukune asked, feeling his earlier nervousness return.

"Don't wait up for me," Ranma answered, carefully picking the tarantula off of his head and putting it aside before creeping forward through the dead forest.

Kouma the hellhound growled fiercely as he sniffed the ground uselessly, unable to pick up the scent he was following. Releasing a snort that scorched the ground with a small burst of flames, he picked his head up to once again scan the treetops for his quarry.

"Filthy fox! When I get a hold of you, not even the Enforcers will stop me from rending you apart!" the hound roared, glancing back and forth as a small firestorm began whirling around it.

"Eh? It can talk?"

Kouma started in surprise, and then whirled around, his breath hot in preparation to attack.

It relented instantly upon seeing a stranger in human form, however.

"Grrrr... don't sneak up on me, idiot!" The hellhound sniffed the air for a moment, his eyes narrowing. "You're definitely not her. Have you seen the kitsune around here?"

"Nope. Never seen any kitsune monsters before," Ranma said, rubbing his chin as he approached the hellhound, looking him over critically.

"I figured as much. Then hurry up and get lost. I'm... uh... what are you doing?" the massive dog asked as the pigtailed boy dropped into a crouch right in front of him, staring closely at his mouth.

"Yeah, you'll do just fine," Ranma said to himself before getting to his feet again and then patting the hellhound on the head. "Hey boy! You have an owner yet?"

A vein popped up on Kouma's head. "My name is Gamaroshi Kouma, not 'boy'."

"Oh. So does that mean you do have an owner? I don't see a collar..." Ranma asked, looking disappointed.

Two more veins popped up, and Kouma's lips rose to better show his teeth. "I'm one of your classmates, dumbass."

Ranma stared for several moments. "... So?"

Fwoom! The martial artist yelped as a wave of hot ash seemed to burst forth from Kouma's body, forcing him to hop away as a fiery aura built around the angry hellhound.

"Don't screw with me! You wanna die, Saotome?" Kouma snarled.

Ranma blew on his hand briefly, and then shifted into a fighting stance. "Hey. You're in the fight club, aren't you?"

Kouma winced, and his ears went flat against his head. "Yeah, I am. Though thanks to you, I had to take two days off while they put my leg back together."

"Yeah, sorry about that," the pigtailed boy mumbled unconvincingly as he started shifting around the blazing canine. "Just thought I'd recognized that power before. But still, you know you can't really beat me, don't you?"

"If I let a little thing like that stop me, I'll be a small fry forever, won't I?" Kouma said, embers leaking from his mouth as he started circling Ranma in turn.

"Ha! Nice one!" Ranma cheered, breaking into a smile. "You're all right! After I beat you, you have to be my dog, okay?"

Another burst of flame signaled Kouma's annoyance. "Like hell I will! Burn, moron!" he roared, releasing a fireball from his mouth.

"Hi everyone!" cheered Shizuka Nekonome, her smile looking as cheerful as ever. "Today I'm here to tell you all about hellhounds!"

She tapped a pointer against the chalkboard, which showed several outlines of different breeds of dogs.

"Hellhounds are a species of demonic canines that are said to serve as guards in the netherworld! Although rather uncommon, hellhounds come in a variety of breeds, just like normal dogs! From imp terriers to Devil Bernards, to the famous Malbolgean shepherd, hellhounds range in size from as small as a melon to as large as an SUV, and there are even short-haired types for those with allergy concerns!"

Then the youkai teacher frowned. "Not that hellhounds make good pets, though. Although they take to their jobs with gusto, these monsters are usually very proud and short-tempered. Getting them to accept a master is hard, and even then the beasts' tempers tend to get the better of them."

Shizuka then pointed to several diagrams of dogs blowing out gouts of flame next to several thermometers scrawled in chalk. "Combat-wise, hellhounds naturally have a strong fire affinity. All but immune to extreme heat themselves, they spit fireballs at distant enemies, breath streams of flame at short range, and can raise the surrounding temperature significantly by releasing ash from their coats. Their mundane strength varies depending on the size of the hound, but the larger ones have no problem tearing apart foes with their powerful jaws, and hellhound saliva is as hot as molten lead."

The nekomata coughed into her hand. "That said, aside from brutish strength and having a natural flamethrower, hellhounds can otherwise be pretty clumsy, and their short temper means that they tend to fall for clever monsters' tricks and traps. Even so, it's best not to deal with them unless one absolutely has to."

Shizuka smiled brightly as she waved. "That's all I have to say! See you next time!"

"Whoa! WHOA!" Ranma shouted, leaping out of the way and landing on a tree branch before the projectile burst violently on the ground, lighting a swath of trees on fire. "Hey! Trying to blast me is one thing, but you're gonna burn down the whole forest!"

"What do I care?" Kouma demanded, white-hot droplets of saliva dripping from his maw. "Creepy place isn't much to look at anyway. Might as well use it for a BARBEQUE!" he barked, spitting another fireball into the air.

Ranma leaned backward as the orb of writhing flame streaked past him, searing his ear slightly before it burst apart in the air in a harmless display of blossoming fire. "Yeesh. With aim that bad, I don't think I can even use you to get rid of cats."

"Wh-What did you say?" Kouma snarled, his fur standing on end as black smoke blasted from his nostrils.

"I said I've seen newborn KITTENS scarier than you!" Ranma taunted (honestly), sticking out his tongue as he hopped backward from tree to tree.

With a feral roar that caused the ground beneath him to buckle and crack beneath thin seams of magma seeping from his feet, the hellhound gave chase to its new target, its eyes glowing a furious orange.

That evening saw Yukari practically barricaded in a corner of the library, her chosen table piled high with books about curses, hexes, and various arcane lore. Most the rest of the library was dark and barren - partly because it was late at night, and partly because the students had as much penchant for actually studying as they did for vegetarianism - but those few individuals that happened to be in the room made sure to steer clear of the young freshman, well aware of the havoc that a witch could wreak with a target and a little magical study.

"Too tame..." Yukari mumbled as she flipped through one of the less advanced curse compendiums. "Too permanent... too weak... too much risk of backfire..."

With a contemptuous snort, she tossed the tome aside and then picked up the next one. "Let's see... hm? Polymorph... interesting... Jusenkyou, huh? But I'd have to go through mail order, and I don't want to wait... what else is there... tattoos that effect martial arts performance could work, but I'd have to spend a lot of time practicing my calligraphy for just a prank..."

Quickly skimming the rest of the book and finding that it mostly contained different forms of glorified love potions, Yukari chalked up R. Takahashi's book of Obnoxious Magical Plot Devices as a loss and put it aside.

"There's got to be a spell or curse here that's both affordable to perform and reasonable enough in scope that I won't kill anyone," the young witch mumbled to herself as she took up the next tome.

For all her anger and frustration toward Ranma, she had to admit that, for a monster, the pigtailed boy wasn't a bad person by any stretch. He was certainly violent, especially compared to Tsukune and Moka (who practically qualified for sainthood by monster standards) but he actively avoided harming weak people and tried not to cause trouble where it wasn't wanted. He was still a blight unto Moka's presence, a sin that Yukari could not forgive, but the young witch wasn't prepared to kill or cripple the martial artist for his insolence.

"Hmmm... this could work," she mumbled to herself as she looked over the ingredient list for a luck curse. "Bat wings... lizard's tongue... devil's spade?" She frowned at the last item as she read the description. "Huh. Well, the effects are about right... though I wonder why it's a conjuration spell."

She continued reading about the spells effects, and frowned as she turned the page and found only the name of the next curse in the book. "Huh. That's it? Well, I suppose it'll do. But where am I going to find a devil's spade?" Yukari wondered aloud, rubbing her chin. "I doubt it has to be from a real devil, but still, the monsters I know with that kind of tail are..."

Yukari's eyes narrowed.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Yukari waited patiently in the main hallway as shuffling noises came from the other side of the dorm room door, and twenty seconds later, the door opened.

Kurumu, dressed in a sheer negligee, white panties, and nothing else, stared down at Yukari with a mix of confusion and disappointment evident in her features. "Eh? What do you want, Sendo?"

"I had a quick question about succubae, and you were the obvious person to ask," Yukari said simply, shrugging her shoulders. "So tell me: do succubae tails grow back if cut off?"

Kurumu was silent for many seconds before she nodded. "I... think so... why?"

"No reason," Yukari said quickly. "Hey, why is Tsukune climbing in through your window?"

"What? Really?" Kurumu squealed, whirling around as her tail popped out, lifting the hem of her sleepwear.

Yukari's eyes glinted dangerously as she slid a pair of pruning shears out from under her hat.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!"

Ranma and Kouma both flinched as a feminine cry of pain split the air.

"The hell was that?" Kouma asked, his ears flattening down over his head.

"Dunno. Coulda been Tsukune, but it sounds like it's from farther away," Ranma said, hopping down from the tree he was in and staring off toward the dorms.

"Aono? That sounded like a girl's scream, though," Kouma countered.

Ranma nodded. "Yeah, I know. Little guy really needs to toughen up a little."

The hellhound stared wordlessly at the pigtailed boy for several seconds.

And then, at some unspoken signal, they both recalled that they were supposed to be fighting.

Fwoosh! A long tongue of flame threatened to engulf Ranma as he back flipped across the ground, eventually landing in a crouch and then launching himself backwards into the air.

"You're not getting away!" Kouma snarled, embers bursting from his maw with every gasping breath. "Nobody treats me like a pet and gets away with it!"

"First time for everything!" Ranma said cheerfully as he grabbed onto a branch and then vaulted away through the treetops, the hellhound in pursuit.


Within moments the dead forest began to thin out significantly, and Ranma smirked as he saw land give way to the ocean off in the distance.

'With lots of cover, and surrounded by dry, flammable wood, the mutt's actually kind of dangerous. Out in the open, though, this guy's no match for me!'

