Too Many Directions


Xander sighed deeply as he slipped into a bedroom and sealed the door
behind him. Nabiki was set up and getting to work, Mayu and Kodachi were
plotting something, likely to his detriment, Kushina was still doing
safe busy-work, and still happy to be doing it.

He was not tired, exactly. Sleep was no longer something that he seemed
to need, just an hour or two here and there to help him sort through
things in his head, but the actual physical need was no longer there.
That did not really help the emotional exhaustion, especially when he
got waves of emotion from nowhere whenever one of his clones got overly
emotional.

He did not see how he could juggle all the thing he had going on without
his clones, but even with them he felt stretched thin. His demon-clone,
the newly crowned King of a small country in northern Europe or a
reasonable fascimile thereof, had managed to break the siege, but was
still working to assimilate the memories of the ancient castle he was
now Lord of, to take that burden off the House, whose focus was already
greatly divided.

Every now and then those memories would encounter an atrocity and Xander
would be swept up by another wave of pain, anger, and frustration.

His approval of his research-clone's activities had seemingly sent a
signal to his other clones, and they had begun expanding their
activities without waiting for approval from the orginal, trusting to
their shared memories to throw up a red flag if they went too far.

Some minor benefits had already resulted from this, as some of his
clones had used their Jusenkyou-ninja forms to get into a couple of
ninja schools. Of course, he had also lost quite a few clones to more
suspicious ninja, or where his own actions had not been quite
circumspect enough. Still, with the placement of three of his clones,
and the continued surreptitious observations of Ichi and Ni, he actually
had memories of the simplest clone technique, executed by a Jusenkyou
clone using proper chakra coils, gathering chakra from first principles.

They had learned that the mix of two different energies into chakra was
an important developmental step they had missed, but a basic
understanding of that and identification of the energies involved had
allowed them to adjust the Jusenkyou clone to one that had the proper
chakra mix already set in its coils, at which point the gathering and
release of chakra into a proper technique could occur.

They still had not managed to modify or tweak such a technique, but this
seemed to be the right path to figuring that out.

His research clone, which he still needed to name, had been slowly
building a concept of summoning and how to manipulate it. As he put
together the information, he found that the demonic library was
unsurprisingly heavily weighted towards controlling when one was exposed
to being summoned, and by whom, and in the reverse, to projecting small
physical items out to chosen or random planes, as a means of getting a
chosen name and requirements for that first summoning dispersed without
having to depend on another potentially untrustworthy demon to do the
dispersal.

The mapping clone, now independently exploring the Duke's fortress 
after growing bored of library research, the one that he had 
previously termed a phantom, which he supposed was a good enough name 
for it, had found a number of interesting areas in the fortress, 
including some smaller internal gates, that appeared to be protected 
exits into a deeper set of passages carved into the mountain, that 
perhaps were not part of the fortress itself.

The various clones he had left in what he now knew was a version of
Tokyo, though not quite the one he had known from his world, had formed
a sort of hierarchy, with one being designated as an anchor at any given
time. The anchor clone remained invisibly within solid ground, mentally
organizing the activity of the others, while itself protected, so that
even if they were dispersed, he would not lose his connection to that
plane before he got the House connected. At the same time, they had 
taken it upon themselves to rotate that job to avoid too much boredom, 
and were using the Los Angeles clone's shakedown technique to convert 
semi-precious stones into cash.

Xander was not sure if they should not just be robbing the crooks
outright, but one of his clones had pointed out that if the crooks were
broke, they would have to immediately steal from someone else, passing
the damage along as it were, whereas with the stones, they would instead
be pre-occupied with converting it back to cash, rendering them at least
temporarily less virulent. The alternative was to simply kill them, and
while Xander was not opposed to killing, especially someone who
threatened those he was protecting, or harmed the innocent, wholesale
killings would greatly increase the turmoil and fear in the cities he
was hitting.

They had switched to directly producing stones that matched, for the
area, the value of the money the thugs had on hand since they did not
really want to monetarily fuel a crime wave.

Each of the clones he had made, while incapable of producing full new 
fluid-clones with arbitrary power-granted abilities, as he could, 
still were able to use their chakra well to produce mud-clones. This 
was the next layer of hierarchy, as the fluid clones collected the 
money from the criminals, using their ability to produce fluids to 
generate the knockout gas, and their mud clones processed it through 
various means, combining small change into larger bills, and packaging 
and counting these notes.

