Grave's New Life

Chapter 24

By Philip Weigel

Disclaimer: I wish I could draw. Then maybe I could claim to own the series involved. But, no, I can't draw that well. Godfather Ben Dunn, Rumiko Takahashi-sama and High Lord Fred Perry own the respective characters held within.

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Normally upset passengers didn't bother pilots. After all, dealing with the stress of flying, co-pilots, co-workers and the hell that is training school, a seasoned pilot could honestly say that they didn't get bothered by very much. Usually nothing short of armed conflict bothered a pilot. Kevin Koss, better known as Ace, was one person who could keep his cool in nearly any situation. Heck, even being boarded by his rivals when they decided to show up only really bothered him because he was usually delivering something important.

But none of that was bothering him. Heck, the group he was catering to wasn't anyone special, two of the four he knew for years now, and the other two were related to his first two, so that wasn't a problem. Heck, he wasn't bothered by the fact that he had been asked to travel when he had promised his girl some alone time. She was a bit upset, but understood. It was easy for her to understand when she had a few days worth of unfinished paperwork to deal with. Making a mental note, he promised himself to take her to the Bahamas or something for a few days.

The fact that a seven-foot tall, magical cat girl with more speed and strength than most professional fighters was agitated was one thing. The fact that he knew exactly what she was like, well, maybe not exactly, but the horror stories that her sister had told him was bad enough. Plus from the times he had seen her in action added to the nervousness he was feeling at that moment. Seeing an angry, twitching cat pace back and forth from the cockpit to the cargo area and back wasn't making this Trans-Pacific flight any easier. "Yo, Brit, girl, please calm down." He said, finally losing his patience with the woman. True, he respected and cared about her, but sometimes she was just too much for him to deal with.

He relaxed as she sat down in the co-pilot seat. True, she was still anxious and nervous, but at least she was trying to calm down now. "Look, what's causing you so much worry, yo?" The dark-skinned man asked the Werecheetah, as he looked her over. While her choice of clothes was, as per usual for her, quite nice and was able to show off her body without being too indecent about it, her face and hair, on the other hand, looked haphazard, some of her hair sticking out at odd places, rings under her eye-lids, thankfully they weren't thick, a few hours of sleep would fix that, or a shower, whichever she decided to do first.

Sighing as she leaned back in her chair, she looked at her friend, who was dressed in a light brown flight suit, and smiled lightly. The guy was always nice enough to make sure that his passengers were comfortable at the very least and would listen to problems if they weren't too much of a hassle. That only usually happened if he got into a dog fight. Which, now that she thought about it, happened a lot. "Sorry, Ace, I was just thinking about what I found out." Seeing him look at her, she continued, "I mean, for years, I thought I was the only Werecheetah," she said, not really needing to mention that she was the last pure-born Werecheetah that was still alive. "Well..." She sighed and explained to him what she saw on the news, though she didn't mention what Brianna had told her. (1)

He was silent with what he was told. He grimaced slightly. It was like finding out that he had a twin brother and both had been separated at birth. Frowning, he mentally made a note to not watch those types of movies with his girl again. "Brit, girl, why are you so nervous? Maybe this Werecheetah'll be happy to know that there's others like her." Ace could figure that she was nervous. Travelling thousands of miles from home just to try and find one person that may or may not still be there could make anyone nervous.

Britanny was almost, almost tempted to tell her friend about what Brianna had mentioned. "It's... Complicated." She said at length. Even if she wanted to tell Ace what Brianna had told her, she thought about her past and how she didn't even tell her older sister for years about what she had heard about her clan. Something like that just wasn't her place to tell.

When people usually said stuff like that, it meant that they either wanted to tell, but couldn't. Or they just didn't want to explain further. Either way, the pilot nodded and continued the flight.

(---)

Not knowing that people were coming for her, the girl in question was yawning as she walked downstairs of Nodoka's house. She had her eyes closed as she walked around in an over-sized light blue and purple T-shirt, one that went from her neck down to her knees. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, the Lycanthropoid walked by the back door and stopped to look outside. She smiled as she watched Ranma, who wasn't wearing a shirt, she noted with a light blush, was back-flipping, kicking, punching and going through several fighting motions not unlike a grasshopper on a cappuccino caffeine rush.

