Genma's Story.
First person narration test writing.
Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma 1\2.
Author's Note: Well, here's another oneshot. This time I read it over carefully and even got it proofed, so this one shouldn't suck so badly. I was originally going to make it longer to cover Nerima, but I think what I've already got makes the point for me.
Anyways, let the story begin.
Viewpoints 1: Genma's Story.
Hi, the name's Saotome Genma. Yeah, that Saotome Genma. I don't really know why I'm writing this. I doubt that if I ever gave it to my boy, he'd read it. I mean, I'm just the stupid old man. If you know who I am, you probably agree with him, but damn it I succeeded in doing what I wanted to. Why won't anyone acknowledge that?
It makes me angry, sometimes. I hear everyone saying things, and they don't even have the courtesy to say them behind my back, but they have no idea what I went through on that ten year training trip. It's all about the boy. Yeah, I admit I did a lot of stupid crap to him over the years, but if I hadn't, he'd be dead six different ways by now.
When, you ask? I don't know, how about when he went with Akane to fight that Orochi at Ryugensawa? Aside from the Tendo arrangement, which I like to think was one of my better arrangements, NOTHING I'd done precipitated that mess, and without his training Ranma would have been dead, but NO! It's just Genma, the idiotic, cowardly Panda. He's never done anything good in his entire life. You know what the hardest part is? That boy is exactly what I strove to create. He adapts to any situation nearly instantly, never gives up and incorporates JUST enough of my own underhanded dirty tricks to win the fights he couldn't possibly win fighting fair.
I'm proud of the boy. I love him dearly, but I'll never show it. Not in a million years. When I'm buried in the ground, I know my son will hate me. Part of me wishes that he's going to read this some day, that he'll find out WHY I did so much to him over the years, and that he may one day forgive me for what I had to do.
You know, maybe I do know why I'm writing this thing. I just want to leave something as a legacy other than mild annoyance and my son, and I guess this is it. As stupid as it sounds, I'm going to write down every immoral, stupid and dishonorable thing I've done, and tell WHY I did it. I'm sure that if the various police departments who're after me got a hold of this they'd probably faint with joy.
The first thing you're probably asking is why the hell I started the training trip, anyway? To that, I answer that you really don't know much about wandering martial artists, do you? It's kind of funny, though I know that my son and Akane love each other, I sometimes wonder if she realizes that some day, he's going to become restless and wander, even if he doesn't have a child to train. It's an urge, a calling. I've worked most of it out, but it took me over thirty years of the wandering life to do it, and I still grab my pack and go off for a few days every once in a while, even now.
That was a big part of why I left Nodoka all those years ago. I mean, I'd been on a few training trips with the boy before-hand, I'd even carried him on my back when he was too young to walk, telling stories about my old training days with Soun, not really caring if he understood them or not. Yeah, that's how I ended up in the desert with the Daikoku family, in case you're wondering, and just to clear things up right now about that, there's part of that story I didn't get to tell when Daikoku and his daughter showed up to fulfill the engagement. Me and Ranma'd been out in the desert for a few days.
Yeah, I'd brought provisions, but the boy was only a year old, and specialty baby food doesn't keep very well in an old backpack in the middle of a hot, dry desert. I'd run out of provisions about two days before, and being my usual pig headed self had refused to turn around. I had been looking for this supposed 'ancient order of desert dwelling monks,' with very little success, and I wasn't taking no for an answer.
Anyways, by the time I stumbled on Mr. Daikoku, I was hallucinating badly most of the time and had a bad case of sun stroke. I hadn't eaten or drank in a long while, and Ranma wasn't looking very good. I noticed he had a kid, so I figured I'd get him to help Ranma out a bit and get some food for myself at the same time. I know what you're probably thinking, why not just ask for help? I did. The bastard just flat out said 'no,' with some line about him having limited supplies. Kind of funny how receptive he was when I offered to trade Ranma.
