Letting out a frustrated sigh, he rose from his meditation. It had been a par for the course normal day for him, and by that it was completely insane. But he was Ranma Saotome, so he was used to it. He had always been a rather positive sort, as such he figured his life was so bad it could not possibly become any worse, (see, positive). Of course the greater beings heard Ranma's somewhat optimistic thoughts and set out to prove him wrong.
And that's when the headaches started. They weren't too bad starting off, and with his ridiculously high pain tolerance it actually took him a while to feel them. But eventually the pain became near debilitating even for him.
A visit to the good Dr. Tofu diagnosed his migraines as the result of severe stress. Tofu had been the one to recommend meditation, and it had worked, for a time. The pain was great enough to wake Ranma up before his father had a chance to chuck him out the window, much to the Panda's chagrin. But it gave him a few minutes to settle his thoughts and attempt to find a sort of inner peace. He was able to stay his headaches for several months with this, and when things became especially unbearable, Ranma's on the fly ingenuity pulled through for him and he learned to focus his ki to specific spots on his forehead to lessen the pain.
Ranma once had a passing though during one of these daily meditations that it was rather curious the location of his pain and therefore the location of pain easing ki, were five small points equally spaced across his forehead. He hadn't put much thought into it after that discovery deeming it unimportant, and an unnecessary distraction to the art.
It wasn't until four weeks ago that he remembered his little observation, and that was only because he had suffered from a quite literally splitting headache. Jolting awake he concentrated on meditating his pain away as intensely as possible, as good as he now was after meditating for over a year, the eighteen year old had trouble biting back a scream as the center of his forehead ripped open and he felt his blood running down his face, around his nose and onto his lips. Not believing what he was feeling he tentatively let out his tongue and groaned as he tasted the coppery liquid.
Stumbling into the bathroom he wet his face and tried to clean it of the blood. But as anyone with a cut on their face knows, the face bleeds a lot. It took a good fifteen minutes for the blood to finally start clotting enough to slow the flow, and another five before it stopped entirely. Flooding the area with his ki to speed up the recovery he grit his teeth in frustration at the obvious cross shaped scar left behind. Deciding that taking up wearing a bandana to hide it wasn't his style, and was suspicious as all get out as well, he let his bangs hide it thanking his lucky stars they were so long.
That has been four weeks ago, and since then, every week, another cross was split into his head, and another scar was left behind. The worst part of all of this was the completely random times they would happen at. He was lucky the first time, and all the others he had managed to be alone while he dealt with them. He had cut it close one time rushing to the bathroom in the middle of class yelling some excuse about having to go, and that one time he managed to send the noble Tatewaki Kuno into lala land just moments before the pain set in. Yes he could predict which day his forehead would begin to bleed, just not what time during the day.
He supposed the one good thing to come out of all this is that the constant throbbing pain had finally stopped; now all he had to look forward to was one short weekly instant of extreme pain. It wasn't until the pain left him that Ranma realized just how much ki he was constantly pumping through his body to remain functional. When he was able to put the full of his inner energy towards something useful, like fighting off all the crazy people in his life, he was amazed at how pathetically easy it became. Even when the tank Ryoga discovered some newfangled technique to pin Ranma in place and nail him with one of his boulder disintegrating punches, he hardly felt it thanks to the higher pain tolerance his ordeal had given him, and what little damage he did receive was near instantly healed by the ki he'd been using to heal his headaches with for well over a year.
As everyone knows, good things come to an end, and for Ranma it happened in a rather spectacular way.
It was late in the day and Ranma had just finished a several hour long workout. Wiping the sweat off his scarred forehead he headed inside for a glass of cold water. He had gone to Jusenkyo on his eighteenth birthday as a gift to himself and had finally rid himself of that horrid curse, allowing him to be around cold liquids without any fear. In fact he was so happy to have been rid of his gender changing problem, that he spent the first month or two of his eighteenth year nearly permanently wet.
Ranma frowned as he remembered what day it was. It had never been so late in the day before his forehead problem began, but looking back he realized it did happen later every time. He wondered briefly if his head had finally decided to stop with its whole splitting open thing, but decided that no, he was almost done, but not done yet. Every scar formed right on one of the five points of pain he had been flooding with ki the past year, and as there were five points, and only four scars, he was fairly confident the last scar would form today. What happens after that was anyone's guess really.
As the clock ticked on Ranma couldn't help but feel antsy hoping to get the whole ordeal over with. After an hour of waiting he decided he had to do something to let out the pent up energy he'd stored. Stretching he went for a brisk roof hopping around Nerima.
Ryoga was never a very intelligent person, but he was probably the most intelligent of all the crazies chasing after Ranma for one reason or another. So he was able to see that despite all his efforts, Ranma had pulled away from him when it came to martial arts. He should have realized this fact after Ranma bested a supposedly immortal god, but I said he was comparatively intelligent to the likes of Kuno, which isn't really saying a whole lot. This coupled with stubbornness and the fact that it had been over a year since Ranma had been able to fight at his full potential due to his ki having other priorities had led Ryoga to believe the gap in skill level was much closer than it really was.
And then, five weeks ago, Ryoga got a wakeup call. From that point on, absolutely nothing he threw at Ranma, no tricks or crazy antics, nothing worked. In fact, while they fought Ranma almost looked… bored. Ryoga even saw him sigh a few times as if the whole fight for Akane's love was nothing but some pointless chore. Fighting him, Ryoga, a boring chore! He'd even cut back on the constant in battle insults, a staple of the school of anything goes. To Ryoga it seemed Ranma didn't even think him worth that. (and he was right)
Realizing he had no chance of actually defeating Ranma anymore, he gathered together the Nerima wrecking crew and they set about planning Ranma's demise.
Of course the moment they launch their sneak attack on him is the same moment the first jolt of pain from his fifth and final cross shaped scar sets in. (Funny how things worked out that way, almost like it was planned or something)
Next on 'Wild Noah' Ranma fights the Wrecking Crew desperately trying to defeat them before the final cross splits his forehead open, revealing his secret to everyone. But with the pain becoming greater with every passing second, will he be able to last much longer (he does, obviously, this is Ranma we're talking about. But just pretend to not know and be all anxious and stuff)
AN: I will eventually change the format to more dialog type rather than this third person narrator thing I have going on now. This is just for the first couple introductory chapters
Well it's not much but here it is, please Review and feel free to add suggestions on where you want the story to go. This was kind of a spur of the moment thing, and although I have a fairly good idea of what I want to do with it, for the most part I'm just playing it by ear.
This is the first RanmaXDgrayman cross out there that I've found that isn't a crackfic, and I hope to start something of a trend with it.