In other words, he was taking a normal exercise, for him anyway, and transforming it into something that was breathless, mostly due the speed he was using. True, it wasn't as fast as she, no wait, that wasn't her was it? Stupid conflicting memories just had to ruin her morning, didn't they?

Sighing, Grave shook her head, causing her hair, which was slightly tangled, to shift around and cover her eyes slightly. She dismissed the memories, not wanting her morning to get any worse than it was already. As she watched him, a memory of him telling her that he had to be the best no matter what popped into her head.

Flashback... (Insert waves, oooh, pretty colors)

"So, why do you work so hard?" She asked him out of the blue one day while travelling on Jade.

Blinking, he thought about it for a couple of minutes, Grave was going to repeat her question, when he suddenly spoke up. "I guess," He started, his eyes getting a distant look to them, "I guess I've been told my whole life to be the best out there and for years, all I really wanted to do was impress my old man. And when he said that mom would be proud to have the best martial artist as a son..." He trailed off, shrugging his shoulders and not saying anything more on it.

The Lycanthropoid thought about it, and nodded. It sounded plausible to her. And the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Almost all kids wanted to impress their parents in one way or another. And if that child put their whole life into making their parent proud of them, well, then their life goal would eventually turn into what their parent wanted it to be. Not that she disagreed with this one. If it wasn't for that ambition he had, she'd probably be captured, dead or sealed away somewhere.

End flashback... (Oooh! Shiny!)

Watching him backflip out of the way from an imagined attack, she smiled and stepped outside to sit on the back porch. Sitting down on one of the chairs that was there, she leaned back and watched as Ranma kicked upwards, before dropping to the floor to do a perfect sweep around him. The fact that she got a really good look at his rear had nothing to do with it. Really, it wasn't like she was watching every flex tightening of his backside. It was just coincidence that her eyes were glued in on his backside. Nothing serious.

It wasn't her fault that she practically screamed as she jumped from her chair and gripped the roof of the porch. Honestly, who the hell would go around sneaking around this early in the morning? Looking down, she reddened, though not out of anger, as she saw Ranma's mother looking at her inquisitively. "Neko-tama-chan, are you okay?" She asked, her voice was filled with nervous worry. Most people didn't go from sitting down to clinging to the ceiling in a flash. (2)

Taking a deep breath to catch her nerves, she nodded and dropped to the floor in a crouch, revealing that she was wearing short shorts under that shirt of hers. While the landing wasn't as graceful as Ranma's was, she thought she did a pretty good job not landing on her rear. "Yeah, auntie, I'm okay." She smiled at the older woman who just smiled in return.

"Oh goodie." She exclaimed, smiling and turning back into the house. "Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes." It amazed Grave how she could just shrug off some of the weirder things that she had seen. Most of that weird stuff was her fault, now that she thought about it.

It wasn't her fault that she reacted the way she did in the next five seconds. Seriously, why did people feel that they had to exercise their stealth capabilities all of a sudden? Her eyes practically jumped out of their sockets as she proved, yet again, that she had the reflexes of a cat, or at least similar to it, as she jumped up and grabbed the roof the porch again. Her right eye twitched as she looked down at a slightly confused Ranma, who had apparently crept up on her and decided it would be just hilarious to tap her on the shoulder and scare her back to the roof of the porch again. Though, she was slightly disappointed to see that he had put on a white tank-top, even if it did nothing to really hide his body.

"Uh, sorry." He said, chuckling nervously as he rubbed the back of his head. "You were just standing there looking out into space for awhile."

She was out of it long enough that someone had to comment on it? Shaking her head, she dropped to the ground again. "What's up with everyone sneaking around?" She asked, half-pouting, half-groaning. Honestly, she didn't know why people had to make themselves completely silent when they walked around. She didn't notice it too much with most people, but it was hard to tell when anyone was coming or going in the house she was staying in. Hell, Nodoka walked around light footed. No one else that she knew in her memories, at least for most of them, seemed to sneak around as much as the people in this house did.

"Habit." Was Ranma's answer to her question. Well, that and the fact that he was forced to steal when he was really young. That was pretty hard, to put it mildly, since he made more noise than a jackhammer when he was trying to sneak around. The beatings he got form various people taught him just how important it was to sneak around.

Tilting her head, she raised an eyebrow and shrugged. Who was she to complain about different and sometimes weird habits? She had a few of them herself. It wasn't like she really wanted to, but Ranma had said that she was a human bat-zapper, which caused her to groan every time he said it. Honestly, it wasn't her fault that she hated bats with a passion. So what if she blasted bats with aura beams every time she saw one. It was their fault for even existing after all. "Let's get some breakfast." She said, smiling and walking into the house.

