Nabiki scowled to herself. She was at the family table with a pad of paper and chewing her pencil. Everything that had happened today was on the paper, cold hard facts staring her in the face with confusing truth. At first, this werecheetah thing seemed like it would just be another weirdness in the life of Ranma Saotome. Bets on a werecheetah fiancée would come in, she'd make some money on fluctuating odds in his fights, and information on lycanthropes would sell at a premium. Wererat and possibly werewolf challengers would draw a premium on odds. As always, Nabiki would make a profit. If Ranma ended up dead, well, at least this time he knew what he was getting into first. And it wasn't like she was going to volunteer for a bite. No, Nabiki Tendo was smarter than to paint a yellow and brown spotted target on her hide.
Then Ranma bit Akane. Nabiki thought her hair was already yellowing at the roots, but the speed of the transformation was pointless. It had already happened, visible or not. And while Nabiki could be callous with the dumb jock that made her life so damned interesting, she couldn't do so with her own sister. Sell Kuno risqué photos, sure. Profit on the hentai horde, absolutely. Misdirect her about Ranma, why not? But every time Akane was in real danger, Nabiki made damn sure someone was going to save her. Not herself, obviously. She wasn't a martial artist. Leave the heavy lifting to Ranma.
Nabiki's pencil splintered slightly as she chewed too hard. These wererats weren't after Akane because she was some prophesized princess or was in the wrong place or some other misunderstanding that would get cleared up once it became clear that she was a violent tomboy. Akane was a werecheetah. And the wererats would simply want her dead, on principle, and no amount of reasoning would answer that principle.
But the wererats didn't know she was a werecheetah. They didn't know anything about Ranma or his ability to create new werecat or his blessing by the werecat patron. Nabiki couldn't fight wererat assassins, but no one in Japan was her equal at concealing the truth. She just had to make sure Ranma shifted back to human soon and stayed that way until there were enough werecheetah fighters and mages that the wererats couldn't attack. An image of Nerima as a gold and brown spotted paradise flashed through her mind before reality pointed out how unlikely that was, even in this town.
Nabiki looked up to see Ranma sit down with his werecheetah book. His feline features were already becoming familiar. Must be Belldandy's influence. Whatever, she needed to convince him not to be seen before-
"Oh Ranma," Kasumi called, "I don't have enough teriyaki for everyone. Could you run to the store please?"
"Sure, no problem," Ranma called back.
"Ranma wait!" Nabiki called to…the yellow blur that was too far away to hear her. She blinked. "That is fast," she observed. Very fast. Speeding cars were not that fast. And he had incredible precision to do that indoors without knocking anything over. But then, that was Ranma after all. Werecheetah speed was just another 'technique' he had learned and would master in an unreasonably short amount of time. A sudden BOOM from outside rattled the house and Nabiki calmly uprated Ranma's speed from 'faster than a car' to 'faster than sound.'
Nabiki's head sunk to the table and hit with a soft thud. She needed a plan B, and she needed it yesterday.
Wererats are thieves and assassins. It is what they were made to be, and in their freedom few had seen fit to improve themselves above that station. Those that did no longer associated with the wererat clan in any case. But some saw fit to go beyond petty crimes. After all, human criminals organized to great effect, and with a few well-chosen bites these criminal empires became vassals of the wererats, and assets of tremendous utility. As such, wererat influence is a global truth in the criminal underworld. And to the detriment of the nascent Japanese werecheetah clan, the yakuza were no exception.
Yun was an average Japanese wererat. He was skilled in hand to hand combat, carried a variety of weapons, paid his dues to his superiors and was generally a disreputable but valued member of the community. He didn't worry about the greater wererat clan, as his loyalty was to his immediate superior. And today, his superior wanted him to collect payment from a local grocer in Nerima. An easy job; the man was well aware of his debts and happy to pay a reasonable amount. But fate had other ideas, ideas that turned a simple, even pleasant errand into a moment of gut-wrenching terror.
Fate, as it turned out, was male, eight feet tall, heavily muscled, and covered in spotted golden fur.
Yun nearly wet himself. There wasn't a wererat alive that didn't know that werecats were the bane of their existence. And this…this was the fabled, the dreaded, the horrific werecheetah that stalked every wererat's nightmare. And it was standing only a few feet away!