Rebounding off of a splintered tree trunk that exploded into a conflagration a second later, Ranma landed lightly just a few meters from the edge of a rocky cliff, spending a long, dramatic moment to stare out at the ocean.

On his left side, the cliff lowered itself down to form an ugly beach dominated by jagged rocks and multiple signs that warned against swimming, fishing, and walking around at night arm-in-arm with a lover to engage in premarital relations. On the right was a tall bluff that stuck out above the roiling sea, and Ranma idly noticed that there was someone sitting at the very top of it, staring out at the water. Not important.

"Well, well. Looks like the monkey ran out of trees to swing from," Kouma growled, stepping out of the dry bushes that burned to cinders around him. "Nowhere left to run, punk."


Startled out of its quiet contemplation, the figure on the bluff turned to observe the showdown occurring nearby.


"I guess it's about time I dealt with you seriously," Ranma mumbled, cracking his neck casually as he stared expressionlessly at the massive hellhound.

"Aw, shut up and burn!" Kouma snarled, taking a deep breath to spit another stream of fire.

Thwack! Faster than the eye could see, Ranma crossed the distance to the hellhound and snapped a kick into the canine's exposed throat, causing a shower of embers to spray from between Kouma's teeth as he reflexively coughed in response.

"Gack! Kugh!" Black smoke poured from Kouma's mouth as he started hacking up ashes, and Ranma winced and stepped back as flecks of saliva landed on him, searing his skin and clothes.

A moment later the hellhound swiped at Ranma clumsily with his paw, and the martial artist leapt up and then flipped around in the air to land knee-first right between Kouma's shoulder blades.

"GRAAARGH!" the hellhound roared in fury as he pushed himself up on his hind legs, throwing the pigtailed boy off of him. "I'm gonna incinerate you, bastard!"

"Try it, mutt!" Ranma taunted, backing away as the ambient temperature around Kouma jumped several more degrees as the canine's fur stood on end and glowed brighter.

"RAAAAUGH!" with a furious snarl, Kouma spat out a burst of fireballs, the projectiles whirling about each other and then spreading out, blanketing the entire area with fiery explosions.

"Ha! Gotcha mad, did I?" Ranma taunted some more, dodging to the side as one of the scattered projectiles actually came close to hitting him. 'I can tell he's getting tired. Little bit more and he should... wait...'

With a thick belch of black smoke and glowing embers, Kouma sent a particularly large fireball sailing into the air, and Ranma took a split second to take note of its trajectory before deciding to dash under it and launch another assault against his foe.

Or at least, that was the plan until he heard a startled shriek from behind him. "YEEEEK! No!"

Ranma's heart seized up as he glanced behind him, and he cursed himself silently as he realized that the fight had apparently wandered in the general direction of the bluff he had noted earlier. The person who had been sitting there minding their own business apparently hadn't left at the first sign of widespread collateral damage, and even now had frozen in terror as hot, fiery death descended from the sky.

KABOOOM!!


Kouma panted wearily as he watched his enemy vanish within a maelstrom of fire, and the hellhound cringed as a panicked scream was drowned out from the roar as the explosion swallowed the bluff.

'Aw, crap. I didn't mean to actually kill him, much less some random bystander,' he thought abashedly as he continued gasping for breath, his lungs burning (no pun intended). 'When fight club starts up again, I'm definitely gonna have to talk to Miss Wildman about controlling my energy levels.'

The flames began to die down, and Kouma trotted forward reluctantly into the pit of ashes that remained of the bluff, sniffing at the blackened ground.

'Huh. Odd. They're not here?' the hellhound wondered, glancing about at the scorched earth. 'No way... did I even incinerate their bones?'

Somehow, Kouma doubted it. Ranma Saotome was supposed to be the rising star of the freshman class, and had even recently caught the attention of the Enforcers and the monstrels. He was a mysterious wild card, a powerful fighter who had managed to keep his real identity a secret and fought at low power. Surely someone like that wouldn't be done in by a lucky fireball, would he?

"Up you go!" Kouma perked up as he heard Ranma's voice come from the edge of the bluff, and he blew out a dusty sigh of relief as the unnoticed student from before was pushed up onto firm, solid ground.

It was some girl he'd never seen before, boasting unkempt, shoulder-length purple hair and an outfit was pretty far from the standard uniform on campus. A long-sleeved blouse made up her top, while a short, dark skirt gave way to long, striped socks.

The girl seemed absolutely dumbfounded at the moment, though her eyes hardened slightly when she caught sight of the hellhound standing in the midst of the blast crater he had made. Curling her lip back, Kouma could see her teeth clenching around the stick of a lollipop that had remained securely in her mouth despite the screaming and manhandling she had just suffered through.

"Hmph. So you're alive," the hellhound muttered, trying to sound as indifferent as possible as he watched Ranma - who had obviously caught much more of the fireball than the girl and was badly scorched as a result - climb up onto the bluff himself. "Let that be a lesson to you: don't trifle wi-"

Bwack! Kouma let out a pained whimper as Ranma once again crossed the distance between them seemingly in an instant, sending a haymaker straight into the hellhound's sensitive nose and causing him to recoil and lower his head.

"Bad dog," Ranma muttered humorlessly as he stepped forward and raised up his arm.

Crack! Kouma's eyes bugged out as Ranma's elbow slammed straight down onto his head, and his vision began to swim as the pain amplified the sense of exhaustion he was suffering from.

"Now, HEEL!" Ranma snapped as he pulled back one of the canine's forelegs with one hand while shoving its head down with the other, slamming Kouma's snout into the ground with enough force to blow out a wave of hot ash over the edge of the bluff.


Ranma started dusting off his hands as Kouma lay twitching in the dirt, his flesh still stinging from the fireball. "Hey, are you all right?"

The girl from before blinked in surprise, realizing belatedly that he was talking to her. "Uh... y-yes. Thank you..."

"No need for thanks; I should have been more careful about leading his shots if there were innocent people around," he murmured regrettably. "Name's Saotome Ranma. You?"

"Sh-Shirayuki Mizore," the girl stuttered, staring up at him. 'He's Ranma Saotome? I heard about him from the school newspapers... but they never showed a picture... or explained how handsome he was.' A flush came over her cheeks as she continued staring.

Ranma waved briefly as he stepped away, grabbing onto Kouma's tail. "Well, guess I'll see ya around, Mizore. Again, sorry you almost got roasted." With that, the pigtailed boy started dragging the hellhound back toward the dorms, happily oblivious to the love struck gaze burning into his back.

The next morning proved to be quite difficult for many students of Youkai Academy, and not just those still trapped in the school basement waiting helplessly while Richard went out at night making them full-fledged members of his club.

Kurumu and Yukari both awoke with severe injuries; the former had already made plans to see nurse Madaraki to have her tail regenerated from the swollen stump that Yukari had reduced it to, while the latter had simply bandaged up the many (deserved) lacerations on her face and arms and stoically went about preparing for a magic ceremony.

Ranma had his own share of wounds to recover from, but was used to such things. A little extra rest would see the numerous first-degree burns reduced to a mere tan over his skin.

Tsukune, on the other hand, was unscathed, but had other concerns upon waking up.

"Um... not to be rude or anything," the timid human began, his grip tightening on his blanket as he sat up in bed, "but who are you, and why are you in my room?"

The individual in question also seemed to be having an unpleasant morning, on account of being covered in dirt and bruises. He was a boy about Ranma's size, with spiky black hair and bushy eyebrows that crested over harsh red eyes.

The stranger stared at Tsukune wordlessly, as if judging the boy. "I'm Gamaroshi Kouma. I'm in your room because your idiot roommate beat me unconscious and dragged me here last night."

"Ah. So... you would be that giant dog, then?" Tsukune asked cautiously, glancing about for anything fireproof that he could use as a shield if necessary.

"Yeah, that's me. Giant dog," Kouma growled.

"W-Well, it's nice to meet you. I'm Aono Tsukune," Tsukune offered, trying to calm himself as he leaned out of bed and offered his hand.

Kouma made no move to take it.

"Uh... shake?" Tsukune asked half-jokingly.

The hapless human squeaked painfully as Kouma suddenly lunged forward and grabbed him by the front of his pajamas, hauling him up in the air.

"Don't treat me like an animal, scumbag!" the hellhound snarled, his eyes glowing. "I'm no one's pet!"

"Wait! I'm sorry! It's a gesture of respect and friendship, I swear!" Tsukune said desperately, waving his arms.

"And here's a gesture of displeasure and anger," Kouma said, rearing a fist back.

Crack! Both Tsukune and Kouma fell as a foot suddenly came down hard onto Kouma's head, staggering him and causing him to let go of his helpless victim.

"Yawn... oi... this has to be some kind of record, saving you first thing in the morning," Ranma said sleepily as he picked up Kouma by the foot and then hoisted the hellhound into the air upside-down. "Oi, mutt, what's your problem?"

"My NAME is Kouma!" Kouma growled.

Ranma spent a few seconds in silence. "And that's your problem?"

"No!"

"Well, then we're not getting anywhere with this conversation, are we?" Ranma asked, dropping the hellhound painfully onto his head. "Tsukune, you all right?"

"I'm fine," the younger human mumbled while inspecting his stretched out pajama-top. "So why did you bring this person here?"

"He's my new guard dog!" Ranma said happily, planting his fists on his hips.

"I am NOT your dog!" Kouma snarled, scrambling to his feet.

Ranma looked confused. "But I beat you last night, fair and square! That was the deal!"

"What deal? I didn't agree to anything!" Kouma shouted at the pigtailed boy. "I fought you because you were pissing me off, that's all! And you made me lose track of that damn fox!"

Ranma scratched his head as he thought over last night's encounter. It was true that he had simply declared the terms of the battle himself and then jumped into the fight, but that was what people had always done to him, and yet he had always been expected to live up to his opponents' ridiculous demands.

'Man, I guess this is what I get for acting like those morons back home. Who knew that didn't work on other people?'

