Knowing that this was Kushina summoning him for her demonstration before the other ninja to prove that she could in fact summon, Xander wanted to ensure it was impressive, so he went invisible before allowing the questing energies to latch on to him.
When he appeared, and confirmed that Kushina was there before a crowd of ninja, he summoned a great cloud of smoke, reshaped himself, solidified, and then blew it away, revealing himself. Even as he did this last, he summoned a mass of chakra to surround him, focusing on the idea that it should feel overwhelmingly powerful, knowing that the ninjas would be sensitive to it.
Kushina was grinning widely in relief and happiness that her summoning had succeeded, here at this most critical juncture, where her future as a ninja was at stake.
A snide voice broke the stillness. "So she can summon, he doesn't look like much to me. What's the point of summoning a wimp?"
It was clear from the impressed looks on the faces of the other ninja prior to the speech that they had detected the power of the chakra he had produced, and that this was false bravado on the part of someone who had an interest in seeing Kushina fail. After all, Xander was in his own form here, as he had appeared to Kushina, the form of a man optimized to the peak of physical condition by the super-soldier serum. It was true, of course, that these ninja were also in top physical condition, reducing the disparity he had over them, and his musculature and the absence of fat were to an extent concealed by the black garments he had created, including what he hoped was an impressive Darth Vader style black cloak. Still, he was by no means a wimpy or weak figure of a man.
It was equally clear that the heckler had failed when with a glance from Xander, he was ejected upwards as if he had been sitting on a rocket-powered ejection seat, and sent flying.
An older looking ninja wearing an odd hat-Xander thought he might be the village leader Mizuna had mentioned-cleared his throat, bringing all eyes to him. "Perhaps now, Kushina-chan, you can demonstrate for us how your partnership with your summon works?"
He gestured, and turning to look in the indicated direction, Xander saw what looked almost like a traditional old-West shooting gallery, a display of fake buildings, with ninja mannequins sprinkled throughout.
Xander glanced at Kushina, willing to take her direction in how she wanted to deal with this. He was not sure if she would prefer an overwhelming show of force, or a display of precision.
She grinned up at him, moving closer, and leaned forward. He leaned down and she whispered to him, "Can you just blow the whole thing away at once? Like it's insulting to have to fight just one ninja?"
Xander nodded, grinning. They had no fluid in them, aside from a bit of air in the padding, so tossing them individually as he had done with the snide idiot would have taken some effort, but just blowing everything away was as easy as pie.
Before generating a wind, Xander grabbed all the air in the vicinity of the fake ninja, quintupled its density and then pushed it away at six hundred miles an hour. Knowing that hurricane force winds were one hundred and fifty to three hundred miles per hour, he was confident that doubling that would be enough to be impressive, especially after he thickened the air, and indeed, it not only took out the fake ninja but the entire setting; false buildings and all were blown away in a single tremendous rush of roaring wind.
"Hmm... impressive," the old guy said. "Very well, Kushina, you have demonstrated an ability to summon, a skill well beyond most genin. As such, it is clear that you can no longer be held back," at this he glared at several of the group of ninja around him, "and are therefore promoted to the rank of genin. Congratulations, you are now a kunoichi of Whirlpool."
Kushina cheered and spun, leapt at Xander and gave him a crushing hug, then targeted her teacher Mizuna for more of the same. As the other gathered ninja began wandering away now that the show was over, Kushina said, "So I get missions now, right Mizuna-sensei? Real missions?"
Mizuna nodded, but warned her, "Your first missions will be pretty boring and safe, Kushina, but if you acquit yourself well in doing them, eventually you will graduate to harder missions."
"Including ones out of the village?" Kushina begged.
Her answer was cut off by an angry shout. Xander looked up to see the heckler returning, looking quite the worse for wear, but unfortunately uninjured.
Xander was willing to ignore him, until he realized the fool had more of those odd throwing implements in his hands, and if he threw them at Xander, they might hit Kushina or Mizuna. Well, that simply was not going to be happening. A few of the other ninja had stopped at the realization that the loudmouth was returning, so there was an audience as Xander lifted his hand and the idiot was jerked off the ground, and held motionless.
"I don't think I like this one," Xander commented to Kushina, deliberately ignoring the man. "What do you suppose I should do with him?"
Kushina giggled while Mizuna shook her head slowly. Xander did not wait for an answer, instead turning back and drawing the man swiftly across the intervening space to a conversational distance.
Xander teased the man for a minute, continually easing off his control, waiting for the idiot to open his mouth to shout something, and then forcing his mouth closed and still again. "Ah, ah, ah, no shouting," Xander ordered. He glanced at Mizuna, then back to the blowhard. "Is there any reason I should not just stop your foolish heart?"
