A Chinese Connection

Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½ or any related characters in any way, shape or form.

Author's Notes: the dates for this idea were based off the glimpse of a 1994 calendar in the late manga, and the fact the main teens are generally accepted as all being 16 (which means they were born in 1978).

Moving On

The man sat on the bench, watching the world go by and being allowed to do so by the crowd. He was an ordinary looking man, though more than a few women would have called him handsome if they noticed him. He looked somewhere in his mid- to late-twenties, with black hair and bluesteel eyes, and comfortable, casual clothing over a lean, fit frame. He didn't seem to have anything on his mind except just watching the movement of the crowds, and was so engrossed in this mental blankness that he failed to notice a woman detach herself from the crowd and approach him from the side.

"Is this seat taken?" She asked casually, her voice drawing his attention. He looked her up and down, but gave her no visual signal that he recognized her.

"It's a free country." He shrugged, budging over slightly to give her more room.

"Thank you." She replied sincerely, sitting down beside him. For several minutes they sat there in silence- not awkward, as one might expect, but fairly comfortable. Finally, it was the woman who spoke, her words unmistakably tinged with a distinctive accent. "It's been quite some time. You haven't changed much."

"Same goes for you." The man replied. "So what brings you back to Japan, anyway?"

"Believe it or not, business. There are certain items I need to acquire, and the only place to do so is here in Japan. Our meeting like this is just coincidence. A very pleasant one, but coincidence all the same." She answered smoothly.

Silence reigned again in the wake of her words. Finally, it was the man who spoke up. "Why did you leave?" He asked, his question sounding almost… plaintive?

The woman looked at him, surprise evident in her expression, then tilted her head back over the headrest of the bench to stare blankly at the sky. "I guess my great-grandmother finally figured that our fight was a lost one. You and Akane… you still bickered and argued all the time, but you had grown closer; that was obvious, in retrospect. She finally called it off."

"And you just went along with it?" The man asked.

"Hell no. She knocked me out and I didn't regain consciousness until we were already back home. Oh, I fought and screamed and swore and raged worse than the Tendo family combined could have, but my great-grandmother just wouldn't take any nonsense. She said I was to forget all about going back to Japan for you, and she made sure I obeyed, whether I liked it or not. I couldn't believe she was just giving up, at the time."

"Was she giving up? Or was she simply deciding to let time be her ally?" The man asked curiously.

"Probably the latter, I eventually decided. But, at the time, it sure looked like the former." The woman admitted.

They fell into mutual silence at that, before the woman spoke up again. "But, that's enough of that. What happened after we left Japan, anyway? I did hear that you and Akane got married…?"

"Yeah, we did… by the way, was that you who sent me that cask of Nanniichuan?" the man asked suspiciously.

"That was great-grandmother's idea. She thought it an appropriate gift for such an inspired student and worthy opponent, as well as a way to reassure you that we weren't going to come back for revenge." The woman replied. "So… how did everyone else take it?"

"Ryoga went ballistic, of course, and the Kunos weren't much better. Of course, Ryoga stopped being a threat after Akane found out his dirty little secret…"

"You mean… you…?"

"Not me. The old men. Ryoga comes busting in, roaring his head off, and starts charging for the altar. I'm getting away from Akane so she's safe, then pop and Mr. Tendo come out of nowhere and splash Ryoga, turning him into a piglet in mid-charge… and right in front of Akane. She went ballistic over how he'd betrayed her trust, manipulated her and abused the faith she had in him. Sent him flying into the horizon, further than I'd ever seen anyone go before. Didn't come back for over a year. I'll say one thing for him; at least he learned from his mistake. He didn't blame me for it, though we never did lose the rivalry thing. Hell, we're about the closest thing we have to best friends because of it."

"And Ukyo?"

"She was hurt. Real hurt. Left town because of it, and I haven't seen her since. I do get the occasional letter, though. Last one I got was about her rescuing this abused transvestite ninja."

The woman blinked in surprise. "She always did run with the weird crowd, didn't she?"

"Like any of us are ones to talk. What about you and Mousse?"

