Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma½ in any way shape or form.

Author's Note:

Just so you all know this is the first time I have ever written a story let alone submitted to this site.

It is also the first time I have used open office so I hope this comes out on the website how I want it to. (It didn't not by a long shot)

Even though I love to read FanFiction more then writing it this idea just would not leave me alone. So please keep that fact in mind as you rip me apart for whatever error's I make. Also just so you know you will most likely think Ranma and others are ooc.

Personally I'm of the opinion Ranma is smarter then he lets on while still being ignorant about things most take for granted. Ignorant does not equal stupid however and I'm of the opinion Ranma is like most people in poor living conditions from the training trip. I think he doesn't care about something unless it impacts him.

After all why would a poor farmer even care about a TV or something else they find useless when there are other much more important things to worry about? Of course I plan to change that later and hopefully slowly. I also hope this idea continues to drive me nuts or I will most likely never finish it

(Just so you know I'm also updating and changing this and rereading from the ffnet editor now that I know it wont look anything like what I want it to.)

Paring: Nabiki x Ranma

Thoughts:

Speech: "Text"

Special Speech: "()" - Different Languages

Chapter 1: Nerima Rut

As he was falling towards the earth Ranma couldn't help but feel glad at how nice the day was. Not that he himself had a nice day but it was bright and sunny with only a few white clouds in the sky to cast shadows on the land at large. As he landed he took a moment to look at his feet to gauge the disturbance to his landing zone. Over the past few months since Saffron he had taken it upon himself to try and train in any possible way. By checking the ground he could see what had been disturbed and try to alter his form to minimize any trails he left.

As he looked around himself eyes sliding by the patchwork on some of the schools outer walls and some hastily filled holes he couldn't help but watch some of the other students as they walked out of the school to enjoy there lunches outside. As he started walking toward his tree Ranma turned as he sensed the approach of two people. Hearing his name called also helped in pinpointing them.

"Hey Ranm..Ohf" cried Hiroshi and he tripped and 'accidentally' sent the water in his bottle in Ranma's direction. Ranma knowing how these two acted managed to jump backwards enough to avoid changing. "Hey watch it!" he shouted indignantly. As he looked at the two he couldn't help but feel a little angry at them. To most people it would seem an honest accident and if it was Ranma wouldn't have minded nearly as much, but being a martial artist he was able to see how Hiroshi braced himself even before the fall, not to mention the fact that the noise he made was slightly off the timing it should have been if he had really tripped. There where other signs of course but he also knew it wasn't an accent because of the past few weeks they had been having 'accidents' around him whenever there was water near.

Ranma sent a glare at them not only for trying to get him wet but because they only did it for there own amusement and to look at his girl form. The fact they never seemed to think about the trouble they caused him from being wet also fed his anger. As he watched Daisuke finish helping Hiroshi off the ground and just standing there he stuck in hands in his pockets enjoying a faint breeze though his hair that did nothing to defuse his annoyance and anger. "Well what do ya want" he asked neutrally while slurring his words as had become a habit from the training trip that helped make people underestimate him.

Gulping while starting to look nervous Hiroshi finally started to speak "Oh ummm we just wanted to check and remind you not to forget your English homework for next class or the teacher will drain you because that's friends do right?" he said while chuckling slightly looking slightly relieved as he found an excuse. Narrowing his eyes as he watched there body language. "I didn't" Ranma replied watching his two nervous friends. "Oh... umm we got to go and do some... last minute studying for a uh test! So See you later Ranma." Daisuke said suddenly before grabbing Hiroshi's arm and dragging him off out of sight.

Ranma sighed as he continued walking toward his favorite tree to eat his lunch planning to enjoy the calming sound the wind made when it blew though the leafs. Of course it was also his favorite as it was one of the few trees left in the school yard. It was also one of the only places Ranma could eat in relative peace while ignoring the looks most the 'normal' students graced him with.

Snorting at the thought as he got closer to the tree he couldn't help but reflect on how every one thought they knew him. Most saw him as a outgoing and cheery teen jock. Oh sure they all had opinions of him but they all saw him basically the same. Truth was Ranma considered himself some what antisocial, being raised for roughly 10 years out in the wilderness with nothing but his father would do that to anyone. Then again its not like Ranma actually had a choice what with all the fiancées and the other people who sought him out for one reason or another.

In fact that only made him want to be left alone even more.