The man paled, and Xander relaxed his control, dumping the fool on the ground. "Attack me again, and maybe we'll see if you can still be a ninja without eyes." While he spoke, Xander used his food power to produce two realistic looking eyes of sugar and gelatin, and held them out as if he had just plucked them from his pouch.
Kushina and Mizuna both gasped, and the man paled further, scrambled to his feet and ran away. Xander laughed and slipped the eyes back into his belt pouch. That was a good prank, and he might find use for them again.
He turned back to Kushina, who was again talking to Mizuna. She looked up, noticing his motion, and grinned. "Thanks again, Xander! That was great, and now I'm a genin, for real! That's all I needed right now, but I'll summon you again later, okay?"
Xander nodded, and watched her make a handsign. This time he again felt much more clearly the bonds of the summons loosening and returning him.
Xander expected to reappear in the house, but instead, even as he felt those bonds loosen, he sensed a new summons latching on. He was shocked and disturbed. What could possibly have caused Kushina to summon him again so soon?
Knowing that something had gone wrong, he offered no resistance, and indeed used those moments of subjective time to good effect, so that the instant he appeared, he created several voice deepeners, two sand blades, and several compressed air explosives held at the ready before looking for targets.
"You have got to be kidding me," Xander dead-panned, staring at an emaciated goth-wannabe. Was that a candle on his head? "You really need to get out more," he told the skinny teen, marveling at the depth of the bags under his eyes.
Recognizing the lack of understanding on the goth's face, Xander swallowed another language draught, even as another teenage boy standing nearby started a loud speech, though a moment later he realized that he had understood the first few words even before he swallowed the draught, and guessed that perhaps the language draught required him to hear a language before he could speak it.
The candle guy murmured, "It actually worked!" before promptly fainting.
Xander dispersed his sword and explosives, glancing over the chalk circle drawn rather poorly on an uneven wooden floor. It was obvious that he could break this summoning circle without any great difficulty, but of course, doing so would lose him his chance of setting in place a foothold here. The question, of course, was whether it was worth it.
He had not even really begun to explore the knowledge available on the ninja-world, and had not really planned on being summoned again. Nonetheless he had been summoned, and as he stared at the chalk outline, his mind vaguely processing the florid speech of the excited teen ranting in the background, he realized that somehow, he knew things about the summoning, without any indication how he knew.
It was not like a voice in his head explaining things, nor as if he was thinking questions and then knowing the answers. He simply knew, looking at the chalk, that he could break this summoning and return to his home, but he would not then be able to get back to this place, as he would have no link to it, though he might reach some other place with alternates of these two individuals. He could make a deal with his summoner, either through blood, word, or written contract, to perform some task for some remuneration, and that whether he was ejected back to his own plane on completion of the contract depended entirely on the wording, and not the summoning itself. If the contract specified he return to his own plane and his remuneration was not supplied, he would be able to return to seek it, free of restraint. If the contract did not specify his return, then whether he was free of restraint would again depend on the contract, and whether it specified any restraints.
Further, he could see that he could make a deal with either of the two present; apparently they both qualified as his summoner.
Focusing his attention on the conscious teen, he saw that he was waving around a wooden sword. He looked Oriental, though Xander could not place the specific region of the Orient. Paying more attention to his speech, Xander realized the boy was ranting about his girlfriend being held in captivity by an evil sorcerer, though apparently a different evil sorcerer from goth-boy.
Prepped now to speak in the boy's tongue, Xander made sure his voice-deepeners were still up, and stopped him, trying to match the weird style of his speech, which did not seem to be fully translated, as though perhaps the goth boy and the sword guy spoke a slightly different language, and having tuned in to the lingo of the goth boy, Xander was a bit out of tune.
"Hold! A bargain must be set. You wish your pig-tailed girl free of this foul sorcerer? State clearly your demand, and what you will reward me with for such a boon!"
The dark-haired boy stopped and paused as if in thought. He was taller and looked substantially more fit than the unconscious boy, who was now shifting and murmuring as if in the grip of a dream, murmuring about colors. "Very well, I have decided. As my noble but demented father is long absent, I am the head of my house. Free the pig-tailed girl from the foul sorcerer Saotome, and you may have my short sword."
Xander frowned. A sword seemed a poor reward, but the boy was acting as if it was a great gift. Maybe it was a magical sword? At any rate, if there was in fact a pig-tailed girl--Xander really hoped that referred to a hairstyle, and not an actual pig's tail--being held captive, then he would have freed her for nothing, were it not that the summon could only be fully activated by such a bargain. "Agreed. When I have freed this girl from her bondage, I will return and you will give me what you have promised."
