Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and its characters and settings belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Kitty, and Viz Video.

Two years, and some odd months later.

"Ow! Damn it, that hurts!" Ranma bellowed. He was bent over a destroyed column and being subjected to Nabiki's tender mercies, as she slowly cut the flesh from around a barbed arrowhead that had become embedded in Ranma's ass.

"Be still, you big baby," Nabiki chided him as she finally pulled the monstrous projectile from Ranma's posterior, its spell-wrought metal undulating and giving off wave of foul energy. “There, now you can heal yourself and we can get the hell out of here." Nabiki wiped her blood-slick knife and hands off on her cloak.

Ranma sighed in relief even as he cast a healing spell on himself, depleting the last of his sorcerous energies, but at last relieving himself of the debilitating pain brought upon by the Aero Demon's arrow. He pulled his torn and bloody pants up just as one of the ember demons that Nabiki had set to guarding the door gave of its death scream and exploded, shaking the unstable tomb's supports.

"I'm tapped, Nabiki. You think you could call up something to hold the doorway until I can manage to teleport us to safety?" Ranma asked. They wouldn't have to worry about depleted mana if the next room held a mana crystal, but the ancient map didn't indicate one, where it had clearly shown where all the others in the long-forgotten tomb were located.

Nabiki grinned and from behind her back pulled a small bottle filled with a glowing blue liquid. She drank half and offered the rest to Ranma. He accepted the concentrated mana eagerly, glad to be once again armed against the hellspawn that inhabited their latest vacation spot. If he had known that the touch of the zombies that infested the place was poisonous, Ranma would have came properly equipped, but the map had downplayed the dangers and he had only his most basic clothing and a few bottles of mana and health elixir. Nabiki had been even less prepared, with a single quiver of mundane arrows and a like amount of potions, or so he had thought. “Been saving that, just in case," Nabiki said. “If Char was here, I would trust him at the door, but since he isn't…"

Ranma stood well back from his companion's conjuring, and was glad that he had when a giant amalgam of leather, steel, and necromantic power materialized where he had stood. Nabiki gave the mecha-golem its mental marching orders and sent it to back up the remaining ember demon at the door. “You know, it may have helped if you had let me use that when we were fighting the demon," Ranma said a bit heatedly. He had had to sacrifice a rather valuable enchanted staff in order to get enough charge to form the death ray spell that had finally brought down the hellspawn.

"It all worked out in the end, Ranma. Besides, how could I have gotten it to you? I was trapped in that cage when you broke your staff; the bottle wouldn't even have fit through the bars." Nabiki's simple explanation and patience with Ranma and the foul mood he tended to get whenever he came near death seemed to disarm the wizard.

"You're right. Sorry if I sounded a bit ungrateful," he apologized. He pushed the matter aside in favor of more important matters. “Now, let's find out what in hell we nearly got ourselves killed over."

Nabiki nodded in agreement and smiled at Ranma's enthusiasm. She produced the small silver key that would unlock the last room within the temple that they had yet to explore. This was the chamber where their efforts would be rewarded.

"When the door opens, stand back," Ranma said cautiously. “I still have enough energy to pull off a couple spells without depleting myself so much that I wouldn't be able to teleport."

Nabiki silently agreed, but readied herself for a spell if the need arose. Ranma was too protective, and didn't trust in her abilities enough to allow himself to completely focus on the conflict at hand. Nabiki knew that there was little chance of changing that in Ranma, so she let Ranma make the combat decisions and she pretty much had free rein in the more normal parts of the relationship they shared.

Ranma accepted the key from Nabiki and inserted it into the lock, turning it and kicking open the door in one fluid motion. He leapt through the doorway and turned in midair to survey either side of the door before rebounding off the wall and returning to Nabiki's side. “No obvious traps, and there aren't any zombies that I could see; but that doesn't mean they're not there."

It was obvious to Nabiki that Ranma was reluctant to trust her safety to whatever lay within the room. Nabiki shook her head at his behavior and followed him back into the brightly lit room.

The room was the burial vault of a long dead wizard whose many enchantments upon his crypt had allowed the denizens of hell to transport massive numbers of their more numerous— though weak— minions into its depths. The elemental demons the wizard had set to guarding his rest had gone un-harassed by their brethren, a fact that both Ranma and Nabiki had learned of all too recently. The vault was, in simple terms, magnificent. The demonic corruption that had turned the outer crypt into a dark realm of shadow and horror had not reached this last bastion of power. The walls gleamed silver, and from torches kept alight by some long-duration spell, golden light bathed every manner of beasts, pottery, and other finery, all of which were of cast gold or fine porcelain.