Suddenly warned by his other senses as he was about to sit down Ranma threw himself up and to the side while turning in midair watching out of the corner of his eye as a few blades and knifes embedded themselves into the tree.

"Ranma I will never forgive for coming between Shampoo and me!" Shouted mousse while throwing more weapons from his sleeves

Ranma thought darkly as he went about the now daily act of fighting Mousse. As he fought he couldn't help but think about the current situation that was his life. The fact that Mousse had attacked him from the back only made his mood worse.Apparently the wedding attempt had shook up shampoo, Ukyo, and Kodachi and had made them doubt themselves because now they where worse then ever. he thought with weariness. Quickly ducking a chain with a spiked weight on the end he started rapidly closing in on Mousse while avoiding his weapons.

After the battle with saffron he found fighting mouse no longer challenged him. Ranma had to admit that while his Ki pool had deepened by a good amount it had more to do with the fact that in the fight Ranma had not only pushed his Ki to the limits but his Ki senses also. During the fight there where times where he was blinded or couldn't see Saffron and was forced to rely on his Ki to sense where everything was. Not only that but he had managed to come up with a few new techniques for using his Ki to sense the world around him. In fact now by paying attention to mouse he could feel how the Ki around the area changed as mouse drew from his Ki pockets he stored his weapons in. This made it simple to dodge Mousse's long ranged attacks.

Managing to close the distance by half while knocking a knife away by hitting it on the flat of the blade Ranma suddenly found his vision blocked from dozens of smoke pellets as mouse leaped backwards to put more room between himself and Ranma. Mousse found himself thankful he had managed to find them after Sasuke was found spying on the cafe by shampoo. Quickly realizing the perfect chance this was he threw dozens more chains and knifes into the smoke screen both high and at chest level aiming for where he estimated Ranma to be if he dodged.

Mouse couldn't help but feel giddy and relish the moment, sure that he would win with so many weapons spread out at the various area's Ranma might dodge to.

Meanwhile inside the smoke screen Ranma was thinking at a frantic pace as different plans and thoughts flashed though his mind. The main thought was 'I refuse to loose to a blind idiot!'. Quickly using his increased Ki senses to feel out the distortions around mouse he went to work. Mentally estimating the angle of the weapons flying at him from the way the Ki pockets took the shape of rain drops as the chains and weapons left he threw himself into a sideways roll as if he where putting out a fire like the time his cloths caught fire from campfire embers when he was on the road.

As he felt, heard, and partially saw the weapons fly over him some missing by only half a foot at most. He quickly came out of his roll by hand slapping the ground causing him to flip onto his feet. Ranma started sprinting before jumped high in a graceful arc toward where he sensed mouse was.

Suddenly seeing Ranma jumping from the smoke screen Mousse couldn't help but gape for half a second. The fact that he was actually wearing his glasses was not something Ranma missed, meaning Mouse was serious about fighting him this time.

"HOW?" Mouse shouted incredibly, unsure how Ranma was able to dodge with his vision blocked. Suddenly realizing his position mouse jumped back slightly planing to attack Ranma as he lands while quickly pulling his weapons back to himself with one hand while a broad sword appeared in his other. Ranma seeing the sword suddenly put himself into a series of acrobatics slightly enjoying the feeling as he managed to put him behind the shoulder mouse was using to draw in his chains. Mousse quickly tried to start a turning slash but Ranma didn't give him any chance to react other then to partially turn as he unloaded into mouse's unprotected back.

"Kachū Tenshin Amaguriken!" Ranma shouted more to startle mouse with the sudden loud noise then any real need to call out his attack.

Because Mousse himself had attacked his back and feeling in a particularly bad mood Ranma grabbed Mousse's shoulder to keep him from being thrown away like what happened to Ryoga when he learned the breaking point. He also took extra time to attack pressure points he had learned from the books in Dr. Tofu's office along with some of the ones that had been used on him, including the one Tofu himself used to temporally disable his own legs shortly after coming to Nerima.

As Mousse's weapons finished drawing into his Ki pockets Ranma finished the fight by using pressure points to render him unconscious.

As Ranma watched mouse full down he took a deep breath and took a glance around. As he looked around he couldn't help but note the amusement in some of the students eyes for the impromptu show and the annoyance in the eyes of others for disturbing there lunch. taking a look at the school clock he was thankful that only 5 minutes had passed. The fight ending quickly enough for him to find a quiet spot and eat his lunch. jogging toward the school he channeled extra Ki to his legs and quickly jumped to the lower area of the roof before launching himself onto the highest portion that the clock was built into for some peace.

