War Games I [Inuyasha/Ranma/TNN/Noir]

[Catwho]

War Games

A crossover universe novel by Cat Who

* * *

Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2 belong to Rumiko Takahashi. Noir belongs to Bee Train. Tenshi ni Narumon belongs to Studio Pierrot and the Heaven Project. This is a work of fanfiction. I make no profit, although Nabiki is probably making some money off of it, knowing her.


* * *

Where have all the demons gone?

Hundreds of years ago, the forests were filled with them. The waters teamed with them. The sky blossomed into a rainbow of youkai every full moon, every new moon, every sunset and sunrise.

Those days seem to have disappeared. As the human population grew, the demons left little by little, until no more remained in Japan.

Things are not always as they seem, however. The demons knew when they were outnumbered, and so they disappeared into the shadows; portals to another dimension gradually became known as the daemons, the gateways to the Demon World.

They are also still around us, in the Human World. They have . . . adapted. The person sharing your office may very well be a demon in disguise, and you'd never know because they have spells to hide it. Most of the ones in such a disguise are the powerful taiyoukai, demons who carry a human form in addition to a true form.

In fact, the demons of Tokyo have become so numerous that the technically qualify as a minority. No government survey, especially in Japan, bothers to ask people their species in a census.

A lot of them, for inexplicable reasons, have jobs in the Games Division of Sony.

(This explains a lot about the Playstation, when you think about it.)

But why are they working so hard in the Human World, when they have their own dimension with no pesky humans to bother them? Why go through all the trouble to disguise oneself so thoroughly only to live a lie?

Perhaps it is because they are studying the humans. More likely they are living a life in the Human World because this world is somehow more real, more tangible, more concrete. Yet is it better to live a lie in the real world than to live the truth in a fantasy world? The demons would say yes, because *living* requires a real world to actually be possible. Besides, they'd continue, the human world is a hell of a lot more interesting.

They don't have Playstations in the demon world. They don't have office jobs. They don't have CEOs of major corporations. There is power in the Human World, a type of power not found in the Demon World. It is the power, the absolute power, of control.


* * *
Chapter One [2nd draft]
* * *
Nerima, Tokyo, Japan
Spring 1998
* * *

Four figures reflected in the wall-to-wall mirrors of the Tendou dojo. The mirrors, which had been installed several years ago, reflected large windows, a peaceful meditation garden with a small koi pond, and a wooden fence beyond. They also showed one master, one apprentice master, and two students, all wearing the traditional white martial arts uniforms, which had darkened with their sweat.

Each face expressed grim concentration as they held a difficult crane position. They had been standing with their arms high in the air, on one leg, for more than ten minutes, trying to achieve with their balance and spirit the same tranquility as the scenery behind them.

"Arms down," Ranma Tendou finally said, much to the relief of the other three martial artists.

Akane, Ranma's wife of nine years, exhaled slowly and stretched her arms a bit. The younger students groaned and massaged their sore limbs. They had tried to learn the Amuraguri-ken earlier, leaving them with burnt knuckles and bruised pride, but soon they'd be picking up speed as they practiced. The students, one boy and one girl, had looked surprised at Ranma's suggestion that they seek a part-time job as servers in a restaurant.

"We're done for the day." Ranma bowed toward the students.

"Thank you, sensei!" the three students chorused in unison, and bowed back. Then the two high schoolers took off for home, bickering all the way.

Akane stood in the middle of the dojo, her arms crossed, smiling. Although she managed a pretty good Chestnut Fist herself, she had yet to really master the technique, and probably never would. Motherhood to their four-year-old son, Sounma, had become her first priority. She kept trying, however, and Ranma was glad that she hadn't abandoned the art after they'd gotten married.

"Last class of the day," Ranma said, stretching his own arms a few more times as he walked toward his wife. "I cancelled the six o' clock class due to school high school exams."

"That was nice of you," Akane said softly, and sucked on one burnt knuckle.

"Is it bad?" Ranma asked, concerned. He held the offended hand in his own, eyeing the reddened area critically.

"No worse than usual. I'll put some ointment on it and I'll be fine." Akane grimaced, and stomped one foot impatiently. "Why am I not picking up speed? I've been doing this for *how* many years now?"

"Six," he answered automatically.

