It was just another normal day in Nerima for most of the populace.
For Ranma Saotome, martial arts genius and occasional transsexual, it was the day he was starting therapy. There were many reasons for Ranma to see a psychiatrist, it does have to be said. There was his crippling fear of cats, or that his mother was quite happy and willing to chop off his head, or that at least two of his fiancées were liable to kill him before the end of their wedding night, or the fact he had fiancées plural (and fiancés, plural too; although he tried not to think about that most days), or the frequent sex changes he got from any nearby body of water. Yep, Ranma had so many possible mental health issues that he'd had a whole syndrome named after him. It was called "big old parcel of crazy" syndrome.
The reason he was sitting a waiting room though was a real puzzler even for him. His father had insisted. Yes, Genma-"Father of the Year"-said no body ever!-Saotome, man responsible for a solid eighty percent of the crazy (or seventy eight percent on a good day, if Ranma was feeling generous) had insisted that Ranma visit a head shrink "to make sure the boy got his head straight and felt okay". Ranma had of course mentally filed this turn of events under "highly suspicious", but after a solid week of checking around (and not incidentally a large amount of time posing for photos for Nabiki, not to mention working as a waitress at the Nekohanten) had discovered nothing. There wasn't a fiancée or fiancé in sight, nor did there appear to be any other patient holding someone hostage to force a showdown, or even a mystical artefact working its ill will amongst the populace. Well apart from that incident with the haunted Rolls Royce that had possessed several of the local cheerleaders, but that appeared completely unconnected and had only required a brief impersonation of a sexy chauffeuress to resolve (a bit of a puzzler to many onlookers as to why Ranma needed to pose as a chauffeuress, since the key to banishing it was merely to perform a perfect three point turn, followed by a simple parallel parking, but that was Nerima for you).
So Ranma sat in the nice waiting room waiting for the, as far as he could tell, perfectly ordinary psychiatrist to help him with his perfectly bizarre issues. Naturally he wasn't happy. He was shaken from his thoughts by the secretary, a perfectly ordinary young man who had done nothing more sinister that type up some sort of short story about multi-coloured ponies and making fairy cakes or possibly basement DIY or something (Ranma had been trying to follow the keystrokes in case he ever came up against a school of Martial Arts Typists).
"Ranma Saotome, Doctor Okidoki will see you now, just go straight in".
Ranma nodded, then carefully opened the Doctor's door just in case. Once inside the office he took in the usual accoutrements of such rooms. A pot plant, in need of some watering. A couch, leather. A middle aged man wearing a head mirror, sat in a plush wingback chair. A cigar sat in a cigarette tray where it quietly smouldered. And finally, a framed doctorate placed prominently on the wall. Somehow seeing all this made Ranma feel a lot more reassured. It seemed so quietly, and professionally, normal.
"Ah, Mister Saotome your father told me you were coming to see me," Doctor Okidoki said in that quiet reassuring tone that psychiatrists always have, "why don't you just lie down on my couch and we'll begin".
"I don't think so Doc," Ranma said folding his arms and staring at the seated figure. "So, how do you want to begin this? You gonna get up, or should I just knock you outta the chair?"
"Young man, I do not know what you mean", the Doctor replied, managing to affect a slightly saintly and long suffering tone.
"Look old man, its simple. I got ya read. This is some sort of crazy Psychiatric Martial Art thing, right?" Ranma shifted his weight so he could keep his haughty, arms folded stance while being balanced in case of a strike.
"Oh dear me. I knew that you had had a lot of bad things in your life," the doctor said in a concerned voice as he took off his headmirror and started polishing it. The man's patient expression had shifted into mild worry, "but you must know that not everything has to be about martial arts in life".
"Yeah," Ranma retored, curling his lip so that his own expression now changed into a slight sneer, "not everything is. In this case it is though, right?"
The doctor shifted in his chair, and tutted slightly, in a strangely reproachful tone. "Why don't you lie down on the couch and we can discuss it?"
"Because I can see that it's spring loaded and it'll smash me into the wall!" Doctor Okidoki raised his hand in protest, his headmirror and handkerchief still clutched in it, but Ranma ploughed on. "Your plant is Peruvian bear-strangling marmalade-vine, one of my my fiancées has a ton of that crap around, your cigar has flame thrower in it," the doctor tried to interrupt, but Ranma just ignored him, "that mirror of yours had really sharp edges, and your chair has breakaway sections in it."
Doctor Okidoki finally managed to cut in as Ranma's rant ran down. "My couch was assembled in sections because it was imported from Britain and is well sprung because there are a lot of really fat people there, my assistant got that plant got at a fundraiser for Saint Hebereke's school for gifted young girls, my cigar holder is a novelty item that my wife bought me for our seventeenth anniversary, and I tend to polish my mirror when I am worrying so of course it looks a little sharp when it is so over-cleaned. Is there any other deduction you wish to make young man?" The doctor kept his voice quiet and even throughout his reply, using that calming rhythm that all medical professionals who have to talk to highly disturbed patients were taught.
Ranma shuffled his feet slightly. "Well how about your diploma saying 'Hokkaido School of Martial Art Psychiatry!"
"RANMA SAOTOME, FOR THE CRIME OF YOUR FATHER INTRODUCING ME TO THAT HARRIDAN OF A WIFE, PREPARE TO DIE!"
As the sound of whiplashing vines, and exploding cigars filtered through the locked office door, business just went on as ever for Namura Hikaru of the School of Martial Arts Fanfic Writing and Occasional Secretarial Personnel Supply Company. It was just a normal day in Nerima.