"Hey, Ranma? Uh... I'm gonna go wash up, if it's all right..." Tsukune said awkwardly, not wanting to leave this matter unresolved but also wanting to make it to class on time and adequately clean.

"Yeah, go ahead," Ranma mumbled as he rubbed his chin.

Finally, he shrugged his shoulders. "Well, if you won't be my guard dog, then what WILL you do? I mean, I gave up my whole search last night just to bring you here."

Kouma balled his hands into fists as his teeth clenched. "You jumped me in the forest and then beat me unconscious! And you want a reward for that?"

Ranma raised an eyebrow. "What, is that strange? I thought monsters did that kind of stuff all the time."

"Hellhounds are different!" Kouma insisted, jabbing a thumb into his chest. "We're beings of order, not chaos! If you want me to acknowledge you, you're going to have prove your integrity and strength of spirit, not just your martial power!"

Ranma blinked. "How about saving that chick on the bluff when you almost blasted her last night?"

There was a long, uncomfortable silence after Ranma's question, broken only by the sound of the shower turning on in the bathroom.

"Well... uh... why do you want a guard, anyway?" Kouma mumbled, scratching the back of his head as he tried not to make eye contact with the other boy. "And why me? I'm sure there are plenty of other monsters that would be willing to be your lackey."

Ranma crossed his arms over his chest as he squatted on his bed, his expression deadly serious. "I need someone to get rid of cats."

"Cats?" Kouma echoed.

"Cats," Ranma confirmed.

"Why cats?"

Ranma took a deep breath to fortify his composure, preparing to delve deep into the topic of his most feared and hated enemy. "Cats are beings of pure evil made flesh. Sadistic, petty, self-centered, arrogant, hateful, cruel beasts who love nothing more than to see others suffer. And that's just the little ones. I've only met one kind of cat monster before - some kind of ghost cat thing - but that was plenty. I want someone to keep the blasted things away from me."

Kouma spent several long seconds digesting the tirade, and then his lips slowly grew into a smirk. "So... what you're saying is... you're afraid of cats."

Ranma twitched. "Wh-What? No! No, that's ridiculous! As if I could be afraid of something like that!" he said unconvincingly, his skin crawling.

"Yes. 'As if'." Kouma's smirk broke into an all-out grin. "Just imagine, Ranma Saotome, top brawler of the freshman class, scared of itty bitty kitty cats! Ha!"

"H-Hey! Watch it, jerk!" Ranma growled, his teeth clenching. "I sure as hell 'aint afraid of fire-breathing mutts, so shut up!"

The hellhound snorted. "Why should I take you seriously? Like I'm going to fear anyone who'd freak out at the sound of a kitten!"

Seeing the playful look on Kouma's face, Ranma paled slightly. "Whoa. Wait. I'm warning you, don't-"

"Mreow!" Kouma mewed mockingly, holding up his fists in imitation of a cat's pawing.

"Hssss!"

The hellhound was quite surprised as something rather large and hairy fell down on top of his head from the ceiling at the same time two more somethings grabbed onto each of his legs. This surprise gave way to panic as his body was punctured by three pairs of needle-like fangs.

"Gah! Aargh! Get 'em off me! Get 'em off!"

Ranma winced as Kouma ran around in circles in his bedroom, flailing helplessly as the giant spiders flooded his veins with poison. "Hey, I warned you..."

Crash! The pigtailed boy cringed as Kouma jumped through the window while screaming, dislodging the spiders as he rolled along the ground and then scrambled away, still screaming.


Ranma sighed as he stared at the shattered glass, watching as the three arachnids that had attacked slowly crawled back into the room, their target having escaped. "Man... what a waste of an evening. And now there's gonna be a draft in here. Knew I shoulda stuck to spiders..."

Knock! Knock! Knock! Moka retracted her hand after knocking on Yukari's door, fretting silently as she waited for the young witch to respond.

'She was really upset with Ranma when I saw her last night... I hope she's okay.'

"Moka? Is that you? You can come in," Yukari called from the other side of the door. "Forgive me, but the somatic requirements of this ritual require me to remain immobile for now."

Frowning slightly, Moka pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The interior of Yukari's room, which had been cleaned to impeccable standards as soon as the giant spiders had left, was now aglow with a myriad of colors all originating from a shimmering portal of ethereal light slowly rotating above Yukari's head.

"Uh... Yukari, what is-" Moka was about to ask what was going on, but the magical disturbance in the room was forgotten as soon as she noticed the bandages all over the young witch's face. "Yukari! What happened? Did Ranma do that to you?"

Yukari almost sighed at Moka's knee-jerk reaction. "Moka, Ranma is far from the only one who might seek to inflict harm upon me; there's no need to accuse him every time something goes awry." Then she cleared her throat as she continued grinding away at some mixture with a mortar and pestle. "As it so happens, these wounds were... well... I would call them a fair price to pay, honestly." As selfish and reckless as Yukari could be sometimes, even she didn't expect she could harvest body parts from living and unwilling donors without suffering retribution. Frankly, she was just glad she had escaped with all her extremities intact.

Moka sighed wearily. "I wish you wouldn't get into trouble like that, Yukari. What if something serious happened to you?"

"It's indeed unfortunate that things have escalated this far," Yukari began, though the smirk on her face indicated that she didn't find things all that unfortunate, "but at this point I have little choice but to go all-out if I'm to put Saotome in his place. And if I wasn't willing to risk a few scratches for the chance to fully humiliate him, what kind of witch would I be?"

Moka glanced doubtfully at the shimmering portal. "So... what is this, exactly?"

"A generic luck curse," Yukari said as she finished grinding the ingredients and poured the contents of a small crystal bottle into the mix. It promptly began to fizzle noisily. "A bit uncreative, I suppose, but its potency is guaranteed!"

Without further delay, Yukari tossed the mixture up into the dancing lights, and Moka flinched away as a ghastly howl filled the room as the light turned to ambient darkness, an insidious shadow that seemed to swallow the room despite the dim sunlight filtering in through the open windows.

Yukari cleared her throat as she removed a Polaroid picture of Ranma from within her cape and placed it down under the coruscating pitch. "Here is the target, here is the prey; to cast out and humble with little delay! Whether rain or wind, mud or rock, shave precious hours from his clock! Fire and salt, dust and ash, the curse is complete, now kick his ass!"

Moka sweatdropped heavily at the incantation, but couldn't deny its effectiveness as a tendril of shadow seeped from the darkness and reach down to touch the photograph, causing it to disintegrate instantly.

Within a few seconds, the construct of shadow had disintegrated, and the light levels returned to normal.

"Uh... so... shaving hours from his clock? What does that mean?" Moka asked, wanting to break the awkward silence as Yukari started gathering up the remnants of her ritual.

"Normally it's a metaphor for cutting a life short," Yukari explained as she took out a dustpan and her witch's wand, "but given the lesser severity of the curse, I assume it's to be taken literally, as in consuming hours of his time as he deals with the effects." With a snap of the wand, a broom in the corner floated over to the young witch and started sweeping the dust on the floor into the dustpan.

"Ah. I... see," the vampiress mumbled, unsure as to how she felt about this newest turn of events. The childish pranks that Yukari and Ranma had been throwing at each other were quite bad enough in her opinion, but actually cursing someone was...

Well, she had no idea how bad it was, really. She had never dealt with or seen curses herself until seeing Ranma change gender, but from that instance alone she got the distinct feeling that such powers shouldn't be cast about lightly.

With a flick of her wrist, Yukari floated the dustpan over to the trash and emptied it. "Now all that's left is to watch as Ranma's fate cuts him down to size!" the young witch said cheerfully, packing up the spell book and placing it in her book bag. "Come on Moka! Let's get to class!"

Ranma shuddered suddenly as he felt a chill creep down his back.

"Ranma? You okay?" Tsukune asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Ranma mumbled, scratching the back of his head. "Think I just got cursed again, though."

Tsukune blinked. "What? What do you mean?"

"When you've been hit with as much magical crap as I have, you start to get a feeling for it," the pigtailed boy mumbled, looking around. "It's like a seventh sense."

"You mean a sixth sense."

"No, I got my sixth sense when I was ten," Ranma explained to the increasingly confused Tsukune. "This is different. Anyway, I'm gonna be extra careful not to get wet just in case my Jusenkyou curse got locked again."

"Locked. Again." Tsukune repeated, not bothering to put the proper amount of alarm and confusion in his voice. By now it was implied.

Ranma nodded, rolling his eyes. "Yeah. It happens every once in a while. Some moron decides to spite me and comes up with some pressure point or magical ladle or SOMETHING to stick me as a girl until I find the cure."

"That's..." Tsukune hesitated. "Uh... what's that like?"

Ranma stopped in the hallway and took a moment to gaze forlornly out the window. "Tsukune, we should be grateful for what we've been given when we're born."

'What's that supposed to mean?' the younger boy asked as he waited for his friend to come back to the conversation. Several seconds later though, Ranma was still peering outside, although his expression was less melodramatic and more concerned.

"Hey... what's that?" Ranma asked, leaning closer to the window as he saw a dark shape descending through the air.

CRASH!


A few seconds after the unexpected impact, Tsukune slowly cracked an eye open as he huddled on the floor, his arms over his head.

"Oi, what now?" Ranma mumbled, standing over the younger human as he glared at the figure in the middle of the room. "It's not even homeroom and I already have my second fight of the day?"

A snort came from the largish creature that had broken into the hall, and Tsukune's expression darkened as all around him the other students ran for cover. Standing in the middle of the hall was a creature with wings and a tail whose skin seemed to be covered in obsidian scales. Twin horns curved over its ears, and both its heavy legs and arms ended in thick talons. The creature wasn't especially enormous - Saizo had been much bigger - but still dwarfed the humans at six feet in height, to say nothing of its wings that nearly doubled its stature.

"W-Wait! That armband!" Tsukune turned as he heard someone unfamiliar shout in panic.

"An Enforcer? Seriously?"

