It had rained in Nerima for nine days.

Not storm rain. Not the kind with lightning and wind, where somebody stands on a rooftop with their hair blowing and says something dramatic. It was the thin gray kind that came down all day and all night like the sky had a slow leak, and it had turned Ranma Saotome into a girl on the first morning and kept her that way ever since.

"Nine days," Ranma said at breakfast, glaring at the window. She was short, red-haired, and in a mood. "Nine days I've been like this."

"Eight and a half," said Nabiki, without looking up from her rice. "You got a kettle on Thursday. You made it all the way to the front gate."

At the end of the table, a giant panda finished his third bowl of rice and held up a wooden sign. It said MORE PLEASE.

Kasumi filled the bowl without a word. Genma Saotome hadn't been human since the rain started either, and as far as anybody could tell, he loved it. Pandas didn't have to look for work. Pandas didn't have to pay back the money they owed Mr. Tendo. Pandas got fed three times a day and napped on the porch, and whenever the subject of the household budget came up, pandas held up a sign that said I AM ONLY A PANDA and rolled over.

But Ranma had a plan.

The plan was standing in the umbrella stand by the front door, and it was the size of a small tree. Ranma had found it in a shop by the train station: green vinyl, a steel shaft, ribs as thick as chopsticks. It had cost two thousand eight hundred yen, which Ranma didn't have, and which Nabiki had loaned her at a "family rate" that turned out to be higher than her regular rate.

"I call it the Fortress," Ranma said. "Nothing gets through it."

Akane, putting on her shoes, looked at it. "It doesn't fit through the door."

"It fits sideways."

The rest of the plan was simple. Kasumi had a kettle on the stove. Ranma would pour it over her head right there in the front hall, turn back into himself, open the Fortress on the step, and walk the whole way to Furinkan High without one cold drop touching him. He would sit through class as a guy. He would eat lunch as a guy. He would walk home as a guy. It wasn't a big dream. But it was his.

That morning the Tendo umbrella stand held five umbrellas: Mr. Tendo's black one, Kasumi's blue one with the flowers, Nabiki's, which she rented to Akane on bad days, Akane's yellow one, and the Fortress. Kasumi, who kept track of things like that, counted them while she mopped up after the kettle. Five.

Ranma steamed, stretched, and was himself. Kasumi handed him a lunch box wrapped in a blue cloth. Behind her, the panda watched that lunch box the way Ranma watched a good opponent.

The Fortress went up on the front step with a sound like a sail filling. Not one drop.

*   *   *

Ranma walked the top of the fence along the canal like always, the Fortress overhead. Akane walked down on the sidewalk under her yellow umbrella.

"You look ridiculous," she said.

"I look dry."

They had almost reached the corner when a figure dropped off the top of a garden wall in a flapping raincoat with a wooden sword over its head. "SAOTOME! For nine days you have hidden from me like a frightened rabbit! Today the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High shall..."

Ranma tipped the Fortress about two inches. Kuno hit the top of it, bounced like a basketball, and went into the canal with a noise like a dropped piano. Ranma didn't even get his elbow wet.

"Nice," said Akane, despite herself.

Then a bicycle bell rang behind them. Ranma knew that bell. He started walking faster.

"Ranma!" Shampoo came around the corner on her delivery bike, a stack of noodle boxes strapped behind her, saw that he was a guy for the first time in nine days, and lit up like a Christmas tree. She let go of the handlebars and jumped for him.

Ranma swung the Fortress to block, the bike kept rolling without her, and a delivery truck chose that exact moment to go by through the biggest puddle in Nerima. When the spray settled, Shampoo was gone. There was a small, soaked, very annoyed cat sitting on Ranma's shoulder, under the umbrella, looking him right in the eye.

Ranma did not scream. He would want that on the record. He made a sound that was very high and very long, and then he ran.

He ran three blocks with the cat on his shoulder and the Fortress held straight up, because even in total terror some part of his brain was still thinking: stay dry. Somewhere in the second block the cat jumped off. Ranma didn't stop until he was in an alley behind a dry cleaner's, panting, shaking, and checking himself over.

Dry. Still a guy. He let out his breath.

"RANMA SAOTOME!"