Meanwhile down below a few more students where still trickling out of the school. Akane pushed and held the door open for her and her friends taking longer then usual to get outside because she ended up talking to her friends and a few classmates at her locker before exiting the school with Yuka and Sayuri. As she glanced about the school yard she noticed Mouse's unconscious form and rolled her eyes. As they walked to there own spot she glanced around the yard and saw Ukyo who looked annoyed at being kept busy by a line of students while cooking on her portable grill.

"Huh I wonder where Ranma went off to?" Sayuri asked aloud absently while eating her lunch. Blinking Akane looked around the school yard paying special attention to where Ranma normally sat including in the branches of the tree. Upon not finding Ranma anywhere she felt a surge of anger as her face clouded over.

Pushing down her anger Akane conceded to the fact that maybe he was inside the school building or maybe off dealing with Kuno. Still feeling angry Akane focused on her lunch while talking to her friends pushing Ranma out of her mind.

Up on the roof Ranma had just finished his bento and laid back not really minding the gravel, his hands behind his head while looking at the clouds trying to keep his senses tuned to the world around him. As he lay there his mind once again wandered back to his situation and all involved 'Oh god I'm so sick of this' he thought with growing frustration.

As he continued to think about his life he felt bile rise in his throat so disgusted was he becoming of his life in Nerima. 'God none of them really care about me.' he thought remembering the amusement and annoyance on peoples faces while memory's ran though his mind. 'How did it ever get so bad?' Stopping to think about it he realized his life wasn't one mess, but a huge mess made up of countless smaller problems.

He thought about all his problems like the seppuku contract, learning that stealing wasn't a game, the neko-ken, not being allowed to have any friends on the trip, Ryoga and the duel, going hungry, Jusenkyo and his fiancées, his own mother just to name a few of the larger problems. 'lets not forget the uncountable smaller problems' he thought as a fire of conflicting emotions once again started to blaze inside him. The primary emotions being anger with sparks of hate, with a healthy dose of disgust and resentment at not only his life but how those in it had started treating him.

Ranma thought in anger and disgust while clenching his left hand into a fist while thinking about the various people and there actions from the past 3 months. 'Ukyo's living in her own little dream world. Thinking if I married her everything will just stop.' he snorted at the thought.

She had told him at different times while he ate or tried to hang out there of what there life would be like if he chose her and just dropped the others.

Ranma thought in a bitter sarcastic voice while rolling his eyes. Sure she hadn't came out as said it that way but that was basically what her perfect life was. Sometimes while talking he had tried telling his best friend 'better make that ex best friend, she's a fiancee now' what he himself wanted to do with his life looking for support from his friend Uchan.

He told her how he wasn't ready to get married, how he wanted to continue to improve his arts and to seek out other masters and other people to observe and learn from, to actually have the time to go on training trips and improve himself without interruptions. Heck he even told her he wanted to learn about normal things most would learn in school.

However every time he tried talking to her he would notice how she would have a far away look in her eyes while just nodding the making the appropriate sounds while acting like she was listening. But he could tell she was lost once again in another fantasy of there 'perfect' life together. After a while of trying to talk to her he realized he would never have his old buddy Uchan back and he eventually just gave up.

The fact that Ukyo didn't even notice he had stopped telling about what he wanted only hammered in this fact even more. So he had stopped sharing with her his wants and dreams.

Ranma sighed while idly scratching an itch, starting to enjoy the way the sun warmed him while thinking about his twisted life.

For a short time he had even tried talking to kasumi but other then 'of my', 'that's nice', 'how wonderful', and a few other words she to didn't seem to really pay attention to what he wanted ether. At least not the same way she paid attention to her sisters. That is actually talking to them instead of at them. He had even tested this by repeating himself word for word 3 times in a row on different days but he still only got the same responses. Fact was it seemed that none of them wanted to actually be his friend.

Oh sure he knew that kasumi wasn't as 'misty' as she seem to be and was actually very smart but there was also the fact that none of them not even kasumi took the time to find out who he was on a deeper level beyond the facade he used. Hell none of them even knew his birthday let alone his favorite colors despite the fact he wore them almost every day.

