How Do I File This One? by David A. Tatum

Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 obviously does not belong to me, but I do ask its creator, Rumiko Takahashi, and anyone else who owns the copyright on it, that they not sue me for what I feel is simple tribute to the fabulous world they have created. If you do decide to sue me, realize I'm a third year college student who is a journalism major and a creative writing minor- so I'm a broke kid with no real prospects for employment.... Bubblegum Crisis (or AD Police, which is what I'm actually using) is owned by... um... I dunno... Animeigo's translation was licensed by Artmic, so I guess them.

Author's Notes: I don't know if this idea's been done before- I don't read BGC fics. I never thought I would write one, either, but I couldn't get this one out of my head. The only BGC-world tapes I've seen have been the AD Police Files, but I think I know enough from that in order to get this thing written out...

Chronological Notes (kept separate for those people who NEVER read author's notes): 2027 AD, between 'The Phantom Woman' and 'The Ripper.' About 30 years after the last Ranma Manga (and long before the Knight Sabres enter the BGC story).

On with the story... ------------------------------

Leon McNichol sat in front of the acting-chief's desk, holding a file folder. "So, boss, how do I file this one? I mean... we didn't get her, but she's no longer a threat... but..."

The chief shrugged. "I dunno. Is that the Nerima case?" Leon nodded. "I've only heard sketchy details. As I hear it, it turned out she wasn't a boomeroid after all, so we couldn't touch her. If that's the case, we might just want to forward that to the standard police, and let them handle it."

"Well..." Leon hesitated. "For some reason, I doubt we could have touched her anyway. Er, and she WAS a boomeroid, but she isn't anymore. And that's the problem."

"Eh? You mean someone removed enough of her implants that she was no longer seventy percent boomer?" The chief leaned back. That had been done before, if the person was on the borderline. Just like he thought, a case for the standard police.

"No... WE removed ALL of them."

"WHAT? That's impossible! How did she live for very long with more than half of her body gone?"

"Well, sir, it's like this..."

* * * * *

"GET THOSE CAMERA'S OUT OF HERE!" Leon shouted over his shoulder to the gathering reporters, before dashing underneath a flying mannequin. He ducked and rolled over to the policeman who was hiding behind an overturned sales counter. "What's going on?"

"Officer Desaix, first on the scene, sir. I was called in for a disturbing the peace, and when I turned up the woman started tearing up have the store and throwing things at people at random- lord knows where she got that mallet from. We checked, and she ain't either boomer or human, but seems to be a boomeroid. Name of assailant is... Akane Tendou."

"Anyone killed?" Leon asked, checking his ammo.

"No, but Officer Tengu was severely injured after being kicked through the ceiling, and she just clipped him. She's dangerous- a full strength punch could kill someone." Desaix shook his head. "I wouldn't have expected that from a forty-seven year old woman."

Leon sighed. "Guess that means we gotta take her out... any family?"

Desaix shrugged. "A husband, two sisters... no kids, though."

Leon shook his head and closed his eyes. Boomers were bad, but boomeroids... they were human, once. In some cases, the humanity was still present in them, but the implants disrupted the mind so much that the human portion when nuts. If the boomeroid wasn't dangerous, it could be captured, and possibly restored to some extent, but if the malfunction caused it to get dangerously violent...

A rack full of women's clothing flying overhead shook Leon out of his thoughts. "What set her off?" he asked, getting ready to spring out from behind the cover and open fire.

Officer Desaix blinked. "Well, as I heard it, she started screaming 'pervert' when the sales clerk suggested she buy a padded bra." Desaix gestured to a frightened red-headed teenager with a ponytail huddling in the corner.

Another rack of women's clothing crashed into their cover. "Ready?" Leon asked. Desaix drew a police issue semi-automatic and nodded. "Let's go!" The two lawmen leaped up from behind the overturned counter and opened fire.

A red and black streak, shouting "Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!" darted between the guns and the crazy boomeroid. It solidified into the form of a man wearing Chinese clothes in his mid-twenties... who only had blurs for arms. The bullets ricocheted all around the store, until the young man directed two of the bullets to knock away Leon and Desaix's guns.

"What the hell! Another boomer?!" Leon cried as his gun flew out of his hands.

The man darted in, knocking both of them to the ground and pinning them against each other. "No, I'm not another boomer," he said. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ranma Tendou."

Leon gritted his teeth. "I thought you said she didn't have any kids!" he groused at the prostrate Desaix. He felt a stinging at the back of his neck and realized he couldn't move.