"Oh man, what did Saotome do to piss them off?"


"SILENCE!" the winged monster shouted, causing the spectators to either stop talking or scurry away from the scene. Then it pointed at Ranma. "Saotome! I've come for you!"

"Yeah, I figured," Ranma mumbled, cracking his neck to either side. "I mean, either that or you're here to pick on Tsukune, and either way I'll be kicking your ass. So whaddya want?"

"I think you know why I'm here," the Enforcer said smugly, his beaked mouth curving into a smirk. "Or can it be that you don't recognize me in this form? Very well! It's only fair for a criminal to know the name of his judge, is it not? My name is Keisu Haruo!"

Ranma grit his teeth as he moved into a combat stance. "I see. And here I thought you'd learned your lesson back at the bus stop. But fine, I can-"

"No, no," Tsukune suddenly butted in, tapping Ranma on the back, "that was Saizo, not Haruo."

Ranma blinked. "Oh, right. So is this that Explorer's Club guy I beat up?"

"Maybe... I never got his name," Tsukune considered.

A vein popped up on Haruo's head. "I'm not in the Explorer's Club! Only an idiot would join a club run by Jadeite!"

"Hey! They're not all idiots! Some of 'em are just wimps!" Ranma countered angrily as Tsukune sighed in defeat. "And anyway, I still don't remember who you are."

Haruo's eyebrow twitched as he stood up straight, having held a combat stance long enough that he was starting to get cramps. "You really don't remember? You made a spider attack me!"

Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Wait, I thought you were a hellhound."

"No, Ranma, that's Gamaroshi, not Keisu," Tsukune corrected with no small measure of discomfort, "and what's this about the spiders attacking people? I thought they were trained."

"They are," Ranma insisted, turning around fully to speak to his roommate. "That's actually part of the training, but... look, just don't make any cat noises and you'll be fine."

"What IS it with you and cats?" the younger boy asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"STOP IGNORING ME!!" Haruo roared, causing the two humans to wince at the volume and reluctantly turn back to the enraged monster. "That's enough! Whether or not you remember, I'm taking you in!"

Then the black gargoyle spread his wings and jumped up, claws slashing forward as he propelled himself toward Ranma through the air. "In a body bag, that is!"

"Hello again everyone! It sure has been busy this chapter, hasn't it?" Shizuka beamed happily. "This time, we're going to talk about gargoyles!"

Laid on the blackboard was an outline of Haruo's monster form with circles around the wings and arrows pointing to its hands and feet.

"Gargoyles can be traced all the way back to ancient Egypt, but only came to prominence in Europe during medieval times when artistic architecture became commonplace. Gargoyles vary more than other monsters in physiology, but all varieties have rock-like skin and are bipedal, and the vast majority has wings."

Shizuka pointed to a second sketch which had Haruo's outline standing on top of a clock tower. "Gargoyles have adapted a 'stone form' in which their body hardens further and takes on all the apparent characteristics of a simple statue. This allows them to inhabit even heavily populated human settlements without being discovered. It is only recently that gargoyles have started taking on human form and tried living among humans properly, and opinions are split over whether or not the current state of affairs is an improvement."

Then she frowned. "Despite what certain human cartoons have to say on the topic, a gargoyle's stone form isn't a debilitating condition caused by sunlight, but a natural defense mechanism that they can activate at will. However, gargoyles have excellent night vision and aren't very stealthy creatures when active, so the vast majority are nocturnal."

Shizuka tapped the first diagram again in the chest area. "In battle gargoyles don't have much as far as special abilities, but they have fearsome strength and their skin is rock-hard even when not in statue form. They're also surprisingly agile considering their weight, both in the air and on the ground, and are feared by most other flying monsters. In general gargoyles aren't too aggressive, as sharing living space with humans for centuries has bred out most of the territorial instincts that many other monsters suffer from."

"Still, they DO have the short temper that many other monsters suffer from, so try not to get on their bad side! If you do end up fighting one, you'll find that its body is impervious to all but the strongest attacks. Its wings, however, are surprisingly sensitive, and gargoyles hate being grounded."

With another bright smile, Shizuka bowed. "See you next time!"

Ranma launched to the side to avoid the attack, grabbing Tsukune and hauling him out of harm's way along with him. "Ha ha, very clever. You make that one up yourself or does your grandpa write your lines for you?"

"Ranma! Don't insult him until AFTER you put me down, please!" the younger boy asked, disengaging from his roommate. "Should I tell Miss Nekonome you'll be late?"

Ranma began cracking his knuckles as Haruo snarled and approached cautiously. "Might as well skip the whole class, actually."

"Ranma, you almost never attend homeroom anymore! What if you get held back or something?" Tsukune insisted.

Ranma ducked under a swing of gargoyle claws, and then dove under a following tail sweep before rolling to his feet and slamming an open palm into Haruo's back, staggering the gargoyle. "They already made me a freshman again; what would be the point?"

"Grraaugh!" Haruo whirled about with his wings extended, the tips grazing Ranma's shirt and tearing through it even as it failed to cut flesh. "Shut up and fight, pest!"

"Oh, give it a rest," Ranma mumbled, brushing off his chest before bouncing a few feet away for some extra space. "By the way, for the record, you're one of those Enforcer guys, right? Those so-called 'campus police' officers?"

Another vein popped up on Haruo's horned skull. "I was the one who told you about us, idiot!"

"Yeah, whatever," the pigtailed boy said dismissively before pointing to the large hole in the hallway where a window used to be. "You just destroyed a window and a good section of wall for... what? To attack me? Should you really be destroying the school while you're enforcing the peace?"

Haruo snorted as he lunged forward, swiping with both claws as Ranma ducked. "Collateral damage is sadly inevitable when dealing with dangerous miscreants like yourself!"

Ranma back flipped over another tail sweep, and then bunched up his legs while standing on his hands before shooting his feet upward into a kick that slammed his opponent's head back and sent the gargoyle reeling. "Are you for real? You could have just, you know, walked up to me to arrest me."

"And give you the opportunity to get away?" the gargoyle growled, leaping at Ranma with a double-handed slash that tore a few more strips of cloth from the martial artist's shirt as he evaded. "Do you know how long it took me to track you down?"


Several of the surrounding students sweatdropped at the admission.

"Seriously? Couldn't an Enforcer... I dunno, look up his class schedule or something?"

"It's not like Saotome's hard to find at all."

"He's definitely the most famous freshman, and he tends to stand out."

"Whatever. I'm still getting over the fact that the Enforcers are actually arresting someone rather than trolling for bribes."

"'Trolling'? Did you seriously say that? Dude, not PC!"


Both fighters largely tuned out the comments of the spectators, although Ranma noted with some amusement that his opponent was steadily becoming more and more enraged. "Look, I don't even know why you're fighting me. If you want to arrest me for breaking some stupid rules, fine, I'll go with you."

Haruo snorted noisily as he tried to find an angle of attack that would keep his dexterous foe from dodging. "Don't tell me how to enforce order! I cast judgment upon YOU, miscreant!"

"All right, fine, have it your way," Ranma said tiredly as he sway from side to side, looking bored. "But you're just digging your own grave, here. I mean, you're obviously better at flying than brawling, and yet you're fighting me indoors with a low ceiling? Seriously, there's no way you can wi-"

Crack! Time seemed to stop as Ranma's foot suddenly sunk into the tile flooring, his reflexes failing him completely as one leg sunk through the floor up to his ankle.

Naturally, the pigtailed boy's first reaction was to try and pull his foot out, but he found that despite the middle of the tile being weak enough for his considerably light step to break through it, the rest seemed curiously sturdy, and his efforts to free his leg produced nothing but soft cracking noises and a very satisfied smirk from his opponent.

"There's a lesson to be learned here, I just know it," Ranma mumbled to himself just moments before Haruo's claws tore into his abdomen.


"Ranma!" Tsukune gaped as he watched his roommate go flying into a door as blood spattered across the hallway.

"It's okay... I'm okay..." Ranma mumbled as he slid down onto the floor, wobbling slightly as the door rattled behind him. "Just a lucky break. I've still got thi-"

Once again the pigtailed boy was interrupted, this time by the heavy, reinforced door he had slammed into falling forward onto his back and staggering the martial artist as he fought to stay standing.

Haruo laughed victoriously as he charged forward, curling his wings around his body and plowing into his opponent like a stone wrecking ball. The attack easily smashed aside the door and much of the doorway, and Ranma grunted painfully as he felt his back hit an uneven metal surface that crumpled beneath the force of the impact.

He also felt a great deal of liquid pouring against his back, too... warm liquid, just above room temperature. And the smell was...

Cracking open his eyes, he saw that Haruo was standing over him, glancing about the room in confusion. Trying to ignore the mass of pain that was his torso, Ranma also twisted around to see what he had crashed into.

"Gasoline," the pigtailed boy mumbled, staring at the barrels and smaller canisters arranged rather haphazardly in the supply closet he had been pushed into. The drum he had broken open upon entering was already mostly empty, having covered the floor of the room with fuel.

"Uh... yes. Gasoline," Haruo mumbled, obviously just as confused. "It seems we... well, the school... keeps a gasoline stockpile."

"Why? There's only one vehicle that ever comes here!" Ranma protested as he started to get up.

Haruo snarled and promptly dismissed his surroundings, grabbing the martial artist's shoulders and forcing him down. "Who cares? It's over for you, Saotome!"

Ranma grit his teeth as he grabbed the gargoyle's wrists, mentally going through the list of maneuvers that could see him through this debacle.

"Say, uh... gargoyles don't have fire breath or anything like that, do they?" Ranma asked seriously, looking up at the monster holding him down.

Haruo promptly shook his head. "Even if I did, no way would I use it now."

"Okay, good," Ranma mumbled, his lips curling into a smile. "In that case, it's over for-"

"Hey! Put out that cigarette, man! Class is already starting!" came an unfamiliar voice from outside the room, in the hall.