Nabiki and Ranma hadn't come for the material wealth contained here, though it was tempting to pry loose a few of the fist sized diamonds and other precious stones that were peppered liberally throughout the room, but instead for the objects of power that lay within the sarcophagus of the wizard itself.

"I don't know what's keeping those zombies from dying and protecting them from my demon's fire, but the golem can't hold them all off for long, and the ember demon just bit the dust," Nabiki said, letting the urgency of their situation carry with her voice.

Ranma strode purposely to the giant chunk of finely carved ivory that was their host’s final resting place. He slid his fingers under the edge of the lid and with a casual flick of his wrists and a tensing of the muscles in his arms, Ranma heaved it to the floor where it crashed thunderously and shattered like glass.

Old bones long free of flesh stared up at Ranma with the same hideous grin that an animated skeleton gave before attacking. This skeleton, however, didn't attack. Robes of fine silk— once undoubtedly enchanted— had gone to ruin centuries earlier, and no longer held within them their booty.

Nabiki peered over the edge and into the musty coffin. “We had better hurry; the golem is weakening, and four dozen zombies are waiting to pour through that doorway when it dies." Warning once again spoken, Nabiki reached down and yanked the dried bones aside, revealing at last their prize or prizes.

Reverently, Ranma picked up a heavy tome, one of the ancient grimoires that required study and practice to master its multiple spells, and stowed it away within that area of warped space that all people of Nox who were dedicated to magic possessed. Nabiki, with the same reverence that Ranma had shown, knelt and pulled a leather-bound bundle from its resting place. She balanced it on the edge of the sarcophagus and hastily undid the ties that held it closed. Inside were several scroll cases and a medium sized bow, black as cold iron and as smooth as glass. It was unstrung, but an aura of menace spread forth from it even in its seemingly harmless form.

"Finally," Ranma exulted. He was about to invoke the spell that would carry Nabiki and himself to safety when a glint of metal within the sarcophagus caught his eye. Ranma quickly pulled another bundle from the sarcophagus and slipped it in with his other possessions just as zombies flooded in through the unbarred door.

"Ranma," Nabiki said, and that was all it took to convince Ranma to get them out of the last godforsaken hole in the ground that either of them intended to visit for a very, very long time.

"It is simply unacceptable, Horvath," Nester, one of his fellow wizards stated firmly. “They are yet to be adults— mere children— and for over a year they have been raiding ancients tombs, forgotten temples, and abandoned Necromancer strongholds. I shudder to think of what they have unleashed into the world in their ignorance of the forces they play with. Less than a week ago, I spied Nabiki summoning elemental demons that even I hadn't known existed, and Ranma, your apprentice, was blasting them from existence with Chaos spells of such magnitude that I feared for my very life!"

Horvath had never liked the little rat-faced man, whom everyone knew secretly lusted for power and was at the same time almost physically sick with the knowledge that others were indeed more powerful than he. “Nester, your fears are unfounded, I assure you. Andwywn swears that he has never seen a conjurer with so much control over the creatures she commands, and I swear to you that Ranma is bordering on mastery of a whole new form of magic, something derived from the forces of Chaos and Order which we once used millennia ago. Of the spells I have witnessed him cast, none have gone astray, and his knowledge grows daily. You have nothing to fear from two enthusiastic youths. Now, if you would excuse me my friend, I am not as young as I once was and my old bones are weary." Horvath waited for Nester to acknowledge his not so subtle dismissal.

"Very well, but I can assure you that the Assembly will hear of your pupil's craving for power denied to all men." With those parting words, Nester turned on his heel and scurried from Horvath's office.

Although there was little chance that the Assembly would reprimand Ranma for this 'craving' for power that Nester accused him of, Horvath reminded himself to warn the boy of the possibility, no matter how remote.

Meanwhile, Ranma and Nabiki were relaxing in the large tub that Horvath had had installed in his forest home. As numerous cramps and aches were carried away by the steaming water, Nabiki, her body pressed closely against Ranma, asked, “What kind of swords were those?"

