Chapter 13

Ranma sat in the too-warm library in a too-comfortable chair and felt himself starting to drift off, forgotten magazine tented in his lap. "Gotta meet Shay at 6," he thought as he settled back and closed his eyes, confident his internal alarm clock would wake him in plenty of time. "Just a few minutes..."

Suddenly, his sleep was interrupted rather rudely by a smack on the head. Startled awake, he jumped up, knocking the chair over and drawing the irritated glares of nearby students. "My my, aren’t we jumpy these days, Saotome?" came a low, confident voice.

"Nabiki! What the hell do you want?" he asked, righting the chair and sitting down with a bit of a huff.

Taking the chair opposite, Nabiki calmly sat down and withdrew a Palm Pilot from her backpack on the floor. "Now now," she chided, "is that any way to treat your former almost sister-in-law?" She made some notations on her little machine and glanced back up at him. "I can see how engrossed you were in," she glanced down at the magazine now tented in her lap, "Scientific American."

"It’s for a class. C’mon, give it back," Ranma fumed impatiently, holding his hand out. He knew he was faster than her, but the way she snuck up on him when he was dozing made him uncomfortable. ‘She must be doing some training, finally.’ he thought as he eyed her slim form. Even bundled up in a down jacket and wearing winter boots against the myriad to puddles on campus she looked like a fashion plate.

"Fine, take it. I don’t want to interfere with your...studies."

"Hey, you know I’m pulling a B+ average here. I don’t need to jeapordize my scholarship."

"I know exactly how you’re doing." Ranma thought he detected the tiniest threat in this last statement and looked sharply at her. Always cool and in control, Nabiki continued to make notations in her Pilot as if she were at a board meeting rather than in an overheated college library across from a martial artist whose fuse was getting shorter by the moment.

"What’s that supposed to mean?" he asked with narrowed eyes. Nabiki finally looked up.

"It just means that I am familiar with your progress as a student in this fine educational institution. After all, Honor Roll and Dean’s List are publicly posted."

"Hm. Whatever." Ranma sat back in his chair and eyed her warily. She had gone back to poking and prodding her device and finally closed the little case and slipped it back into her backpack. Nabiki sat quietly regarding him.

"Well, aren’t you going to ask?" she said after a few moments of watching Ranma squirm.

"Ask what?"

"Ask about my sister."

"Oh. Yeah, how’s Akane?"

"She’s well."

"That’s good to hear."

"She’s coming for a visit."

"Yeah? We’ll have to get together for lunch."

Nabiki’s brow suddenly darkened and she scowled. "You will stay away from her," she stated in clear, precise words.

Confused by the sudden change in her attitude, Ranma stared at Nabiki dumbly. "What? Why?"

"You’ve already broken her heart and she’s gone on with her life. She doesn’t need you around as a reminder."

Ranma felt the heat rise in his face and his own brow furrowed. "What? Broke her heart? Hello? Were you there when I came home and found her engaged to that forgetful ass hole? Who’s heart was broken that day? Oh yeah, mine!" He heard his own voice rising and fought to bring it down, feeling the weight of many eyes on him.

"And why did she get engaged to him? Because you left, that’s why!" Nabiki whispered back savagely to him, a look of glee in her eyes.

"Dammit Nabiki, you know exactly why I left!" Ranma whispered furiously back at her. "I had to! I couldn’t marry Akane like I was!"

"Do you think she cared? If you hadn’t left--"

"I would still be half a woman!" Ranma shouted and immediately regretted it. Everyone in the packed room was staring at him and he felt his face go a dark red. Shooting a disgusted look at Nabiki, Ranma mustered his dignity and walked out of the library, trying to ignore the swivel of eyes as he walked briskly out of the room.

The cold air outside hit him with force and he belatedly remembered his jacket on the back of the chair in the library. "I’ll get it later," he said out loud, preferring to wait a while for Nabiki to leave. ‘I could send Shay in for it,’ he thought as he headed down toward the computer lab. He was a little early, but that was okay. He didn’t mind hanging around and watching her work. It always amused him to watch her search her desk for a pencil when she had one right behind her ear.

Thankfully, the computer room wasn’t as hot as the library and he spent some time catching up on email. His mother had recently acquired an email account at the public library not too far from her house and he knew she enjoyed the correspondence with her son. While he was typing his latest response, Shay came up and looked over his shoulder. "Oh, email to your mom? I don’t think she likes me."