"All right, geez. What's with all the ruckus around here, anyway? There a fight going on?" A second voice asked as a pair of students passed by the storage room.

That, of course, was of less interest to Ranma and Haruo than the lit cigarette being tossed negligently into the closet without a glance as to where it might land.

As the smoldering embers plummeted to the floor and Haruo mumbled something weakly about littering regulations, Ranma simply sighed. "Okay, now I'm starting to think that something's going on, here."

"Wow. I don't think I've ever had a class cancelled on account of fire before," Moka mumbled as she stared at the ash-covered halls that led to her homeroom.

"Well, you haven't taken any classes with Professor Richard, then," a fire technician countered as he wound up a length of fire hose. "Speaking of which, it's almost time for this morning's inferno. Man..."

As the rather cynical man stalked off with his fellow firefighters in tow, Yukari observed the surroundings with a more analytical eye. True, her homeroom class was in the opposite direction, and was still going on, but she decided that these events were important enough to sacrifice even her homeroom attendance.

"You say the floor actually cracked? Right beneath him?" the young witch asked to a bystander who was loitering around after the fight now that he had no class.

"It was uncanny. Right under him. And he couldn't get free in time at all. And after THAT, the door managed to fall on him even though it's supposed to open inward. I mean, how does that even happen?"

Yukari nodded wordlessly at the description. 'They're definitely the effects of the curse. It worked! Although...' honestly, Yukari thought that encountering such unlikely obstacles in battle was a bit lethal where bad luck was concerned. The curse was supposed to be painful and humiliating, but not fatal.

'But then again...' "Saotome did survive, right?" Yukari asked, trying to sound mostly uninterested.

"Yup. Dunno how, after an explosion like that. Maybe he's a fire-based monster?" the nameless bystander wondered. "Anyway, I think Aono helped him to the infirmary, and I saw the firefighters chuck a scorched statue outside once the fire died down, so I think they'll both be okay."

Yukari nodded and then turned away, promptly dismissing the other student. 'It's a... little harsher than what I had expected, but not too bad. The important thing is that Ranma gets what's coming to him! Saotome brought this on himself!'

Tsukune sighed wearily as he finished washing away the scorch marks off of his face and arms, the water in the sink an ugly gray due to his efforts.

"That whole fight was just bizarre. It looked like Ranma had it all in hand, but what's with that turn of events?" the human mumbled as he wiped off his face.

A moment later he stepped out of the bathroom and into the infirmary waiting room, ready to sit down and await further news of Ranma's condition.

"Tsukune! You came to see me!" Whump!

Instead, he found himself tackled to the ground as an excitable succubus girl dove into his arms.

"Ow! Kurumu? What are you doing here?" Tsukune asked, struggling to get his arms free from his amorous suitor.

Kurumu pouted and let go of Tsukune so that she was merely straddling him rather than pinning him down. "You mean you didn't come here for me? Aw, phooey!"

"I didn't even know you were injured! What happened?" the human asked, his concern momentarily overriding his discomfort at the awkward position.

The succubus' pout turned into a frown. "That brat Sendo hacked off my tail last night, for some reason. Wouldn't tell me why, either." Then she brightened as a long, spade-tipped appendage curled up from under her skirt. "But look! Miss Madaraki did some work on it and now it's as good as new!"

"That's a relief," Tsukune said honestly, slowly crawling out from under Kurumu's shapely thighs. "I'm actually waiting to hear about Ranma's condition. He was just admitted."

"Eh? What's the matter with him? Finally bit off more than he could chew?" Kurumu asked, looking concerned herself as she stood up.

Tsukune shook his head hesitantly. "No... well... I'd almost say it was an accident, but..."


Before Kurumu could ask for any details, Fran Madaraki entered the room from an operations center, with Ranma following behind her.

"Ranma! You're on your feet already?" Tsukune asked, impressed as always with his roommate's resilience.

"Eh, if something like that was enough to take me down, I would have been burnt to a crisp ages ago," the pigtailed boy bragged. Sure enough, his skin looked darkened and slightly oily from the applied ointments, but no other burn damage was evident. He did have bandages wrapped around his stomach which were visible thanks to the tear in his shirt, but Tsukune had to figure that the lacerations had to have been cauterized in the blast anyway.

"Your body seems considerably resistant to extreme heat, Saotome. A fortunate trait, as you seem to suffer a great deal of it," Fran said with an unassuming smile.

Ranma shrugged. "Well, I never gave it too much thought, but a while back I ate this magic pill that was supposed to offer heat resistance... at the time it was just to deal with this stupid pressure point, but maybe there was more to it."

Kurumu turned back toward Tsukune. "Well, it looks like everyone's better! Let's go-" Chomp!

"YOW!" Ranma shouted as the spade on Kurumu's tail split into a mouth of razor-sharp teeth and clamped onto his arm, taking the martial artist completely by surprise. "What the hell is that? Get it off!"

Kurumu paled as she looked back and saw what was happening, and Tsukune's eyes bugged out.

"Kurumu! Your tail! What happened to your tail?"

"I don't know! It's not supposed to do that!"

Fran blinked and cocked her head to one side as she stared critically at the appendage in question.

Ranma growled and grabbed hold of Kurumu's tail, eliciting a yelp from the succubus.

"Ow! Stop that! You're hurting me!" Kurumu complained, grabbing hold of Ranma arm in turn.

"You're hurting me too! What am I supposed to do?" the pigtailed boy asked.

"Oh dear. I didn't expect this," Fran mumbled while rubbing her chin.

"Didn't expect what? What did you do?" Kurumu asked desperately. Ranma had weakened the pressure on her tail considerably, but was still understandably reluctant to let go.

Fran smiled angelically as she explained. "It occurred to me that your tail lacks a defensive mechanism to ward off predators that might take it off, so I made the appropriate adjustments."

"It doesn't need defenses against 'predators'! It's not an issue!" Kurumu protested.

"Then how did the tail get severed in the first place?" Fran asked curiously.

"Sendo is NOT a 'predator'!"

The head nurse shrugged. "Well, be that as it may, it seemed like a prudent method to deal with all manner of hostile organisms. The fact that it attacks clearly non-hostile associates is an unforeseen problem, however."

"Yeah, speaking of which, a little help?" Ranma almost begged, gritting his teeth.

"It will likely release you soon," Fran reassured him. "And I have plenty of antivenom on hand, so you should be conscious again and ready to leave within the hour."

"Antivenom? This thing's poisonous?" Ranma asked, glancing at his arm. "But I don't feel any po-WHOA okay, yeah, there it is." Thud!

Tsukune sweatdropped as his roommate collapsed, and Kurumu released a slightly guilty sigh of relief as her tail was released.

"Miss Madaraki, fix my tail back to normal!" Kurumu demanded hotly. "I don't need it to bite people!"

"Very well, if you're sure," the bio-geneticist said with obvious disappointment. "How about a supercharged adrenal gland or sensory organ?"

"No! I want a tail! An ordinary devil's spade!" the succubus protested. Tsukune, having no part in the debate, opted to drag Ranma back to an infirmary bed.

"Like, a spade from an actual devil? That could be useful, but I don't have any willing donors on hand... Oh! How about a retractable filament blade? It will require a whole new muscle group, but-"

"Stop that!"

Roughly an hour later, Ranma stumbled out of the infirmary and into the main hall, still looking a bit worse for wear but really wanting to get out of the infirmary.

"Hope Kurumu'll be okay," the pigtailed boy mumbled, recalling that the succubus was still being treated and occasionally yelling at the nurse to ensure nothing extra got added to her new tail. After a few minutes of staggering through the hall, his body began to react to the improved circulation and Ranma felt much of the earlier queasiness and weakness vanish.

"Well, now it's just a question of where to go next," the martial artist mumbled. "What time is it anyway? Is it lunch yet?" He was certainly hungry enough to eat, but Ranma was well aware that school lunch schedules rarely coincided adequately with his appetite.

"E-Excuse me... are you... are you Saotome Ranma?"

Ranma turned sharply at the question, quite surprised that someone had managed to get so close to him without his noticing.

The person who had identified him was a petite girl with pointed ears and dark cobalt skin, a color which didn't coincide with any human race that Ranma had ever heard of. She had even darker hair and a heart-shaped face, and although she was rather cute Ranma couldn't recall seeing her before.

"Yeah, I am. Have we met?" Ranma asked, keeping his guard up but trying to sound friendly at the same time.

"No... um... I've seen you before, though," the girl mumbled as she stared at the floor, a dark flush over her cheeks. "That is, I wasn't, like, stalking you or anything! I swear! It's just... you're so popular! And strong... and handsome... and hung like a-"

"So! What can I do for you, anyway?" Ranma asked, wanting to finish the conversation and go about investigating exactly where he was supposed to be at the moment. Also, the girl was giving him an odd vibe.

Well, an odd vibe besides the "schoolgirl crush" vibe that he was picking up. It was obvious enough, but something else about the dark-skinned girl was seriously bothering him.

"W-Well, my name is," the sound that followed could only be described as a hundred rakes being dragged over blackboards while tortured puppies whined in horrific concert in the background, and Ranma very nearly fell comatose from the hellish noise before it stopped mercifully, "but my friends usually call me Tobaki," the girl finished shyly.

"Oh-kay... Tobaki," Ranma said uncertainly. "And?"

"I was w-wondering," Tobaki said quietly, staring at the floor again and drawing a circle with her toe, "if you have a girlfriend yet..."

'Ah. Okay. Well, at least I can nip this in the bud easily enough,' Ranma thought. "Sorry, but I'm spoken for. I'm engaged, you see," he explained bluntly, scratching his head underneath his pigtail.

The dark-skinned girl looked crestfallen for a moment, but then seemed determined as she stared up into Ranma's eyes. "Hey... do you... want to see my true form?"

Ranma expression was perfectly blank. "Uh... isn't that... against the rules or something?"