She was referring to the twin rune swords that Ranma had found in Irtram's tomb, neither of which had been listed on the map they had recovered from the mountain temple of a once-worshipped demon god. “I’m not sure yet. I know that they are opposites in some way, but my experience with enchanted artifacts is pretty limited. I'll have Horvath take a look at them tomorrow." The spell book Ranma had attained also required Horvath's input since much of its contents were in a dialect of Nox's language that he could not read. Nabiki's bow was much more straightforward, firing bolts of pure magic force, and the scrolls within the cases she had found had not only contained the proper information to summon the demon lord she had been seeking, but also the previously unknown demons that Irtram had bound to his tomb.

"I want to get back to Earth just as much as you Ranma, but if we get ourselves killed in the attempt, what good will it do us?" Nabiki asked a few minutes later.

"We don't belong here, Nabiki. Can’t you feel it?" Ranma asked in response.

"So what if I can? So what if we don't belong on Nox? We're here now, and Horvath doesn't believe that we will ever be able to leave, so why don't we settle down and put out some roots?" Nabiki squeezed his encircling arms in emphasis. “At the very least, we could wait a few more years, build up our strength, then try to find a way back to Earth. Back home, we would still be in school without any responsibilities, though without our consent. Here on Nox, however, we could do whatever we want; we have enough treasure to never work another day in our lives, but you keep throwing yourself into one mad quest after another looking for shreds of useless information, and I always follow along, keeping you alive as best as I can." Nabiki realized that she was crying. She never cried. Well, almost never. “One day one of us might not come back. I don't want to think about what I would do in grief if I lost you." Nabiki could see herself turning loose hordes of rampaging demons, all of them bent on blood and death.

Ranma was silent for only a few moments, though it felt like an eternity to both of them. “Okay, you win," he eventually said. “We’ll find some nice little hole in the wall and make a life for ourselves, then we'll see about getting home." Only Ranma feared that Nox had become their home, or soon would, and that a comfortable life with Nabiki just might be too much to leave behind.

Ranma unfolded the dry and cracked leather sheet that the rune swords were stored within upon the large wooden table in Horvath's lab.

"Demon's blood!" Horvath cursed in half astonishment, half awe.

"What?!" Ranma asked his mentor. From the old man's reaction he expected that the swords were very powerful or valuable in some way.

"Ranma, where did you find those accursed blades?" Horvath asked intently. If Nester knew that Ranma had returned the mythical sword 'Death Wind' and it's black brother 'Stormbringer' to the light of day, he would surely go to every effort to have Ranma punished, if simply to eliminate another individual that he saw as his superior.

Ranma shrugged. “They were in Irtram's sarcophagus along with some other stuff."

Horvath fell back into his chair with a heavy sigh, wearied by the short and eventful visit of Ranma. “Irtram, you say? How did you locate it? I thought its location had gone from the minds of mortal men a millennia ago."

"There was a map of the place at the Temple of Arioch."

Horvath's eyes widened and he had to take several deep breaths to steady his breathing. It appeared that Ranma had been busy lately. “What else did you bring back from the temple and Irtram's tomb?"

"Arioch's Temple didn't have anything in it besides the map and a lot of demons, but Irtram's tomb had some demon scrolls and a magic bow that Nabiki claimed, and I found a comprehensive book on ice magic. About the swords… what's so special and accursed about them?"

Horvath picked up the black-bladed sword with the blood-red runes carved along its surface. "Stormbringer is an ancient hell-forged blade of great power that has been wielded by both the just and corrupt throughout the history of reality. It devours the very soul of its victims, and transfers their energy to its wielder." Next, Horvath picked up the white-bladed, silver-runed sword. “This is Death Wind, said to have been forged in heaven at the exact moment that Stormbringer came into existence in hell. It, too, steals its victims’ souls, but instead of destroying them, it automatically reincarnates them without a chance of judgment in heaven. What it doesn't give its wielder in energy, it more than makes up for with its ability to turn aside virtually any spell. Both blades are indestructible and have seen whole universes explode around them, yet they simply relocate themselves by some magic means that no one on Nox understands. Right now, they both appear to be dormant."

Ranma's interest was enflamed. He didn't know whether or not he could ever bring himself to use such weapons that so casually toyed with a being’s soul, but their ability to travel between universes could possibly be harnessed to return Nabiki and himself to Earth.