With those words, the circle of chalk, poorly drawn as it was, flashed brightly, and Xander actually felt a weight, like that of a light backpack, settle on his shoulders. To his surprise, he actually found an image in his mind of this pig-tailed girl, a rather pretty girl, also obviously Asian, though with such vibrantly red hair that Xander was surprised it was the styling of the hair that the sword-boy used to identify her.
Flipping into an airy form, ignoring the surprised shout of the youth, he drifted up and out the nearest gap in the building's construction. Much to his surprise, given the talk of foul sorcerers, the summoning, and the appearance of the two boys, he found himself in what appeared to be a fairly modern city. It was of a style unfamiliar to him, that looked like it belonged on Willow's mother's coffee table, but there were cars, albeit tiny ones compared to what he found familiar, and buses and trucks and such, and power lines and mass-produced fencing, asphalt and concrete roadways, sidewalks, any number of little things that said this was a far more similar place to Sunnydale than Kushina's village had been.
Curious if the sense he had of being held here until his task was completed, of the weight he felt as being chains holding himself here, was accurate and would impact his ability to cross the planes, Xander reached out. He found he could feel his other selves, far away, but he could not move into them, he could not shift his essential self from here to there.
He slipped into an alleyway, which was curiously prosaic, resembling an alley in Sunnydale in feeling much more than the streets resembled Sunnydale streets, and after verifying that he was alone, attempted to produce a portal to his hideout. It failed, and Xander felt a sudden sense of urgency. What if Kushina needed him, and tried to summon him, and he could not come to her aid because he was still stuck here? He should have stuck with his first instincts, that he did not need to explore further summonings until he was done with Kushina's world. He was fairly certain that he was as immortal as he liked now, given Wolverine style healing, magical healing, and the ability to basically rebuild his body on demand, so he had no reason to rush.
The stories he had learned made it clear that time travel was an almost inevitable thing when traveling between planes, and if he had any hope of returning to the aid of his friends, he would have to master it before his return anyway, unless he simply got preposterously lucky, an outcome he felt was massively improbable, given what the Powers had done to get rid of him.
With renewed urgency, Xander formed a number of fluid selves, giving them different appearances, forming an eye to spy on the street to match clothing styles and colors to help them blend in, then pumped them up with chakra clones.
"All right, let's find this pig-tailed girl," he ordered, and they slipped out the alley in ones and twos, while he drifted up invisibly, to get a higher overview.
He was at a loss as to how to find this foul sorcerer here in a normal, modern city, where he had expected to be looking for an obvious wizard's castle or tower or something, but an explosion in the distance caught his attention, and he quickly zipped in that direction.
He soon found that he was paralleling a young woman with shockingly purple hair who was riding a bicycle along the walls and even power lines, also clearly heading for the distant explosions. There was something odd about her, and Xander found himself strangely certain that she was a small purple and white cat, in spite of being able to clearly see that she was a beautiful girl.
Realizing that even if his target was at the conflict he was heading for, he would not be likely to be alone, and that confrontation would be better alone, Xander produced another five clones and sent them in search of a quiet space where he could have a face-off without creating a lot of collateral casualties.
A moment later, Xander was reminded that first, he was in a world that had cars and such, and therefore at least had a chance to be his, and second, that while he had verified he could not get back to his other selves, he had not tested producing a portal within this plane. He popped off a quick portal to Southern California and just as quickly banished it, pleased that it had been produced with no effort, but a bit disturbed that the cycling purple-haired girl had noticed and was looking around as if searching for something, though she had not changed the direction or speed of her travel.
They crossed a busy lane of traffic, Xander merely flying over, while the cyclist literally jumped the roadway, crossing from one line of power lines to another across the street, a very impressive feat of precision landing and balance, and then they were at the scene of the conflict.
A familiar looking young man with a pig-tail, that could have been the pig-tailed girl's brother, given the identical hair-style and the very similar clothing style, which did not match the others present, though of course Xander had no frame of reference for how common such a style was amongst the local population, aside from the few he was seeing, was leaping and bouncing around a solid looking fellow in a bandanna.
Both of these two, who appeared to be in a street fight in a very Oriental, martial arts type of fight, had that weird sense about them, as if there was another being there, or as if they should be something different. The pigtailed boy was a girl in this strange view, and the boy was a pig.
Xander looked about the others quickly to see if perhaps all the people on this world were like that, and he simply had not noticed it with the first two. One of the others, a boy in white robes throwing knives and other weapons at the pig-tailed boy looked like a duck, but the pony-tailed boy with the big shovel did not, nor the angry girl swinging what looked like a bookbag.
His guess as to his target was confirmed a moment later when the bandanna boy shouted "Saotome Ranma, for avoiding your just punishment, die!" when the pig-tailed boy managed to dodge a bookbag hit, and promptly attacked with what looked suspiciously like a closed umbrella.
