Only after Ranma had put Satori to bed and he'd returned downstairs
did he realize exactly what he had done.  He was alone with a pretty
girl in the house of his mother.  That would have meant possible
embarassment to any other person with even remotey normal parents, but
Ranma knew his mother well enough to know that he was royally F%&@ed
if she found out he had a girl over.  Not that she would be upset.  No,
far from upset.  She would be overjoyed.  Nodoka would be so happy that
her son had proved his manliness that she would almost certainly let
Akane know, if not the whole harem.

As he tried to think of a soluution to his newest problem that didn't
involve leaving Satori to the Nanami woman, Ranma began to pace the
living room nervously.

<Ranma, may I make a suggestion?> Chiron asked much more calmly thought
he should have.  Afterall the guy carrying him around had only a few
hours to live.

<Suggest away,> Ranma replied.

<Why not tell your mother the truth?>

Ranma considered the advice.  It could work.  Why hadn't he thought of
it?  It was so obvious.  Wait a minute!<How did you know what I was
thinking about?  Can you read my thoughts?> he suspiscously asked
his companion.

Chiron coughed mentally.<Um, not really.  It's just that you're
screaming your thoughts out so loudly that I'm starting to get a
headache.>

<Can you get a headache?>

<Oh yes.  As of right now it's getting very unpleasant.>

His worries momentarily forgotten, Ranma asked,<How can you have a
headache?  You're a computer.>

Sounding almost hurt, Chiron answered,<I am not a *computer*.  I am
an artificially sentient biologically active neural processor.  And I
get headaches from your mental stress, the same as you would if I
wasn't soaking it all up.>

Scientific gibberish Ranma didn't understand, but bullshit he did.<So
you're just a very, very advanced computer, heh?>

The mental silence lasted for several long moments, unitl finally,
Chiron said,<Yeah, pretty close.>

Ranma didn't have time to gloat, mainly because he was busy
panicking.  Someone was at the front door and the sound of a ket turning
in the lock seemed to stab into his ears.  He wasn't ready!
****

Nodoka opened the front door and picked up her bag of groceries.  She
was determined to fix Ranma the best meal of his young life, as a
welcome home present.  She still couldn't decide wether or not Genma
should be allowed to attend.  Kicking the door shut behind her,
Nodoka followed it up with slipping her shoes off, then headed for
the kitchen.  As she passed the living room she saw Ranma sitting on
the sofa.  He was busy gnawing on a finger.  Ranma?

Nodoka dropped the bag when she realized her son was home.  She rushed
over to him and gave him a motherly hug and kissed him on the cheek.

"What are you doing home so early, Son?  However did you get in?" she
asked after turning him loose

Ranma looked very nervous as he spoke."Mom, I need to tell you some-
thing.  It'll sound very strange, and mostly unbelievable, but it's
all true." He waited for her approval.

"Of course, Son, you can tell me anything." Sensing that whatever her son
had to say may take a while, Nodoka sat down next to him. Maybe he
had finally decided to marry and make lots of grandchildren.  She would
need at least a dozen if she didn't want to die prematurely from
extreme boredom in her declining years.

Ranma began with finding Chiron, the changes that had brought, and how
he suspected that the cure for his curse had come with it.  He went on
to tell what Chiron had told him of Nanami and the others working for
her, finally finishing his narrative on the subject of Satori.

Ranma was such a manly son.  Always looking out for others.  Always kept
an eye out for the ladies, too."Where is the poor dear?" Nodoka asked
Ranma.

"In the spare bedroom."

"Wait here, Son.  I'm just going to make sure she's alright."
****

<Ranma, what were you talking saying about a curse?> Chiron asked him
after his mother had departed for her meeting with Satori.

It had completely slipped his mind to mention the curse to Chiron.  A lot
had been going on, and Chiron had been offline when it all happened.<Before
I found you I used to turn into a girl everytime I got splashed with
cold water.>

<A girl.> Chiron suddenly burst into fits of laughter.  Eventually he
calmed down and asked,<And you don't have it now?>

<No it's gone.>

<Could you describe the transformation?  I assume there was a
transformation, not just a changing of bodies?>

<It was definately a transformation.  My body would shrink and I always
lost a lot of weight.  I was weaker, but also faster, and may range
decreased a lot.  Everything went back to normal whenever I got splashed
with hot water.>

Almost a minute passed before Chiron's excited answer came to Ranma.
<During the initial conversion process, after your body had been altered,
but before the advanced systems had been anchored to your nervous system,
I ran into an energy anomaly.  It was most unusual, and was interfering
with placing the spacial generators.  I couldn't link your energy with
the generators because the anomaly acted as a buffer between the two, so
I used the already installed gravitational and magnetic capacitors to
draw the energy away.  Of course the capacitors weren't meant to handle
that type of energy, and it all dissipated harmlessly.  That must have
been related to your curse in some way that I can't determine with the
means available to me.  It's most fortunate that this happened or the
first time you transformed the technology within you would have retained
its normal size while your body shrunk around it.  You would have
died.>