Ranma rolled his eyes and smiled. "She likes you just fine. I’ve told you a million times."

"What about that package she sent you last year with all those profiles of available girls?"

"Did you hear yourself? That was last year, before she knew you. She’s in love with you."

"Well, if you say so," she sighed, sitting at the next terminal. "What’re we doing tonight?"

"I dunno," Ranma shrugged, clicking the send button. "Let’s go to a movie."

"Okay. I’m easy. Don’t let that get around though," she teased, checking a list of movie times on a web page. "All right, how about ‘Summer Lovin’ at 8?"

Ranma wrinkled his nose and peered over Shay’s shoulder. "Here we go, how about ‘Crazy Fists of Fury’ at 8:10?"

Now it was Shay’s turn to look disappointed. "Ranma, we saw an action flick last time. Come on, please?" She turned to face him, giving him her best forlorn puppy-dog look and watched him give up his dream of seeing butt-kicking on the big screen two weeks in a row.

"Okay, fine," he relented. "It’s a good thing you’re cute."

"I know. Come on, I’m hungry."

They left the lab and began walking toward the parking lot, Ranma missing his jacket in the chill air. Remembering his jacket in the library, he steered Shay toward the massive building. "I left my jacket in there earlier. If I lose it, Mom’ll kill me."

"You mean if you lose it...again," Shay corrected with a smile, remembering the talking-to he’d gotten from his mother on the previous occasion.

"Whatever. I’ll be right back." Leaving Shay by the circulation desk, he darted into the main reading room, pausing for a moment to check if Nabiki was still hanging around. Satisfied that she as gone, he quickly moved to his previous seat and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the navy blue windbreaker still on the back of the chair. Quickly donning it, he was on his way back out in a matter of moments, determined to have a good time with his girlfriend and not think about either his ex-fiancee or her mercenary sister.

**

"Come on, admit it. I saw you tearing up there at the end," Shay insisted as they left the crowded theater.

"I keep telling you, the heat in there was drying out my eyeballs. I was just getting some extra moisture going. I was not crying," Ranma countered as they moved toward the exit. "It was volcanic in there."

"Yeah yeah, extra moisture. Whatever. You talk a tough game, but you’re just a big softie. Come on, you can still be a man and cry. I won’t tell anyone."

Ranma looked down at his girlfriend with a smile. "You," he said, putting a finger on her upturned nose, "are the softie here. I almost ran out of napkins in there."

"Well I’m a girl. It’s expected. Where are my keys?" Shay started looking through her cavernous purse and wandered absentmindedly out of the door Ranma held open for her. "Hey, it’s cold out here!" she exclaimed as a blast of cold wind hit her.

"Duh. It’s still winter. Where’s your coat?"

"In the car."

"Good place for it."

"Well, I knew it was going to be hot in the theatre and I didn’t want to bother holding it."

Ranma rolled his eyes at her rationalization. "And you were counting on your nice boyfriend to let you wear his," he sighed, already taking off his windbreaker.

"Exactly. And people say women are so hard to figure out. Hand it over." Smiling up at him, Shay shrugged into the oversized garment and wrapped her arms around herself. "Excellent. Pre-warmed and everything."

A few moments later they were standing by the car and Shayla resumed her search for her keys. "Hey, what’s this?" she asked, pulling a piece of paper out of the jacket’s pocket.

"What’s what?" Ranma asked, moving to the other side of the car.

"It looks like a picture. Hold on a sec." Shay walked closer to a light post and examined the picture closely. "Woah! Who is this?" she asked, holding the picture up for Ranma to see.

Squinting a little in the dim light, Ranma felt his stomach drop down into his shoes. "Where did you get that from?" he asked, his voice high and throat tight.

"From your jacket pocket."

"Oh?" Ranma stalled while a million thoughts zinged through his head. ‘It must have been Nabiki! Dammit! The next time I see her...’

"Ranma? Hello? Who is this and why do you have a picture of a half naked sleeping girl in your pocket?" Shayla was staring to sound pissed Ranma realized and he knew he’d better come up with an explanation quick.

"I don’t know," he stammered, inwardly cursing himself.

"Oh, you don’t know?" Shay asked with a sarcastic tone. "Well, you’d better find out quick or you’re going to find yourself walking home." Still holding the small picture, she crossed her arms and waited.