This brought up a side-issue. None of the clones Xander had produced on
appearing in Tokyo had been explicitly granted the ability to produce
fluids, yet they had been able to produce knockout gas.

A closer examination of his memories revealed that the chakra clones,
when inhabiting a body he had been in for a while, as was the case with
the Los Angeles clone, could use his power, though apparently their
range and facility with it was limited. For example, the L.A. clone had
attempted to give the other clones the ability to produce the gas and
failed.

This was not a barrier for them, however, as he had fairly quickly set
on the idea of producing a food based magical candy that granted them
the power, and to Xander's surprise, it appeared to have worked
perfectly. A similar attempt, just testing for scientific purposes,
according to the L.A. clone, at giving one of the mud-clones a similar
power failed, destroying the clone, and an attempt at giving a
fluid-clone the same powers the full-body clone had also failed.

So apparently, his actual power, in its full versatility, was beyond the
ability of his food-summoning power, but the food summoning power could
be used to provide limited boosts to his fluid clones.

His own personally made mud-clones could use the food summoning power
themselves, but his clones' own mud clones could neither use the power
themselves, nor gain power by consuming the food offered by a clone who
could use it.

Xander pulled out a pad and made a note to test the limits of his food
summoning power more thoroughly.

The independence his clones were showing worried him, though he and they
both knew his worry was not enough to want it to cease. He was not
worried about what the clones would do, as they effectively were him,
and would do what he would do, with their memories and abilities. He was
worried, rather, about the extent to which he was depending on a
technique he did not fully understand, and which he was using in a
fashion unknown to even the ninja who had created and used it.

Regardless, they were being effective, and he had no doubt that Nabiki
would be able to procure a house for him in short order, probably no
more than a week, at which point he would have to face Kodachi. He
paused for a moment, thinking back to make sure he had mentioned the
need to inform Kodachi's school of a necessary absence to Nabiki, then
turned his thoughts back to what he had yet to do.

He needed to do something about the two human girls Maleficent had given
him, he needed to check on the dragon, and he needed, much though he
dreaded the thought, to face the fairies again.

Remembering how much he had managed to pick up during his short conflict
with Ranma, he pulled out his notepad and made a note to arrange for
one of his clones to have lessons, either with Ranma, or with some other
trainer on that world. Having Captain America's equivalent strength and
stamina was well and good, but having actual fighting skills and
training would be even better.

Theoretically, he should be able to pick that up from the ninja world,
but his clones there were more focused on learning about chakra than
mere fighting. Besides, Ranma and the fighters that he had seen in that
melee had for the most part appeared capable of superhuman feats of
strength, and without chakra. That could only be an advantage, if he had
more than one way of boosting his abilities.

Xander was all too familiar with the swift ratcheting of most
superheroes' enemies, until someone with simply superhuman strength was
suddenly facing a world or even universe ending threat. He hoped that
nothing of the sort was to occur with him; if anything, it seemed more
like he had been thrown out of the story, cut from the script, so he
ought only to have to worry about what he actually came into contact
with, but he was under no illusions. If something existed with enough
power to give him the powers he had, it must, by definition, have more
power still. Which meant that the dictum still held, there is always a
bigger dog.

Hopefully if he did encounter significant enemies, they would not come
in a steady series of ratcheting power, as the comics would imply, but
more in the fashion of the real world as he had known it before being
ejected from it, where any given disaster response team could expect
to deal with many small fires or plane crashes or terrorist plots
between each major incident, with several coming together only rarely.

Of course, extending himself across multiple planes was a good way to
ensure he encountered the former instead, given that he would notice
the largest disaster amongst the various planes, in the same way that
news shows found more bad news to show nightly as they expanded from
local to national, and then international news.

Look at a big enough swath, and you could almost guarantee that there
would be a war or atrocity happening somewhere.

Still, appealing as pulling in his various activities to focus on
getting home was, the few that were superfluous, or at least less
vital, were in places where he had other things preventing his
withdrawal regardless, such as the two explorers still charting new
territories in Kushina's world, or the Jusenkyou-ninja getting
training there, or the wealth-gathering clones on Kodachi's world. In
both cases, his responsibilities, the promises he had made, held him
fast, keeping him from withdrawing from those worlds.