Xander interrogated his quiet-place searchers, and picking amongst what they had found, he popped a portal up directly in the path of the pig-tailed boy. To his disbelief and amazement, the boy managed to twist in mid-air and avoid hitting it, then shouted in anger when the bookbag girl stumbled in to it before Xander could disengage it.
The bandanna boy leapt in after her, just as Xander shut it down and popped up another one, pointing at a different chosen location in front of the pig-tailed boy, now identified as Saotome, again.
Meanwhile, the Xander at the target location promptly ported the two unwanted guests back. Unfortunately for Xander, the Saotome boy who had been about to leap into the portal avoided it the moment he saw the bookbag girl again. Instantly Xander realized that in spite of her attacking him, he had been about to go to the rescue, and now saw it as unnecessary.
The next fifteen minutes were occupied with a continual procession of wrong people entering portals meant for Saotome, while he adroitly avoided them, in spite of Xander popping portals up in his path while he was falling, and using wind gusts in an attempt to push him in.
Finally, frustrated and a little angry, Xander used his power over fluids to grab the boy and pull him directly into a portal, then portalled over himself.
Unfortunately, even this direct strike failed, as it seemed the purple-haired girl was swift enough that she managed to make it through the portal he himself used, though it had existed for the merest moment, and now the Saotome boy was accusing her of having 'magicked' him away.
Xander allowed himself to become visible, stopping the argument. "I brought you here," he told the boy. "It had nothing to do with her."
They both oriented on him instantly. "Shampoo help husband fight new boy!" the girl shouted, but neither actually attacked. The girl was clearly in a fighting stance, holding two heavy looking but colourful stick-balls, while the boy actually slipped his hands into his pockets and simply stood there, bouncing lightly on his feet, eyeing Xander suspiciously. Xander realized from the way she said it that Shampoo was her name, not the substance, and felt a shiver run down his spine, though he did not know why.
"Look, I've not got a lot of time, there's a little girl counting on me, so I need to get this over and done with. I was summoned here to free a pig-tailed girl from a foul sorcerer Saotome, and I'm pretty sure you are one or the other of those two . . . if not both."
The boy groaned. "Kuno, you idiot! So, you're a demon?" He shot a significant glance at Shampoo, whose face hardened as she nodded back.
"No, I'm not a demon. I just got banished to a place chock-full of them, and one way out is to be summoned. Look, I know your name is Saotome, I heard Bandanna-Boy shout it earlier. Are you the sorcerer Sword-Boy mentioned?"
"I'm not a damned sorcerer," the boy growled, "I hate magic. Kuno's just crazy."
Xander eyed Shampoo, who seemed to be further to the left than she had been, though he had not seen her move.
"Fine. Do you know the pig-tailed girl he mentioned?"
"She's not real," he spat. "Just a damned curse!"
Xander flicked his eyes over to Shampoo and started. She was gone! Xander instantly went fluid, and just in time, as one of those metal balls came down and sent bits of him splashing everywhere. Xander quickly pulled himself together and grabbed them both with his power.
"Damnit, I don't have time for this," he said, worried that the shiver he had felt earlier was about Kushina. He formed another fluid clone. "See if you can portal out of here. I can't, but . . ."
The clone nodded and frowned for a moment, then shook his head. "No dice."
Xander growled, then reached out to the two child-clones he had left in the Hidden Whirlpool village. "Check on Kushina, make sure she's okay."
His concentration was shattered by a fist blasting through his head, splattering it about again. He pulled himself back together and took to the air, lifting himself up several times to avoid attacks while he tried to figure out why his control had failed. The purple-haired girl, Shampoo, was still held, but the boy was somehow attacking him. He tried again to get a grip on the boy, but his control slipped off.
Shampoo was cheering him on now, and Xander learned from it that this Ranma was her husband, and a pretty lucky one at that, Xander thought, considering Shampoo's curves and her obvious skill. He could feel her doing something, without moving, that was as if she was trying to wriggle out of his control.
Xander quickly formed a half-dozen fluid clones to try to subdue the Saotome boy, only to find himself having to push higher still, as the boy used them as springboards to leap higher.
About to banish the summoned clones as useless, Xander paused when one of them objected. "Hey, I'm learning here. This kid is as good as any of the ninja teachers we've been watching, except he ain't going for killing moves. This is good stuff!"
Xander sighed and nodded, drifting higher again, even as Shampoo figured out the trick to it and slipped free of his bonds. Xander was still puzzling on how to get these two out of fight mode and back to talking to figure out if what he was seeing, the cat and the girl, were really somehow present, and if she even could be freed, when he was suddenly brought back to the fight by a sudden impact of heat and pressure that sent him up and back another dozen feet.