"Six years, and I'm still nowhere near as fast as you! It isn't fair." Akane sighed and rescued her hand. "Come on, Auntie Nodoka will want me to watch her make dinner again, although I think we both need a bath first."

"Yeah, good idea. You go first, then."

Akane gave him a semi-smile, and trotted out of the dojo toward the bathing room. Ranma let out a sigh of his own, and dropped to his hands and knees, inspecting the floor of the dojo.

"No new cracks, it looks like," he muttered to himself, and began crawling around. The floor had been broken and repaired so many times that it was almost impossible to tell what the original stain of the wood had been. The walls and the ceiling were much the same.

Bits had been replaced over the years, but the heart of the dojo went on. That was the important thing. The learning, the concentration, the *soul* of the students who studied here was still embedded in the walls themselves, even if the walls were no longer the same ones that the students had studied in. The dojo was the thing, and the whole of the thing, whether it was the original dojo or not.

At least that's what the Tendous told themselves. The insurance company for the house said otherwise. The brutal truth was that their dojo was old, and dangerous. More than once since they had started teaching classes again had students broken through the flooring, or cut themselves while punching a hole in the wall. Even though they didn't have a mortgage or rent on their home, their insurance premium was extremely high, especially for Japan. They didn't have a lot of income, and what income they did have went almost entirely to the insurance and layers and layers of fines for teaching in such a dilapidated building.

And that was with classes limited to an enrollment of five. The insurance agent, one of those very uptight salary men who wore the perfect gray suit with the perfect gray hat and carried a perfect slim black leather suitcase, had hummed and hawed as he inspected the dojo, and glanced over the notes he had made beforehand. He had then presented them an ultimatum: Either fix the dojo, or have no more than six people in it at one time.

Unfortunately, even with a maximum capacity of six, the insurance still nearly broke them each month. Tokyo had a moderate respect for its ancient buildings, like the Tendou dojo, which was at least two hundred years old, but it also liked them to be in a livable condition. Those that weren't useable anymore had to go, in the name of progress.

They couldn't take on more students until they repaired the dojo. They couldn't repair the dojo until they took more students. Ranma hated that there were so many things he *couldn't* do. His art, his whole way of being, depended on turning that "couldn't" into "will."

I will somehow find the money to repair the dojo, he vowed as he stood up. I will be able to teach more students the Art. I will . . . somehow.

* * *

Nodoka and Genma had moved in with Ranma and Akane shortly after Nabiki had moved out, seven years ago. The arrangement had worked out well, since it finally left Kasumi free to move out too. Tofu Ono finally managed to ask for Kasumi's hand in marriage then, and with Nodoka to cook for her busy son and daughter-in-law, Kasumi hadn't felt guilty for leaving them at all.

"Now, Akane," Nodoka began patiently, "we don't need to add any salt at this point."

"But it tastes too bland!" Akane protested. Nodoka only let her "help" in the kitchen, since Akane had never been able to make very edible food on her own.

"Sometimes bland is better. And even if we did want to add salt, it wouldn't need to be a full cup."

Akane grudgingly put down the measuring cup, and stared at the merrily boiling stew angrily. Seven years with Nodoka had taught her to never cross Ranma's mother. She could out-nice even Kasumi while preparing you for ritual suicide, and afterward all you felt was tremendously guilty for disappointing her. That was the difference; Kasumi was never disappointed. Nodoka never said it, but Akane saw it in her eyes, and often felt as though she were a total failure as a wife.

Sounma, the third generation living in the house, toddled through the kitchen to the porch where his grandfathers were engaged in a battle of go.

"Saotome, it has been your turn for several minutes now," Soun Tendou complained.

"I'm thinking, Tendou," Genma answered sharply. Sounma, named after both of his grandfathers, watched the stones with interest. He sat down carefully, his attention never wavering as he took in the pattern of black and white on the board.

"No, Akane, we don't need any more seaweed."

"But it'd add some more texture!"

"Not even for texture, Akane. Put the seaweed down."

"Yes, Auntie Nodoka . . ."

Sounma ignored the voice of the women in the kitchen. Before him, a war waged on the metaphysical plane. White was winning, but only just. If black were to go there . . . and then white went *there* . . .

Genma finally placed a black stone, in the wrong spot. Sounma sighed. He learned a lot from watching his grandfathers, but they just didn't seem to understand the power of the game.