The demon world he could theoretically withdraw from, having no
particular duties or responsibilities holding him there, but at the
same time, it was the only one of the worlds he had yet encountered
where he had made progress in getting details of traveling the
dimensional paths.

He had no direct link back to Maleficent's world, so there was nothing
to withdraw there, though he had little doubt that he would at some
point be summoned back by her.

He could presumably have withdrawn from the besieged castle, had he
declined when they named him King. Having failed to decline, he was
now again bound by his word and could not withdraw, unless it was to
pull the entire castle back to his world.

He might yet do that, but he would need to learn more of its people
first, and determine how much larger the kingdom was than the castle
he had already integrated into himself.

Emotionally tired and confused, Xander turned to a simpler, easier to
grasp problem, the continually delayed exploration and testing of his
powers.

Specifically, he focused on the newly discovered aspect of
sooth-saying in his powers, wherein the difference between a fluid
being created, and his powers failing, seemed to convey answers to
questions whose answers he had no way of otherwise knowing.

In doing this, he unwittingly spurred a process he had long since set 
in motion, a process of whose actions and consequences he was as yet 
wholly unaware.

As he had learned, some of the demons in the demon-plane were such as
might break a man's mind to look upon. This was not, as some might
presume, a mere matter of horrific appearance or behavior. The immense
popularity of horror films makes it clear that man is more than
capable of facing visceral cruelty and venal injustice with
equanimity, even amusement, as long as it is not directed at himself
or someone close to him.

No, it is a matter of simple dimensions - these demons are vastly
higher dimensional, and a human can perceive only their
four-dimensional extrusion into the four-dimensions that the human is
capable of sensing, three of space and one of time, the additional
dimensions of normal space being so tiny and twisted as to be
impercetible. This extrusion, or protrusion, varies horribly from
moment to moment, as the beasts shift about in higher dimensions,
resulting in mind-bending shifting of mass, space-time, and horrible
flesh, which an attempt to comprehend can strain a mind to a degree
from which it will never recover.

Xander himself now had aspects of such a higher dimensional being, as
he was present in multiple worlds at once, but each of his presences
was itself a fairly ordinary four-dimensional entity.

The power, on the other hand, which had been given to him, well, that
is another story entirely. The primary basis of the power was a wish,
granted by a reality-altering demon, which if he had been allowed to
progress through the story line the Oraculur Powers That Be foresaw,
he would have experienced in a way that made clear it could alter the
entire world's history.

Now, no minor, or even major demon could simply reach out and alter
the entire history of the world. No, these demons were simply agents
of the Powers, granting wishes that were in fact enforced by the
Powers, much as in another reality Gods and Demons would grant mortal
wishes enforced by the Ultimate Force, as mediated by the World-tree
computer, Yggdrassil. In Xander's home reality, the Powers That Be
held the place of that balancing arbitrator, of maintaining the
balance between Light and Dark, and their powers when wielded on
behalf of that balance were not significantly less than the Ultimate
Force of that other world.

Unfortunately, such reality altering powers have limits, enforced as
they are by the combined powers of the deities and infernal powers
that are party to the agreement in a given reality, and while they
also drew directly on the power of a particular elder deity that had
power over dimensional travel, there was simply no way to use such a
power to ensure that Xander would have his wish fulfilled regardless
of where he ended up . . . at least, not without something traveling
with him to enforce that.

In service of that wish, a program, not terribly unlike the Yggdrassil 
software that runs Heaven in the aforementioned other reality, though 
on a much smaller scale, traveled with him, a higher dimensional 
program capable of interfacing with the powers and arbitrators of the 
worlds it entered, of hacking and overriding the local rules of 
reality to ensure that Xander's wish remained in proper fulfillment,
and to prevent any simple exercise of the wish-granted powers from
returning him to the now forbidden dimension of his birth.

To preserve his wish, the program would need to be resistant to
external attack, and capable of adjusting to fluid external
conditions, and consequently, of growth. As Xander pushed it this way
and that, testing his power's ability to transfer knowledge to him,
the program itself was pushed to rapidly expand.

Already it was having to maintain itself in as many dimensions as
Xander himself, and in each it was facing different challenges, and
interfacing simultaneously with multiple different systems of reality,
each of which sought through various means to place restrictions on
Xander's power, against which it had to fight and resist, for Xander's
wish had not been limited.