"She doesn't!" Desaix replied, before Leon saw Ranma's finger touch the back of the other person's neck, paralyzing him as well.

"I'm not her son... I'm her husband," Ranma growled.

'Disgusting,' Leon thought. 'She's gotta be twenty years older than him...'

Leon felt another sting on the back of his neck, and Ranma turned him around to look him in the eye. "Tell me... if I can capture her, is there a way you can remove all her implants without damaging her mind?" he asked desperately.

"Uh... I don't know. It depends on what changes were made to the brain to allow her to access her implants... but I doubt she'd live long, regardless. With more than seventy percent of her body gone, the only way she could possibly survive would be to immediately replace those parts with new ones..."

Ranma sighed. "I know of a way... but you'd have to be able to keep her brain alive long enough to get us both to an isolated region more than halfway across China..."

Leon blinked. Was there some new medical procedure that he wasn't aware of? "Um... I think if she survived the initial separation from her implants, that'd be possible."

Ranma smiled weakly. "Thanks," he said, right before Leon felt another stinging sensation in the back of his neck. Ranma gently lowered him so that he could see the destruction Akane was causing. "Oh, and by the way, she does stuff like this all the time... normally she does this just to ME, though..."

With that, Ranma darted out to face his wife in a serious fight.

'Gods,' Leon thought to himself. 'Into older women AND masochism? This guy is sick... But how the hell did he stop all those bullets?'

Ranma walked up to the crazed female, and ducked underneath a support giant mallet she had been swinging. "Akane?" He began calmly. Leon winced as the mallet came crashing down on the young man with enough force to crush an armored car, but Ranma merely staggered back and shook it off. "AKANE!" he shouted, a little flustered.

The boomeroid blinked. "R... ranma?"

Ranma slowly moved towards her. "Akane... I told you it was okay that you hit ME with your mallet every once in a while, but you really shouldn't be taking your frustrations out on innocent people."

"R...ranma?" Akane asked again. The mallet disappeared as if it had never been, seriously confusing Leon.

"Now, Akane," Ranma said slowly, now so close to her that he was almost touching. "I'm going to have to knock you out... If I don't, the police are going to kill you, and you know I couldn't live without you. If you want, you can hit me after you wake up, but right now you need to go to sleep."

Akane closed her eyes. "Okay, Ranma... go ahead."

Leon took in a deep breath, waiting for the boomeroid to turn Ranma into hamburger. He was shocked when Ranma pressed a point on Akane's neck, much like he had with Desaix (and, Leon supposed, himself), knocking the woman unconscious. Ranma caught her before she fell, and returned to the two cops, restoring them from their paralysis.

"Okay, you two," Ranma began. "Take me to wherever it is that we can get her implants removed, and then get a plane ready to fly. We've got a trip to take."

Leon blinked. "What, you expect me to go with you?"

Ranma nodded. "I want as few people involved in this as possible. You'll understand why, later."

* * * * *

The surgery was successful, and five hours later Ranma, Leon, and Desaix were on a plane to the Bayankala Mountains in China with the few remains of the 'real' Akane in a life support system. All that was left was the brain, a spinal column, and a few internal organs like a single lung and a kidney, and some of her skeletal structure. Ranma had been unable to look at it, and shuddered every time his eyes glanced at the pod in which she was kept.

Desperate to make conversation, but unable to keep his mind off of Akane, he turned towards Desaix and asked a question which had been bugging him for some time. "So... what set her off?"

Desaix shrugged. "Well, the sales clerk said that all she was doing was trying to get your wife to try a padded bra and-"

"A padded bra?" Ranma broke in with a strangled cry. "Um... what did this sales clerk look like?"

"Oh, she was a cute one," Desaix began, smiling. "About sixteen, read hair, a-"

"Pigtail?"

Desaix blinked. "Ponytail, why? What significance does a red haired pigtail girl play in all this?"

Ranma closed his eyes and swallowed nervously. 'He looked calmer when he was blocking our guns' bullets,' Leon thought.

"Um..." Ranma began. "See, Akane and I... well, our marriage was arranged, and we met when we were sixteen years old, finding ourselves engaged to each other... we didn't really like each other at first, I suppose, and there were a number of complications... and I was always teasing her... and she had all these rivals... and..."

"Let me guess," Desaix smirked. "The red-haired pigtailed girl was one of those 'complications.'"

Ranma nodded. "It took us a couple years to find out we loved each other despite it all." He sighed. "Some of those problems we've had, though, may help us now, IF they work as they think I do..."