Ranma shuddered as he thought of strange machinery sticking out at odd
angles from various places on his female body.  At least he wouldn't have
to worry about that.<Thanks, I guess.  You didn't do anything else to me
that you don't know the effects of did you?>

<Well now that you mention it, I did run into a very small portion or
your brain that was highly overactive.>

<Overactive?>

<Producing much more energy than necessary, or safe.  I chose it as the
core of my consciousness since I could substitute any of the functions
it performed, and I felt it would be safer to remove the area without
highly invasive and dangerous brain surgery.>

Couldn't really complain about that.<Thanks again.>
****

Nodoka led a much more conscious Satori down the stairs.  The girl had a
rosy cast to her cheeks and would not make eye contact with Ranma.

"Son, it was very admirable of you to save Satori, but I'm sure that
her parents must be worried sick by now," Nodoka said.

"Both my mother and father are out of town, Mrs. Saotome.  I've been
staying with a friend."

"Well then, we can't have you put your friend in any danger, or increase
that which you are already in.  You'll just have to stay with us until
your parents return.  Then we'll make other arrangements."

"I wouldn't want to be a burden," Satroi said quietly.

"Nonsense," Nodoka replied."You wouldn't be any trouble, I'm sure.  Now
that that is decided, Ranma will be taking you to your house to gather
up some clothes and things."

"Huh?" asked Ranma.  His mother hadn't actually invited Satori to stay
over at his house?!  Sure he had done it, but Ranma knew he never
thought things through all the way unless he was in a fight so he could
be excused for being dumb, but his mother was an adult, she was supposed
to make sure this kind of thing didn't happen.

"I was just telling Satori-chan that you were kind enough to offer her
an escort home."

Ranma nodded.  They were on the opposite side of Nerima, and they
probably hadn't started looking for him yet.  He wasn't too late.  Maybe
he could avoid being seen by anyone.  He would have to be especially
careful around other teenagers.  There was no way to tell if they
were working for Nabiki.

"Great!  Now you take Satori-chan and I'll go start dinner." She didn't
leave either of the teend time to say anything, grabbing up her groceries
and scurrying into the kitchen.
****

Nodoka smiled to herself once she was safely in the kitchen.  That
girl definately had a crush on her son.  If Satori could just work up
the nerve to seduce her son then Nodoka was sure she could get her son
out of the engagements to all those horrible girls!  And to think that
she had been hoping Akane would marry Ranma.  That girl was just plain
mean.
****

"Wow, your mom is..."

"Overbearing?" Satori nodded."Yeah I know what you mean.  So where do
you live." Please don't let it been near Furinkan.

Satori gave Ranma the general directions, but stopped abruptly
before finishing."Shara says to forget about directions.  She's sending
the coordinates and a picture to Chiron so that you can teleport us
directly to my house."

Even as she spoke, Ranma was recieving a mental picture of Satori's house
and a set of spacial coordinates.  It was wierd how all he had to do was
look at the trio of separate numbers and he knew where he would appear.
****

<Satori, you really need to calm down,> Shara chided her.<Your heartrate
and breathing are very high and your blood is becoming hyper-oxygenated.>

Satori couldn't help it.  She felt her ears burning red as Ranma put his
hand on her shoulder to teleport them to her house.  He had to notice
that she was almost as red in the face as his shirt.
****

Ranma made a note to himself to ask his mother is she thought Satori
was sick.  Satori's face was very red, from a fever, he guessed.  There
was nothing he could do about it.  Besides, now that he could simply
teleport them to Satori's house, there was no fear of being found
with another girl.

As quickly as the world caved in on itself, it sprang back into its
normal non-warped existance around Ranma and Satori.  It was becoming
easier, Ranma noted, though it had never really been difficult to
teleport.  Practice did make perfect afterall.

Satori let out a quick gasp, still unaccustommed to the feeling of
whatever the process was that allowed Ranma to move without moving.
It probably would have been disorienting to him too if Chiron hadn't
tweaked a few things in his head.  That, more than anything, made
Ranma nervous.  Even though he agreed with Chiron's decision to replace
the damaged section of his brain, what would happen if he suddenly had
to fight a fire-chunking demigod and he needed a Hiryu Shoten Ha, but
he couldn't make them anymore.  It *had* happened before.  Ranma dropped
the unpleasant thought, choosing instead to gawk at his surroundings.

It was mostly pink.

With lots of fluffy purple stuff.

And lace.  Lots of lace.

There were also pictures of guys on the walls.  Semi-nude guys.

It was a girl's bedroom!