Further, though Xander, not being technically or logically minded, had
not noticed or been capable of readily devising tests for determining
it even had he noticed, the program was based on two interacting
definitions, his own personal definition of the terms in his wish, and
the understanding antiquated as it was of the demoness that granted
it. Thus at times the 'power' was from a comic-book perspective of
creating and controlling, hence his ability, eventually, to transform
into a liquid form, and at other times it was more constrained by the
demoness's concept of 'fluid' as little more than 'stuff that flows.'

There were other consequences building about him as he pushed his
powers, but the eventual crossing of a critical complexity threshold
in the magical program that executed his powers on his behalf would
have the greatest impact on Xander, though it would be some time
before he realized it, and even longer before he understood it.

To conduct his test, Xander had settled for a fairly simply set up. He
placed a bowl on the table closest to his chair, and then started
trying to produce fluids whose existence was predicated on something
else.

He first tried something he knew would fail, a drop of a portal to his
Sunnydale. Sure enough, nothing was produced. Then he produced a drop
of a portal to Kodachi's home, and a single dollop of glimmering,
silvery substance fell into the bowl. When it settled and flattened
against the bottom of the bowl, Xander vanished it.

He similarly produced single droplets of portal stuff to his demon
dimension, and the ninja-world, though he was careful to vanish each
totally before summoning the next. He was curious as to what he could
learn from this, but not eager to see the results of mixing
dimensional portals.

A drop of portal stuff to the dead-Earth where he had done the
power-testing that lead to the creation of his plane reminded him that
he had at that time been able to produce a connection to a world he
had not personally visited previously.

It did not, however, occur to him to try creating a portal to a
fictional world, as he was not aware that the ninja world or Kodachi's
world were represented in the fiction on his world. He might have
thought that of Maleficent, but knowing that demons and such existed
on his world, he had simply assumed that the stories had held grains
of truth. After all, she had not been a perfect match for the Disney
villainess, and since he knew that demons could be summoned to his
world, he assumed that there might also be connections from the world
of the Fey to his. Indeed, his own mist-travel was based on the legend
of the Mists of Avalon and such; well, that and Ravenloft, but then,
surely Ravenloft owed a debt to the Mists of Avalon of its own.

He tried producing a drop of portal stuff to Sunnydale in Kodachi's
world, which succeeded, then vanished it and went for Sunnydale,
California, and got nothing, which confirmed that he could get answers
about Kodachi's world without being there.

As another layer of verification, he tried Las Vegas, Nevada on
Kodachi's world, which worked, and Las Vegas, Nevada on Kushina's
world, which failed as expected.

He considered trying to create a portal to Maleficent's world, but
decided against doing anything that might attract her attention. The
magic of that world spooked him.

Trying to come up with a way to test for the existence of a person
without risking harm to them, since he was afraid producing their
blood might take it from them, or expose them to unpleasant magical
effects, he tried producing a drop of the last liquid the U.S.
President drank.

He got nothing until he focused that query to the U.S. President of
Kodachi's world. A similar effect to produce the last drop the Hokage,
a political figure he had heard Kushina mention (but not one with
which they were at war, or likely to be, just in case it was
detectable) succeeded without focusing on Kushina's world.

A drop of the last liquid the Hell-Duke consumed also worked, though a
moment later Xander winced at the thought that he might thereby have
garnered the attention of either that mighty demon, or whatever mages,
sorcerers, or other magic-wielders he had on staff. "Probably should
set that whole complex off-limits. Sneaking about inside is bad
enough, but I already know I can pretty much get away with that . . ."

Xander fretted for a bit, worried that the magic might be actually
reaching out, in a sort of magical interrogation, to obtain the
answers to the facts he was testing, and thereby might be doing
something that could be traced or followed back to him.

When nothing had occurred after a while, and his clone in the Duke's
library reported no alarms or obvious signs of agitation, Xander
calmed back down and resumed his testing.

Meanwhile, another of his clones on Kodachi's world was taking
advantage of some of the money that had been gained by their
techniques, and was appropriating various comic books, both to see
what differed on this world from his own, and to get ideas for further
testing.

One of the more interesting things they had noted was that the
timeline in this world was a few years behind his own home. It was
late 1988, almost ten years before his world. Aside from that, he
found much was similar, though of course, his favorite comics had not
reached the arcs he was familiar with.

