Burden

a Ranma 1/2 story

Disclaimer: The characters used in this piece of fiction belong to their rightful owners. I do not hold any rights to them and am not aiming to make a profit from this.

"There you are!"

The cry – a mixture of outrage, malicious glee and satisfaction – pierced the air, sending a shiver down the backs of the people walking along Nerima's side walks that morning.

Genma Saotome had never heard that voice before in his life, yet he froze and started looking for escape routes as if his health depended on it. Experience had taught him that, whenever somebody shouted those words in that tone of voice, in ten cases out of ten it did.

Experience had also taught him that the best way to deal with those situations was to run like hell and let his son deal with it. So he did just that.

Or he tried, anyway. Just as he was about to jump onto the roof of the nearest building and make a run for it, half a dozen mini-spatulas, of all things, embedded themselves in the concrete around him, forming a half-circle and causing him to stop dead in his tracks.

"Don't even think of running away, you bastard!"

All right, this is new, Genma thought.

With his first plan foiled for the moment, Genma reconsidered his course of action and started scanning his surroundings for his attacker.

There! On a roof a few houses down the street stood a boy wearing the uniform of the school his son went to. He had the sun in his back and his head tilted, his bangs falling into his face, making it impossible to identify him. Though Genma didn't need to see his face to know that this guy, whoever he was, had a serious bone to pick with him. The handle of some kind of weapon sticking out from his back as well as the fact that he was trembling all over – presumably with rage – made that pretty clear.

And the spatula-shuriken forming a half circle around him were also pretty helpful in that regard.

"Listen," Genma began, "I don't know who you are, but I'm sure whatever my son did, we can-"

"Shut up!" The unknown boy cut him off. "This isn't about what Ranma did! This is about what you did to me, you worthless bastard!"

The boy jumped off the roof, somersaulting in the air. With the sun in his back it appeared as if his long mane of hair was glowing, giving it the appearance of a comet's trail and creating a very dramatic image.

An ordinary person would have been impressed by this. An ordinary person would probably even have been intimidated by this.

Genma Saotome was no ordinary person. He was a master of Anything Goes Martial Arts. That was as far away from being an ordinary person as you could get without developing a sexual fetish involving little pot-bellied black pigs. He had seen and used every dramatic pose in the book, and invented several that weren't.

Genma suppressed a scoff, instead doing a closer inspection of his attacker, now that he had the chance.

The boy had a bandoleer filled with more of those spatula-shuriken slung across his chest, and now that he was closer, Genma could see that the big weapon strapped to his back was a really big and really sharp spatula.

Spatulas, spatulas... Hmm, somehow I think this should be a big clue to this boy's identity, but it still eludes me!

"Saotome," the boy growled, "six years ago, you and your boy ruined my life! I've been tracking you and your worthless son down for months now, but it ends today! Today I will have my revenge for what you did to me!"

Genma grimaced. It seemed as if he and his son had a knack for attracting violent-minded nutjobs. Oh well, there's nothing to be done about it. We are martial artists, after all.

Letting out a big sigh, Genma addressed his opponent, "Listen, boy, I don't know what we did to you, but I'm sure we can talk about it."

The boy finally raised his head, allowing Genma to see his face for the first time. What he saw there caused shivers to run down his spine and a cold sweat to break out on his brow. The boy's eyes were hard and unrelenting like steel. His features were twisted into a fierce scowl, with his teeth bared like a snarling wolf's.

For a second, Genma felt like a small animal staring into the face of its ultimate predator.

"Talk about this?" The boy repeated Genma's words. "Talk about this? You think we can talk about this!" He broke out into laughter that was bordering on hysteria. "Believe me, old man, I'm way past the point of talking about this! It passed when you and your worthless son left me behind six years ago! When you discarded me like a piece of trash! When you ruined my WHOLE! FUCKING! LIFE!"

"Come on, boy, surely it couldn't have been that bad," Genma tried once again to reason with his opponent.

"Stop calling me 'boy', you asshole!" The boy's voice broke during his scream, turning into a hysterical shriek that touched an unknown spot inside Genma with its impotent rage. "My name is Ukyo Kuonji, and I'm a girl!"

Kuonji! Genma's eyes widened briefly as he finally realised who his attacker was.

So they had finally caught up with him and his son. Genma had known that all the problems he had left behind would catch up with him as soon as he settled down, but he had hoped it would take longer than this. They had only been staying with the Tendos for a few weeks! A martial artist's life really was fraught with hardship.

Genma set his jaw, readying himself for his ultimate technique, The Crouch of the Wild Tiger, but he stopped as another thought occurred to him.

This was the perfect opportunity to finally do something right by his son! To earn back some of the respect he had lost because of botched training exercises and bad decisions. To see something different from annoyance in his son's eyes. If he took care of this, Ranma would see that he wasn't just an old man whose only strong suits were fighting and conning.

It wouldn't even be that hard! All he'd have to was beat or subdue Ukyo, since the girl was obviously in no condition to listen to reason at this moment. Then he'd just have to explain to her that the engagement had never been legitimate to begin with, because his son had already been engaged to another girl at the time. After that he would just have to track down her father and clear things up with him, too. That would probably involve more fighting and talking, but it couldn't be that hard.

It would boil down to two fights and several hours of reasoning with the Kuonjis. A small price to pay for regaining his son's respect.

Though on second thought, Genma wasn't so sure if he wanted to do this. It sounded like an awful lot of hassle just thinking about it. Did he really want to put that much effort into this? Experience told him that it was probably doomed to fail anyway. The people he had swindled were never interested in reasoning, they were always out for blood. His blood. And then where would he be? He'd miss Kasumi's dinner and his favourite tv-shows! He wouldn't have time for the daily shogi match with Soun!

And besides, that spatula looked like it would hurt. And Ukyo looked like she knew how to use it. Should he risk possible injury and pain for something that would fail anyway? He would have to fight Ukyo's father, too. That guy was bound to be even stronger than his daughter and just as angry.

Wouldn't it be easier to just let the girl vent some steam now and let his son deal with this? After all, that was what it would come to anyway, no matter if he tried taking care of things or not.

Genma was struggling with himself. He didn't know what to do. Try dealing with the situation in a very likely very futile effort to gain back some of his son's respect, or just do what he always did?

"Now you'll pay!" The boy screamed as he rushed Genma.

As Ukyo came rushing towards him, spatula raised for a strike, the coward inside Genma gained the upper hand and the side of him that always avoided responsibility won.

He did not fight back, did not even defend himself as Ukyo took revenge for having her life ruined by beating Genma until he was blue and black.

"You ruined my life, you bastard! You turned me into the city's laughing stock! I gave up being a girl because of you, asshole!"

As he took his beating and listened to the girl's tearful ranting, grimacing with every hit he took, it quickly became clear to Genma that the girl knew what she was doing. Her strikes were quick and precise, aimed to inflict maximum pain without doing enough damage that her victim would lose consciousness.

The fight was long and brutal, with one party working six years of pent-up humiliation, frustration and anger out of her system, and the other just taking it.

I wonder what's for dinner, was Genma's last thought before he finally passed out.