Ranma closed his eyes and tried to calm down. It was all he could do to not take off, find Nabiki and throttle her. He knew if he took off right now, he’d piss off the most important person to him and after all the mistakes he’d made with Akane, he really didn’t want to mess this up. ‘Shit shit shit!’ he raged inside. Opening his eyes he looked at his girlfriend and briefly thought about just snatching the picture away from her and ripping it up, knowing he was perfectly capable of doing such a thing before Shay could even blink. Shaking his head, he took a deep breath and looked her right in the eye. "Okay. I love you. The person in that picture is no longer in my life. I think I know how it got in my pocket, but I did not put it there. That is God’s honest truth."

Shay narrowed her eyes and looked at the image again. It showed a flame-haired young woman wearing only a tank top and shorts. She was asleep without a blanket and the sensual curves of her body were on display for all to see. Looking back at Ranma, she noticed how nervous he was and how sweaty his brow was, despite the chill night air. "Is this from a magazine?"

"No. Not from a magazine," Ranma answered, shaking his head.

"Is she another fiancee?"

"No."

"Then who is she?"

"Shay, I can’t tell you right now. I swear I will. Soon, but just not right now," he pleaded, watching her face for any clue that she was going to go back to being his loving girlfriend and give him the picture so he could destroy it.

Shayla looked at the picture again and back at Ranma. She knew the two were connected somehow and she wondered why the image made him so nervous. She knew she wasn’t really that mad at him, but finding this kind of image in his pocket was disturbing. It was the kind of image a lover might carry and keep close when separated, but as far as she knew, he wasn’t seeing anyone else. She knew his schedule to a T and they were now spending most nights together at her apartment. Shaking her head, she sighed. "Okay. I’m gonna trust you. I’m not upset, well, not much really, just mostly surprised at finding this sort of thing in my boyfriend’s pocket." She started moving back to the car and missed Ranma’s look of abject relief. "But, I am keeping this until you tell me who this is, how it got in your pocket and why the hell it makes you so damn nervous."

"Not a problem," Ranma agreed. "Just don’t go flashing that thing around campus."

The ride back to Shayla and Carrie’s apartment was silent and when Ranma attempted to kiss Shay once they were settled in bed she turned her back towards him and turned out the light. ‘So it’s like that,’ Ranma thought, frustrated and pissed with Nabiki. ‘Boy, she had better watch her back.’ He turned onto his back and put his hands behind his head, staring moodily up at the ceiling. He knew Shay wasn’t asleep either, but he was going to honor her wish and leave her alone. ‘I guess I’ll just have to bite the bullet and tell her. Tomorrow. How am I going to make her believe me?’

**

The morning found Ranma still awake, but with his arms around Shay. Sometime during his long, sleepless night she had cuddled up to him, her sleep making her forget her quarrel with him. He felt better about things, having come to a decision during the night and watched her begin to stir. Her eyes slowly opened and she smiled at him, frowning a split second later as she remembered her argument and the picture. She moved away from him and sat up, rubbing her eyes and trying to smooth her sleep-tousled hair. "Well?" she asked, her voice husky from sleep.

"Good morning to you too, dear," Ranma smirked, getting out of bed and pulling a red t-shirt over his head. Sitting back down on the corner of the bed, Ranma turned to face her. "Well. I think I’m going to tell you," he said after a short pause. "But not here."

Shayla frowned, puzzled. "Why not here?" she asked skeptically.

"Because I have something to show you. Now, get up and get dressed." He stood to pull on a pair of jeans and put his shoes on. He looked back at Shay and saw she had laid back down in the bed and closed her eyes. He grabbed a nearby foot and gave the sole a little tickle and was rewarded with a sleepy squawk. "Get up. I’ll make you some coffee, okay?"

"Okay okay, I’m up," she mumbled, pulling her foot out of his grip.

Out in the kitchen, Ranma kept a watchful eye on Tigger while he made the coffee and put it in a primed and waiting thermos. He’d developed a tolerance for the cat as long as the animal stayed on the other side of the room from him. Sometimes when Tigger was feeling moody he would try to surprise Ranma by sneaking up on him and suddenly appearing next to him. This was always met with ill humor on Ranma’s part and hilarity on Shayla’s.

Once the thermos was ready to go, Ranma went to check on Shay again and found her dressed and brushing her teeth. A few moments later, they were on their way out the door, meeting Carrie coming up the stairs. "Late night, huh?" Shay asked, receiving a wan smile in return.