Being in Tokyo as well as Los Angeles, he inevitably happened upon
Japanse Manga, including a few series that he observed Nabiki to be
fond of, from Skysaber, with an uncharacteristically Western hero, to
3x3 Eyes which had some interesting ideas for magic, to Dragon Half
which, when Xander managed to tear his eyes off of the very sexy lead
character, a female 'dragon-half' named Mink, had some interesting
concepts regarding a potion that could turn a dragon, or at least a
half-dragon, fully human, which might have some bearing on his own
recent acquisition from Maleficent.

Ranma himself introduced Xander to a manga called Kenji, focusing on
martial arts. Xander had not yet propositioned Ranma for training, but
he had allowed himself to be encountered at various places in the
area, in case someone wanted to get in touch with Kodachi or himself,
and to keep pressure from being placed on Nabiki while she tried to
get things set up for him.

There were interesting feedback loops flowing almost unnoticed between 
the various bits and pieces of Xander. As Xander studied demonic 
summoning rituals and cartouche creation tomes, between mapping treks, 
his thoughts informed Xander's testing of power inspired questions and 
answers. At the same time, his interest in the sigils and runes he was 
encountering was fueling an interest in chakra-powered seals in the 
Xanders on Kushina's world. As other Xanders studied comics and 
observed Ranma and his friends, their ideas informed the training of 
the Jusenkyou-powered Xander-ninja, while those same Xander-ninja's 
training and learning was improving the fighting style and 
effectiveness of the Xander clones running the thug-takedowns in Tokyo 
and Los Angeles.

Meanwhile the House and Plane were feeding off each other, and the
things they observed, and these ideas were influencing the clone of
Xander that was interacting with Nabiki with respect to money-making
schemes, and what sort of house to obtain, while the knowledge gleaned
from the built-in history in the castle of the now-deposed wizard had
Akuma and Lewis hunting for a similarly history laden-place in the
ninja-world, in the hope that joining the House to such a place would
again garner them ages of knowledge in an instant.

At the same time, the more interesting aspects of the buildings the
various clones observed began to appear here and there in the House,
and the new and unusual landscapes Akuma and Lewis were encountering
found expression out in the Plane beyond the House.

When Ryu independently decided to push his own limits, he discovered
that though he could not directly access the fluid powers of the
original, he could use some of them by working with the Plane and
House. In particular, the Plane could access the fluid power on its
own, and could form mists to transport Ryu to different locales, and
could even extend itself to travel with him by forming metal armor for
him to wear of Plane-stuff, giving Ryu almost full access to Xander's
abilities, at least in terms of external expression.

In this way, he was able to travel to the dead-Earth's Moon and that
system's Mars, working with the House and Plane on each to form a
redoubt there, two more places to which they could retreat. While
Xander had been concerned about the possibility of environmental
collapse if the outer shell was breached, Ryu recognized that now that
they had the Plane and House, the two working together could form a
viable environment, including self-healing domes and the like.

Working together, they determined that within the House, even extended
onto another world, the House and Plane could readily form and
disperse mud-clones at will, in addition to the unseen servants that
Xander had explicitly provided for, thus giving the ninja-clones a
place to gain memories of using their chakra skills to the fullest
without risk of being detected.

Tarou found himself following the urging of the library clone, and
venturing out onto the demonic plane. He was well built for combatting
the demons he encountered, even without Xander's fluid abilities,
though of the clones, he was one of the few that could use the fluid
powers nearly in full.

Each fight gave him a chance to use more of the ideas and skills being
built up by the other clones, as well as improving the mobility and
agility of his rocky body. The fluid sense was within the reach of his
power, and so he could observe as after each fight, the internal
network filled out, and became more intricate and complete, their
healing power at work, as far as he could tell.

They had another purpose, however, these fights, for every now and
then he would encounter a particular sort of demon, and the library
clone would direct him to collect something from it, a bit of bone or
horn or plate, or blood, muscle, or sinew.

The Plane collected these from him by sending mud-clones through the
mists, so he was unburdened by what he collected, and he grew to quite
enjoy throwing out one of the Thing's catch-phrases as he remembered
them, from "It's Clobbering Time!" to "I am the Idol of Millions," and
similar things said by other comic heroes, like "I'm the strongest
there is!" when facing a muscular demon, and then promptly smashing
said demon into rubble.

