"Wait," Nabiki said as the wind blew a new scent into the room. "Do you all smell that."
Kasumi just blinked, uncertain what Nabiki was talking about, but Akane growled angrily as she smelled a certain person in her house. It didn't bother Akane that the only time she had previously smelled that person was before she had become a dog, what mattered to her was that she recognized the scent.
"THAT PERVERTED LITTLE FOX!!!" Sayuri shouted angrily upstairs, provoking the three sisters to action. Akane was up the stairs toward her shouting friend while Nabiki headed for the door of the house.
Soun met his middle daughter outside and looked around for any sign of Ranma.
"Was that honorless Saotome here?" Soun demanded angrily.
"I don't know how he got in without us knowing," Nabiki said. "But he was here."
"Well, he shan't do you any more harm as long as I draw breath," Soun declared. "You hear that Ranma! Stay away from this home."
Nabiki, being much more capable of seeing in the dark than her father, caught sight of a faint flash of red over the wall and then she was off, scrabbling over the wall as a tanuki.
"Nabiki, wait," Soun called out. "Don't fight him!"
Nabiki had no intention of fighting Ranma, but she wasn't about to let him get away this time. Besides, she had support if she was right. Most sparrows didn't fly in at night as far as she knew.
The sight of Akane bursting into the room in full hybrid form was, to say the least, disturbing for Sayuri. She back pedalled quickly from the fierce looking dog person and had to check the impulse to scream at the top of her lungs again. This time in terror.
"Akane don't DO that?!" Sayuri gasped.
"Where is he?" Akane demanded, looking and sniffing about the room. "I can smell him in here."
"He jumped out the window," Sayuri said irritably. "He WAS the cat! The little pervert was sitting there listening to us the whole time. And to think I thought that Chinese cat gave him those wounds..." Sayuri paused a moment as she considered that.
"But, he's a fox," Akane said. "How can he be the cat too?" Sayuri didn't seem to be listening, and then Akane looked out the window and saw her middle sister take off after a red fox. She'll get herself killed!
Sayuri snapped out of her awareness as Akane jumped out of the house and landed as large brown dog, easily one hundred pounds, that easily leaped the wall. She saw the Tendo patriarch about to follow and called out.
"Tendo-san, please don't go," Sayuri called out. "Wh..what if something comes here!"
"But..." Soun pointed helplessly towards the direction his daughters had run.
"They can take care of themselves," Sayuri said. "Are you really going to leave a helpless little girl all alone and defenseless in your house?"
Soun sputtered.
Ranma looked back and tested the air. All three of the girls were after him. He winced at the thought and then sighed. He could lose them probably...
Or he could give them a little training.
Akane had long ago passed up Nabiki in the chase and could see Ranma ahead of her. She was so close she could almost feel the heat of his blood on the night air.
If only people would just get out of my way, Akane thought irritably.
She continued to bark loud and angrily as she pelted down the street crowded by people heading home after a long day of work.
Then the fox took a leap almost straight up about twenty feet. Akane blinked in surprise and followed the fox's trajectory for a long moment before Ranma flipped in the air lunged toward a store front and virtually rocketed off the building onto the roof of car, off that car over the other lanes of traffic and across the street.
Akane watched this with a slack jaw, a curious expression on a dog, until she realized that she was still running in the same direction. Which was about the time she smashed into the fruit vendor. She stood up and shook herself out, paying the frightened vendor no mind as Nabiki flew past her.
"Are you going to get into the chase, Akane?" Nabiki twittered, though Akane could somehow understand her despite the strange accent. Akane growled irritably and took off after Nabiki across the street.
"Leave off the jokes, Nabs!" Akane shouted back angrily. Lucky that Ranma choose to cross the street just in time for us to use the crosswalk.
"Here you go," the store vendor said, smiling as he passed the shishkabobs to his customer. "Please come...AHH!!" Something small and furry ran past him and he virtually jumped. The flash of red leaped up away from the man onto his cart.
"What the hell was that?" the customer asked looking down the side walk to the flash of red that was busily dodging people.
"A...a...fox?" the shopkeeper said.
"In the city?" the customer asked. "Hey!! It stole my food!!" They both looked angrily down the street where cries of surprise marked the fox's passage. The screams of dismay, crashes, and loud barking coming from behind them refocused that attention.
As they turned around they both barely had time to duck as a dog seemed to virtually blow through the food cart without stopping. People jumped to the side as the beast charged away in the direction of the fox.