"Heya little fella," a warm tenor said from behind him, and picked him up. Sounma giggled as his father swung him in the air. Ranma was fresh from his bath, and wore a clean Chinese shirt and old sweatpants.

"No, Akane, not that much sake. No!" Pots and pans banged from the kitchen.

"You said it needs more bite to it!"

"Bite, not a roundhouse kick."

The four men stared in apprehension at the kitchen, where culinary Things happened.

"Will she ever learn?" Ranma wondered aloud.

"Probably not," Soun said, laying down another go stone with careful precision. "Although Nodoka has been a remarkable influence, I have to admit. We haven't had food poisoning in almost a year."

Ranma groaned at the memory of that last disaster, but privately agreed that Akane was getting better. She at least made consistently decent curry nowadays. Nodoka had forced Akane to work with a limited set of ingredients, and only once in a while did Akane decide to . . . experiment. Akane's idea of gourmet cooking usually involved flavors not intended for human consumption.

Ranma set his son back down, and Sounma immediately concentrated on the go game before him.

Ranma wandered over to the central table, where today's newspaper lay neatly, only mildly mangled after his father-in-law had finished with it. Idly, Ranma flipped through the paper, noting the baseball scores, blinking at a few advertisements, pausing over a few headlines. By chance, he found the classified ads, and something inside prompted him to find the Help Wanted section.

"Lessee . . . chef wanted, no . . . driver . . . no car, hmmm." Ranma scanned them, wishing for once an ad would say something like "Martial Artists wanted." No advertisement ever said that. Martial artists, like kabuki theatre players and geisha and the old buildings like their dojo, also had a certain note of respect with everyone in Japan, but no one ever really *wanted* them for anything. They just wanted them to stay as they were, a comforting reminder of an ancient culture that had only decided to take a little break from tradition in the interest of becoming a world power.

Then, defying that logic, Ranma saw an advertisement from the Sony Corporation.

"Seeking qualified martial artist to pose for 3D gaming platform in development. Prefer a medium build," Ranma glanced down over his mid-sized, wiry frame, "with many years experience. We need an excellent male and female model. Please inquire in person only. Bring this advertisement to our Personnel Department, 8th floor, Sony Building, Tokyo."

An idea began to form in his mind . . .

Nodoka and Akane emerged from the kitchen, hot dishes in mitt-covered hands. Ranma guiltily folded up the paper, and got out of the way while the women of the house set up the dinner table. He placed the newspaper on the stand near the main door, then as an afterthought found a pen and circled the advertisement from Sony.

"Dinner's ready!" Nodoka called to her husband and son's father-in-law.

"How much did Akane actually make so I know not to eat it?" Ranma asked automatically, earning him at flowerpot at the head from Akane. He ducked and it bounced harmlessly against the wall behind him, the paper flowers inside it landing with a sad whump on the ground. They kept mostly plastic dishes and things around the house, since everyone knew Akane's temper and *anything* might be thrown at some point.

"I made the salad, thank you very much," Akane huffed, and began piling lettuce onto a place for her husband. "It's plain. Auntie Nodoka wouldn't let me add any soy sauce."

Ranma shot a grateful look to his mother, who pretended not to notice as she set up dishes.

Sounma stared at his grandfathers some more, and finally spoke aloud.

"It's over," the four year old said quietly, and then stumbled over to the dinner table, where his mother and grandmother fussed over him and tucked a bib around his neck.

Soun and Genma frowned at the go stones. Neither of them liked to end an unfinished game, mostly because neither of them were very good and they really couldn't tell who was ahead until the endgame itself. But Sounma had the uncanny habit of predicting who would win after the halfway point of the game. Most of the time it was Soun.

But sometimes it was Genma.

"Hey, Sounma . . ." Genma called to his grandson, who was already stuffing his mouth with salad.

"Who won?" Soun finished.

Ranma ruffled his son's hair, and leaned in close to the young boy. "Don't tell them," he whispered with a grin. Sounma grinned back, revealing a mouth full of salad.

"I won't," he said.

"Sounma? Help out Grandpa here. We want to eat dinner too."

"C'mon, tell us who was winning . . . be a sport . . ."

"Ranma, you shouldn't encourage him," Nodoka chided gently, then without another word handed her grandson another place of food. "Eat up," she said.