"Where to?" Shay asked in the car, tapping her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

"Let’s head out to the Boardwalk."

"It’s freezing."

"That means no one will be there." Ranma clapped a hand on her knee. "Come on, do ya wanna know or what?"

"Okay okay. Fine, freezing beach at 8 o’frickin clock in the morning." Once they had parked, she turned to Ranma and said, "Okay, here we are."

"Okay. Let’s go."

"You mean we’re really going out there? On the sand?"

"Yep. Come on."

"Holy cow," Shay grumbled as she got the blanket she always kept ready out of the trunk of the car. Making sure her jacket was securely zipped and holding on hand on top of her baseball cap to keep it on in the wind, she followed her boyfriend down onto the beach.

Swinging the thermos of coffee, Ranma felt happy. The wind was cold and it plastered his windbreaker against his body and felt good. Tossing the thermos down in a good spot he took off his shoes and socks and felt the cool sand against his bare feet. He was glad he’d finally decided to tell Shay about his former curse. True it had come and gone before she even knew him, but he still felt she had a right to know. He was still very angry at Nabiki for forcing his hand, but he’d find a way to get even sooner or later. All good martial artists did and he was the best, wasn’t he?

Shayla spread the blanket and tried to anchor it as best she could in the buffeting wind and gratefully poured some coffee from the thermos. Knowing how she liked it, Ranma had already primed it with plenty of milk and sugar and she savored the taste as she watched him execute a short kata. When she really thought about it, they hadn’t really been together all that long, but it seemed like she’d known him all her life. She knew about his crazy childhood and his even crazier adolescence. He’d told her about the whole fiancee fiasco and how he’d had his heart broken. To find that there was some part of his life she didn’t know about and then to discover that he didn’t really want to tell her about it came as quite a shock. As she watched and thought, Ranma finished his kata and took off at a sprint down the hard packed sand of the surf line and came back at a slow jog to collapse on the blanket, completely winded.

"Excess energy this morning?" Shay asked with a smile.

Ranma nodded, quickly recovering his breathing and smiled back. "Well, I didn’t get any exercise last night."

"Har har. You very funny man." She fished in her pocket and pulled out the picture, fixing him with a look. "Well?"

Ranma took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eye. "That’s me," he said simply.

"Excuse me?"

"The girl in that picture is me."

"No way. There’s no way that can be." Shay looked at the picture again to confirm the subject’s gender. "That’s a girl. You’re a guy."

"Yes. That is true. See, it’s a very long story. Well, maybe not so much long, but certainly confusing. It all started because my ass hole of a father can’t read Chinese." And he told her all of it. Everything from the ill-fated beginning of the trip to the cursed spring training ground to the defeat of Shampoo and kiss of death and marriage. He told her about the times his various fiancees would dangle cures in front of him in hopes of gaining his favor and about the craziness with the barrel of spring water at he and Akane’s ruined wedding. "After that, I was determined to put it all behind me. I really wanted a future with Akane. I wanted kids and I wanted to be their dad, not their mom and dad. I was tired of running away from water, women, you name it. All this time I’d been playing at finding a cure, not really taking it seriously, you know? So I finally decided to search seriously for a cure so I could marry Akane a whole man, not some freak of nature."

He told her about how his search led him far and wide, away from his home, friends and Akane. "I stayed with some monks in Tibet for a while, stayed with the Amazons for a while. Ran into Ryoga a lot. He tried to help me, but he kept on getting lost. I studied scrolls so ancient they had almost crumbled into dust."

As he was talking, Shayla watched him, not quite sure if she believed him or not. The stuff he was talking about was like something out of a fantasy novel. The whole notion of cursed springs having the power to change someone’s form with a touch of hot or cold water seemed absolutely preposterous to her, someone raised in the good old American fashion where things like real magic didn’t exist. The conviction in his voice and the emotions displayed on his face were hard to disbelieve though. Everything he was saying seemed like it had really happened and she could visualize in her mind’s eye the moment when the brash youth surface from his impromptu dunking a her. "Where did you finally find the cure?" she asked tremulously when he paused for a moment.

"Heh, finally found it in India. Go figure. I found an old old scroll at an old monastery in Sichuan province that told of how a certain section of the Ganges river during the New Year celebration gained the power to cure anything. It was only for a twenty four hour period though and it took me a while before I found out the exact location and then I had to figure out that they celebrate their new year in March." Ranma looked out on the ocean for a moment before continuing. "That monastery is going to be underwater in a few years because of the Three Gorges dam."