One of the clones focused and showed him a mental picture of what had happened from his perspective. "Fierce Tiger Bullet?"
Xander shifted and focused his senses on the boy, watching and waiting for another such attack. The boy did not attempt it again until he managed to get within about fifteen feet, using the girders of a construction site next door to the empty lot Xander's clone had chosen, and then he shot off another attack. Xander stopped it in mid-air, examining it.
It was similar to but different from Ryu's Hadouken, and Xander found it was trying to dissipate, so that he had to force it to remain so he could look at it. The silence that had fallen distracted him from his look, and he banished it and looked up.
The two fighters had stopped, and were staring at him with looks of startled disbelief on their faces, as best he could tell. His clones had stopped attacking when they did, and were standing around waiting.
"How did you do that?" Ranma asked.
Tired of wasting time and happy that they were willing to talk again, Xander allowed himself to drift downwards, wryly thinking as he did so that before his time with Naamahalat, he would never understand or realize that in doing so, he was placing himself within their reach again, deliberately, as a token gesture of peace.
"Being thrown from your home into an unfamiliar place full of demons, you learn new tricks, or you die. I learned," Xander said. They did not need to know that he had been gifted with power, and that he could control energy such as chi or ki was certainly something he had learned recently, so it was truthful enough that he was not lying.
"Look, I'm bound by my summoning to free the pig-tailed girl, but that does not mean I have to fight you, or harm you . . . unless you are in some way holding her by force?"
Ranma frowned again. "I told you, the pig-tailed girl is not real. Kuno's just nuts."
"I can see her," Xander said plainly. "I can see a red-haired pig-tailed girl when I look at you, and a small purple and white cat when I look at you," he continued, looking to Shampoo. "And somehow, this Kuno, if you are right about who summoned me, must be at times able to see her as well. What I do not know is what she is, nor how I might free her?"
Ranma sighed, glancing at Shampoo, then nodded. "It is a curse, from China," he said flatly, and Xander noticed Shampoo wince. "I fell in a cursed pool, and now cold water turns me into a girl, and hot water turns me back into a boy. Shampoo," he glanced at the girl again, and only continued when she nodded, "was cursed the same way, but deliberately, as a punishment."
"These were pools of water?" Xander asked, startled. He had never considered that pure water could carry magic. He had used magical potions, but cursed water was a new one. Ranma and Shampoo nodded, and Xander grinned. He was tempted to just spray them, but remembered Ranma's tone when he spoke of it, and decided it was best not to set them off again.
"Will you let me see it?" he asked, holding out a glass of water summoned with his food summoning ability. Ranma glared at it for a moment before nodding, and stepping forward, put his hand in the water. Xander focused his full senses on Ranma as he shifted abruptly into a beautiful and very busty young woman.
"Wow," Xander said, grimacing. "That must be pretty miserable when it happens in a crowd."
"It's a curse," Ranma said, her voice higher and clearer. "Water seeks me out."
Xander considered that for a moment, exploring the water around, and indeed, he found that he could sense, without really understanding how he knew, that if he relinquished his control of the glass even a little, it would fall in such a way as to splash the purple-haired girl.
"And this pool, the curse is random? I mean, you turn into a girl, and she's a cat, and I saw a pig and a duck earlier."
Shampoo spoke up then. "Many cursed pools, victim turn into what drowned there."
"So a girl drowned in a pool . . . and you are cursed to look like her?"
Shampoo spoke up again, moving forward. "No, pool take some . . . not know word, likeness maybe, of person or thing what drowned, victim get likeness . . . not likeness . . ."
She looked at Ranma imploringly and he shrugged. "Far as I can tell, I look a lot like Mom did when she was my age. Prince Herb got splashed with the same water and he looks like his own sister."
Xander looked at his clones thoughtfully, but shook his head. Too much risk that it would affect all of him. So he made a normal mud clone, and had it move away, by itself. Ranma and Shampoo watched this curiously but without understanding. They were curious about the technique that allowed the clones, but had no idea what he was attempting.
It took Xander three tries before he figured out that he had to actually specify that the water carry the curse, not merely that it be water from where something had drowned. Which made sense once he thought of it, as otherwise anyone who took a dip in the ocean would be cursed.
Ranma and Shampoo gasped aloud then started shouting frantically when the curse took and turned the Xander-mud-clone into a beautiful black and grey northern wolf. Xander focused on the clone, examining it and found that he could sense the mud-form. Taking a chance, Xander tried to tug the mud-form forward, and after a moment of his power slipping off, he figured out the right way to grip it, and the wolf turned back into a clone of himself.