"Ranma, I must caution you to keep your ownership of these swords a secret from all who do not already know. There are people within the Assembly of Wizards that envy you your power and quick rise to wizardry. They would use your possession of them as an excuse to harm or punish you in some way."

Ranma nodded gravely, and after rebinding the swords, slipped them back into subspace. “I’d better go put these somewhere safe, then." Ranma stepped towards the teleport pad that led to Horvath's other home. Then with a grimace of distaste— or possibly embarrassment— he turned and said, "Nabiki told me to tell you that you're invited to our wedding."

Horvath was getting tired of these constant shocks to his system. His poor old heart just could take too many more of them. He admitted that Nabiki and Ranma made a very good couple and got along with each other wonderfully, but they were so young to be married… "Ranma, I'm honored and would be glad to attend your and Nabiki's wedding, but don't you think you may be too young to marry?"

Again Ranma grimaced, and a blush accompanied the look of discomfort this time. “You think I don't know that? I sure don't want to get married, that's for sure; but Nabiki said that I had to sleep on the couch until I agreed, and well… you know…" His blush deepened.

It must be in their blood, Horvath declared to himself. His late wife had done the exact same thing over seventy years ago. “Would you like me to talk to Nabiki? Maybe talk some sense into her?"

The look of hope and relief on Ranma's face made Horvath laugh uncontrollably. “Would you, please?" he asked desperately.

"Of course, of course! Now get on out of here before your intended starts getting worried!" Horvath didn't stop laughing until Ranma was long gone.

Nabiki watched through the back window of their moderately sized cottage as Ranma went through a blazingly fast kata, the Staff of Oblivion swirling around him in a howling blur. Its current enchantment, an ice spell of Ranma's own devising, filled the air with a thin mist as it cooled the surrounding air. Ranma had cultivated much dislike among the natives of Nox when he reassembled two of the three pieces of the staff also known as the Necromancer's Bane. It wasn't as if it were still truly dangerous, not with the Orb of Souls long banished from Nox, sucked into a magically created wormhole.

Nabiki turned her eyes from Ranma and went back to cutting the vegetables for their supper. She hated the times when it was her turn to cook. The meals were always so drab, and the cleanup afterwards was a bitch, but Ranma's meals always seemed possessed of a peculiar flavor that she often believed was the result of some obscure spell that he had learned in secret.

She heard the massive explosion that accompanied one of Ranma's sorcerous traps that were spread liberally throughout the forest and along the small road that led to their little settlement. No doubt another 'adventurer' seeking to make a name for him or herself by besting Ranma, or even Nabiki herself, who in their few years upon Nox had become infamous in many regards. She had heard tales that under their home huge caches of gold and jewels, magical treasures and objects of power were stored. How this rumor had been started, nobody knew, but it now led to the death of at least three people a week.

Ranma would no doubt go to reset the sprung trap. She had little fear that anyone had survived its detonation; not with the powerful fire, ice, and chaos spells that Ranma wove into his traps. There would probably even be a new pond the next time they got a good rain. Even with her confidence in Ranma, Nabiki set a squad of forest spirits to guard Ranma in case he walked into an ambush.

Nabiki's betrothed returned even as she laid the night's supper out on the table. She gasped in surprise, nearly dropping a plate of biscuits. Ranma was covered in blood, as was the Staff of Oblivion which he held in his right hand, but from the lack of wounds evident on Ranma, none of it was his. "Ranma, what happened?" she asked quickly.

Ranma smiled in fading battle rage. “There was an army of them, Nabiki. Three dozen trained warriors, at least three wizards, and two conjurers. Those spirits you sent really were a lifesaver. I doubt I would have made it if they hadn't been there."

Before Ranma could sit down, Nabiki grabbed him lightly by his pigtail and drug him towards the bathroom. Any blood he got on the furniture was his responsibility to clean up, but Ranma always ended up resorting to a spell to remove the recalcitrant stains, and that was always the signal for Nabiki to go buy new furniture because the old had reached the end of its life.

As Ranma washed the blood from himself, he told Nabiki of the encounter with the men in the forest. None of them had been poorly dressed and all were in fine, polished armor or whatever garb suited their profession. They obviously weren't strapped for cash, and the attack had been so well planned, so perfectly executed, that Ranma should have died. If he had been any normal wizard, he would have died, but Ranma was by no means normal. When they had sought to nullify his magic, they had succeeded, but only in nullifying the magic that they themselves knew. His chaos and ice magic had served him well until he had at last depleted his considerable mana reserves.