Breakfast sounded good, though, he had to wonder just why his stomach decided to voice its agreement loudly. It wasn't like he was starving for days on end. At least, compared to what he had done on that training trip. That had been a nightmare and a half sometimes and he had long decided that if he ever had kids, he wasn't going to put them through that hell. A lesser version would work just fine, no one needed to go through some of that crap that he did. Not that he complained about the results, it was just the fact that sometimes spending more than five days laid up due to injuries really bothered him. It could've been worse though, considering his old man often pushed for the final result and damn the consequences.

(---)

Their search had been mostly fruitless, having to deal with scum that had nothing better to do than just bully those weaker than themselves and leer at women, the people of this "underground" criminal organization gave Shampoo more problems than she liked to admit. Not that any of these thugs gave her any problems, her walk was good enough, not to mention her confidence in her walk, to make most of the people who would think about touching her that way steer clear.

Having a two-foot troll with a six-foot staff walking right by her didn't hurt either. "Xian Pu," said troll said, before continuing without waiting on a reply, "I have what we've wanted for awhile now. Let's go." Her gravelly voice cut into the background noise as she and her granddaughter jumped out of the alley and onto the skyline, both of them moving fast enough that most people would only be able to see blurs at best. Still, getting away from this more down-trodden part of the city was good in the younger Amazon's opinion.

The fact that three people were either dead or in need of emergency medical treatment because they had decided to attempt some liberties with her didn't bother her in the slightest. Being an Amazon did have its perks. Being able to crack people's skulls was just one of them. (3)

Frowning as she made her way towards the inner portions of the city, the elder of the two was busy digesting the information that she had managed to "coax" out of such "willing" participants. They weren't dead, killing scum like that wasn't really worth her time, and she was in a hurry. The information wasn't too useful, but she finally did have a name to search for now. "Genma Saotome." She muttered, wondering just why a bunch of underground criminals would know about the slightly overweight martial artist, but she just shoved it away, figuring that it probably wasn't that important overall. (4)

(---)

Shivering as though someone poured ice water down his back, the aforementioned martial artist stared at the field of battle. So many had fallen to the enemy already, thankfully, he had been able to return the favor without losing too much ground. Spotting avulnerablepoint to his enemy's formation, he was quick to attack the point, only to be brutally blown back a moment later. "Well played, Tendo, well played." He complimented as his friend placed down the next piece on the board. Now, how could he get out of this?

Soun Tendo was a man that had survived a lot in his life, his wife's death, training under the most sadistic and perverted man ever, three teenaged, well, one was an adult now, girls, the loss of his students when his emotions got in the way of training, and now the current setback of his and Saotome's plans to marry their children together. Still, he and Saotome had been making plans to get his best friend's son away from Nodoka and show up at his place ever since that tournament. He didn't agree with outright kidnapping, but sometimes sacrifices needed to be made. "But, are you sure that you can get to your son? Remember last time you were there?" He asked, remembering just how bad Genma looked after making his way back to the Dojo.

"Yes, but I'm sure that I shouldn't see her again, even so, you'll be there to back me up." And if he knew his wife right, he could push honor onto the matter and that would be the end of all problems. Well, except for his empty wallet. He still couldn't believe that the middle child of Soun's girls would charge so much to find out where his son was. How was he to know that Ranma had managed to stumble across Nodoka when he wasn't looking?

Frowning, Soun nodded and sighed internally. Being backup for Genma usually meant taking the brunt of an explosion, or at the very least making sure that he got out of a sticky situation without too many problems. At least it wasn't as bad as it had been with the master, that was for sure.

Grinning as he put down his next piece on the board, Genma was only a couple moves away from victory, now if only he could figure out what his friend was looking at in surprise. Turning his head, Genma frowned, not seeing anything in the yard, nor in the air when he looked up. Maybe what his best friend had seen was gone and wasn't any problem now. Turning back to the board, his eyes widened. Wasn't he ahead just a moment ago?

(---)

"Thanks, mom!" Ranma yelled out as he walked outside and jumped up onto the fence as he went down the street, Grave Digger following him on the sidewalk, both wanting to enjoy the day and not have to worry about anything. Okay, so Ranma was skipping school, but in all honesty, he didn't see much use for it, other than to bore the hell out of him. Though, he supposed that that American teacher was kinda cool. He still got a laugh out of that motto of his about steam saving the world.

