A/N: For obvious reasons characters are going to be out of character, I'm thinking that Ranma is going to be a much nicer person in this, especially when he gets older and probably a lot less arrogant. If you are concerned about my other work Pulling Punches getting less attention the next chapter for that is well under way I just needed a break.
Ranma was never going to let his father near him again, he decided. It didn't matter what was happening he decided that he was always going to be well out of Genma's reach from this day forward. Ranma wasn't going to let Genma have the chance to do something like the Cat fist training to him again, regardless of the fact that the training had worked. To this end Ranma's training became near impossible resulting in Genma ambushing Ranma and forcing him to spar with him whenever possible. But at some point Ranma just couldn't trust Genma enough to be really trained by him. At some point the boy became so paranoid that Genma may be around that he wouldn't sleep unless it was somewhere Genma couldn't reach, but it seemed that Genma could easily get anywhere Ranma could. At some point Ranma stopped being able to eat anything his father prepared for him, after the attempt to drug him. Ranma didn't know what to do it's not like he could just ditch his Father and live on his own he'd tried that; he had left Genma one night with the tent and his pack and ran for it. Eventually Genma had tracked him down, while he slept after going hungry for the third night in a row.
Genma didn't know what to do the boy wouldn't let him get closer than ten feet even to the point of running away when Genma tried. He figured the boy would eventually forgive him if he apologized, but the kid never did. They'd only been training, really training for three years, you try keeping the attention of a three year old focused solely on martial arts. And while ambushing him taught the boy to keep up his guard and learn to dodge attacks. The boy was slowly starving himself instead of eating the food Genma made. He even refused the food Genma "bought" for him from restaurants and stores. Maybe he could convince No-chan to go easy on Ranma and not uphold the contract; she was sure that she would be happy to have Ranma back. And he could probably convince Soun to train one of his daughters to be a great martial artist or possibly train Ranma in his stead.
Genma sighed he didn't see any other options not like anyone else could teach his son the Saotome Anything Goes style. He looked up at his son staring suspiciously down from a tree at him. "Son we're going home to see your mother." He called up to the boy. Genma turned and started packing up camp, Ranma hardly ever talked to Genma now. But he could hear the kid mumbling something about not realizing he had a mother. After he finished packing his and own things, he looked to find Ranma standing there with his own pack as he turned to leave knowing that Ranma would follow when he felt Genma was far enough away. It took a while Genma to get to town but, Genma used some of his money and bought them a ticket back to Nermia. It took some doing to get Ranma to come close enough to get the ticket let alone on the train. He and Ranma wound up sitting in different train cars but they were back in Nermia. He stopped in a park on the way home. "Son why don't you stay here and I'll go get your mother," Ranma nodded in response, he seemed pretty willing to cooperate on this. Maybe he could fix things with them.
Genma watched as Ranma eyed him suspiciously before turning and going to play with the other children. Genma sighed this might be an uphill battle.
It was sunset, Ranma was the last person left in the park he was sitting on the swingset with his pack leaning against the supports next to him. "Maybe he decided to just ditch me here." Another kid came wandering into the park he looked lost he was carrying a pack like Ranma's. The boy came up to Ranma.
"Excuse me do you know where we are?" the kid asked Ranma thought it was weird that the kid didn't read the sign as he walked in the park but whatever.
"We're at Nermia central park. Are you lost?" Ranma questioned.
"Yeah… But at least I'm close to the right city I live somewhere in Kanagawa."
"My Mom is supposed to be coming here soon to pick me up maybe she can help get you home. She supposed to be here soon."
"You think she'd do that for me?" Ryoga asked.
"Yeah if she's anything like I hope she is she'll be really nice. Anyway my name's Ranma, do you wanna see who can jump off the swings the farthest?"
"Yeah okay! I'm Ryoga by the way."
After Ranma and Ryoga both did a couple jumps Ryoga noticed that Ranma was jumping a lot farther than Ryoga could.
"That's not fair, how are you doing that?" Ryoga complained as he watched Ranma sail gracefully through the air.