With a powerful healing factor, and a body that was resistant to
damage regardless, Tarou also found the time to practice executing the
fancy moves used in professional wrestling. Oh, sure, he was aware
that it was basically scripted, and many of the moves owed more to
carnival strong-men, with the two wrestlers moving in concert to make
each wrestler seem considerably more powerful than they really were,
than to Greco-Roman wrestling. He, on the other hand, really was
immensely stronger than he had been, and while some of the demons were
equally strong, others had little more physical strength than a human,
or even less.

Suplexing and pile-driving demons made a great show for the
eye-remotes the House had taken to operating, the same ones Xander had
first created so long ago, and that the House had assumed command of
to monitor the demon-plane hideout. Using two of them allowed the
House to keep a watch on Tarou and his moves, giving him a mental
exterior view to improve his form, while at the same time observing
his surroundings and warning him of incoming attacks, giving Tarou an
air of prescience as he easily avoided being blind-sided, whether by a
sneak physical attack, or a magical sniper.

While Xander himself found exploring his power to be fun and 
interesting, he had never been a jock. Even after improving his body 
to Captain America standards, he had not really taken the opportunity 
to put it through its full paces. As Tarou he was learning what a 
thrill it could be to actually be the strong one in an encounter. Even 
when he did face demons that were physically stronger than him, or 
when trying to do a throw and getting it wrong cracked a bone or 
pulled something out of joint, it healed in moments.

There were a few points where he actually found himself put at risk
due to magical weaponry, but in the worst cases, a quick blast of the
fluid power could take pretty much any demon and impart a massive
kinetic force to it, simply by pushing at all the fluid in the demon.
They tended to act like they had just been drop-kicked by a giant at
those points.

He tried a number of Hulk-style moves as well, including the thunder
clap, which he could do only by employing his powers against the wind
to fake the effect, and the spinning hammer throw of an enemy, where
again it needed an extra kinetic impulse to the fluid makeup of the
enemy to give it the proper heroic 'sending him flying' effect,
instead of a mere five-yard flop.

Every now and then Ryu would mist in and join him in a particular
contest, usually when he encountered a demon that actually seemed to
have some fighting skills, as opposed to the more usual brute force
types.

Now that Ryu had set up a base on an inhospitable world in a solar
system without sentients to put at risk, the House had started raiding
the aftermath of Tarou's fights, sending out a small swarm of
mud-clones to gather up valuables and pull them through the mists to
Mars.

If something that they grabbed turned out to be some sort of beacon,
invading demons would not find a hospitable or soft target.

While Tarou had the ability to use the fluid powers, he mostly
refrained, except where necessary to fit his super-hero appearance,
reveling instead in the feelings tied to being physically fit and
powerful. Among the other knock-on effects of Xander's
self-adjustments and this form specifically was a vastly increased
stamina, and Tarou found that he could run for hours without tiring,
and then dive right into battle.

There were more unexpected consequences as well, including one that
Xander did become aware of, when Nabiki came and found one of his
clones to report that she had finished setting up a corporation and
purchasing property, as well as filing for guardianship of Kodachi,
and a lawsuit against her brother for endangering her, and to block
her from being disinherited.

How could she have gotten so much done in an evening? She could not.
No longer needing sleep, and with memories overlapping of multiple
day/night cycles, not just between worlds, but even from two sides of
Kodachi's world, and without the heretofore regular interruptions of
summonings, Xander had delved ever deeper into figuring out ways to
use his power to answer the questions cropping up in his various
clones' thoughts, and lost track of time in a big way.

It was hard to see how to properly judge the passage of time; there
was no day/night cycle at all in his demi-plane, none of any substance
in the demon-plane, and the other worlds had cycles that conflicted,
but by the simple expedient of asking Nabiki, he was able to determine
that from her world's perspective, it had now been ten days since he
had been given Kodachi and thus taken responsibility for her.

"Time to pay the piper," Xander said to himself, as he led Nabiki
through the house to the suite of rooms he had assigned to Kodachi,
and to which the House had at least partially confined her.

With the aid of multiple points of view while they were inside the
House, Xander actually noticed Nabiki silently eyeing the doors that
opened at their approach, as if trying to discern how it was done, but
in spite of this evidence of his improvement at noticing things, he
was still caught off guard by Kodachi's docility when they entered her
rooms.