At the other end of the alley stood a young man with a bandana, a backpack the size of a refrigerator, and a red paper umbrella. Ryoga Hibiki had a look on his face like he'd been walking for three days, which he had.

"I've been looking for the Tendo dojo since Monday," Ryoga said, through his teeth.

"It's two blocks that way."

"Don't lie to me!" Ryoga's eyes went to the giant green umbrella, then to the lunch box, then back to Ranma's dry, comfortable, male face, and something in him snapped. "Three days in the rain, and you're walking around under a circus tent..."

He swung. Ryoga's umbrella weighs about as much as a motor scooter, and when it hit the Fortress, the Fortress folded up like a flower at night. Cold rain hit Ranma right on the top of the head.

Except it didn't, quite. Because in the half second the Fortress was going down, Ranma grabbed the only other umbrella in the alley, which was Ryoga's, and yanked it right out of his hand.

For a moment they just stood there. Ranma was holding a red umbrella that felt like it was full of bricks. Ryoga was standing in the rain, holding nothing.

Then the Fortress, lying in a puddle, sprang back open on its own. Ryoga dove under it.

"Give that back!" Ryoga said.

"I'll trade you at the Tendo dojo," said Ranma, arms shaking. "It's that way." He pointed.

Ryoga glared at him, grabbed the Fortress, and ran in the exact opposite direction.

*   *   *

Ranma got to school dry. He sat through three classes as a guy. Nobody had ever been happier about a math quiz. At lunch he set Ryoga's umbrella down against the wall, where it cracked a floor tile, sat down next to Akane, and untied his blue cloth.

Inside the lunch box was a smooth gray river stone and a tiny wooden sign. The sign said I.O.U.

Ranma stared at it for a long time.

Akane sighed. Then, without a word, she pushed half of her own lunch over to his side of the desk. She had made it herself. Ranma looked at it, and it looked back.

"Eat it," she said. "Or don't. I don't care."

He ate it. All of it. He would never tell her what it tasted like, and she would never ask, and that was the nicest thing either of them did that week.

Then he reached for his tea, and the classroom window next to his desk, which had been stuck shut since about 1960, picked that moment to blow wide open in a gust of wind.

Akane looked at the short, wet, red-haired girl sitting next to her. "You made it to lunch," she said. "That's a record."

*   *   *

That evening, Kasumi counted the umbrella stand again. There were seven.

Her father's black one. Her own blue one with the flowers. Nabiki's, rented out twice that day. Akane's yellow one. A long, dignified black umbrella with a dragon on the handle, which Kuno had left behind when he came by in the afternoon to deliver a poem for the pigtailed girl. A pink umbrella printed with little cats, which Shampoo had borrowed from the Cat Café and left when she came by in the evening to look for her bicycle. And Ryoga's red umbrella, which Ranma had leaned against the stand when he got home, and which had immediately tipped the whole stand over, and which nobody in the family except Ranma could pick up.

The Fortress was not among them.

Just after dark there was a scraping sound at the front gate. Everybody went to look. Coming up the walk, very slowly, was a small black pig with a bandana around its neck, dragging a large green umbrella behind it by the strap. One of the ribs was bent backward. Ranma decided not to ask.

"P-chan!" Akane scooped him up. "Where have you been? Look at you, you're soaked! And you brought us an umbrella!"

Over Akane's shoulder, the pig looked at Ranma, and Ranma looked at the pig. Neither of them said a word.

Kasumi took the Fortress, shook it out, and stood it in the stand. "Eight," she said, pleased, as if it had been a good day for umbrellas.

*   *   *

The rain stopped a little after eight. For the first time in nine days there were stars over the Tendo dojo, and frogs in the koi pond, and the smell of wet stones coming up off the yard.

Ranma sat on the edge of the porch, still a girl, eating rice crackers out of the bag. After a while the panda came and sat down next to her. He didn't hold up a sign. He just reached behind his back, put something in her lap, and looked out at the yard.

It was the lunch box from that morning, wrapped back up in its blue cloth. Half of the lunch was still in it. The good half.

Ranma looked at her father for a long time. Then she ate it. It was very good.

The radio in the kitchen said the rainy season would be over by the weekend. Ranma didn't believe that for a second. But she finished the lunch.

~ The End ~