"Honestly," Ranma mumbled to himself. "How the hell is steam going to save the world?" It wasn't like it could be used to cure diseases, could it? He had to think about it for a few moments, trying to figure out how someone could use steam to fix diseases. Maybe it just sped up the healing that the body went through? That was something to ask. Though, he could admit that one machine that the guy had shown him on the first day was awesome, it just wasn't practical. Over-relying on something made you a bit too vulnerable when you didn't have it anymore.

"Maybe as a cheap source of energy?" Grave offered as she kept in pace with Ranma, her tail swaying cutely back and forth behind her. If she was honest with herself, the only real reason she followed her friend around was because of a shift in the air. Something just felt different and she couldn't place it.

He looked down and shrugged. That could be it, but honestly, he doubted that anything came that cheap. "Say, didn't trains used to run on steam or something?"

"Yes, actually," Grave said, some memories of Brianna, and Gina, whom Grave didn't want to admit was her sister at all, were still in her mind. "Using coal burning, they were able to use a water-pressure and steam system to span back and forth across America on rails. It was mostly used because coal burned longer than wood did." She didn't mention that most of the world's electricity came from coal as opposed to other forms of power.

It still didn't make sense to Ranma why someone would use steam to power everything, but he just shrugged it off mentally. "So, how do you think he powers all those machines of his?"

"Not sure, coal wouldn't be cheap to carry around in large amounts," Grave told him. "Back when trains were first developed, coal was dirt cheap." She considered things. "Also, he might have found alternative ways to try and make steam. Maybe by using solar energy." (5)

Of course, if the professor heard that, he would have called her a heretic for depending on sun-beams. Fortunately, he was nowhere around to hear her, so she was safe.

"Maybe..." Was Ranma's reply as they made their way to the park. There was supposed to be some fun stuff going on today, though personally, Ranma just wanted to work out and knew that the park was fairly large. It was the closest thing he had seen to a training area in this area. If he wasn't satisfied, he'd take his mother's advice and check out that northern area like she suggested. Though, how an area of a large city like Tokyo actually had areas that were perfect for training, he wasn't sure, but if there was, he certainly wouldn't complain.

Grave smiled as she realized where they were heading. "Can we stop for ice cream?" She asked, loving the taste of the lovely frozen creamy delicacy. It wasn't her fault! The Japanese apparently knew how to make really good ice cream. She had to be careful though, she kept getting brain freezes.

Jumping off the fence as they came to the park, he shrugged as he thought about it. "Sure." Why not? He liked the stuff as much as anyone, even if he never did get much of it while on the road with his old man.

"Thank you!" Grave said excitedly, before tightly hugging onto Ranma, causing more than a few people to look at the pair and smile ruefully. Some frowned lightly at the open display of affection, while others were giving the pigtailed martial artist a slight grin and a thumbs-up.

Ranma stiffened and his eyes widened as she hugged him. "Eh heh heh..." He chuckled nervously before hugging her back. He wasn't afraid to show his affections, per say, it was just that the looks he was getting from everyone around them made him slightly nervous.

Grave however, ignored the staring and continued to hug onto Ranma. She liked hugging him, he had saved her life a couple of times, why shouldn't she hug him? Besides, the promise of ice cream just gave her more incentive to give him a hug.

Ranma just shook his head and continued to hold her. He just couldn't believe how nice it felt to hold her close to him. He wished he had known about how good hugging felt earlier, though, he couldn't see himself turning into a hugging fiend and trying to hug everyone around him.

"So..." Grave said as she held onto Ranma. "They do sell ice cream at the park, right?" She asked, smiling up at him cutely, mentally grinning as he was staggered slightly, not that she'd manipulate him into doing something dangerous, but a treat like this wasn't something she could just pass up. It didn't hurt that he looked so cute when he was looking like that.

"Why wouldn't they?" He asked, dumbfounded. Hell, half the time he and his old man would run into ice-cream vendors without even half-trying. Not that he ever bought any ice cream from them. It was either pass along or steal from them.

Looking down, the little lycanthropoid mumbled, "Would be my luck if we didn't find any today..."