A lot of the things I've done over the years even ashamed me, but I wouldn't turn away a starving man and his young son, no matter how little food I had myself. I put food over a lot, but there are some lines even I wouldn't cross.
So yeah, that's why I made the first engagement. Well, the first other than Tendo's. Despite what you may think, I didn't walk around Japan looking for girls to sell Ranma to. I arranged three engagements, one of which was an absolute survival necessity. Yeah, I know you're thinking about Kuonji now, but I'll get to that eventually.
So, getting back to the original subject, most of the reason I went on the trip was because I wanted to wander, and I wanted to bring up my son in the martial arts. …all right, there was another motivation. My wife.
Don't get me wrong, Nodoka's a beautiful and kind woman, and I love her, even if I'm scared spitless of that damned Katana of hers. The thing about Nodoka is that she'd fallen in love with being a mother, and with the idea of having the perfect little son. You may not think this was a problem, but her idea of 'perfect' wasn't exactly very good for a martial artist.
Everyone seems to think that I'm a sexist pig because I took Ranma away so Nodoka couldn't coddle him. None of you have lived with the woman when she has a young child around, have you? I tell you, every time the boy would slip and skin his knee, she'd be on him like a hawk, cooing over the 'boo-boo' and comforting him, even though he wasn't even crying! It was impossible to teach him ANYTHING in the art, because every time he got so much as a bruise she'd fly into hysterics.
Now, I wonder where that caring woman disappeared. Yes, she's always taken honor very seriously, while I've thought of it mostly as a tool to manipulate. You think that's bad, I'm sorry. The fact is that most Japanese assume that everyone lives by their code of honor, and I use that. But anyways, I'll get back to that later.
What disturbs me about Nodoka, is that now she doesn't show the slightest concern for the boy. I saw it, in the beginning. When she was being 'aunty Saotome' for Ranko, I saw what she used to be like. It made it so hard to hide as that damned panda, but fear has always been a strong force in my life, probably the only thing that's kept me alive through some of my stunts back in the day with the old master. When she finally found out about the curse, though… she seemed to change completely.
I think even Ranma knows something's wrong, and he's never been really swift when it comes to picking things up outside of a fight. a bit of a disadvantage to the way I trained him, I'm afraid. Ah, why is it that I keep getting distracted? Maybe it's that I don't want to remember some of the things that happened in the early years of the training trip.
I made a promise to finish this damned thing, though, and unlike most of the others, I'm going to succeed in this one.
Well, let's just say that I managed to get Nodoka to relinquish Ranma for the training trip, but it took a lot of convincing, and eventually the contract. Yeah, I know the contract was a bad idea, but I didn't then. I thought I'd raise Ranma in the tradition of the art, make him strong and powerful, and we'd have no problem convincing Nodoka that he was manly, and damn it, I don't care what some people say. Ever since I saw the boy face down Saffron in China, I can say that I fulfilled that contract to the letter, no matter how big his cursed form's breasts are.
That's another thing that I want to set straight right now. I do NOT look down on women. Well, okay, I tend to look at women quite a bit, but think about it. I've been wandering this country for a very long time, and in that time I've encountered my fair share of female martial artists that could beat me. There's a simple reason why I call Ranma a weak little girl, and that's school yard teasing. During the training trip, I'd enroll Ranma in school whenever we were in a town long enough that I figured he'd get a good chance to settle in.
One of these times, He was well into the 'girls are icky and have cooties' phase, and someone had started calling him girly. This annoyed Ranma quite a bit, and the anger made him sloppy. I've always taught him not to let anger screw up his fighting, it's a quick way of getting his ass kicked, and using his insulting skill to piss off his opponent for the exact same effect is part of the school, so after I heard about the fight at school, I started calling him girly in sparring sessions.
He eventually got past letting it screw up his fighting, but it ALWAYS worked to get him angry. I really don't know why it effected him so much, but it was a good way to make him fight harder, and I didn't see any reason why it'd cause a problem. Damn Jusenkyo, anyhow.