"Mousse got married." The woman replied casually. Her companion turned to her with surprised eyes and she hastened to add, "Not to me. About a year or two after we came home, this girl who'd always had a crush on him challenged him to a marriage match and beat him. Law is law and they've been wed ever since. Oh, he fought against it, at first, but he caved… actually a lot quicker than you might have thought. I guess finally being on the receiving end of affection was just so addicting to him he ended up hooked against his will."

"Did you have anything to do with him losing?" The man asked, a mischievous glint in his eye and an amused smile on his lips.

"I may have taught her a few tricks…" The woman admitted, mirroring the man's expression. "They have six kids now. What about you and Akane…? Did you…?"

"Never." The man admitted sadly. "We actually went to a doctor to check it out; we thought it might have been my fault, a last laugh from Jusenkyo. Turned out she was the one with fertility issues."

"I'm so sorry…" The woman said softly.

"I admit it probably didn't help that we didn't really… y'know… much. She was still about as bad-tempered and suspicious as she'd always been, so we tended to fight a lot. I don't think she ever really got over that whole 'pervert phobia' of hers, and her being angry and nervous meant I wasn't exactly eager to go to bed when she did finally feel in the mood." The man continued.

"I thought you two were in love?" The woman asked softly.

"We thought we were." He said, simply. "Maybe we weren't. Maybe it just wasn't enough, I don't know. In the end, it was duty more than anything that kept us together. She focused on her friends and her work and generally found reasons not to be around the house- there were even folks who claimed she was cheating on me, sometimes with other women, but I never believed them. That wasn't something Akane would do. As for me, I just threw myself into training as much as I could; with everyone else gone, the best challenges I usually got were Ryoga, and you know what he's like. With students only interested in learning the basics, and even having to tone those down so as to not scare off the hobbyists who made up the majority of them, I was terrified of losing my edge. I left on training journeys whenever I could get away with it- I had spent my whole childhood aiming to become the best martial artist I could, I couldn't simply throw that dream away."

He sighed loudly, plaintively, and silence fell once more. Time ticked by as they sat side by side, lost in thought. Then, finally, the woman spoke. "I never forgot about you, you know. Never married. I always had this dream that, one day, somehow, we'd be together."

"So that was your plan all along, was it? Just sit back and let time eliminate the obstacles that you couldn't touch on your own?" He asked, his voice bearing a touch of bitterness, a trace of resentment.

"Great-grandmother's plan, maybe, but never mine." She answered, shaking her head and the long lavender hair cascading over her shoulders. "I never would have left you to such a painful lesson."

"Painful it was, and your great-grandmother's plan worked. We… separated… over a decade ago." He admitted. "I… won't deny that I'm happy to see you. I think I'm tired of being alone. So, what happens now? A marriage challenge?"

"In my youth, maybe. But I'd like to think that with a little age comes a little wisdom." She said.

"And with a lot of age comes a lot of wisdom." He deadpanned.

"Maybe so. We have time, and we need to catch up better anyway. Will you have lunch with me?" She stood up, brushed herself off, and smiled at him, extending a hand.

He looked her over, gave her a soft smile, and reached out and allowed her to help him up. "I think I'd like that." He said, and the two began to walk away.

Around them, the crowd moved on, heedless, caught up in the daily minutia of life in Nerima, in the year 2078.

An unusual piece of work, even by my standards. I don't really know where this scenario came from, but people commented that the basic idea was unique, so I tried my hand at it. I did this on my own, so that's probably why it's so weak- I feel I work much better when I have somebody to bounce material off of. Anyway, I hope people like this and there will be more for this and its counterpart "Childhood Loyalties". I certainly don't have any shortage of fuel to burn. The precise basis for this idea stemmed from the fact that we're shown it takes some time for master martial artists to show aging in the Ranma universe. Need proof? The monk in the Hiryu Shoten Ha story arc shows a hundred-year-old picture of Happosai, who looks distinctly middle-aged, and we know Happosai to be a contemporary of the 300-year-old Cologne. Hell, if you believe "Case of the Missing Takoyaki", he's actually 450 years old.