"Oh."

"Yeah, okay, so anyway, by that time I’d been gone a little over a year and not exactly being in highly developed areas, I didn’t get the opportunity to call home all that often. I tried to write when I could, but I was never very good at keeping up a regular correspondence and I didn’t really have an address to get mail from. So I guess Akane thought I wasn’t coming back. I guess I can’t really blame her, we were just starting to get along halfway decently when I left." Ranma paused in his narration and looked back out at the crashing waves again and leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows. "I sure did love her though."

They were both silent for a time, Shayla trying to digest what she’d just heard and Ranma reliving times of dizzying hopes and crushing disappointments. Finally, she spoke up, "So where did the picture come from?"

"Nabiki. She used to take pictures of my girl form and sell them."

"Sell them? To who?"

"Anyone. Mostly Kuno. He was in love with my girl form and we couldn’t make him understand that it was still me and he hated my guts."

"Did I meet Kuno?"

"Sorta. He was at the wedding. You remember, the guy in the really old fashioned clothes with the wooden sword?" Shay nodded and Ranma went on. "Yeah, that whole family is kinda, you know, off."

"Okay. So how did the picture get in your pocket? You seemed as surprised as I was."

"I think Nabiki put it there. We got into an argument in the library yesterday. I think she put it there to piss me off. Maybe she was hoping you would find it and flip. I dunno," he shrugged, sitting back up and crossing his legs.

"How...nice of her. I’ll have to thank her next time I see her.

"Oh, no no no, she’s mine. I’ve got something coming her way soon."

"All right, back to the things at hand. You bring me out here to this freezing cold beach and tell me this story about springs and monks and pandas and Chinese Amazons and expect me to believe that you used to change into," she checked the picture again, " a chesty redheaded girl when you got splashed with a bit of cold water?"

Ranma stood up and stretched, extending his hand to help Shay get up. "Well, I did say I had something to show you. Come on." Together they walked down to the edge of the water and Ranma rolled up his pants legs and waded a short distance into the surf. "Okay, now watch the space between my hands."

"Okay. What am I supposed to see?" Shayla shouted over the sound of the surf.

"Just wait. You’ll see," Ranma shouted back. He stood quietly for a moment with his eyes closed and concentrated. Drawing on his supreme self confidence and his desire to make Shay believe him, he generated a small ball of orange light.

Shayla couldn’t believe what she was seeing. There was a small, bright orange light that came out of nowhere suspended almost lovingly between Ranma’s two very human and ordinary hands. It seemed that she could almost hear a humming sound above the roar of the waves and it looked like the surface crackled a little. "Oh my God," she breathed, meeting Ranma’s eyes. In that instant, she believed everything he’d told her.

Seeing the look on her face, Ranma smiled in relief and whispered, "Mouko Takabisha," and released the ball of energy into an oncoming rush of seawater, creating a small puff of steam. He slowly waded out of the water, he jeans wet to his knees and approached his incredulous girlfriend.

"So, you believe me now?"

She nodded slowly and backed away from him a little. "How did you do that? Was that, was that magic?"

"Sorta. It’s not the same as the Jusenkyo magic. That light came from me, from my chi. You’ve heard me talk about chi in class right?" Another nod. "I can channel my chi and...make it do things. So can Ryoga."

"Oh," Shay said faintly.

"Look, don’t be scared. You could do it too, with the right training." Seeing that she was still a little spooked, he spread his arms wide. "Come here. It’s still me. Just Ranma." Hesitantly at first and then more certainty, she moved toward him and wrapped her arms around him, seeming to assure herself with his solid presence.

With her face buried in his neck, she started to cry. "I’m-I’m sorry," she sobbed and hugged him tighter.

"Hey, hey, it’s okay. Come on, quit cryin’. Shh," Ranma soothed, surprised at the depth of her reaction. "I should have told you all of this a long time ago. Come on, my legs are freezing out here."

Quietly they shook the blanket free of sand and made the trek back to the car. Behind the wheel, Shay paused for a moment before starting the car, looking at Ranma with an inscrutable look on her face. Taking one last look at the picture, she handed it to him with a smile. "Well, one thing’s for sure, you’re hot in either form!"