Gah, I keep getting distracted. Admittedly, the next few years of my and Ranma's life, at the beginning of the training trip, are something I don't really like to look back on too much, especially without the nice damping effect of a bottle of good sake.
You see, Ranma took leaving his mother REALLY hard. For the first few months, I'd hear him sniveling from the Futon next to mine, crying for his mother. Every time I heard it, I felt bad, and every time I felt bad, I went to get a drink or trained Ranma harder to alleviate my own depression.
It was around that time that I found the book. I'd been using the Umisenken to break into a small store for some money at the time. It was an antique shop, specializing in the arcane or unusual. Yeah, breaking and entering isn't very honorable either, but it's how I did things. I'd still do it that way if I didn't already have a roof over my head and food in my belly, and I don't much care what you think about it. Finding an ancient training manual while I was rummaging through the shop for pawnables was a nice bonus, and when I read the technique inside, I thought I'd found the mother load.
Yeah, I know. I should have read the Neko-ken manual more carefully. Every time I look back on the incident, I curse myself for not checking the next page, and it was my own laziness to blame, but as the Americans say, hindsight is 20/20.
The first time I tried the technique, I tried not to be as vicious as the manual indicated. I let Ranma play with a pit full of well fed cats. I guess I figured that if he hung around with them, he could start picking up their fighting style, or something. That obviously didn't work, so I decided, reluctantly, to step up to the full technique.
Yeah, it sounds pretty cruel, and honestly it is, but there are techniques that are just as bad in main stream arts, and they bring good results. Look at that Hibiki boy, for example. I'm sure getting hit by boulders couldn't have been fun, but now he can stop cars with his body and keep walking.
At this point, I was mostly lost in the idea of making Ranma the perfect martial artist, to show my master and everyone else that I could do good, and maybe I should have stopped after the first drop into the pit. Kami, the boy's screams still echo in my ears sometimes. I desperately wish that I'd stopped the first time, but I didn't. I insisted that he could do this, that he could master the Neko-ken and make me proud, and by the time I realized that I'd instilled a severe fear of cats into him instead, it was too late.
My reasoning after that was kind of hard to explain. I guess it's kind of like thinking that you've already done the damage, and you can only go up hill from here. Honestly, tell me I'm wrong! If I'd have stopped when he was just afraid of them, what would that have done? He'd still have a paralyzing fear of cats that could be used against him in a fight, but no defense against people taking advantage of it. That's what I tell myself every time he wakes me up, screaming his head off.
People think I don't care when my son is huddled in a ball crying out of complete terror? I care. I care a lot, the problem is that I didn't stop to realize the damage I'd caused until it was too late, and now both of us have to live with the consequences. Do you know I still have the scars from the first time he went cat?
He tore a good part of my left leg clean off with his claws before he ran off, and there were some nasty gashes on my side, too. Some part of me just wanted to let him go, to lay back and let myself bleed to death in punishment for what I'd done to my son, but I couldn't.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking, I was too scared to die. That's probably partly true, but the reason I got up, got medical attention and went to find the boy was because I wanted to make up, somehow, for removing his sanity. The goal of making him the best martial artist ever wasn't just to show up my old master anymore, it was now because I'd taken something away from the boy, and had to give him something else in exchange. The art was all I had.
After I got patched up at a local hospital, I went hunting for the boy. My leg was still sore as hell, but somehow the boy taking a huge chunk out of It hadn't managed to hit any vital nerves or muscles. I think I have my weight to thank for that.
When I found the boy, this old lady from in town had apparently found him. He was curled up in her lap, this look of complete piece on his face that I hadn't seen since we'd left Nodoka. I thanked her and took him back with me. It's funny. The lady was old, and I think blind. I don't even know if she realized that Ranma wasn't some big cat that had walked up onto her porch.