Ranma was lost in thought. It was nice to be away from the house for a few minutes. He made really good time getting here. Well, being faster was no surprise. Things got really quiet once he broke into a sprint, though. That was weird. Ranma grabbed a bottle of teriyaki (the good stuff; he knew how important quality ingredients are!) and turned to pay and leave.
There was a man there, yakuza by the look of his tattoos. Ranma knew better than to start anything with a yakuza. Yeah he'd win, but it would be more trouble than it was worth. He had enough problems. But this guy looked outright terrified, and was staring straight at Ranma. Well, he was an eight foot tall cat-person after all, so he could see how that could be intimidating. Ranma smiled slightly. "Hi?" he asked, hoping to get this over with.
The werecheetah bared its hideous teeth and Yun's courage failed him. As did his bladder. Ignoring this indignity, he bolted from the store and ran down the street, not screaming only because that would make him easier to track.
Ranma blinked and caught the scent of urine in the air. "Huh. Maybe he had nekoken training?" he wondered. Poor bastard. Well, he'd calm down soon enough, probably, and chasing after him wouldn't help. He bought his food and left.
The store owner shrugged. No one living this close to the Tendos paid much attention to the characters that visited every so often. It was hard on the sanity just to keep up with the locals. 'Course this cat-man looked a bit like the Saotome boy. Maybe he was a manifestation of that nekoken thing. Aahhh, Nabiki would have the details published in a day or two. If Yun didn't come back for his payment, he might buy a copy. That would be nice.
Then a sonic boom rattled his inventory.
Yun didn't stop running. He went full rat the moment he was out of sight, but he didn't stop running. Eventually he made it to a safe house. A wererat he didn't recognize was on duty there in hybrid form. She looked at his ragged, out-of-breath self and cocked an eyebrow. "What has you so worked up?" she asked.
Yun hyperventilated for a moment and shifted to hybrid. He looked at the wererat girl and realized for the first time that the wererat clan really did come before yakuza family. "I saw a werecheetah," he gasped out.
The girl choked. "You…you what?"
"Nerima. A grocer. He snarled at me and I ran."
"What is a werecheetah doing in a grocer in Tokyo!?" the girl shrieked. "Are you sure it was a werecheetah? Maybe it was a weird-colored jagwere?"
Yun stared at the girl for a moment.
"Right, dumb question. What are we going to do about it?"
"Nothing," Yun said. "We send word up the ladder. That's all."
"Yeah. Yeah," the girl agreed shakily. "They can deal with this. I think I'll move to Okinawa now."
"I was thinking Hokkaido was nice this time of decade."
Not two hours later, the wererat known as Gothwrain had performed one final check. These scrolls would go to the lich. These would secure his escape to paradise. This would take his beloved with him…painfully. All the pawns were in place. A plan which took so many lifetimes of careful manipulation to achieve was now finally ready. He would go to the underworld, cast the die, and nothing could stop it. Not him, and not that bitch that held his soul in her hands. The cold logic of reality would drive events inexorably towards his salvation.
He gathered the scrolls and prepared the spells to disguise himself and leave this world for the next…and his computer bleeped.
…
Gothwrain sighed. He could spare a moment to clear this distraction from his mind. An email from Japan, that couldn't be too important…
No.
No. It couldn't be. They were all dead.
They were all dead save one. He had been commanded to kill them all. And he had. Except for the one whose death was assured in this final plan. He had even made sure Theodore misunderstood lycanthropy to strip her of her ability to repopulate her clan. Britanny Diggers was the Last Werecheetah, and he would doom her to save himself.
But that wouldn't work if there were more werecheetahs! Gothwrain's fist clenched scrolls, scrolls of immense power, scrolls that were the key to his escape, scrolls which were completely and utterly useless to him!! He tipped his head back and screamed his rage to the uncaring universe.
Skuld plucked a thread of potential from the tapestry of fate. It was a dark thread, full of death and pain and anguish. It was tied to hues of manipulation and scheming…and as she held it those ties weakened and broke. The thread came free. Skuld smiled and watched it wither into nothingness, and reached into the pure potential of the future to draw forth its replacement into the tattered hole of an uncertain fate.
What will be is what will be. And the universe is not so uncaring as to what that is.
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