A lovely thing happened to me several months ago. My computers died... they died real good... Everything gone... Including all my stories and all my story notes... Even the manuscript I had working for a novel (probably the only thing I had backed up). One day I may work on the stuff I had before, but for now, I'll start with this.

I honestly want to keep this particular fic going, but with the way my life goes it's going to be hard. So if, for whatever reason, you actually enjoy this fic and it's been a while since I've updated e-mail me or send a pm. Make it somewhere along the lines of "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! UPDATE DAMMIT!!"

Stuff like that gets the message across.

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Dual Rhapsody

Track 1

Puppet

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Wake me

C'mon and wake me up now I

Want to

Cut all my strings and break

Loose off your control of me

Cut your stings and be free with me

- (Thousand Foot Krutch)

Honestly he should have expected it.

Considering what his life was… the ways his life went… He really should have expected it…

Sadly he didn't… He never did… Somehow, someway, he always woke up in the morning with the naive belief that the day would go normally… Ranma no baka… at least that part she'd gotten right… He was an idiot. He had no people smarts, no school smarts, nothing that helped him in "civilized" society. All he could do was fight. It was the one thing he could count on and the only thing he had…

So obviously it was his destiny to get married to Akane; because it was only natural for a young male who had no prior relationships with the female of the species, to be the perfect person for a young female with mostly bad experiences with males. Let's, of course, ignore the curse, the young man's predominantly male pride which was now threatened by said curse, and the young female's perspective that most males were perverts, instead let's focus on the positives… They fight a lot and the young female takes advantage of the young male's moral aspects to never hit girls… Naturally this meant they were in love and couldn't wait to get married and carry on the schools.

"Dumbasses," Ranma grumbled under his breath.

He could perhaps fault them for their idiocy, he could perhaps fault them for thinking that magic was a way to bring their children closer together, he could perhaps fault them for stealing a magic item in the first place, and maybe, just maybe he could even fault them for using said magical item upon him… but he wouldn't. There was no point in doing do. Because at the end of the day all they would ever do was follow the single most important law of the Furinkan populace: when in doubt, blame Ranma. It would be his fault that the "destiny stone" hadn't led him to wedding Akane, his fault that he'd been stuck in a world that actually needed his help, his fault that he'd been gone the near equivalent of a month... It was always the same… like it was his fault for the engagements, his fault for the wedding disaster, his fault for the dojo being destroyed, his fault when Akane got hurt…

Hate wasn't something Ranma had ever associated with himself. It was a foreign emotion. He honestly had never hated anyone in his life; not even Saffron just before he'd killed him for the first time. But just before he'd left, Ranma had known hate. He hated his life. Hated the way it was going, hated knowing that sooner or later he'd either end up married to Akane and stagnate in his art, or become a drugged up breeding stud for the Amazons. But most of all, he hated pretending that it wasn't inevitable, yet knowing that there was nothing, and no one that could help him out of it… at least not until the destiny stone…

Everything had changed then, for him at least. Even after coming back a month later, nothing seemed to have changed in Furinkan. Less than a day in and already the fathers were trying to get him married, Akane was denying everything, Ukyo was being his "cute" fiancée, Shampoo was being Shampoo, and the rivals were after his head. He doubted anyone saw his pain, he doubted anyone cared. Things had to change; he had to make them change. He'd learned that in the other world, and damned if he didn't follow it.

Of course he should have known that his resolve was going to come back to bite him in the ass, after all no good deed goes unpunished; so of course, saving an entire world from destruction would logically be rewarded with his expulsion from school. The fact that he'd simply bowed to the principal and left the classroom was an irony that hadn't been lost upon him. It had been the first change of the two that occurred that day; the second barely even taking the period of ten minutes to let him digest what had just happened.

"Ranma! Prepare to die!"

It was, sadly, a normative statement in the life of one Ranma Saotome, and many people had come to expect it to be answered in a variety of ways. The way he had answered it that day wasn't one of them.

"I'm sorry."

The stunned silence of the on looking Furinkan populace was palpable and Ranma had almost been able to feel their gazes upon his back. Ryouga himself had been stunned into silence, his face moving between confusion, anger, and satisfaction before settling upon a dawning comprehension. His words had been filled with venom, and strangely enough, Ranma had a hard time blaming the lost boy.

"What are you trying to pull Ranma?!"