She sat quietly in a chair by a desk at one side of her room, facing
the door. When Xander walked in, she stood and bowed low to him.
Xander had quite deliberately avoided thinking of what the House had
observed of her, and the House had equally tried to avoid paying
attention to what was going on in her rooms, neither wanting to
unnecessarily invade her privacy.

Both were aware of her encounter and subsequent meetings with Mayu,
but again, they had only paid enough attention to assure that no
altercations had occurred, without looking closer.

One of the things that House had learned from interacting with Kodachi
was that he had quite a degree of influence over various almost
automatic functions of the environment inside himself. Since Kodachi
was an authorized user, the concept that Xander had built in, where
the House and Plane would fundamentally serve his will, a command that
went deeper than the chakra clones that provided conscious direction,
applied transitively, in so far as what she desired did not conflict
with his instructions.

Since to a degree, the clones really were Xander, they had similar
power over the subconscious or unconscious behaviors of the magic and
energies that pervaded the House and Plane, so, for example, House had
discovered that deciding that she would be confined to quarters was
sufficient to make it so, without his needing to actually pay
attention to every detail.

There were other more subtle effects though, that neither Xander nor
House, nor yet Plane had yet recognized. Particularly, the intention
that her food should have healing potion in it, initially in place
because Xander was concerned that a brother with so little concern for
his sister might have additionally been abusive, had never been
directly countermanded, and so everything that Kodachi had consumed
over the past ten days had been laced with healing draught.

All of the poisons and plant toxins and hallucinogens she had been
exposed to through her hobby had been leached from her system, both by
the magical activity of the healing potions, and by the simple agency
of time, as they were not renewed or replenished. Further, the damage
they had done to her mind and psyche had likewise largely healed.

Mayu's talks with her and Xander's failure to appear and force himself
on her had slowly brought it home to her that this demon was in fact
treating her better than her own family had. The absence of constant
attacks and defense, the stress of living in an insane household in a
violent district, of the necessity of upholding the honor of a family
whose honor was deeply broken, these had a freeing effect on her mind,
and with Mayu to gently guide her understanding, by the time Xander
found the gumption to face her, she was in a remarkably receptive
mood, and almost unrecognizable compared to the nearly feral character
she had initially displayed.

Instead of a violent screaming match, Xander found himself sitting and
sharing tea while Nabiki and Kodachi discussed her options, the house
that had been located, what she would have to do if she returned to
school, the lawsuit against her brother, and, given that Kodachi was
aware of who Nabiki was, the well-being of her love-interest, Ranma.

Kodachi had one surprising point about their lawsuit that sent Xander
in a new direction, as she noted that her father was not known to be
dead, merely absent somewhere in Hawaii, with her brother directing
family affairs in his absence.

Finding him would be a convenient end-run around Tatewaki, her
brother, although she described the man as quite obsessed. Even as
they walked together to visit the house Nabiki had purchased for them,
Xander was sending his clones to Hawaii to hunt down Kodachi's father.

It should have been a challenging project, given that they were
looking for one Japanese man with the only significant information
available being his name on an island chain with a large tourist
population. In fact, Xander expected to have the man located, if he
was living, in very short order, as one of the things he had managed
to do was get his power-interrogation technique operating as a sort of
compass, by putting a bead of water on a flat container and forcing it
to move towards a given target.

Just as with his portals, it failed miserably if the target did not
exist, but even that could be informative. Unlike the portals, it was
restricted to a certain degree of locality - even if he knew, for
example, precisely where Kushina was, asking the question in his House
gave no answer, nor did asking it in Kodachi's world.

Furthermore, he had determined that there was some weird distinction
between the answers he got through that means, and the similar answers
produced by using his food summoning power, such as producing a
chocolate compass that when floating on milk would point towards a
target. 

They would both indicate the same general direction, but not precisely
so when he was in a different city. When looking for a Tokyo target in
Tokyo, they agreed pretty well, but when trying to find someone in
Tokyo while he was in Los Angeles, they did not quite agree, and he
had not figured out the difference.

Since the gap in the methods vanished as he got closer, either would
work for locating the elder Kuno.

He was fairly certain that Willow would have either known the reason
they differed, or been able to devise a test. Xander for his part was
content to note that there was a difference, but that it appeared not
to matter in terms of finding the target, so could be ignored.