The next thing I have to tell here, I haven't told anyone before in my life, and it's a reason why I told them not to read this until I was dead. When the boy woke up, he didn't recognize me. In fact, he didn't recognize anything. He didn't remember anything at all aside from how to talk. I explained who I was, and what we were doing, and he took it pretty well. I even told him about the Neko-ken training, but he told me he did remember that.
Honestly, I think Ranma still can't remember anything from before he was six years old. I don't know if it was brain damage, some 'psychological trauma' or something else, but one thing was for sure. It made training Ranma both a lot easier and a bit more painful.
Before the training trip, I'd acted like a father to Ranma. I'd done all the things fathers do with their sons. I'd carried him around on my shoulders, I'd laughed at his stupid jokes and made appreciative noises at the things he'd done and made at school. During the trip, I was his Sensai first and his father second, and that's all Ranma knows. He doesn't know that I once acted like any other father with his son.
As for how Ranma's loss of memory made things easier, for one thing he didn't know anything about Nodoka anymore. He didn't cry for his mother because he didn't know who she was, and he took to the art with all of his heart because that's what I told him he was doing before.
I perpetrated the greatest lie I've ever done, or ever will do, and I think it's the soul reason Ranma's as good as he is. The art is, and according to him always has been, the only really important thing in his life.
I think some other things have recently intruded into the place that the art holds in his heart, most notably Akane, and somehow I'm glad about that. It may make him slower to improve, or may give him a better reason to keep trying to improve. Come to think of it, given how much more quickly he's increased in power since we came to Nerima, probably the second one.
As it was, Ranma's new dedication to the art gave me a whole new range of techniques to try with him, simply because he was determined to face the challenge and grow from it, rather than trying to shirk his responsibility.
That was when I started training him in the most important part of the anything goes. Many have wondered why I used so many dangerous and life threatening training techniques on Ranma during the trip. The answer was simple. I had to come up with a new technique for him to train in every couple of days. That was the key. Ranma had to be constantly barraged with changing conditions, with little or no warning, in order to increase his range of abilities and adaptability.
When he was younger, before he hit the age of ten or so, most of these techniques were reasonably safe. The occasional flicking of small rocks at him when he was doing a Kata, or rolling logs and other obstructions into his path while running.
No, I didn't have him running from wolves at seven. I learned from the one massive training mistake I made. I knew damned well that Ranma was ready before I tried ANY technique after the Neko-ken, and I was always looking out to make sure he wouldn't be killed or too badly hurt. A broken leg here or there was fine, it helped him learn and increased his healing ability. A broken neck was definitely not.
It was a couple of months before Ranma's seventh birthday, about half a year after the Neko-ken when we arrived in Ukyo's little town near Osaka. I'm sure many people are still wondering what I was thinking when I engaged Ranma to Ukyo. Honestly, I'm not sure. Ranma'd been training with the girl for a week or so even before I found out.
I'd noticed that he wasn't fighting for his food quite as much as usual, and he seemed a little more happy, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. That was until he used a throw I'd never taught him to catch me off-guard and fling me into a tree. It was a weight redirecting throw. Even Ranma didn't have enough strength to move someone my size at just under seven, but it impressed me so I asked him where he'd learned it.
That's when I met the Kuonjis. I won't lie, Ukyo and her father were both good. Ukyo even managed to pin Ranma a few times, though he'd never admit to it and it'd never happen twice. Kind of a shame what happened,. She could have been so much better with actual instruction rather than that training by the sea thing.
As for the engagement, Mr. Kuonji started pestering me about it only a couple days after I met him. He liked Ranma, and Ukyo liked Ranma, so what was the harm? I told him about the Tendo arrangement, but he just shrugged it off. Then he brought out the big guns, mentioning that Ranma'd been eating free Okonomiyaki at his cart for a week now, and offering his family cart as a dowry.
Normally, this would be my cue to start running, but Ranma still hadn't figured out all of Ukyo's family style, and I figured it'd be a good addition to the anything goes. Besides, the cart would be useful for making a bit of semi-legitimate money for a while. I agreed to the arrangement. Quite possibly the third stupidest thing I've ever done, with the Seppuku promise coming forth, Jusenkyo second and the Neko-ken first.