"Its a technique my dad taught me, it helps you jump really high from any position." he paused for a moment and remembered that his father said it was a Saotome secret technique and that he shouldn't share how to do it with just anybody. But then again he wasn't really the best person in the world so maybe it would be okay. "I could teach ya how to do it." Not like its something he could hurt someone with.
"Really?!"
"Yeah but you gotta promise not to hurt anybody with it unless you're protectin' somebody, it's part of the martial artist's code." Ranma decided that if there was anything good his father taught him it was the martial artist's code.
"Alright" Ryoga beamed.
It was a long and well emotional argument, conversation? Whatever. Nodoka was walking to the park, and to be honest contract or not she was just happy to have her baby boy back. She took the turn into the park and walked to the children's playground where she hoped to find Ranma. Maybe he hadn't run off the moment Genma left him there. Once they got home things were going to be different around the Saotome household, starting with that lazy husband of hers getting a real job to support them.
When she came to the playground she spotted two children, chasing each other around the playground having fun. She immediately recognized her son by the braided pigtail she used to put in his hair. He looked happy so she decided to wait on the sidelines for him to be ready to leave. But then she noticed the second pack by the swing set and wondered if the other boy was also on a martial arts journey. The two were bounding around like Genma and Soun had done in their youth. After a while the boy with the bandana around his head stopped and called Ranma over, they started talking and the other one point at her. When Ranma looked at her he seemed he seemed to pale, and looked nervous. The other one seemed to egg him on to come closer, Nodoka simply waved and put on a friendly smile and gestured for Ranma to come closer.
He obliged, but stopped short about 5 feet away from her, just out of reach. He didn't seem to know what to say so she started. "Hello my name is Nodoka Soatome, it's nice to meet you. You're Ranma aren't you?" She figured it would be best to take it slow.
"Yeah, does that mean you're my mom?" He seemed nervous, he was bunching up the bottom of his shirt in his hands.
"Well yes I suppose it does. Are you ready to come home with me? You can tell me all about your time with your Dad-" Ranma looked ready to protest "And not to worry he'll be spending the night somewhere else okay?"
"Okay but can Ryoga come with us he's lost." Ranma asked and pointed to where his friend was.
"Ryoga?" She looked at the boy and back at Ranma this seemed important to him. "Yes he can come. Why don't you two get ready to leave and we'll see what we can do about getting him home after dinner."
Soun was turning out to be harder to convince than he thought he would be. But an idea was beginning to bubble just under the surface. He just had to convince Soun that this training journey with Akane. It doesn't help that she's fallen behind because he's been in mourning for two years.
"-besides old friend who's going to watch after my other two girls…" Soun complained, "it's not like I can just leave them here unsupervised."
"I've been thinking about that old pal; see if you do go on this journey with Akane; Nodoka and I could come and watch over the girls while you're gone. Plus it's necessary for the school to carry on. We need one of our children to become a master and Ranma won't let me teach 'im anything and Nodoka is talking about making me find my own place to live until the boy is comfortable around me again. She could move in here and take care of Nabiki, Kasumi and Ranma while I live out at home and when you come back Nodoka and I will move back together to our own home and then we can tell the kids about the engagement. Plus this will get you out of the house help the mourning process, it's not good for you to be cooped up surrounded by all the memories of her."
"You make a strong case Saotome…" Soun seemed to be considering it. "I'll have to talk to the girls about it but after this, but this sounds doable. Plus the girls do need a Mother to learn from."
The remainder of the night at the Tendo home was spent catching up and drinking.
A/N: I got really bored writing this toward the end of the chapter, so like yeah if it starts out good but gets gradually worse, then you know why. Also I've decided that while still a martial artist who practices every technique he can get his hands on Ranma in this au will be a pacifist outside of sparring matches and protecting others. Well even in those instances Ranma probably won't throw a punch. This will be touched on in later chapters. If this were to get so far shampoo will probably be hunting Akane to death after finding out she's a girl. Remember to leave a review and thanks for reading.