"I ain't tryin to pull nothin. I'm tellin you I'm sorry… for everything…"

"Yeah right!"

"I mean it! I'm sorry!"

"So if you're sorry you'll have no problem admitting that I'm the better fighter and the better man."

It hurt…He doubted anything could or would ever hurt as much as that. Every breath was agony, every second added more pressure and in saying it all he could taste was bile. He barely even realized he had said it until he saw Ryouga gaping like a fish. He hadn't said anything after that, hadn't trusted himself to ruin what had been so damn hard for him to do in the first place… Instead he'd simply bowed one final time and walked away. He couldn't exactly remember what he'd done of where he'd gone after that, but he did remember stepping on the shattered remains of his pride. He remembered that vividly.

Training had taken on a turn to fanaticism. He moved past everyone, dodged explanations and when things got too annoying, he simply up and left. It wasn't until a few days later that he started to realize what he had done. Apologizing to Ryouga had been the right thing to do, regardless of how much crap the moron himself had done; but bit by bit he began to see a clearer picture. In doing what he had done, he had committed a grievous error, a sin that could never be forgiven, a wrong that could never be righted… he had changed the status quo. Subconsciously he must have seen it (it was as good an explanation as any to his new training regimen), and now he was preparing himself for the fallout. Strange how things worked out. By the time he'd set foot in Nerima again, it wasn't the inevitable brawl he thought. Ranma had set his entire mind and being into the fight against the fathers, the rivals and anyone else who thought he would have become weak because of his words to Ryouga, instead he'd met a bastard he swore he'd put down for good the first time.

Saffron

Strange how things worked out… Strange indeed…

He'd won, of course. He wouldn't have been here otherwise, but to do so he'd had to awaken a part of himself he'd kept sealed since his time in the other world. In giving in to that part of himself, he'd lost what he'd worked all his life to gain… Control… Control of his mind, his body, his very life… Without a doubt Ranma knew the necessity of being under someone's control as a martial artist. There was a reason one learned under a sensei, and a reason a sensei gave a student his mastery. Awaking that part of himself had lost him the very thing he strived for… and that hadn't all been a bad thing… Saffron himself was dead, for good this time. There was no coming back from what Ranma had put him through. The phoenix bastard was gone, but he hadn't died alone.

He'd taken innocent lives with him; innocent lives which Ranma had made his very people pay for. Two lives for every one Saffron had taken. When the battle was done, ten innocents lay dead, twenty of Saffron's own having joined them, and twelve people, Ranma included were critically injured. When Ranma awoke after a week in the hospital it was to a pair of eyes he had never seen before…

One should never underestimate the greed of Genma Saotome. Considering this was a man who used his own son like a credit card, it was a very apt statement. Thus the words where this had all originated were now back into play. Honestly, he should have expected it… The pair of eyes belonged to someone Genma had made a deal with a long while back; a deal which negated all others. A deal which was totally and completely legal. The fathers had protested, the fiancées had protested, his mother had protested, the Amazons had been deported, but in the end it wasn't up to any of them. It was up to the courts.

Oogami Ranma… Even now it sounded weird, but a good type of weird. He was free now. Free to pursue his own interests, no longer bound to the schools or the Saotome family. He may not have been allowed to practice Anything Goes any longer, but at the end of the day it hadn't necessarily been a bad thing.

Ranma sighed softly. He was under no illusion that his new found freedom would last long. Sooner or later it would end… but until that time, he would enjoy it.

"Ranma?"

"Yeah Diana?"

"What are you thinking about?"

Ranma smiled softly as he scratched behind her ears, listening as the small grey cat purred with affection.

"Everything Diana… everything and nothing…" he responded.

"Since when did you become a philosopher?" she rebuffed lightly.

"Since when you helped me cure my fear of cats." He grinned.

"Baka."

If anything the smile on his face grew bigger. His first real friend, the first person to give him something without wanting anything in return had been a cat. It was yet another form of irony that wasn't lost on him.

"Ranma?" she asked softly.

"Yeah Diana?" he answered.

"What's going to happen now?"

He paused at that… What exactly was going to happen now?

"Ain't got a clue…" he laughed nervously, "but it ain't gonna be boring that's for sure."

No, it wasn't… and it never would be. Even as his bus came to a stop he could easily tell that the excitement in his life would continue. At least it would if the look of the bus driver was anything to judge by.