Ranma screamed then dived under a queen sized bed seemingly composed
of purple ruffles.  Just to make sure he wasn't attacked by any
carnivorous teddy-bears, he readied his distortion field, just
encase.

The sound of giggling made Ranma peek out from under an overhanging fall
of lace.  Satori was giggling girlishly while trying desperately to
stifle more raucous laughter.  She finally failed and laughed until she
fell back into a normal wooden chair, the only pieced of un-hyper-
feminine material in the room.

"R-Ranma," Satori wheezed,"what in the world is wrong with you?"

Ranma nervously crawled out from his hiding place.  Nothing had attacked
him yet, so he was probably safe.

"Well?" She giggled again.

Ranma grumbled at his own behavior when he replayed the whole scene in
his mind, once again cursing his father for ever being born, even though
he knew the ramifications that the event not occuring would bring.
"You promise not to tell?" Ranma asked Satori.  She nodded and
he continued,"When I was a kid, about six or seven, I guess, Oyagi took
me to a carnival that was visiting from America.  Well, he found a place
with all kinds of scary stuff in it.  Then as part of my training, to
conquer fear he said, he snuck into the place one night and locked me in
one of the rooms.  When he turned the lights on I was trapped in a
room almost exactly like this one, except there were giant stuffed
animals with metal teeth and knife-wielding dolls.  The bastard left me
in there the whole night."

Satori burst into another fit of giggles.

"You promised," accused Ranma.  Okay, he would sure never tell that story
to another living soul, especially if it got that reaction.

Satori managed to catch her breath and apologized,"I'm sorry Ranma,
I couldn't help myself." She blushed, or was her face already rosy
from laughing so hard, and began moving about her room with practiced
ease, flowing from one giant walk-in closet on one side of the room, to
an equally huge bathroom on the other.  Within a minute she had a
large duffel bag packed full of necessities absolutely essential to
the survival of girls the world around.  Then she started packing
clothes.  This took longer, almost five minutes, and when it was over
Ranma had a large bag under on arm and an even larger one slung over
his shoulder.

Of course Satori could have carried them.  Like Ranma, she could most
likely have lifted a greyhound bus one-handed, but she was used to
passing baggage off to ever accomadating boys, and Ranma was the a
ccomadating type.

"This all?"

"For now, but we may have to make another trip in a couple of days,"
Satori answered.

Ranma decided not to reply, not wanting to offend a girl who was being
nice to him for no reason.  It also helped that she was a living
weapon.  With his free hand he gripped her shoulder lightly and once
again teleported them to his home.
****

"Satori-chan, would you like to help me cook?" She really should
establish a good relationship with the girl that she was praying would
marry her son.

Satori had just finished unpacking her things in the spare bedroom and
was sitting at the kitchen table flipping through a magazine.  At
Nodoka's question her head snapped up and she got a gleam in her eyes."I
love to cook and I would love to help."

>From then on they worked like a team, backing each other up and
performing separate tasks that soon brought the bigger picture of
the meal into focus.

"So, Satori-chan, what do you think of my son?" Nodoka asked suddenly
as the two of them worked together mincing vegetables.

Satori fumbled with the knife and it ran down the back of her pointer
finger.  Normally she would have had a bad cut requiring several
stitches, but Satori wasn't exactly normal now, so the blade glanced
off her skin, unnoticed by the older woman."W-what do you mean,
Auntie?" Nodoka had insisted that she be called that.

Without stopping her chopping, Nodoka said,"I know that you like him,
it is fairly obvious."

Satori slumped, her whole body going limp."I must be making a fool out
of myself in front of him." She 'eeped' when she realized what she had
said.

Nodoka smiled and went on."Don't worry, my son is almost completely
oblivious to anything but a completely direct appraoch from a girl.
He just doesn't pick up on the more obscure signals we women send
out."

Satori's face got a very confused look."You sound like you don't care
wether I like Ranma or not, but doesn't he have a fiance?"

Nodoka smiled again."Oh no dear, Ranma hasn't got a single fiance, he's
got four." She stopped, giving Satori time to close her mouth and make
her eyes go back to normal size."It's not by choice that he is betrothed
to them, I can assure you, but because of his father's lack of
responsibility and honor.  The girls are just dreadful, too.  One of them
is a backward Chinese girl who can barely even speak Japanese, the chef
is a cross-dresser, the gymnast is completely insane, and the worst one
of all is constantly blaming problems on Ranma and hitting him.  So, you
see, I would not mind at all if something like a relationship was to
form between you and my son."
****

Luckily, Ranma was nowhere within hearing range of his mother's
conversation with his newest aquaitence.  He was having a chat with
the little voice in his head.

<Go over that one more time,> Ranma requested.