"Sounma? Please?" Genma pleaded, while Soun sneakily rearranged a few stones.

* * *

The family turned in early in the evening. They tended to follow the pattern of the sun, since none of them worked in an office environment and no one was in school at the moment. Ranma yawned and changed into his usual tank top and shorts in the room he and Akane had shared ever since they were married.

Nine years, he told himself, unable to believe how quickly the time had passed. Their real wedding had ended up being a brief civil ceremony in a courthouse. No invitations, no meddling, no announcement at all. The parents had acted as witnesses, and the only gift they received was the Tendou dojo.

There had been a ruckus the next day in Nerima, of course, although he and Akane had been safely on a honeymoon to Okinawa by then. Over time, however, the mindless devotion of the Fianc?s and the Nerima Wrecking Crew had weathered down into occasional good-natured bantering. Some of them had even married other people. For reasons Ranma never quite understood, Kodachi had married Prince Herb of the Musk Kingdom, and she lived in China, so she wasn't a problem anymore . . . but in the case of the others, Ranma knew that the only reason they'd settled for who they were with was that it was better to live with the person who loved you best than to live without the one you yourself loved.

And really, he was happy with Akane. She understood him (most of the time) and she only threw things at him or tried to hit him when he was intentionally provoking her. It was their way of teasing each other. To someone who wasn't used to it, it could be mistaken for violent abuse, but if Akane stopped trying to hit him someday, then he'd be worried. And she never hit anyone else, not even Kuno, although that wasn't hard since he'd married Nabiki and they now lived in Europe.

Akane entered their bedroom, stifling a yawn. She held a glass of water in one bandaged hand, and Ranma watched as she popped a few aspirin in her mouth. "Sounma's tucked in for the night."

Ranma lay back on the bed, trying to stay as far away from the water as he could. Akane set it down on her desk, at a safe distance, and started to change into her own pajamas.

"Did he try to get out of it again?"

"No, I told him that the best time to think about the games that Grandfathers play is right before he falls asleep. He seemed to like that idea." She yawned again, now in pair of blue and white pajamas that gently hugged her trim figure.

"Scoot over," she commanded, and Ranma obliged. They shared a full sized bed now, one that had been hastily purchased after an unfortunate instance with a cat accidentally locked in their room with Ranma. The wooden furniture had survived with only a few claw marks, but Akane's poor twin bed had to be vacuumed up. After that, Akane had forbidden animal of ANY kind (except pot-bellied pigs) in their dojo.

They snuggled, leg to leg, and tried to find the most comfortable position without disturbing the other one too much.

"Hey, Ranma?" Akane asked in the darkness, leaning against her husband's shoulder.

"Mmm?"

"Are we going to make it this month?"

"Just barely," Ranma answered with a sigh. "One of the mirrors cracked two weeks ago, you remember that? The insurance company is paying thirty thousand yen to have it replaced, but the installation and everything ran us twice that. As long as nothing else happens, we should be all right."

"I wish there was something else we could do . . ."

"Actually, Akane . . . I've been thinkin' about something."

"What?"

"Maybe I should try to get a real job, if only for a little while."

Akane sat bolt upright, not quite believing what she had just heard. "What, you mean a day job? Like a salary man job?"

"Calm down, Akane! Yeah, something like that."

"But Ranma, all you have is a high school education. And whenever we've been short for a month, you'd just worked at Ucchan's for a weekend to make up for it . . ."

"I can't make enough to actually gain anything at Ucchan's. We need a permanent solution, not a temporary fix. There was a job ad from Sony, lookin' for a martial artist. I'm gonna apply."

Akane let herself relax again. If it was a position for a martial artist, Ranma had a fighting chance. She'd been afraid he wanted to apply for a desk job, one that he wasn't qualified for, one that would only get his hopes up only to have them dashed against the ground again. But she should have known that Ranma wouldn't do something he didn't think he could succeed at.

"When?"

"Tomorrow," Ranma said, a note of determination in his voice. "If I do get the job, you're gonna have to take over all the classes except the advanced one."

"That's fine. Now that Sounma's a bit older, I can handle teaching again."

They were silent for a few moments, each mentally working out how to rearrange schedules. Ranma's advanced class could be moved to the evenings, and most of the other classes could stay the same, except for perhaps the six o' clock intermediate class. Maybe they could be swapped out.

