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The Mysterious Man was more confused then ever, so he had decided to go walking through the town in search of someone to mess with. He was masking his aura so that he couldn't be detected and ended up in a small gift shop. Amazingly, he had been out for a good hour and hadn't cursed a single item, which was only confusing him more. He decided he would make up for lost time by cursing an odd pendant he found in the shop. The jewel in the pendant looked like it had a splinter in it, and the man figured that a curse dealing with wood was fitting. The man cast the curse, watched it surround the pendant, and then vanish without taking effect.

"What in the......"

The man soon had bought the pendant, left the store, and returned to his lair with it. Something about it was preventing him from cursing it, and he wasn't about to let that go unexamined. He paused momentarily to ponder the fact that he ended up not cursing anything in the end, but realized that for the first time in his very long life he didn't care. What he did care about was figuring out what was protecting the pendant. He knew it would be taking a while, so he ajusted the time balance in his world so that 5 days could pass in about an hour back in the dimension he tormented.

5 Days/1 hour later....

The man was closer then he had been initially, having isolated the abilities of the pendant to what he had mistaken for a wooden splinter. He had gotten it out, and it almost looked like a shard of a broken jewel. He had realized sometime around day 2 of his work that his earlier statement of "What in the......" was wrong, for this shard was definitely from OUT of the world. It was definitely not something he had created, that was for sure. Around noon on day 3 he had figured out the curse on the shard, and how to lift it, but the curse was well-placed and would make it very hard to detect. If there were more of these things out there then the man knew he would be able to detect at most one of them at a time, and then only if he were within a mile of it.

The man decided to let his magic mirror keep auto-recording for him as he went to ponder the results of his work.

Another 5 days/1 hour later....

It had taken him 5 days to put the pieces together, so to speak, but the man had finally figured it out. After watching his mirror and what had been said by various people he figured that this shard was one of the shards Joe/Emeral, or Sonic/Rose as he now knew them to be, was looking for. He had recieved some information as to why they were in his creation, as well as some about the other outer-worlder that was in his creation. He wanted to learn more about them and their abilities, but wasn't sure how he should go about it. He sat back to think again........

15 days/3 hours later....

The man had been working hard for 15 days on his new plan, and finally sat back in his chair and re-adjusted time. He had missed 5 hours of potential fun back in his creation, and he intended to catch up on it soon. He noted that Shampoo had never been helped, so he triggered the failsafe he put in all his curses. The necklace fell off of Shampoo, all the curses removed from it, and she realized where she actually was. It didn't take her long to celebrate her return to humanity. The man smiled at this, for he knew that she would be more careful about here Japanese in the future. She might even learn some Japanese grammar.

Since Shampoo would be weary of anything that might be cursed in the near future the man knew his next plan would require someone else. He realized that he hadn't gotten Ryoga recently, and he was just as much into searching for a cure for his condition as Shampoo was. Of course, there was also Mousse who would be just as happy to find a cure. The man sat there for a moment, and realized that there was no challenge in getting them to use a cursed item. He had to find something that could amuse him if his plan failed.

After going over everything he had done he came to the conclusion that Cologne would be the perfect target. She was the most cunning person in the whole town, and one of the strongest fighters overall. She was always looking for a way to get Ranma to marry Shampoo, but was more cautious then Shampoo herself was in attempting it. She would be tough to create a curse for, but also the most likely to attract the attention of the outer-worlders once she was cursed. The man pondered this for a moment, and laughed when he realized that it didn't matter who he cursed, the outer-worlders would come running with his new plan anyway.

The man laughed harder when he realized that Cologne herself had provided the means for her own cursing when she requested a Cookbook she had left back in the village.

The man turned to his workbench and picked up a small book. The book soon became a duplicate of the cookbook that Cologne had left with one of her sisters in the village, and a few minutes later was cursed. The curse was masked to avoid detection by anyone, even himself if he were so careless, and quickly replaced the original in the mail package that would be arriving at the Cat Cafe in the morning. Cologne had been looking for a recipe for a love potion that she had written in the book, and the man didn't tamper with it, however the act of brewing the love potion would trigger the curse. The man also knew that Shampoo wouldn't be attempting to make something so complicated, especially with it involving cold water, so he was reassured that his intended target would receive the curse.

Wouldn't Cologne be surprised when she suddenly started age-jumping between pre-teen and her current age, and the outer worlders would come running whenever it happened because the curse was matched perfectly with the energy coming from the shard. Partially because the man had used some of the energy from the shard to create the curse, and partially because the man was getting good at creating curses that were indistinguishable from a given energy.

The man sat back and started catching up on what he had missed, again, waiting for morning. He figured something must have happened since he cursed Shampoo, that he hadn't seen anyway, and he knew he would have to wait till the next day before the outer-worlders tried to get the shard that wasn't there. The real fun would begin when one of them triggered the second curse and was teleported to another world of his, one created especially for his initial meeting with any one of the outer-worlders. Once they were there he would have about an hour before they would be sure to escape, but that was plenty of time to talk to them.

Of course, the door would stay open for anyone very close to the person who triggered the curse, so if Sonic or Rose triggered it the other would be likely to follow. The man might even give them the shard, if he believed their story.