Exasperatedly, Chiron said,<Priziun society is based around the color
of a person's skin.  There is no discrimination because the culture
chose to develop towards its present status millenia ago.>

<Yeah, yeah, I got all that.  I mean go over the color thing.>

<There are ten naturally occuring skin colors among the Priziun
people.  Through selective breeding and social isolation between
young Priziuns, different sets of values and beliefs are indoctrinated
into them.  White Priziuns, for example, are educated almost exclusively
in the arts, nurturing their creativity, and forming them into highly
skilled artisans.  Blue Priziuns, like my creator, are given little
education beyond mathematics and the sciences.  They form the scientiffic
and engineering sector of the populace.  Even though occupations are
color specific, no one color has any advantage over any other color,
meaning that a red Priziun could be brought up like a white one and have
the same artistic motivation as a white.>

Ranma reminded himself that they were talking about a completely
alien society and he couldn't expect them to live like people from
earth.<What about black?>

<Black Priziuns are trained from an early age to be soldiers, and make up
the entirety of the military command structure,> Chiron finished, his
mental voice clearly betraying his happiness that he would no longer have
to explain the complicated and strange, even to him, Priziun way of
life.

<So that would make me like the leader, or something,> Ranma mused
to himself, not even aware that he was talking to Chiron.

Chiron laughed weakly before saying,<Ranma, you may well be the most
capable warrior ever encountered by a Priziun...or Priziun technology,
but you are far from being a leader.  You have much more maturing to
do before such a task falls into your lap.>

Ranma took the criticism in good humor, knowing that it was the truth.
<Okay then, since you're the black cube, does that mean that you could
tell the others what to do?>

<Sure, I could tell them what to do until I'm blue in the face,
figuratively, but I have no real authority.  Those cubes who have been
found by the people similar to you may have developed personalities,
like Shara, that respect my decisions.  That's all though.
****

Nanami leaned back in her leather upholstered chair, drumming her fingers
on the mahagony desktop as she waited impatiently for Leffan to arrive.
The glossly red of her long, glossy red fingernails, reflected her
mood perfectly.  The glow from a myriad of heat lamps mounted above
her stained the rest of her and her surroundings blood red.  She still
hadn't reached  capacity yet, despite being in an almost constant state
of thermal drain.  Tirna assured her, though, that her limit would soon
be reached.  Her calculations put her maximum capacity at nearly ten
billion BTUs.  The numbers indicated the fantastic amount of damage she
could do if the crystalline emitters in her palms would allow for more
than focused beams and intense blasts of infrared energy, but the
technology grafted within her body by Tirna was centuries, if not
millenia, beyond human duplication, and there was no way to tell what
the side effects would be if she tampered with what she didn't
understand.

A hazy plane of air formed several meters in front of Nanami's
desk, signalling that the wait for Leffan was over.  She would have to
keep in mind that Germany was in a different time zone when she scheduled
the vext meeting.

"Hello Nanami," Leffan greeted her in heavily, though passable,
accented Japanese.

"Leffan.  I take it that the trip went well?" Leffan's ability to
create those mysterious gateways of his demonstrated just how advanced
the cubes were.  Nanami couldn't even begin to wrap her mind, considerable
as it was, around the sophistication needed to create stable portals
between two places in space.

Leffan shrugged."I can't complain."

Nanami flipped the switch that controlled the heat lamps and quickly
absorbed the excess heat from the room returning it to a more
comfortable, less life threatening temperature.  Knowing Leffan, he
would have let himself cook before he complained about it."So, getting
down to business, do you have the arms ready for production?"

Leffan nodded and reached his arm into one of those portals of his, no
doubt retrieving the desired object from a predetermined table
somewhere.  When he pulled his arm back his hand held a long bundle of
wires, tubing, and microchips."Like the rest of the armor, the
servo-hydraulic hybrid design increases speed and strength by a factor
of ten." He laid it on the desk."The outer plating has to be fitted after
the fire-controls are linked to the soldier.  The weapons are modular and
can be easily exchanged.  Presently we have working grenade launchers,
flame throwers, autocannons, and anti-armor rocket launchers.  There are
also a number of close combat weapons that can be chosen to best suit
the soldier."

"Excellant," Nanami grinned.  Leffan's people were leftover from the
cold war, and they were *good* at what they did"What about the
lasers?"

"My scientists are making progress, but your expectations may be too
high.  The energy cells can only hold ten charges at the most, and
that's pushing past safety tolerances.  Now that that's taken care of,
we should discuss my expenses on so much R&D and the agreed upon payment."

Nanami reached into her desk and pulled a large velvet pouch out.  It
was almost bursting at the seams with its contents.  She undid the tie-
string holding it closed and passed it to Leffan."Twenty million in
uncut diamonds, as usual."

Leffan deposited the bag of precious stones on the other end of a portal
then nodded to his business associate before standing and walking through
a portal that ceased to exist as soon as he passed through it.

Author's notes: I'm on a roll so look for chapter five in the next few
days.

dark_phoneix@hotmail.com