"We'll figure out a schedule after I get a job," Ranma decided aloud. Akane made an agreeable noise, and settled down on his shoulder for the night.

The door tentatively knocked.

"Mama? Papa? I can't sleep," a little boy's voice whined. The parents, who had almost been expecting this, looked at one another in mutual understanding.

"My turn," Ranma whispered, and crawled over his wife, trying not to disturb her too much. Unfortunately, his foot got tangled in the sheet, and he nearly lost his balance, and landed on the desk across the room. A faint goosh of water and a thump from the glass on the carpet accompanied an unpleasant dampness and an even more unpleasant sensation of morphological change.

"Ranma, are you okay?" Akane cried, flipping on the light to reveal her husband, in his female form, looking quite disgruntled and wet. The glass of water had spilled onto his leg, triggering the old curse from Jusenkyou that Ranma still hadn't found a cure for. They were too poor now for certain to afford a trip to China.

The water dripped steadily from the desk onto her foot.

"I'm fine, I'm fine . . . I'm gonna take a bath after I tuck in Sounma . . ."

"I'm sorry, Ranma. I'll clean up the water," Akane volunteered, climbing out of the bed to go find a towel.

Ranma-chan stomped out of the room angrily, and plucked her son up with one hand without losing stride. Sounma giggled, as he was being carried sideways.

"Hi, Auntie Ranko," Sounma said. It was what they had termed Ranma's cursed form after Sounma was born. Sounma was too little to understand that Auntie Ranko was his father, so to prevent any bizarre Freudian things that might haunt the little boy in his later life, they simply pretended that Ranma-chan was another person entirely.

"C'mon, boy, let's get to bed," Ranma said gruffly, trying to impose a remembered sternness from his father's version of parenthood. Sounma giggled, indicating that it wasn't working.

"Don't wanna."

Ranma kicked open the door to Sounma's room, which had been Nabiki's room a long time ago before she moved out.

"Sleep," Ranma commanded, depositing her son on his bed unceremoniously. Sounma giggled again.

"I don't wanna. When I sleep, then I can't see the games in my head."

Ranma paused at that statement. Sounma had an uncanny interest in the games that his grandfathers played, both go and shougi. He never interrupted the games, but he loved nothing more than to stare at the board for hours while Genma and Soun duked it out with imaginary armies.

"You have to sleep though, Sounma. We -- your parents and I worry that if you don't get enough sleep, you'll get sick."

"Won't get sick," Sounma insisted.

"Can't you think about the games you saw tomorrow?"

"They'll play different games tomorrow. I wanna see those too."

Trying to argue with a four year old was almost as futile as trying to argue with a two year old. The only major difference was that a four year old used a twisted sort of logic, while the two year old just said "no" to everything.

"Tell you what," Ranma-chan pleaded. "If I play a game of go with you tonight, will you be happy?"

Sounma looked blank. "Play?"

"Yes. Instead of watching a game with Grandpa and Grandpa, I'll play a game with you. But only if you promise to go to sleep afterward, okay?"

The little boy nodded dumbly as Auntie Ranko stood up. "Let me go and fetch the board."

It was a good plan. Ranma would let Sounma push the stones around a bit, maybe sort out what his grandfathers did all the time, and let Sounma grow bored with the whole thing. It'd be over in ten minutes.

* * *

Three hours later, Ranma, once again back to his normal male half, stumbled into the bedroom. Akane woke up and turned on the light, revealing Ranma with bloodshot eyes and an expression of shock.

"Ranma . . .?" she asked, confused. "I thought you were going to tuck Sounma in and then take a quick bath."

"I was," Ranma groaned, and *very* carefully climbed over his wife into the bed. "But then I made the mistake of offering to play a game of go with him --"

"Oh, Ranma!"

"--And I have never lost a game of go so badly in my life."

Akane blinked a few times, and then clicked off the light.

"Did you finally get him in bed?

"Yeah, it's almost midnight now, he's too tired to stay up any longer. I hope."

"I hope he grows out of this phase soon," Akane said quietly, and burrowed into Ranma's shoulder again. "G'night, Ranma."

"'Night, Akane."

* * *

In the darkened room, go stones danced through Sounma Tendou's sleeping mind.