As he lay there on the sun warmed roof while lamenting his messed up life slowly his eye started to droop before finally without much of a fight sleep claimed the raven haired martial artists.

Not caring about slamming the door Nabiki exited the empty classroom she and her associates used as she continued walking down the hall to return to her own class room to eat lunch, watch those around her for information, and think about recent events.

Keeping her mask in place Nabiki's mind spun at what a bad month she had been having. Raising an eyebow while noticing a someone flirt with someone she idly wondered how much he would pay to keep his girlfriend from find out. Frowning slightly as that thought only reminded her of her current situation. At first it had started small, nothing more then a slight decrease in the betting pools on Ranma's fight. But over the course of the month people started to stop placing bets on Ranma's fights and even if they bet they always bet on Ranma.

Over the course of the week she was forced to shift the odds so that she wouldn't have to pay as much out. For a few days it seemed to work as a few people took the long odds of Ranma loosing hoping to score lots of money.

But then that too stopped and she was forced to shift the odds even more until it got to the point where no one would even bet. Why would they when they hardly got any gain in money or just broke even. She had tried setting up other betting pools. Things like how long it would take for Ranma to win a fight, who his next opponent would be, or when Ryoga would show up next, and other things like that.

Stopping in front of a vending machine she put 320 yen into the machine before pressing the button for flavored water to go with her lunch. Idly grabbing the water she continued walking.

About a week later she resigned herself to the fact and shut down her betting for Ranma's fights. The cost's of paying for people to help manage the betting pools and collect bets and not to mention supply's caused her to loose more money then she was making. Once she closed the pools and going over the figures for the others she noticed that the income from other betting fields where also taking a drop, even the ones she had started before Ranma even showed up. As it stood now she was barely breaking even what with the cost's of food and various other things such as repairs and saki.

It seemed that more and more people where starting to wise up. While that may have caused a nice drop in profits depending on how many where getting less gullible and actually learning from there mistakes it still should not have caused the kind of drop she was now seeing. Wondering at the cause she had both her most loyal, and the people she had the most blackmail on keep there ears and eyes open for anything that might be causing this. While she went over all the figures personally

Hearing a noise she looked down to see her hand squeezing the bottle in a grip so tight her knuckles where white. Relaxing her grip she started climbing the stairs, her room not much further.

It took a few days but 10 minutes ago she had finally found out why. She was not happy!

she mentally raged.

She had not taken the news that the network, HER network she had spent years to build had split very well. In fact the more she thought about it the more angry she got.

Apparently Sakura a black haired mousy girl with glasses who used to be one of the people who worked directly under her, until she found someone who she could trust more, had managed to fracture her network in half. Somehow she had gotten a hold of some of her private black mail material that she stored away from her home so it wouldnt be accedently detroyed by a battle and for security reasons. And had used it with her apparent charisma along with what she learned from Nabiki to sway parts of her information\network.

Once she had the building blocks Sakura had worked behind the scenes to sway even more people to work for her allowing her to setup her own operations. Not only that but she had damaged her network even more by feeding it false information from 'trusted' sources. The information while not obvious was still important information to function. Things like debt's and who had paid this much, and who owed that much. As a result Nabiki had no way of fixing her records because she had no way of knowing when Sakura had started giving her network bad information and who really paid or took out loans during that time.

a distressed Nabiki thought to herself. Nabiki thought to herself making sure she looked like the ice queen before entering the classroom. But she knew that would only help a little. And so Nabiki found herself becoming depressed behind her icy mask, knowing that soon the Dojo would be in debt.

None in the classroom where any wiser to her distress and depression as they finished there lunches before the next class started.

Author Notes:

I'm sorry to those who feel like I'm butchering something. If it's the character you feel I'm butchering please remember that this is my world and I'm of the opinion that even though Ranma acts and talks the way he does he is also a very smart if ignorant person.

I can see Akane jumping to that conclusion and I can also see her getting worse then what was shown in the Manga and Anime in terms of anger. As for Ukyo well I really do believe she lives in a little fantasy world but not as much as I'm portraying her to have in my FanFiction. Just so you know I plan to get Ranma out of Nerima and once that happens the other people in Nerima wont play to big of a role if any until later in the story.

Any thought's/idea's are welcome but just so you know I'm very lazy and easily unmotivated.

Also any suggestions or error's in my style or such are also welcome so feel free to point them out.