At this point a tanuki dropped a pile of money in front of where the shopkeeper cowered on the ground, and a wallet in front of the customer.
"A...tanuki?" the shopkeeper said. "Hey!! There's five thousand yen missing!!"
"And I'm missing two thousand!" the customer whined as he looked through his wallet. Both men found a note in their funds and looked at it curiously.
"Finder's fee?"
A sparrow alighted in front of the two men and gave a very good imitation of a formal and apologetic bow to each before flying down the street as well.
"Err..." the two men said.
Ranma paused a moment to catch his breath and check his injuries. He glanced back and saw that one or two of his wounds had reopened, and that shouldn't have been a particularly difficult run either. He was already badly winded and from what he could tell Akane was practically fresh.
Sayuri had mentioned something about Kasumi saying he should take it easy. She was right, not that he really had time, but this night's activity had been rather useless. All he had done really was blow off some steam and probably send a flare up for the enemy.
He assumed he had a few seconds before the caught up to him after his last trick.
Akane had managed not to run into the last few carts, but Nabiki was already starting to drop off. He wasn't certain about Kasumi.
"I should be taking it easy," Ranma muttered to himself, still in fox form.
"Okay," he said. "A few more minutes and then lose them. This attracts to much attention anyway." But it certainly is fun, and maybe I need more of that. Then the sound of Akane barking could be heard, and the chase was on again.
Ranma ducked as a black shape swooped down on him.
Scratch that!! Ranma decided quickly as he got a better look at who had just swooped on him. A bat had joined the chase. When he found himself dodging knives the idea of ending the fight seemed to be even more appealing.
"Get back here Ranma!!" Akane growled out.
Ranma winced, and then smiled as much as a fox could smile. He could see Mousse coming around for another pass, and as Akane bounded towards him, he sprinted towards a streetlight and became a bat in time to swoop through the light.
"Changing into something else won't help you get away from me!" Akane shouted, already looking for something to jump off of. She changed her mind when a small black shape skeetered past her, muttering about having to change directions.
Mousse suddenly found himself with other problems than trying to outfly Ranma as Akane pursued him, angrily ignoring the fact her nose was telling her that this wasn't Ranma.
"AHHH!! Stupid fox, you can't fool me this time!" something shouted as it dropped down on Akane's back.
"Wait, Shampoo!" the bat yelled. "That's not!!" The dog angrily rolled as the cat clawed into its back and Shampoo slammed into a wall, surprised at the sudden reaction. Certainly it had no grace or finesse, but the raw power was tremendous.
"Sushi...." Shampoo muttered happily as she voiced her commentary on Akane's defensive reaction as well as she was capable of at the moment.
"How dare you hurt my Shampoo!" the bat demanded, landing and shifting into his hybrid form. Akane gulped as she grew into her hybrid form as well and stared across at Mousse in the lot.
"Ummm, okay, I think I have the wrong people here," Akane said.
"Die you beast!!" Mousse shouted.
Kasumi blinked and stared as a bat flitted unsteadily past her going the other direction.
"'scuse me," the bat muttered.
"Oh, it's all right," Kasumi responded as she continued to scan the streets for Akane.
It was a moment before she realized that the only animals other than sparrows she understood were her sisters. Then she stopped in confusion of whether to look for the bat that had just passed her, or continue looking for her sisters.
She quickly decided to go back to looking for her sisters, and immediately found Akane in a battle with a bat-man.
Akane was not having an easy time of it, despite the fact that she obviously had a great deal more physical strength than the bat.
Kasumi swallowed nervously a moment as she swooped down and landed, taking her own hybrid form.
"Stop! Stop!" she shouted. "We're not trying to hurt you!"
"Kasumi, stay back!" Akane shouted, moving in front of her sister. "This guy's good."
"That bitch hurt my Shampoo," the bat growled, pointing to where a purple cat was shaking her head and standing up into a hybrid form.
"She landed on me and clawed into my back!" Akane shouted back.
"I think you fox in disguise, stupid dog!" Shampoo shouted angrily. "And then you stupid slam Shampoo into wall!!"
"We're all after Ranma here!" Kasumi reminded them. "Not each other."
"Then why you fighting us?" Shampoo demanded.
"I SAW Ranma turn into a bat!" Akane said, glaring at the bat.
"So that's why you chased me," Mousse said.
"Would all of you just shut up?" a voice said above them. "All that whining and wailing, you're giving me a headache."