* * *
Luxemburg
* * *

In front of a fireplace, several men and one woman sat comfortably in chairs. The decor around them tastefully complemented the old luxury of the chairs and people themselves; it was a place that spoke of ancient wealth, ancient knowledge, and ancient secrets. These were not the people who made history, since history is merely kings and dates and battles. These were the people who planned it.

A push here, a nudge there . . . and the whole river of destiny could change its course.

"They've posted the ad in Nerima," one of the men said. Neither his name, nor his face, were important.

"Do you think he will respond?" another questioned.

"There is no doubt. The insurance and fees is draining them dry. Only hard work has kept them afloat this long."

The others nodded. Luck didn't keep people in dire financial straights afloat. In their world, luck was something that happened only when you made it.

"Has he contacted Lord Sesshoumaru yet?"

"Not yet. A few other hopefuls responded to the ad, and Sesshoumaru politely rejected them. I believe it is only a matter of time."

"Time," the woman echoed thoughtfully, one be-ringed finger tapping against the jeweled head of her cane. "Time is nothing something we have a lot of."

"The projected date of the project isn't for another ten years," one of the men reminded her.

"Ten years is a mere breath in the lifespan of the world," she said.

"He will answer soon," the fourth man said sharply. "If not, then we have . . . ways of forcing his hand."

"Arrestation? Arson? Assassination?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of giving him a friendly phone call, actually."

"Oh."

The creators of history stared at the dull orange flames of the fire in front of them. On the scale in which their universe worked, there was no such thing as a really drastic measure. Control was the key, of course. It was one thing to force two nations into terribly, bloody combat. It was another to lead them on a merry waltz to economic deadlock. Both methods eventually lead to the destruction of the nations in question. The latter was so much more interesting, though, and usually a lot more profitable.

"What about the other one, the one that Sesshoumaru said was probably . . . er, here now?"

"We've been watching that household carefully. There have indeed been frequent sightings of a mysterious young man around the shrine." The voice paused, and then continued, slightly embarrassed. "He's a bit of a tourist attraction, actually. They're making him part of the history of the shrine."

"I don't like dealing with demons," muttered one of the men who had hitherto remained silent. "Bloody freaks, the lot of them. Worse than those vampires."

"We are not here to pass judgment!"

The mutterer grumbled a bit more under his breath.

"The pieces of this game are being assembled onto the board, now," the woman said, a hint of deadly smile creeping into her voice. "And we, gentleman, are the players."

"The question is . . . what is our prize?"

* * *
Nerima, Tokyo, Japan
* * *

Ranma stared in apprehension at the giant face of the Sony building in front of him. Akane had dragged out one of her father's old suits, and it fit Ranma rather loosely, but the only other nice clothing that Ranma had had been the tuxedo their parents had picked out for their wedding, which was hardly appropriate since it was white.

He looked down at the ad, carefully clipped from the newspaper. He was twenty-five years old, and he'd never worked at a *real* job in his life. It was frightening. Regular paychecks . . . benefits . . . regular hours . . . those sorts of things generally didn't appear in the career of a martial artist. Money was supposed to come second to one's dedication to the art.

No use standing around, Ranma told himself. He entered the building, waited for an elevator, and started on the long, long elevator ride to the 9th floor.

Ranma looked at the numbers as they changed. Something odd struck him about the digital face, which changed to zero-six, zero-seven, zero-eight as he watched it. The elevator stopped, and the doors opened again with a muted, oily, mechanical sound.

A sign right in front of him said "Personnel." Ranma followed the arrow.

Personnel turned out to be a large lobby with a pretty blue haired receptionist, who smiled at Ranma and handed him a clipboard when he showed her the ad. Something also seemed odd about the woman, something that Ranma couldn't quite place. She made him feel very nervous.

He filled it out in his careful handwriting, struggling to remember his tax ID number and the official name on his birth certificate. Finally, he handed it back to the receptionist, and wondered what happened next.

She looked down at the clipboard, and blinked for a few moments as she scanned over the application. Then she smiled back at Ranma, revealing two rows of perfect teeth, and said, "Wait right here." She scurried off to someplace unseen from the lobby.

Not knowing what else to expect, Ranma waited.

* * *

"Sara-chan?" the receptionist from personnel said into a phone.

"Yes, Miruru-chan?"

"He's here. You can tell Sesshoumaru-sama that the first one is here."

"Which one? Tendou or . . .?"