His remaining foes had thought him easy pickings when once they saw his last spell flicker and die from lack of power. The warriors' valiant charge had met only with a ruthless opponent who outclassed them in their own field. With the Staff of Oblivion and its ability to hold any enchantment placed upon it, Ranma had carved up a gruesome, half-frozen offering to the scavengers of the forest. Nabiki's spirits had kept the conjurers from drawing on any supernatural aid while Ranma slowly herded them towards another trap.

This trap was one designed to force its victim into a state of uncontrolled, and magically enhanced speed. The wizards and conjurers who had hung back from physical battle were then forced, against their will, to run straight into Ranma's grip.

"We should get in touch with Horvath, Ranma. He has the resources to discover who is behind all these attacks," Nabiki said as she slowly washed and massaged Ranma's tense back.

"It was the Council," Ranma responded. “Each of them, warrior, conjurer, and wizard wore the mark of their Assembly. I guess that someone has finally convinced the higher-ups that we're too dangerous to live free."

Nabiki jerked her hands from Ranma's back and forcefully turned him around to look straight into his eyes. He wasn't joking! “I’ll gather my things and call back my creatures. You should start gathering all your traps and constructs, we'll probably need them," she said, standing up and heading for the door.

"So we we're off to the Castle?" Ranma asked. Nabiki nodded. "Oh well, it had to happen some time."

The Castle in question was one of those discovered the year before during their more adventurous roamings. It, like so many other abandoned places of magic, had become infested with various hellspawn. This one had been full to the brim with the undead and several species of medium-strength demons. Besides its demons, though, the castle had remained untouched by the years or the corruption that denizens of hell so often radiated. It was there, under the watchful eye of golems and ember demons, that they stored the vast treasure they had accumulated. It also sported several deactivated teleport pads that once restored, allowed for easy transit to most of Nox's major cities and sites of magic.

Throughout the night Ranma tirelessly removed all the traps laid within the forest and stored them in the Castle, as they simply referred to it. His experiments with enchanted armor and clothing, along with the equipment needed to carry out the experiments, took two trips by teleport pad. Nabiki had some trouble with her little menagerie of summoned and charmed creatures. The forest spirits she released back into their natural environment, but Char, along with his mate and a dozen half grown wolf puppies, a horde of various sized spiders, an amazingly tamed ember demon, and the trio of urchins that they used to take care of the gardening and general upkeep of their cottage, all had to be herded reluctantly through to the Castle, located between two snow-peaked mountains in the far north.

It was only after everything had been settled in and Nabiki and Ranma were lying in a feather-stuffed bed, wrapped in silks and each other, that the glowing face of Horvath appeared at the foot of their bed.

"By all that is Holy, you're alive!" the face exclaimed in happiness.

Ranma sat up, disentangling himself from Nabiki, and in the process pulling the creamy silk sheet from her. She 'eeked' and hurriedly snatched the sheet back over herself. “Horvath? How did you find us?"

"Oh, you two, I am so happy to see that you live!" Tears flowed down Horvath's incandescent face. “I tried to convince the Assembly and then the Council of your innocence, but there were too many against me. With your partial reassembly of the Stall of Oblivion, they all thought you sought after the power of the Necromancers that it destroyed."

"How did you find us?" Ranma repeated impatiently. If Horvath could do it, so too could others.

Horvath smiled at Ranma, and said, “Not to worry, my boy. There'll be nobody following my trail, not unless they wish to journey to the Forest of Souls."

"That would mean—" Ranma started.

"That I am dead," Horvath finished. “Yes, sadly I leave this world. They were too strong for me, the combined powers of the Council. I tried to get a warning to you, but they were just too strong. It appears that you two still live though, so even in death I know that you cause at least some small torment to my murderers."

"Horvath, I could bind your soul if you wished," offered Nabiki. "You would still be immaterial, but at least you would live on, in some form."

"No, sweet child; it is my time to go, so I will go with dignity, not gibbering in terror at my uncertain fate." Horvath's image began losing the little integrity that it had. “Farewell, and may the gods smile upon you," were his last words before fading away entirely.

For some time after the old man's ghost had departed, Nabiki held Ranma in her arms as he mourned the man who had been more of a father to him than his blood sire.