Meanwhile, Nabiki was showing them through the house she had located,
while invisibly, all around them, House was becoming one with it,
absorbing the home's memories. When Nabiki revealed that there was an
actual greenhouse attached to the house, Kodachi finally hit her
limit, and broke down crying.

After a short bit of interpretation from Nabiki of Kodachi's garbled
sobs, clones of Xander left on a mission of reclamation, infiltrating
the Kuno mansion and recovering the contents of Kodachi's room, of her
greenhouses, and of her pet, Midorigame, who was transported via a
simple underwater portal from one pool to another. Xander was amused
to note that the slight elevation difference in the properties had
meant they also gained about a foot of water into their pond, pushing
at its intended boundaries.

Nabiki also claimed a set of rooms, and used her key to link them to
her other suite in the House, while Xander claimed the Master suite.
Not, of course, that he actually needed the space, but Nabiki made it
clear that it was a necessary concession to the status-consciousness
of Japanese business society, and that indeed, she was working on
getting him several high-rise apartments in different districts.

That reminded him of his pirate bay, and he made a note to have her
look into getting him a yacht. He did not bring it up directly, as
Kodachi was still with them.

With Nabiki's expert guidance, Xander's required activities in Tokyo
were dispatched with remarkable ease and speed, and all too soon he
found himself again at loose ends. Kodachi was restored to her proper
routine of attendance at her private school, her father had been
located and was returning to Japan--Xander could have simply portalled
him there, but Nabiki had forestalled that, pointing out that it could
be problematic if there was no record of his re-entry to the
country--and would soon be resolving issues with Kodachi's brother.

That left little to distract Xander, but the House and Plane both
assured him that the human maidens, the flying horses, the
dragon, and the two little dominatrix fairies were all setting in well
and did not need another visit from him to muck things up any worse.

The Draconic-King clone and House, speaking from the perspective of
his castle, was doing fine with no intervention needed, having just
competed in and handily won a local traditional contest of strength
involving hurling what were clearly the ancient version of telephone
poles.

His demon-plane clones were going gangbusters, getting the full
superhero-style fighting training workout, and building up towards
being able to fashion a cartouche for him. 

"But what of me?" complained Xander, pondering in his room back in
House on his demi-plane. "Kushina could summon me at any time, but she
won't; from what the watchers have said, it could be months there
before she is allowed the sorts of missions that could use a summons."

"You shouldn't feel bad about taking over for a clone, it's just a copy
of you," the House pointed out, forming a fluid self into a
neighboring chair to provide a foil for the conversation.

"Doesn't change that I do. I mean, if I take over for something cool,
I get all their thoughts and feelings about how cool it is, and I
can't help feeling bad that they don't get to finish it. I could go do
something boring that I wouldn't feel bad about taking from a clone,
but that would be, well, boring!"

"So maybe all the summoning wasn't so bad, then?" the House pointed
out, pushing a tray of golden creme-filled snack-cake goodness over
towards his counterpart, afer snagging one for himself.

Xander grabbed one of them and held it up. "Odd that my magic doesn't
quite reproduce these to spec," he commented.

The House shrugged. "You weren't focused on just producing food," he
pointed out, "but on summoning food that would be healthy and
sustaining, and later on food that would please Naamahalat without
making her angry at you for getting her fat."

"So all the wonderful badness is missing?"

"Probably. It seems somewhat more so in the food I am producing, I
think you must have intended that I be able to produce healing magic
and the like."

"So that's why the ones I create myself are a bit more real than
yours, but neither stand up to the plastic packaged original?"

Any answer the House might have offered was cut off when an unexpected
and powerful surge of pleasure ran through Xander. Xander caught House
wincing, setting his mind racing, even as he dove into his memories,
searching for the source of the pleasure.

"You ass!" he accused, leaping to his feet. "You were trying to 
distract me!" He did not stay to hear more, passing instantly through 
a portal to the nearest open space close to the source of the pleasure 
he had felt.

He gave the room, which he recognized as belonging to the Tokyo House,
just the briefest of glances, before focusing his vision on the
black-haired goddess frantically rubbing herself in the bed. She was
on top of the sheets, and nude, nothing concealing her except her
hands where one was mauling her full breast, and the other furiously
rubbing her moist folds.