"Tendou."

"Sesshoumaru-sama will be very pleased."

"He will indeed."

The two women shared a silent grin across the phone line.

* * *

And so the message reached the ears of one Sara, full youkai and secretary to one of the most powerful men . . . er, demons, in Japan. She was not ethnically a Japanese demon, but that was okay, since most demons nowadays lived in their own world anyway.

Her job was a cushy one. She answered the phone for Sesshoumaru. She pushed paperwork around her desk and made sure everything got done. It was a lot of work, but it was generally very quiet. Only a very few people ever got to see her in person, and fewer made it past her to Sesshoumaru.

She really wasn't a very powerful demon, as far as demons went. Not like Sesshoumaru, who was over five hundred years old and had a true form the size of a small island. Her one main ability was that she could go entirely invisible, if she so desired. It wasn't that useful, not like some youkai abilities, such as being able to devour humans in one gulp. It did make her popular at office parties, when she would strip and wander around invisible and naked.

Now one of Sesshoumaru's plans had begun, and Sara anticipated being the one to tell him about it. She had met Sesshoumaru a long time ago (either four hundred and fifty years ago or one year ago, depending on how you looked at it) and in all that time, she'd found that his plans were always a lot of fun.

When he'd met her again, a few months ago, and offered her a job as his secretary, she'd jumped on the chance she'd lost all that time ago. She liked nothing more than telling Sesshoumaru good news. She never told him bad news, because it was her job to make the bad news go away before it ever got to him.

"Sesshoumaru-sama," she said, opening the door to his office a crack and peering in to look at him. No other being, mortal or demon, dared to do such a thing. Sara had privileges.

"Yes, Sara?" Sesshoumaru asked, looking up from his paperwork.

She slipped inside the door, and smiled at him from across the room.

"Ranma Tendou has applied for the job, just like you said he would. Miriru has already hired him. He'll start next week."

Sesshoumaru set his paperwork down then, and Sara caught her breath. Even though he was well over half a millennium old, he didn't look a day over twenty. He was entirely himself today; the spells he used to keep his true nature under wraps had been dropped in favor of the natural look. Two stripes graced each high, proud cheekbone, and a large blue crescent moon glowed from the center of his forehead. His long eyes glittered a dangerous lemon yellow from inside a face that was too pretty for a man. His neatly brushed hair hung loosely down his back. In public, he pulled it back into a gentlemanly ponytail, and his cheeks bore no marks.

Times had changed, however, in some respects. This Sesshoumaru wore a tailored charcoal three-piece Armani business suit.

Sara, in her little red Chanel suit and little red pumps, matched this Sesshoumaru, and she liked that fact a lot.

"Has the other one arrived yet?"

"We just sent out his letter yesterday. I believe he should be along either this afternoon, or sometime tomorrow." Automatically she began tidying up the office. Sesshoumaru was a neat person, in both speech in manner, but he had never really understood the true need for a filing cabinet, a quirk that resulted in cleaning maids not being allowed in his office anymore under any circumstances whatsoever. She picked up the stacks from the floor and arranged them near the wall, clearing up a significant amount of floor space.

"You don't need to do that, Sara," Sesshoumaru said softly. He told her that every time she started the task, which was usually every time she stepped in his office.

"You never know when you might have missed something I could have taken care of, Sesshoumaru-sama," she answered with a grin, and picked up a set of complicated looking forms to prove her point. She handed them to him, and Sesshoumaru produced a tiny pair of reading spectacles from one coat pocket in order to peer at them.

"Ah, I see. This is for that charity ball I was invited to."

"Did you want to go?"

"I may as well. I will donate one half million yen. And you will escort me, of course."

Sara nodded and took the forms back from him. He pocketed the reading glasses again. He wasn't really that old, at least by youkai standards, but the eyes generally were one of the first things to go no matter what species you were.

Ah, another charity ball with Sesshoumaru. In order to ward off scheming businessmen who intended on matching Sesshoumaru to their young daughters, Sesshoumaru took Sara as his date. It was a lesson he had learned long ago in the court of Kyoto. Everyone knew she was his mistress, which was the important thing. The fact that he was too much of a gentleman to actually keep a mistress never occurred to any of them.

Sometimes I wish he *would* make an improper move, she thought with a sigh. But he had too many bitter memories about his love life. He had told her that much in the feudal era . . .