"I haven't shown it to anyone else," Tobaki pressed, clasping her hands in front of her chest. "Will you be... my first?"

"Uhhhhhh..." Ranma glanced around him, but as the halls seemed to be completely empty save for the two of them, no useful distractions seemed to be forthcoming. "Er... all right, sure. Why not?"

Tobaki promptly opened the door to a conveniently empty classroom and stepped inside, coyly gesturing with a finger for Ranma to follow.

The martial artist hesitated at first, but eventually rationalized that there was no danger and followed the girl into the room, allowing the door to close behind him.

"She's trying to WHAT? But she... it's... ugh... that's disgusting..." Shizuka Nekonome said queasily, her normal cheerful demeanor completely drained as she held her stomach. On the blackboard behind her in shaky, barely readable letters was the word "Yochlol".

"Just... Google it or something," the nekomata mumbled as she staggered away with a hand over her mouth.

Tsukune frowned as he, Moka and Kurumu left the infirmary, the last enormously pleased as her new, perfectly normal tail swished back and forth behind her.

"You're sure you didn't see Ranma leave? What if he was still feeling the effects of the poison?" the human asked nervously, glancing back and forth as if clues to his whereabouts might be lying on the floor.

"Nope. But Miss Madaraki said he'd be fine, didn't she?" Kurumu asked, shrugging. "What are you so worried about Ranma for? He can take care of himself."

"Normally I'd agree with you, but..." Tsukune trailed off as he considered all the times Ranma had thrashed the monsters that had attacked him. "But still, he took a beating in that fight this morning."

"You said that was a fluke, right? Just bad luck!" Kurumu said dismissively, patting down her skirt. "I'm sure something that crazy isn't going to happen again."

Moka winced at that. "Maybe... Maybe we should check up on him. Just in case."

Kurumu raised an eyebrow. "What? You too?" She glanced back and forth between Moka and Tsukune as they gave each other doubtful looks. "What's all the sudden concern for Ranma? What do you think could possibly be happening to him that's so horrible?"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

The trio of students flinched simultaneously as a blood-curdling shriek blasted through the halls, followed a moment later by a vaguely red-and-black streak blasting through the halls at similar speeds.

"What was THAT all about?" Kurumu asked, holding down her skirt against the sudden gust of wind.

"Waaaaaaaaah!"

Before anyone could address Kurumu's question, the trio's attention was seized by a dark elf that none of them had seen before running past them and dashing into the infirmary, sobbing desperately all the while.

"I hate to sound like a broken record, but what was THAT all about?" Kurumu asked while sounding marginally more irritated.

Moka sighed heavily as the weight on her conscience proved too heavy to bear any longer. "Guys... we need to find Yukari."

"Sendo? What does she have to do with this?" Tsukune asked. "Is she setting up Ranma somehow?"

"Yes," Moka said before hesitating, "well... it's something like that, anyway. I don't think she realized exactly how destructive her plan would be, though."

"So this is all a part of their stupid prank war," Tsukune groused, shaking his head. "Moka, do you know where we can find her?"

As Moka nodded, Kurumu scoffed. "I still think you guys are overreacting, here. This is Ranma freaking Saotome we're talking about. Seriously, what's the worst that she can do to him?"

"Huff... huff... huff..." Ranma panted heavily as he stood in the hallway of the next building over, his hands resting on his knees. "Never thought... huff... I'd meet a girl... huff... scarier than Kodachi... huff..."

Taking a moment to wipe off a patch of noxious yellow slime that had gotten on his sleeve, Ranma abolished his most recent emotional trauma and once again set about analyzing his situation.

"There's definitely something going on, here. Even MY luck isn't usually this bad," the pigtailed boy mumbled to himself as he straightened. "Then again, there's not much to be done about it. And it's not like I've had to deal with anything TOO dangerous."

With his confidence instantly restored, Ranma turned around in preparation to go on with his day as normal.

Professor Richard stood alone in the hallway in front of him, the warlock's glowing yellow eyes boring into Ranma's crystalline blue ones.

"How odd. I'm suddenly very, very bored," Richard said, raising his hands as they began to glow with eldritch power no mortal could even comprehend.

Ranma's eye twitched. "Well, so much for that rationalization," he mumbled as he prepared to fight for his life.

It didn't take long for Moka to find Yukari, although it was odd for the vampiress to be in the role of the pursuer rather than the pursued.

Although Moka didn't know of any of Yukari's classes save Jadeite's, she knew where the witch usually ate lunch by herself and figured that Yukari might retreat to the same area if she didn't have anything better to do and didn't want to go all the way back to her room.

As it so happened, Tsukune, Kurumu and Moka were on their way there when Kurumu spotted Yukari crouched behind a windowsill and peeking over it, as if she was spying on someone outside the school building.

"Yukari? What are you doing?" Moka asked, glancing out the window and not seeing anything but a large paved patio and another building across it.

Yukari glanced at the trio approaching her, and then quickly turned back to her vigil. "I'm observing my opponent."

"You mean Ranma? Where?" Tsukune asked, searching the patio. There were a few students loitering out there, but no one he recognized. "I don't see him out there. And what's with all those flashing lights from building C?"

"That's my best guess as to where Saotome is," Yukari murmured, wincing as one of the distant windows blew out in a burst of massive ice spikes. "It occurs to me that, as effective as this tactic has been, the reprisal for the misfortune I've brought him may well be beyond my ability to withstand were he to think of a proportional response."

"That's, uhm, kind of why we're here," Moka said uncomfortably as spears of lightning rained down on the building and nearly blinded the four students. "We think that what's happening to Ranma has been a bit too..."

"You think it's too much?" Yukari asked, turning toward the vampiress.

"We think it's too LETHAL," Tsukune corrected, arms crossed over his chest. "Until now this was all just harmless nonsense, but what Ranma's been through just this morning would have killed most people five times over!"

Yukari snorted and stood up, staring disdainfully at Tsukune. "Saotome is not most people. Has it occurred to you that maybe he's suffering these kinds of incidents because he's powerful enough to find them merely inconvenient rather than fatal?"

BOOM! Tsukune's face darkened as a glowing green meteor smashed into the side of the school building across the patio, collapsing nearly a quarter of the structure as supernatural flame licked at the remains.

"Has it occurred to YOU that maybe you're, oh I don't know, WRONG?" Kurumu snapped, her hands on her hips. She was still confident that Ranma could handle whatever Yukari had thrown at him, but that didn't mean it was right, after all.

Moka stepped forward and took the young witch by the shoulders gently, causing a deep blush to creep over Yukari's features. "Yukari, Ranma doesn't deserve this. And on top of that, the curse has caused a lot of damage to the school and hurt a lot of other people besides him."

"Hurt other people? Like who?" Yukari demanded.

At that moment a male student ran past the window screaming while green, otherworldly flames clung to his back. "AAAAAH!! SOMEBODY HELP!! THE FIRE BURNS YET IT DOES NOT CONSUME!! AAAAAH!!"

Yukari sweatdropped as Moka continued to stare at her sternly. "Oh, come on! None of you even know that guy!"

"Yukari," Moka said, perfectly mimicking the tone of a mother taking issue with her child.

The young witch folded instantly, wilting before Moka's gaze. "All right, all right! I'll undo the curse! Besides, I suppose that Saotome HAS had enough trouble by now, hasn't he?"

An explosion that caused the walls to tremble unsteadily underlined the truth of Yukari's reluctant admission, and the witch removed a book from within her cape. "Very well; come with me and I'll dispel the effect immediately."


Yukari led the other three students into a small club room that was currently empty and laid the book out on the table in the middle of the room before quickly locating the curse in question.

"So you CURSED him? Isn't that a little hardcore for a prank?" Kurumu said disapprovingly. Moka was still playing the protective parent even if she was finally trying to bring Yukari into line, but Kurumu had no such concerns; the only thing that was keeping her from carving the young witch a set of gills was that Tsukune was in the room and she didn't want to seem hot-tempered and violent.

"The curse is supposed to be mostly harmless," Yukari snapped back as she found the right page. "Generic bad luck spell. Stuff like tripping on sidewalks, losing your wallet, missing the bus..."

"So where does the storage closet full of gasoline or the homicidal warlock teacher come in?" Tsukune asked with an eyebrow raised.

Yukari coughed into a fist as she tried not to make eye contact with her accusers. "It's POSSIBLE that the curse doesn't take into account that the victim may already be incredibly unlucky or live in an unnaturally dangerous environment. Magic is an imprecise science."

"It's not a science at all. That's why it's MAGIC," Kurumu countered.

"Okay, that's enough," Moka said firmly, glaring at Kurumu. "Yukari said she was going to undo the curse, and now we're just distracting her. Yukari, go ahead."

Kurumu and Tsukune reluctantly fell silent, each one keenly aware of distant fireballs exploding outside.

Yukari scanned the spell and then frowned as she flipped to the next page. "That's odd."

"What's odd?" Tsukune demanded, a sinking feeling growing in his stomach.

"Well, I didn't really notice before, but the spell information sort of cuts short at the end of the second page," the young witch mumbled as she flipped back. "It's almost as if... ah ha!"

Yukari smirked triumphantly as she peeled apart two pages that had been stuck together, revealing two extra sheets of information.

"There! Now I have all... the tools... I... uh..."

The room was absolutely silent for several seconds, though Tsukune noted with great relief that he could no longer hear magical detonations coming from outside.

"Is something wrong?" Moka asked, noting that the blood seemed to be draining from Yukari's face at an alarming rate.

"Uh... define 'wrong'," Yukari asked rigidly, her eyes locked on the data before her.

"Okay: 'information or circumstances that will make it harder to lift the curse on Ranma'," Tsukune said immediately, clearly losing patience with the sudden holdup.

"Er... okay, define 'something'."

"Damn it, Sendo! What's written in there, anyway?" Kurumu demanded.