Then Xander focused on the wolf he could now see overlaying his clone, and after another few tries, managed enough of a grasp on it to change it from a wolf to a lion before pulling it forward again. The lion roared irritably, before Xander reached out and this time, sought to separate the lion from the clone entirely.
After several minutes of wrangling with it, causing not a few changes back and forth, and resulting in a very irritated and cursing Xander-clone, he managed to separate out the lion essence, which came out as a glowing blue ball of water, which he proceeded to dissipate.
Finally returning his attention to the two other teenagers, Xander was beyond surprised to find them both crying and kneeling beside him, begging him to cure them.
"Not that I would object," he said, "but I am bound to free your cursed form. How I do that is up to me, but I need to do so in a way that satisfies the summoning contract."
Ranma looked to Shampoo but she shrugged her shoulders. Xander sighed. "If I just remove the curse, the pigtailed girl in question no longer exists. I suppose in at least one sense that would be freeing, but I'm afraid if it did not, it would be too late to do anything about it, and I would be trapped here unable to fulfill my summons. But if you are the girl in question, then I simply need to free you from yourself, in some way." Xander moaned, rubbing his forehead. "What I wouldn't do to have Willow here. She'd figure this out in no time."
Ranma gave Shampoo a long look, then sighed. "Shampoo's Granny would probably know."
Shampoo glanced at him. "Why you no say Old Ghoul?"
Ranma shrugged. "She's an Old Ghoul when she's trying to trick and trap me. Nabiki could probably figure it out too, but she would want money."
Xander looked between them. "Makes no diff to me who you want to ask," he said, feeling a bit frustrated at what he had just realized. "But I'm still under the influence of the summons, I can only act towards the completion of my goal, especially when it involves others. Basically, I can remove your curse, Saotome, if it fulfills my contract, but I can't remove Shampoo's unless it's an equal exchange. If I can get the contract fulfilled though, I should be able to come back on my own, and remove the curses then."
Shampoo make an almost cat-like mew of displeasure at that, and Ranma flinched. Xander narrowed his eyes at this, wondering what he was missing now. "Well, can you guide me to one or the other? Or I can just do what I am thinking of."
Ranma looked around for a bit, before pointing in one direction and looking at Shampoo. "That way, I think?"
Shampoo nodded. "Looks right!" she chirped. They took off, and Xander sped off in their wake, turning invisible again so no one would see him flying.
When they paused a moment, not seeing him, he said, "I'm here, keep going."
They sped off again, and soon had led him to a two-story restaurant. Xander had not bothered to give himself the ability to read their language, so he was not sure what the name was, though the characters certainly looked Oriental.
Returning to visibility, solidity, and the ground as he passed through the door, Xander allowed Shampoo to guide them to a table. She did not have to go looking for her Granny, for even as they sat a rapping or knocking sound was heard, and Xander saw a tiny woman bouncing up, balanced on a wooden staff.
"So, son-in-law, who is this that you have brought in this time? Another challenger?"
"Maybe, sort of," Ranma answered her. "He says Kuno somehow managed to summon him like a demon, but he claims he's not a demon."
"And he maybe can remove our curses!" Shampoo interjected.
The old lady hopped forward and gave Xander a piercing look. "There's something odd about this one," she said. "You look like one of these Western body-makers but you do not move like them."
Xander shrugged. Shampoo had led them to a fairly out of the way booth, and there was a curtain that half-cut off the view of the rest of the main dining area, but he still checked to be sure no-one else was watching, then he went fluid, shifted to his original shape, and went solid again. "That better, Granny?" he asked, grinning impudently.
She shrugged, unphased. To Xander's chagrin, even Ranma just shrugged. "Ah, man, tough crowd," Xander griped.
"Just like Copycat Ken," Ranma said. "Not as neat as seeing you pull back together after Shampoo splashed ya."
Xander shook his head. "Getting off topic anyway. I was summoned, and by verbal contract I must free the pig-tailed girl from the foul sorcerer Saotome."
Granny grinned at that, a bit scary Xander thought, and said, "Sounds like you have to get Ranma out from under his father's thumb."
"I told him I ain't no sorcerer," Ranma said curiously, "but what do you mean about Pops?"
"Well, he is a bit foul," Shampoo said tentatively, knowing that Ranma shared the general poor opinion of his father, but also knowing that he would come to his defense if he was pressed too hard.
"And some of his techniques qualify as what the mainland monks term 'ki-sorcery,'" the old lady said, "so he is the foul sorcerer."
Xander sighed. "Unfortunately, if I remove your curse, you won't qualify to be the pig-tailed girl anymore, and I'm afraid that will leave the summoning unfulfilled."
"Ehrmm-hmm," a new voice chimed in, "That is easy. 10,000 yen?"