Sara had once landed in that time by accident. She had met Sesshoumaru then, and fallen in love at first sight. He had been unable to reciprocate her feelings, so she had run back to her own time, heartbroken . . .

Then it had turned out that he had waited all that time for her, which was why she was now his secretary. Yet, he had never made an actual move to demonstrate anything. He was a patient man, and apparently the time for him to love Sara had yet to arrive.

That was okay with Sara, too. As long as she was the one by his side, she could continue supporting him, and loving him in her own way. They understood each other that much.

Sara returned to her own desk and started filling out the forms in a crisp, flowing hand.

"Let's see . . . one half million yen . . . pennies for Sesshoumaru, but five times the required amount for this ball . . ."

* * *
Nerima, Tokyo, Japan
* * *

Ranma returned home to the Tendou Dojo, a rather stunned look on his face. Akane greeting him with a quick hug, and asked the question that had been foremost on her mind all day.

"Did you get the job?"

Ranma nodded dumbly.

"How much is the salary?"

"Three . . ." he began.

"Three hundred thousand yen? What, is that a month?"

"Three . . .," he began again, still unable to imagine that much money.

"It's a good salary, Ranma. I'm so proud of you."

"Akane, it's three . . . million."

"Three million a year?" She calculated the math in her head. "That's a little under 280 thousaund yen a month . . ."

"No, Akane. It's three million yen. A month."

Akane's expression matched Ranma's for a few moments. Three million yen . . a month . . . was a lot of money.

"It's only a temporary position, though. I'll be working for three months. That's nine million yen for the contract, total."

"Nine . . .?" Akane managed to choke out.

"Yes."

They silently calculated how much they had made, as a household, over the past nine years. It was about half that much money.

"Ranma," Akane said, her face full of wonder. "Don't tell Nabiki."

"I won't tell Dad, either," Ranma said, looking nervously in the direction of the porch where a panda bear and Soun Tendou were playing shougi.

Neither of them had ever worked in the real world before, so neither questioned just why a job like that could pay so much money . . .

* * *
Luxembourg
* * *

The fire burned again that evening. The fire always burned, although those in the room who watched it changed occasionally.

"The bait has been taken."

"Yes."

"Was it poisoned? Or was it in a trap?"

"Not poisoned. The Tendou Dojo is, after all, a historical building. It would be a shame to let it continue in that state of disrepair."

"Then it was a trap."

"Perhaps not. Perhaps . . . it was only a lure."

"Ah."

One of the voices casually lit a cigar, earning a stern look from the woman of the group, although no one could see her actual face in the gloom of the study.

"I really wish you wouldn't smoke in here," she pronounced.

The man with the cigar smiled ferally back at her.

"I really wish you wouldn't focus on trivial things in here."

"There are no trivial things. Every minor detail is of import to some plan."

"Every detail?"

"Every little one."

* * *
End chapter one.
* * *

[ice princess]

Holy Crap. This story is great already. The only prob is I don't know if Sara is an OC, or from one of the two anime I haven't seen. I have no idea about Noir or Tenshi ni Narumon. Here's my first inane question: Does this "Tenchi" anime have anything to do with Tenshi Muyo?

Either way, I'm hooked. Ya know, I really don't care if I've seen these characters before or not...this story is fab.

~ice princess

[Catwho]

Tenshi ni Narumon is released in the US as "I'm going to be an angel!" She's one of the full demons from the series that helps to raise a baby angel that fell from heaven ^_^ She's the character on my avatar and sig, because she's the major cross element from that series. She is not an OC in the strictest sense, although I take a lot of liberties with her character (obviously she never fell into the well and met Sesh in her canon series . . .)

Tenshi ni Narumon has nothing to do with Tenchi Muyo!, as "tenshi" means "angel" in Japanese and "tenchi" means "heaven and earth." I think they may share the kanji for ten, but other than that they are unrelated words.

My TNN shrine: http://www.catwho.net/tenshi/ (hasn't been updated in two years or so . . .)

and here's manga sara: http://www.csusm.edu/anime/galleries/Te ... m/sara.jpg

As for Noir, the people sitting around the fire in Luxembourg are from it. The official website is at http://www.projectnoir.com/ . No romance or waffiness in this . . . except some subliminal yuri. It's still incredibly good.