After making the arrangement, guilt started to bother me. I had fully planned to run out on Kuonji with his Yattai as soon as the date when I was supposed to take Ukyo rolled around, but Ranma did really seem to like the girl, and I'd already taken a choice away from him when I'd left for the training trip in the first place.
In retrospect, asking him if he liked Ukyo or Okonomiyaki better was a pretty stupid way to get rid of my guilty feeling, but it worked. Maybe I would have done things differently if I'd known that Ranma didn't even know Ukyo was female, but I personally doubt it.
The next morning, I took off with the Yattai, Ranma perched on the back and waving happily at Ukyo as she ran after us. I don't hear those calls quite as often as I do Ranma's Neko-ken screams, but it still bothers me. No, that's not really true. It never really bothered me until I found out what Ukyo'd spent the last ten years doing. The idea that she'd lost her childhood to my stupid scheme to let Ranma learn a new technique or two and get some free food is yet another shame I suffer from, but considering the amount I'm ashamed of, does it really matter?
Yeah, I bet you're surprised that I feel regret for the things I do. I never show it unless it's due to some act to get Ranma to do what I want, but I am a human being, damn it. I'm not some sort of uncaring, over-eating monster.
Fortunately, the incident with Ukyo was the last really bad thing that happened for a good long time. I spent the next few years teaching Ranma and traveling around, preaching to him all the time about the virtues of a true martial artist and finding new masters for him to train with while I got the money I needed to feed us, legally or illegally.
It wasn't until Ranma was in Jr. High that I realized I'd rambled about honor a little too much. He'd been getting into training fights with Ryoga, usually right after the lunch hour at school. The faculty complained, but I just shrugged it off. The boy had found a good sparing partner, and that was all that mattered. Unfortunately, my activity in the area had started drawing attention, and the two of us eventually had to leave.
Apparently Ryoga challenged Ranma to one last fight before he left, so I allowed him to go to this vacant lot near Ryoga's house to wait for the challenge. At the time, I didn't know about Ryoga's direction sense, so I figured Ranma would be done in a few hours.
When he didn't come back the first night, I thought Ryoga had beaten him, and decided that he needed some time to sulk about it before I lit into him over it. By the time the second nightfall rolled around, I was actually worried, but I decided to give him until morning.
When I went to get him at about ten the next morning, I found him standing there, looking like he hadn't slept in days. He hadn't. He'd just stood there, waiting, for the whole time because he was afraid that Ryoga would show up when he was gone getting food or his tent. Why'd he do all this? Because he'd promised to wait for Ryoga.
The second he saw me, he just fell over. I took him back to our campsite, packed up and hiked out of town. If I'd have known what a pain in Ranma's ass Ryoga would later become… I'd have done nothing. Ryoga may have been a pain in Ranma's ass, but he was also his rival. I think that half, or more, of the boy's advancement in the art in the past years has been to keep ahead of the lost boy.
One thing I did start doing differently after this event, though, was to start teaching Ranma that while a martial artist's word freely given couldn't be broken, it could be interpreted. For example, he could leave a note for Ryoga saying what he was doing and to stay there. Quite simply, I told him that honor could be bent, but never completely broken.
I know that's not what a traditional citizen thinks, but it's how I work, and given his condition when I went and checked on him Ranma would have passed out from exhaustion and maybe died if he'd kept trying to uphold that stupid promise he'd made to Ryoga.
As almost anyone who'd want to read this knows, it was after Ranma met Ryoga in Jr. High that we headed over to China. I'd been planning the trip to China since the beginning of the training trip. It was to be a sort of wrap-up before we headed home to Nodoka, to see if Ranma could incorporate Chinese martial techniques into his style.
I'd found a guidebook, mostly in Chinese, but it highlighted some interesting sounding training grounds, and I'd decided to take a two year trip around the country, visiting them all in order.