Yukari winced, and Moka quickly rounded on her friends as the young witch started making puppy-dog eyes. "Guys! Leave her alone! She's trying her best!" Turning to Yukari, her gaze softened. "What's the matter? Is there no way to lift the curse?"

"No, there is... kind of," Yukari said, twiddling her thumbs. "All you have to do is survive long enough, and the summoned spirit will eventually appear. Destroy the spirit, and the curse is lifted."

"How long is 'long enough'?" Kurumu asked.

"Wait a minute! Forget that! What's this about 'surviving'? Didn't you say this spell was supposed to be mostly harmless?" Tsukune demanded.

"I... DID say that, didn't I?" Yukari said, laughing nervously as she conked herself on the head. "It turns out that the degree of bad luck is actually quite severe... and eventually, quite fatal." Beads of sweat began crawling down Yukari's forehead as Kurumu and Tsukune's faces darkened. "Really though, this is all the author's fault! The severity and ultimate effect of the spell are supposed to be the FIRST things you note! Not packed in a summary after the instructions and ingredients!"

"You put Ranma under a curse without even reading the entire description?" Tsukune asked, trying to keep his voice even while a vein throbbed on the side of his head.

"So much for being a genius," Kurumu snipped, finally allowing some real worry as to what would happen to Ranma.

Moka gave Tsukune and Kurumu a sharp glance, and then turned back to Yukari. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

"I'm not sure," Yukari said. "But we should find Saotome immediately and help mitigate the effects of the curse as much as possible. That will frustrate the evil spirit and draw him out."

"Right!" said the others, nodding decisively.

Ranma wheezed wearily as he pushed his way through piles of scorched rubble and blossoms of razor-sharp icicles. His shirt had been reduced to tatters and his pants weren't much better. He was wet, scorched, and had a few particularly uncomfortable spots on his body that itched desperately as flakes of skin peeled off. Numerous abrasions and a few nasty gashes covered his arms and legs, and only a constant surge of adrenaline and pure focus kept him from feeling the effects of dramatic blood loss.

He was also holding a pair of long, skinny, bone-white arms in his hands, having apparently been removed from their previous owner.

"I just want it on record that you're totally overreacting," Richard said as he watched his student aide stomp off angrily. Green, necrotic ooze that glowed faintly and smelled sickening gushed from the gaping wounds under his shoulders, but the undead magus only seemed mildly irritated by the dismemberment. "I was only trying to kill you a little. You didn't have to get that mad."

"Shut up," Ranma groused, not looking back at his physical science teacher as he stalked off. "You can have these back next time we have class."

"Bring glue!" Richard called before he turned around and sauntered away.


Ranma promptly entered the nearest men's restroom to wash himself off and think about his next course of action.

"All right, so I'm getting the feeling that I might be in some real danger, now. Maybe I should hide out until..." Ranma trailed off as he thought about that sentence. Hold out until when? He didn't know what was going on at all, although he had a feeling that the earlier magic he had sensed had something to do with it. 'Either that or it's just a big "kill Ranma" conspiracy. Wouldn't be the first.'

Still, that did leave the problem of not knowing how long it would last and having no clue as to what to do about it in the meantime.

'Maybe I can just hide out somewhere or get out in the open where-'

His thoughts were interrupted as the lights in the bathroom suddenly failed, surrounding Ranma with absolute darkness.

Aside from a surprised blink, the pigtailed boy didn't react much. It took a lot more than sudden darkness to frighten Ranma Saotome.

Of much greater interest was the bright white text that suddenly appeared over the mirror that Ranma had been using to wash up.

"'It is pitch black'," Ranma read curiously, "'You are likely to be eaten by a grue'. What the hell's a grue?"

There was a slight squeaking noise as one of the bathroom stalls opened nearby, and Ranma noted with increasing discomfort that a throaty growling noise was coming from somewhere nearby.

"Well, I'd better be on my way then," the martial artist mumbled as he started toward the door, projecting an aura of complete calm and confidence.

Evidently this did nothing to dissuade the creature lurking in the darkness from attack, and the pigtailed boy leapt into action as he sensed something leaping for his back.

Deadly claws went wide as Ranma ducked into a low roundhouse kick, and he felt his leg smack into something before a dull impact revealed that he had knocked down his attacker.

"Leaving now!" the martial artist said, grimacing when he felt large, thick talons close around his leg that had been extended for the kick.

"Rrrraaugh!" the grue snarled as its dragged its prey closer, its red eyes gleaming as it opened its mouth.

At the usual blackboard that featured the monster encyclopedia entries Shizuka Nekonome was nowhere to be found, instead replaced by an "On break" sign stamped to the top.

Underneath the sign was a very succinct description, consisting of the words "Grue," "darkness," and "BAD," with the last entry written in very large letters and underlined several times.

"Leggo, freak!" Ranma shouted, laying punch after punch into the mysterious attacker but failing to loosen its grip on his leg. His attacks did seem to keep the rest of it at bay though, and from the grue's frustrated snarls, he could only guess that he was beating the beast back.

"Shrrreah!" with a terrifying screech, the grue finally stopped trying to bite its prey and lashed out with its other claws, raking them across Ranma's shoulder and chest.

Ranma grit his teeth against the pain, although by this point the lacerations were merely the newest of dozens of such wounds. "All right, I'm sick of fighting something I can't even see!"

Kicking away the grue's fumbling talons to give himself a moment's respite, Ranma focused through the waves of anger and fear within his being and seized hold of his confidence, the assurance that no matter what was thrown at him, he would survive and overcome.

"Mouka-"

"SCREEEEE!" Before the pigtailed boy could gather more than a glimmer of ki energy into his hands, the grue holding him shrieked in terror and released him, retreating instantly from the miniscule orb of light.

A moment later the stall door from earlier slammed shut, and Ranma lay on the floor, blinking as he stared down at the marble of shining blue hovering above his palm.

"Well, time to bail," he mumbled, scrambling to his feet and rushing toward the front door. Only once daylight poured into the bathroom from the fully-lit hallway did he allow his ki to vanish.


Tsukune blinked as he saw Ranma stagger out of the men's restroom, a set of fresh slash wounds on his chest and leg and an expression of extreme annoyance on his face.

"Ranma! Are you okay?" the younger human asked, rushing up to meet his roommate as the trio of girls behind him followed at a more subdued pace.

"Oh. Tsukune," Ranma said, his voice sounding almost mechanical. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

"You don't LOOK fine," Tsukune said critically. "How much blood have you lost today? And we need to find you a new shirt before you catch a cold!"

"Naw, I don't catch colds," Ranma insisted even as he wobbled to and fro. "I'm good. Totally, completely..." he started to tilt to one side, and Kurumu quickly dashed forward to support that side and hold him up. "... good. No problems here."

"The constant emotional and physical trauma has rendered him delusional. Or stupid. Maybe both," Yukari said as she flipped through the spell book. "We need to get him to somewhere safe to rest."

"What kind of place is 'safe' from bad luck?" Kurumu asked.

"I don't know, but here isn't it," Yukari answered, stepping past Ranma and the others. "Come on, we can figure something out while he's lying down!"

"So... is this all Yukari's prank, then?" Ranma asked as Kurumu helped him along. Not that he needed any help, of course, but he was feeling a BIT tired.

Moka smiled nervously as she followed along. "It's... more of an accident, really. She didn't mean to do all this to you."

"Except for that thing with Kurumu's tail biting you. My only regret there is that I didn't think of it independently," Yukari corrected, much to Moka's chagrin. Then she stopped at a closet and grabbed the knob. "Maybe a small, enclosed space would work," she mused as she opened the door.

Ranma sweatdropped as he stared into the supply closet. "You know, I haven't seen ONE electric saw on campus, ever. So why would someone keep so many spare blades?" Indeed, the entire interior of the closet was lined with rotary saw blades of all sizes arranged on pegs, in stacks, and a few on fragile-looking strings that could easily collapse at any moment.

A perfectly pale Kurumu backed Ranma slowly away from the closet, sweat crawling from her forehead. "All right, nobody make any sudden moves... Sendo, you close the door CAREFULLY, all right?"

At that moment, a pair of students in lab coats walked by while carrying a large, heavy machine of some sort.

"Where do you think we should dispose of this alarmingly powerful and possibly still functional electromagnet?"

"Well, I suppose we could just-"

The boys were silenced as Tsukune and Moka tackled them to the ground, and Yukari quickly shut the door to the anomalously dangerous closet, wincing as she heard the sound of clattering metal a moment later.

"All right, let's try somewhere else," Moka said as she got up, Tsukune apologizing profusely to the unknown students behind her. "Maybe somewhere outside?"

"It couldn't be much worse than that," Yukari quipped as she once again took the lead. "Let's go!"

Ranma cleared his throat again as he let Kurumu help him along to the door leading to the patio area. "Anyway, I've gotta give you credit; this is a pretty solid trick you pulled off. I was starting to think-"

Clong! Kurumu flinched as a wash bin plummeted down onto Ranma's head the instant they stepped outside, silencing the pigtailed boy.

"A wash bin? Well, I suppose that's not too bad," Tsukune mused, watching at the metal bin tilted slowly to one side.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! One by one, three full-sized bowling balls rolled out of the bin before the wash bin itself bounced onto the ground, and Kurumu grunted as she suddenly felt herself supporting Ranma's weight all by herself.

"I'm DREADFULLY sorry!" Came a voice from the edge of the roof above, and the students that were still conscious looked up to see the bus driver stooped over the edge of the roof, puffing on his pipe. "Are all of you all right? I'm so embarrassed I could just DIE!"

Tsukune glanced down at the bowling balls, and then back up at the bus driver. "WHY?"

The driver cocked his head to one side. "Why? I... well... it makes sense to... erm..." he stopped talking and rubbed his chin as his brow creased. "That's funny. Carrying three bowling balls to the gym over the roof in a wash bin made perfect sense when I thought of it." Then he shrugged. "A rather GRAVE mistake; my arms are DEAD tired!"