"Nabiki," Ranma muttered, looking at her nervously. Xander examined the newcomer, a rather pretty teenager with a mischievous if a bit impish smile, a calculating and very sharp look in her eyes, with short-cropped brown hair, wearing pants and a tight shirt that hugged generous curves, though not as generous as Shampoo's. "How'd you find us?"
"Logic, Saotome," she said in a bored tone, before focusing back on Xander. "You want the answer or not?"
"I don't have any yen," Xander answered, watching her face fall and then her expression close off. He held out a small chocolate ball. "But if you suck the chocolate off this . . . but don't swallow it! I think you'll find it sufficient payment."
She took it curiously, and for just a moment Xander could see temptation in her eyes, before she clammed up again, and handed the candy to Ranma. "Be a dear and clean that off for me, Ranma," she purred. Ranma glanced at Xander nervously, then took the candy, and sucked on it for a minute, rolling it around in his mouth, then once the flavor was gone, he pulled it out.
Nabiki gasped and grabbed it from his hands. Her eyes were darting between Xander and the small, glittering clear stone. "This is just glass, isn't it?" She said suspiciously, even as she unexpectedly pulled a jeweler's loupe, a little magnifying device, out of nowhere and started examining the stone.
She breathed in sharply and hissed, color flooding her cheeks as she stared at Xander. "This is a real diamond!" she said. "How did you do that?"
"Is it sufficient?" Xander asked, instead of answering her, though he let her see another chocolate ball in his hand. "You have an answer?"
"If you really can manipulate Jusenkyou curses," she said, a little doubtfully, "just give him control over it, or remove the curse and curse him again without the water magnet bit, and change the trigger to a snap of the fingers or something. Then he could still count as the girl because he could become her at will, but he wouldn't be forced to anymore."
Xander glanced at Ranma. "Would that satisfy you?"
Ranma shrugged. "I don't like the curse, it has made my life miserable, but it has a few good memories too. Not changing constantly would be wonderful. Not changing at the worst possible time would be even better."
Xander nodded. "I can probably do that," he said, "but that still leaves us with the question of freeing from the foul sorcerer bit."
Nabiki asked to hear the whole thing again, and they explained once more what Xander was being required to do. She frowned as she thought it over.
"Does it have to be complete? Or can it be symbolic?" she asked. "I mean, the only way for him to be completely free of the old panda is for Mr. Saotome to die, and I'm pretty sure Ranma doesn't want that." Ranma was shaking his head back and forth vigorously.
"But what if it was something smaller, like, instead of being totally free, he was free from having to constantly listen to him? If you can manipulate the curses, can you give Ranma the ability to lock and unlock Mr. Saotome's curse?"
Xander looked at the old lady. She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "It might do," she said. "But better if you could give him the ability to change the curse's trigger. I have never heard of such a thing, but if his curse could be made to trigger whenever he was attempting to curtail the son-in-law's freedoms, that could be reasonably construed as freeing son-in-law from his manipulations."
"Close enough to be worth a try, and it would not cut off my other options like simply removing your curse would," Xander said, eager to get on with it so he could check on Kushina.
Of course, this was also much less obvious than simply pulling out Ranma's curse, as he had just done with his clone. Rather than trying to get every detail, Xander decided that the simplest thing to do would be to use something he knew he could already do, and change Ranma's curse.
Reaching out and grasping his curse, Xander focused on changing it into the curse of the drowned young female Master of Jusenkyou, with the intent that such a Master of Jusenkyou would be able to alter, grant, and remove curses, as well as change the trigger.
Ranma frowned, feeling something shift internally. Xander sprayed him with a light mist of water, and he felt the usual shift, as he became she. "It didn't work then?"
"It may, or it may not," Xander replied. "If all went as I hoped, then your cursed form is now the Master of Jusenkyou, capable of granting and removing curses, altering their parameters, and locking or unlocking them. So your first step should be to alter your own curse, to remove the water magnet and water trigger and replace it with some other trigger. But do not attempt to remove your own curse, for it is your cursed form that has this power!"
Ranma nodded then concentrated. A moment later he became male again, and whooped, then jumped and danced around, singing "Never gonna be a girl again, never gonna be a girl again."
"But you are," Nabiki pointed out. "You have to be female to lock the panda, or change his trigger."
Ranma stopped and shrugged, turning female again. "Had to say it, anyway." She fingered her pig-tail for a moment, then bowed deeply to Xander and said formally, "Thank you, Master Xander, for freeing me from the foul sorcerer Saotome."