Seeing as she really wanted ice cream, Ranma frowned, before picking her up and jumping up into the trees and ran, or rather jumped along the branches, into the park. "Okay then..." Hey, if his friend wanted ice cream, he'd get her ice cream. Sides, he wanted some himself.

Grave squealed with delight. She loved when Ranma did this with her! Even if it wasn't that often. Wrapping her arms around Ranma's neck, she lightly purred as he carried her across the park. She wondered why he was shivering slightly, but she shrugged it off and enjoyed the ride. Damn if it wasn't pleasant.

Looking around, Ranma nodded as he saw an a small cart and a few people eating ice cream as they walked away from it. "There we go..." He said as he touched down right next to it with nary a sound or kicked-up dust.

Those gathered around the ice cream cart were surprised when a guy with girl in his arms just landed right next to the vendor. People appearing out of nowhere wasn't something that happened too often, unless it was a Ninja, but they were excentricly weird was it was already and no one thought that those two were Ninja. The guy looked normal enough, but the girl might've been a Ninja, she was weird in appearance after-all.

"Uh... Hello?" The ice cream man offered. He hoped that these two wouldn't be like the people his relatives had to deal with. Why, one of them had a blonde girl that usually ate all the ice cream that was in stock, and then there were tales of monsters running around in that area, and his other cousin that lived up north complained about skimpy-dressed aliens that caused way too much destruction and property damage for their own good. His sister had told him tales of a pink-haired girl that usually got into fights with helicopters and large machines. Was he destined to get some crazies like those three? Kami-sama, he hoped not. (6)

Putting Grave down, he nodded to the man as they made their orders for ice-cream and waited for their orders. Why were people giving them odd looks? He didn't fly, teleport, go invisible or some other thing that wasn't possible outside of anime, so why were people looking at him like that?

The ice cream man had to go slowly. He made two four-scoop large sugar waffle cones. "Here you go." He said slowly, offering it to them and balancing it carefully. If he went fast, he might spill the ice cream and then he'd have upset customers, and the last thing he wanted were upset customers that may or may not have super-human abilities or powers.

"YAY!" Grave mewled happily, taking hers and already licking rapidly. She LOVED ice cream! Smiling and purring, she walked away after they paid for the icy goodness, licking the delicacy eagerly.

Ranma chuckled slightly and started to lick his own cone as they walked away from the vendor. He had to admit, Grave licking the ice cream was really cute for some reason.

(---)

"Well, here we are." Ace said as he looked at his passengers. He had just landed the plane a couple of minutes ago and nodded to them. "Home of the rising sun, weird things galore and a cool culture." He stood up, stretched and walked into the back of his plane. He'd need to refill the thing before he could even think about taking off, but first he was going to see a friend of his that was supposed to live in Japan now. He wondered if her flight school had taken off yet or not. (7)

Ignoring the pun he made, he looked at his friends as they talked among themselves about where to start looking first. "Hey," he started, causing them to look at him, "head towards the Nerima district."

Blinking, the Werecheetah wondered just why he'd give advice like that. "It's simple," was the reply from their pilot, "Nerima's close to some pretty weird stuff, and some of my friends that come over here a lot tell me that there's a lot of fighters in that area." He shrugged at their looks. "If what I hear is true, then that's the only place a Werecheetah could've gone to hide and not gotten lynched at the first moment."

Britanny nodded and smiled at that advice, sounded good to her. "Thanks."

Behind her, Brianna took a deep breath. This was it, the time to find out everything.

Preview of Next Chapter:

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"So we're walking along, singing a song!"

"Gina, you can't sing."

"Put a sock in it, Bri."

"Ladies, calm down. We didn't come here to shop..."

"What? Shopping!"

"No! We still haven't paid off the last credit card bill!"

"Ah, pooh!"

(1) Britanny's a bit hyper and can talk a lot, but she still has the social graces to not tell someone something that's sensitive to someone else.

(2) To be fair, Nodoka didn't see Genma doing that during the training trip. Not that she'd believe it, even if she saw it.

(3) No, the Amazons aren't evil.

(4) It's not, but when someone goes ten years without being caught for various petty theft, especially against other martial artists, word is bound to spread. Bars are a great place to get information from after all.

(5) I'm BSing most of this. I couldn't find anything definite other than a few things.

(6) Just references to several other animes. None of which will appear in this fic.

(7) I'm sure that some of you know who I'm talking about. No, I'm not putting in more characters. There's enough as it is.