The vengeance reaped by Ranma and Nabiki after that day was great and frightening. From the Castle, Ranma cast spells of such power that they reached halfway across the world to dissolve, freeze, burn, or raze the strongholds of his enemies. Within a week of Horvath's death, Castle Horrendous, the main seat of Warrior power on Nox, had been turned to charred rubble. Castle Galava and the Tower of Illusion were the next to fall, though both places could have been easily protected by their inhabitants if they had prepared any type of defense against Ranma; but in their arrogance and confidence in their own abilities, the Wizards, too, lost their seat of power.

It was Nabiki who wrought wholesale destruction upon the less centralized conjurers. She could only control so many demons and other creatures at one time, but by giving them simple instructions then turning them loose, Nabiki had a near-limitless army at her disposal.

Through it all, no lives were lost. The warriors lost their strongholds and armories, the wizards their great storehouses of arcane knowledge and magic power, and the conjurers their accumulated knowledge of controllable life forms from the various planes of existence that bordered Nox.

Though they did not know it at the time, Ranma and Nabiki had set in motion an upheaval in the culture and tradition of Nox. Their single-minded fury had planted the seeds for a new dark age that, once banished by the light of enlightenment, would see a world without magic, without even the knowledge that magic had once existed.

But for now, in the present, Ranma and Nabiki were content to live their lives. Time passed in the Castle, and life went on. Ranma turned seventeen, and a few months later Nabiki reached eighteen. They were content with the role Fate had allotted them.

Then one day as an early winter storm pounded on the walls of the ancient castle, Nabiki heard a shout from Ranma. She raced through the halls, fearing that at last they had been found and that vengeance was to be extracted from the avengers. The sight of Ranma smiling broadly, his form glowing with radiant joy, convinced Nabiki that nothing bad had happened. At least not anything that Ranma saw as bad. He had a weird view of things, every now and then.

"I can get us home!" he shouted to Nabiki when he saw her enter his laboratory.

Nabiki mouthed the word 'home'. It was an alien thought, viewing Nox as anything but home. Was Earth truly their home?

Ranma was exultant from his triumph over the forces of the universe that had hindered him at every turn, but he, too, didn't know if he truly, in his heart, wanted to go back to Earth. His life had never been a pleasant one, not with the constant training. There had been no real friends— not even Ucchan, who was little more than a passing acquaintance— and no place to call home. Earth was no home, just as Nox was no home, Ranma realized. Home was what you made of your surroundings and the place where you felt truly relaxed. In that case, the Castle was home.

"But I'm not sure if I want to go," he confided after his first announcement.

Nabiki understood Ranma's decision, for she had come to the same conclusion. “How could we travel back to Earth if we wished to go?" she asked him in hopes of keeping his spirits reasonably high.

"The two rune swords are the key. Horvath once told me of how they traveled from one universe to another, so I decided to look into how they did it."

"Did you discover how?" Nabiki asked, her curiosity piqued by the involvement of the mysterious swords they had found a year earlier.

Ranma looked towards the end of the room where each of the two exquisitely crafted blades stood upright within a glass container full of water. "Nope, still haven't got a clue to how they do it, but I know how to use it."

The gears in Nabiki's head were turning, and the proverbial light bulb had become a blaring siren and flashing neon sign. “Could we go to Earth and come back to Nox whenever we wanted?"

"Well, yeah, I guess," Ranma answered slowly, trying to figure out what Nabiki was thinking.

"Ranma, why not visit for a while? We could tell our families that we're okay and that we are happy." They could also bring some people back with them to populate the Castle, and Nabiki was already making a mental checklist of all the antibiotics and drugs that could be used on Nox to treat diseases that also inhabited Earth. Magic didn't always remedy such maladies, not to mention that magic wasn't always available or free if you had a sick child, but cheap Earth-born medicines would have no such disadvantages.

"That wouldn't be so bad. I would like to see how Pops is doing. Hell, I might even be able to find my Mom."

Nabiki, too, would relish being with her family once again. Who knew, maybe she could get them to come back to Nox with her and Ranma.

To be continued.

Author's Notes: Couldn't sleep so I decided to do something mildly productive. The results were this short sub-chapter that may not be all that well written but advances the story to the point that I can put Ranma and Nabiki back on Earth. Won't that be fun? Send me C&C at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007