Everybody looked up to see a tall man with long hair crouching on a gargoyle overlooking the lot.
"Who is you?" Shampoo asked.
Nabiki walked into a side alley and shifted into hybrid form unconsciously. She leaned against a wall and worked to catch her breath.
She frowned as she considered the folly of trying to keep up with a pair of martial artists that had spent their lives practicing. Still, she imagined that there weren't many people who could go through that sort of activity.
To calm herself down she started counting the money she had picked up in her sister's wake and pocketing it. Idly she wondered where her clothes went while she was a tanuki, but was too tired to follow the line of questioning further.
"Excuse me," a voice said. "Would you like to come in and rest there?"
Nabiki looked up to see that she had come to a stop in front of an old shrine. Looking toward the voice she found someone in their late twenties, maybe earlier thirties, with long dark hair and a concerned look. Nothing that really set her apart unless you included her aura.
Nabiki gasped as she took it in. That woman was beyond merely powerful if she read the aura correctly.
"I'll be fine," Nabiki said.
"Really," the woman said. "You should come into the shrine before someone sees you."
"What are you talking about?" Nabiki asked until she looked down and noticed the fur. "Oh...hey, wait, why aren't you up in arms about this?"
"I've gotten used to things like this," she said. "Come in, please, I have another guest to attend to as well."
"Uh, sure," Nabiki said. "I could just change to human form though."
"The shrine is safer regardless," the woman insisted. Nabiki hesitated. The woman did not feel dangerous, at least not dangerous to her. But if she was wrong she had practically no way to fight her.
"I could use some tea, I guess," Nabiki said.
She walked into the shrine with the woman. Indeed the instant she crossed the gate, she felt safer. As she walked, her attention was drawn to an old well to the right of the property.
"I was going to pay you a visit anyway," the woman said out of the blue. "After my husband got back to town."
"Excuse me?" Nabiki said.
"I assume you've noted the flows of power toward your dojo, Tendo-san," the woman said. "After all, you've been brought into the front lines of this war."
"How do you know who I am?" Nabiki demanded, stopping on the pathway.
"Long ago," the woman said. "A terrible ritual was performed on your family's land. A sorcerer cracked a hole in the universe to summon an alien demon that would give him power."
Nabiki flinched in surprise and shock.
"Your dojo is built on the focus point of that gate," the woman continued. "My husband and I were planning to pay you a visit and help you defend it. Though I see now somebody else has."
"My home," Nabiki said. "Is the site of a gate between our world and the hells?"
"No, not the hells," the woman said. "Nor the kami plane, but something outside all of us. Nabiki Tendo, you live on ground on one of the few places were demons and gods and mortals fought and died on the same side."
"How would you know this?" Nabiki demanded.
"I was there," the woman said simply. Nabiki boggled.
"HOW?!!" Nabiki did not like being so in the dark.
"I'll go into more detail in a moment," the woman said. "When everybody else is here."
"Everybody else?"
"Yes, everybody else," the woman said. "And don't worry about your home, I sent an old friend to help protect it while we talk."
Soun answered the knock on the door cautiously, ready to pounce if the person on the other side turned out to be an evil demon out to destroy them.
"Hey," the teenaged boy on the other side of the door said. Though Soun only saw the fox-features.
"RANMA!!!!!!" Soun roared angrily.
"AHHHHHHH!!!!" the fox-boy screamed as Soun's demon head was launched. "WHO'S RANMA?!?!! I'm from a shrine!!!" He shakily held out a card, which Soun took after deflating to normal.
"What's this?" Soun said.
"A shrine with business cards?" Sayuri asked. "So what's your...name?" Sayuri looked at the fainted fox-boy.
"Perhaps I over did it," Soun said.
"Oh, yes," the woman said as they walked into the building proper. "I'll have you treat this as neutral ground while you're all here."
"And just why would I need to do that?" Nabiki asked suspiciously as she considered the fact that there was another guest. Then they walked into the tea room and there was Ranma lying passed out on the floor.
"He fell into my yard," the woman said. "His wounds would have killed him, if I hadn't invited him onto my land when I did." She shook her head. "Wasted all that energy on that chase tonight."
"Who are you?" Nabiki demanded.
"Higurashi Kagome," the woman said. Nabiki blinked for a moment and remembered the the woman's comment about being there long ago.
"But if your THAT Higurashi Kagome...that would make you over four hundred years old!" Nabiki gasped.
"That gets complicated," the woman said, smiling.