One thing you've got to understand, EVERY one of them, aside from Jusenkyo, had either been harmless or beneficial. Ancient shrines to powerful gods that did absolutely nothing, or a tribe of bamboo-wielding staff users who showed us a lot about the iron cloth.
I honestly had no way of knowing that the last one on the list would be so harmful to us. We'd visited three 'cursed valleys' and a 'cursed tower' beforehand, so the name didn't frighten me one bit. Of course, if we'd have listened to the guide, we'd have known, but I was too eager to train to bother, and I guess so was Ranma. Actually, I think he was turning to hear what the guide was saying when I came out of the pond as a Panda, but at that point it was too late.
Ranma chased me around the pools for a good six hours after we got cursed, and I honestly don't know when we met Ryoga. I was in a state of blind fear at that point. You don't want to know how much like his mother Ranma looks when he's female and angry. All he needs is a Katana, and the image would be complete. Well, aside from hair color anyways.
As for me trying to cook Ryoga later, well I was hungry from the chase, and how was I supposed to know the little pig was really a person? Well, all right. The springs were very close, so it should have been obvious, but I tried to cook him, and he somehow blames that on Ranma as well, I'm sure. That boy's got one hell of a one track mind.
Eventually, Ranma'd been calmed down and changed back, but something had changed. I wasn't really sure what it was at first, he just seemed to be acting a little off. It was later, when I asked him if he wanted to try a new training technique that I figured out what that offness was. He said, "What, ya got another Jusenkyo up yer sleeve, ol' man?"
The Neko-ken hadn't destroyed Ranma's trust in me, since he didn't even really know me until after it'd happened, but apparently Jusenkyo had done it, and done it thoroughly. I'm not really sure why. Maybe Jusenkyo just put everything else in his life into some warped form of perspective, because ever since he's been calling me on all the stupid things I'd done before it. A lot of people seem to think Ranma doesn't even really consider me his father, and they're right, but that wasn't true until Jusenkyo.
I don't even really think it was the curse. I mean, he's grown to, if not like it, at least accept it, but I think everything I'd done coming to roost all at once in Nerima just pushed him further from me.
Earlier I talked about seeing him fight Saffron and saying that he proved himself a man to me on the spot that day. That's true, but he also proved something else a week later, after the failed wedding.
Admittedly, not one of my and Soun's best ideas, but I'd just come back from seeing Ranma save Akane and shout his love to the heavens, so we thought that It'd be the perfect time to plan a wedding.
Ranma came to me after the disaster, and just stared at me for a few minutes. I opened my mouth a few times, and tried to say something. To apologize for once, for helping plan this mess and going after a cure that was rightfully his, but one of my traits that Ranma had inherited stopped me. I wasn't sure how to say it, and I knew that if I opened my mouth something stupid would come out.
He just kept staring for a few moments more, shook his head and walked off. He hasn't talked to me since. He and Akane married five years ago. I wasn't invited to the wedding. I've never seen their daughter.
I succeeded in making Saotome Ranma the best martial artist he could possibly be. He's fast, adaptable, determined and smart as hell in a fight, and that's all because of my training. He's now happily married. Nodoka tells me that his daughter's beautiful and he's got a whole series of classes set up in the Dojo now.
Even if everyone other than old Tendo and No-chan despise me or look at me with disgust, I'm proud. I did what I set out to do. My son is a man of (Sometimes questionable) honor, a martial artist to be proud of, a loving husband, proud parent and teacher, and damn it I DID IT!
I can't believe that the total destruction of my relationship with my son, and his childhood, was for nothing. Damn it, I did the right thing…. Didn't I?
HR.
Saotome Ranma slowly closed the small brown book that had been held in his shaking hands, a single tear rolling down his cheek. "Yeah pop, you did the right thing." He stammered, a lump clearly evident in his throat. Setting the small book down on the cold stone in front of him, Ranma slowly exited the graveyard.