"I'm starting to dislike that person," Tsukune grumbled as he turned back to Ranma. "Is he okay?"

"Amazingly, yes," Yukari said as she checked the martial artist's pulse. "I'm going to have to adjust my assumption as to his species up a few notches; for his body to take THIS level of abuse..."

"Ahm... nah... ah mahs'r..." mumbled Ranma in a daze as Kurumu dragged him over to a picnic table.

"Seriously though, what are we supposed to do?" Kurumu asked heatedly as she put the pigtailed boy down. "Bad enough that Ranma's barely clinging to life, but what about us?"

"How long do we have to wait before the evil spirit shows up?" Tsukune asked, his tone rising in tandem with Kurumu's.

Yukari flinched as the two older students loomed over her. "I don't know! Like I said, this spell book is-"

"Excuse me, guys and GHOULS, but are you dealing with an evil spirit?"

The four conscious students glanced over to the bus driver, who had apparently gotten down from the roof and was now smoking his pipe while watching the spectacle nearby. "Maybe I can help! My skills at dealing with spirits are nothing short of SPOOKtacular!"

The students stared at the old man with varying levels of annoyance, all of them weighing the value of the help that he could possibly lend against the irritation of having to listen to him.

"Well, if you can call out the evil spirit attached to Saotome's body," Yukari began, only to step back with a yelp as the driver popped up on top of the table as if he had teleported there.

"Hmmm... really, I'd say this boy just might stand a GHOST of a chance! But there's no need to be so GRAVE, is there?" the old man cackled, lowering his pipe over Ranma's chest and then shaking out some of the embers onto the comatose martial artist.


"GYAAAARUUUGH!!" A fierce roar filled the patio as darkness seemed to seep out of Ranma's body, swirling about in the air and eventually coalescing into a humanoid form standing next to the picnic table.

"Damn it! Why won't this kid just kick it!" the creature snarled. It seemed to be a thing of pure shadow, with the edges of its body frayed and fluid, like the edges of a flame in the wind. A ring of angry-looking eyes were set in its chest, and the mouth set into its faceless head grimaced angrily. "Buzz off, brats! I've got a soul to take, here!"

"Yes! That's the spirit!" Yukari shouted. "Now all we have to do is beat it!"

"Beat it?" Kurumu asked, staring at the angry shadow... thing. "How do we..."

The succubus trailed off as she noticed that Yukari, Tsukune and Moka were all backing away from her and the spirit. "Hey! Why do I have to do it? Isn't Sendo the one responsible for this?"

"After seeing what that thing did to Saotome? Not a chance!" the young witch said. "Besides, you're the strong one, right? You do it!"

"We believe in you, Kurumu!" Tsukune said, honestly wishing there was something he could do but knowing that Kurumu was a far stronger fighter than he was.

Moka remained silent, nervously fingering the Rosario around her neck.

Kurumu turned back toward the spirit, and she gulped nervously as she saw the thing's fingers thicken into curved talons. "All right, fine! Moka, back me up!"

"Me?" the vampiress asked, startled.

"If you're really a vampire, it's time to act like it! Are you the strongest of monsters or aren't you?" Kurumu demanded, hoping to grasp some thread of pride hidden underneath Moka's pacifistic shell.


The evil spirit evidently tired of the conversation, crossing its arms high around its neck (so as not to obscure its vision). "So, what I'm getting here is that you kids aren't up to snuff. Fine. I think I'll just finished off the pigtailed loser, and..." the manifested curse's ring of eyes blinked as it stared at the empty picnic bench. "Wait... where'd he go? He was just-"

THWACK! The four students gathered against the spirit flinched back in surprise as they watched a bowling ball come down on top of the apparition's head, doubling it over.

Ranma stood behind the shadowy being, tossing his improvised weapon to the side. "So you're the punk that was causing all that trouble, eh? You sure don't seem like much now that you have an actual body."

The spirit's response was to turn with one arm extended, claws lashing out for Ranma's chest as the martial artist hopped back out of range.

"Ranma! You're okay?" Kurumu cried, by far the most relieved that the pigtailed boy was up for a fight.

"Of course I'm okay! Just leave these guys to me! I'll take down all three of 'em!" the martial artist cheered, only wobbling a little as he took up a fighting stance.

Tsukune and Moka sweatdropped.

"Is this really okay?"

"I feel like we should help..."


"Ha! You think you can bludgeon me like some fleshy animal?" the dark spirit taunted as it floated into the air, the eyes over its chest rotating. "I am despair! I am weakness! I am the withering sensation in your heart as the world turns against you and doom swallows your future! Nobody may escape my grasp! Nobody!"

Yukari bristled at the boasts, thumbing rapidly through the book. "This isn't good! I had no idea I summoned a spirit like this! This is-"

The young witch's concerns were drowned out by a bright flare of blue light, and the evil spirit flinched back as a corona of energy coalesced around Ranma.

"Wh-What? Hey... what do you think you're doing?" the apparition demanded.

"I'm kicking your ass, of course," Ranma snapped, moving his hands back. "If you're 'despair', then I guess that makes me 'hope'. Now that I see you, there's no way I'm gonna lose!"

"Your body is battered and broken! You can't have this much strength left! The-There's no way..." the dark spirit mumbled, stepping backward as it landed on the ground again.

"I'm used to it," Ranma said simply before he slammed his hands together. "MOUKA TAKABISHA!"

None of the spectators could tell exactly what happened in that moment as the searing blue flash obliterated their scopes of vision, but all of them felt a sudden lift in their spirits, as if the empty feeling of fear that had dominated since the hateful spirit appeared was suddenly swallowed by a cheerful confidence and inner strength.

Of course, when the light abated and they saw that only a black scorch mark remained of the spirit, none of them needed any supernatural explanation to explain their relief.


"All right!"

"You did it!"

Moka sighed wearily as Tsukune and Kurumu cheered, simply glad that the entire debacle had been finished without any need for... desperate measures. "I'm so relieved..."

Yukari gaped at the spot where the evil spirit used to be. "Y-You used a psionic pulse of opposite emotional polarity to discorporate the spirit?"

"If that means the same as shooting my ego at it, then yeah," Ranma responded, trying to catch his breath as he dusted off his smoldering hands. "Anyway, I think I give this one about a six."

Yukari blinked. "What?"

"As far as evil spirits and curses go, this one was pretty nasty, but also pretty simple to cure. So it gets a six outta ten," Ranma explained. "I've had worse, but it's still a pretty impressive spell."

The young witch stared, mouth agape as the pigtailed boy coughed into his hand.

"Not that I'm giving up the pranks or anything! No way am I gonna let you win!" Ranma insisted, crossing his arms over his chest as Moka paled considerably.

All were fairly surprised when Yukari suddenly threw herself at Ranma's feet, bowing her head onto the ground so low that the tip of her witch's hat dug into the dirt. "I'm sorry! Please forgive me!"

Before Ranma could ask any questions or make any confused noises, Yukari looked up at him, her eyes shining with admiration and awe. "It was foolish of me to oppose someone as great as you! I didn't know what I was doing!"

Ranma scratched the side of his head as the witch continued kowtowing. "Well, I AM pretty great, it's true."

"And strong! And powerful! And handsome!" Yukari said, eyes shining up at her new idol. "I was mistaken to think of you as a mere brute! If Moka is perfection in mind and beauty, then you are magnificence in wisdom and strength! Please accept me as your disciple!"

Ranma chuckled haughtily, patting the young witch on the head as he kneeled down. "Ha! You didn't need to go quite that far! But sure, why not?"


Off to the side, Moka massaged her head as she tried to come to terms with what she was seeing.

"Well... it's nice that those two are friends now, isn't it?" Kurumu asked, sweatdropping. She was as weirded out by the scene as any of the others, but was hoping that this would at least keep Yukari on better terms with them.

"Y-Yeah. This is... good," Tsukune said, only a tinge of uncertainty in his voice.

"Heh heh heh! That's the SPIRIT!" the bus driver cheered.

"Okay, seriously, can you please leave?"

Note: Both Kouma Gamaroshi and Tobaki are students of my own creation. There are lot more of those going around than I'd hoped, but oh well. Mizore Shirayuki is from Rosario canon.

End Chapter 5

Big Human on Campus: Extra!

In the bowels of the Netherworld, a disgruntled dark spirit trudged past his giggling fellows before taking a seat on a stump of brimstone, his body still smoldering with the ki energy that had purged him from the living world.

"Dude, I can't believe you got smoked!" said a small, cackling spirit sitting on the opposite side of a divining pool with Ranma's image as the focus.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, squirt," the defeated apparition grumbled. "At least I've had work in the last decade; when was the last time you've been called in for curse duty?"

As the smaller spirit fumed, another being seemingly composed of hundreds of motes of light swirling around each other addressed the newcomer. "You gave it your best shot. And some of the stuff you pulled was rather brilliant! I especially liked the bit with the warlock. Genius!"

The dark spirit's ring of eyes blinked in confusion. "Warlock? What, you mean that Richard guy? I didn't do anything with him. Guy's way too sensitive to our kind. What are you talking about?"

"Dear Diary," Richard mumbled to himself as he clenched a pen between his toes, holding down a rather archaic-looking tome with his other foot as he leaned back in his office chair, "Tried to kill Saotome again today. That kid's proving quite resilient, and it's even more fun when I can press him hard enough to make him fight back. He took off my arms today after I got a little too cast-happy with the mid-level spells, but he still doesn't seem to see me as an actual opponent to be defeated as much as a dangerous obstacle to survive. Frankly, I blame the Japanese social structure; I enjoy abusing power as much as the next sociopath, but respect for one's superiors typically ends after the first cartload of one's peers are reduced to ashes and dumped out in the lawn."

Richard stared up at the ceiling as his toes kept scrawling words in a language forgotten by even the gods. "He deals with fire and ice easily enough; I think I'll try acid magic next. Ooh, this semester is just SO exciting!"