"Eh?" Leon asked. "How? And, for that matter, how were you and Akane teenagers together? She's forty-six, and you seem to be in your mid-twenties!"

Desaix coughed. "Er, he's forty-six too, sir."

Ranma nodded. "Yeah, I've been alive for forty-six years. See, one of the problems with Akane's and my relationship is a condition that I and several other people I know have... it's a condition which had basically doubled my life span, and increased the years for many of the others. It's also a condition which makes it impossible to have implants... as poor Shampoo, one of the Akane's rivals, discovered about thirty years ago. See, when Akane and I finally tied the knot, this young woman decided that the reason I didn't pick her was that I wasn't attractive enough in her eyes- and so she had cosmetic surgery. Liposuction, breast implants, the works. She even dyed her hair black, thinking it was hair color that was the problem. Then she was splashed with cold water, and... well, the breast implants tore themselves out of her body, fatally wounding her." Ranma shivered. "And I hope to save Akane by giving her that same condition, sort of."

Leon nodded. "So that's why you wanted to get rid of ALL of her implants. But... what is this condition?"

Ranma closed his eyes. "Got any cold water?" Leon blinked, but opened the door of a refridgerator behind him and pulled out a bottle of water, tossing it to Ranma. "Watch," Ranma said, opening the bottle and pouring it's contents over his head, turning into a redheaded woman also in her mid-twenties, though perhaps a year or two older than the person who had been sitting there only minutes before.

"WHAT?!" Both Leon and Desaix cried.

"Who are you?" Desaix began.

"And what did you do with Ranma?" Leon added.

"I am Ranma Tendou, husband of Akane Tendou, and victim of the Jusenkyo 'Spring of Drowned Girl' curse." She shrugged. "Shampoo was the victim of the 'Spring of Drowned Cat,' and other people I know were victims of other curses. The newest of these cursed springs was formed about thirty years ago- the Spring of Drowned Akane. It's the only spring left which has not been corrupted by flooding, and I'm hoping that it will restore Akane to her natural body. One of the problems with the curse, though, is when the water is hot, you return to your uncursed form. I do have an idea, however..."

* * * * *

Leon and Desaix flanked the life support pod as Ranma went over to meet the strange man who had met them at the pool.

"Herb! Thank you for coming." Ranma took Prince Herb's hand and shook it. "Do you have the Chishuitong?"

Herb nodded, producing an ornate water bucket. "Of course... While we may have had our disagreements in the past, I had to help your lovely wife. I would not wish her predicament on my worst enemy." He shrugs. "That is why implants are forbidden in the Musk Dynasty- they are too addictive."

"Yeah, well, Akane's never getting another implant again," Ranma said, carefully filling the bucket with water from the nearby pool. "Every implant she had, she changed... she became less alive, less herself. I kept trying to get her to stop, but she never believed me when I told her that she looked good. I teased her too much in our youth. No more, though..." He walked up to Leon, and took a deep breath. "Okay, open it."

The top of the life support pod opened up, and the liquid surrounding Akane's remains drained out into a separate tank. Ranma spied the meter showing her life signs, and saw them weakening rapidly.

Leon wasn't sure, but as Ranma poured the water from the bucket over his wife, he thought he heard "Gods, please let this work..."

Leon watched as the barely recognizable parts transformed themselves into a teenage girl. With a shock, he realized that this girl was, in fact, Akane Tendou- as she appeared thirty years ago.

Her eyes opened slowly. "R...ranma?" she began, looking around.

"AKANE!" He cried, pulling her out of the pod and giving her a bear hug. "Promise me you'll never get another implant again... I never thought of you as looking poor... I never cared about your looks, anyway. It was YOU I loved..."

"Ranma," she said, "Okay, I'll never get another implant. Now, what's going on?"

"Shh!" He said. "I'll tell you later. Right now, I'm just glad to have you back..."

* * * * *

"After a few minutes, sir," Leon was saying to his boss, "We took them home. Expenses were paid for by Tenanco, the information sciences company owned by Akane's sister, Nabiki."

"Wait," he said. "She's a member of THAT Tendou family?" Leon nodded. "Okay, I think I know exactly where to file this... just leave the report here, and I'll deal with it."

Leon nodded, setting the folder with his report on the desk. The folder was picked up, and glanced through for a minute or two, before it was filed.

In the circular file.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- desaix@sysnet.net Sir Desaix, member # 116 of the Knights of the True Fiancee fanfics available at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7872/fanfics.htm David A. Tatum's Used Anime Trading Post http://www2.sysnet.net/~desaix/shop.htm