Azure chains sprang into visibility around Xander, snapping him back to the room where he had been summoned, back within the summoning circle. The candle-headed boy was there, with a slightly stunned look on his face, along with the sword-boy, and a tall, beautiful girl in a leotard, gagged and bound and being carried by a diminutive ninja. The sword-boy gave a loud cry of triumph when Xander reappeared, as the magics confirmed to the summoners that the task had been completed.
"As agreed," he said pompously, "Sasuke, hand over my sister."
The ninja threw the bound girl at Xander, and he caught her reflexively. Immediately the magic chains reappeared, and flung them back to his demi-plane, in the foyer of his home.
Throwing his mind out, Xander reached out to his clones, and sighed in relief when he realized that the clones he had made on that plane had remained there, which meant he had a way back. He quickly unbound the leotard clad girl.
"I suppose your name is Kodachi, isn't it?" he asked, and she nodded, confirming what he had realized as soon as he caught her. The 'short sword' he had originally heard should have been read as a name and not an object, just as with Shampoo.
The girl stood there a moment, quivering, apparently torn between fear and fury. "What has my brother done?" she asked, looking about her while always keeping Xander in her sights. She stiffened, and went totally still when Tarou wandered in.
"He summoned me to perform a task. You are my reward for completing it," Xander explained. "And he must have had the right to do so, or the magic would not have taken hold."
Kodachi frowned, then nodded thoughtfully. "In my father's absence, extended since our childhood, he is the Head of House Kuno. But that does not mean I will go quietly!" she said, her expression darkening, and from somewhere she drew a whip and laughed madly. "The Black Rose is no-one's toy!"
Xander growled. "We'll talk about this after you calm down. I have to go check on Kushina." With that, he had the house relocate her to a new bedroom suite, provide for her needs, but keep her contained. He did not need her attacking Mayu and being harmed or killed.
He created a clone and sent it to check on his cartouches and make sure they were still protected, though he suspected that somehow he himself had matched the parameters of the summoning, given the peculiar fit of him being summoned to a world so like his own, then he slid away to Kushina's world to check up on her, and reassure himself, as well as create additional guardians for her, in case he was detained like that again.
---
Kodachi screamed in shock when her surroundings suddenly changed and she found herself in a bedchamber. Tensely and nervously she turned, searching out her hidden attacker. Why else would she have been brought to his bedroom, but to be ravished? Stories of demonic rape flitted through her head, heavily influenced by erotic manga she would never admit to owning, much less enjoying.
How had her fool of a brother managed to perform a summoning, anyway? It was not the first time he had tried, of course. Tatewaki had several times attempted various ancestor summonings, sure that he was the reincarnation of Miyamoto Musashi, or descended from Matsuura Seizan, only to fail completely.
Now she was a demon's prisoner, its reward for some horrible thing. Had it killed her beloved Ranma-sama?
The thought struck her like a physical blow to the gut, and she fell to her knees, still looking about obsessively. The rivalry between brother and sister was long-standing, but there had been love there too, or so she had believed. Sure, she had ever sought to poison him; but then, was that not what siblings did?
After all, he was the elder and set to inherit, unless she could displace him first. Given their father's continued failure to return from Hawaii, there were only two years or so before he would be declared legally dead and Tatewaki would have full inheritance, not merely abusing his position as temporary head as he was now.
And Sasuke, that little ninja-rat, he sold her out! She bolted to her feet and ran to the door, suddenly frantic. She flung it open, and ran down the hall, but when she opened the door at the end of the hall, she found it opened into the same bedroom from which she had just fled.
She heard a sinister chuckle from somewhere, and spun about, her whip at the ready, eyes searching for a target, but she saw nothing. A sudden sweet smell teased her, and she spun back around to find that a slice of berry pie was sitting on a table by a pair of French doors, and she would swear that neither doors nor pie, nor the glass of milk beside it had been there a moment before.
She lashed out with her whip, knocking over the pie and milk, furious at whoever was playing tricks on her, and at her brother. It did not matter. Ranma would come and rescue her, as he had always done for Akane, and finally she would know again what it felt like to be held in his strong arms, to relax against that strong chest.
Her foot bumped into something, and she looked down to find a trashy romance novel lying on the floor beside her foot. She shrieked and kicked it away, and spying another door, ran to it and opened it. It was a bathroom, with a small enclosed privy, and a large shower and a larger furo next to it, water already steaming.
The only thing it was missing was black rose petals on the water . . . Kodachi screamed in fury, as the air was suddenly heavy with the sweet smell of black roses, petals lying on the water as she had just pictured. She slammed the door closed and stomped away to the French doors and wrenched them open, looking out onto what appeared to be a small patio that led into a rose maze . . . a maze of black roses.
She collapsed into a chair beside a small table, staring at the rose maze, and absently began to eat the berry pie she found there, her mind whirling furiously.