Author's Note:

Hello, and welcome!

Thank you very much for stopping by and trying out this strange story I made. Before we begin, I want to quickly run down the structure of this fic and explain why it's like this.

This tale will be told in 'parts' (or story arcs, if you prefer), as you may be able to tell by now, each telling a smaller story that connects to the greater whole, and slowly unravels the mystery around the characters and the city of Nerima. It's a strange idea, especially for a story like Ranma, but I'll do my best to make it work and become an enjoyable read. Part 1 (titled Ranma's Trick) begins below.

This story will also be told exclusively through the first person, another uncommon trait for a Ranma fic. This will mostly be Ranma's POV, but I have plans for at least one part to be told from the perspective of someone else, perhaps a certain half-pig...?

If you're okay with all of that, then hooray! I may have just captured a reader, who knows?

Thank you very much, and please enjoy Ranma's Stories.

-TTR

Part 1: Ranma's Trick

1

February.

Ever since New Years had passed, I had been without incident for the longest time since moving to Nerima initially. It wasn't that there was absolutely no trouble; bouts with Ryoga and chases from Shampoo were simply commonplace around here, after all. But I really can't say that a huge, earth-shattering event had taken place. Whether that be the trickery of a certain elderly Chinese Amazon or yet another crazed, overpowered challenger suddenly appearing before us, these types of interruptions were nowhere to be seen. I could even go as far to say that the days were almost normal. At least, as normal as it can get around here.

So it was on that evening when I was reading manga in the Tendo living room as usual that I could almost feel a chill running up my spine as if these normal days were being brought to an end. Yes, I could sense it… A great evil, here to impart his wrath and multi-layered strategy of ruining my life and stealing Akane away from me. Truly, it would be a battle of titans in the martial arts world, Ranma Saotome vs. the mystery man and his vicious plot. And after my days of rest, I was ready to show my justice to him-

But it was just Nabiki.

Ah, right. The local 'great evil' that I lived with.

The doorway was where the middle Tendo sister stood, the evening sun cracking through the windows and onto her hair. Her striped blouse and tan pants were probably stylish, perhaps even designer. It was no secret that Nabiki Tendo was rich, at least for a high school student. And was that makeup on her face that I spied, little touches here and there? She was growing up, I realized in that instant. Yes, Nabiki Tendo was almost an adult.

Now you might be thinking that Nabiki was a gorgeous woman with an excellent fashion sense that had wandered into a lucky spot where the lighting just happened to frame her face and bring out quite a bit of beauty. But if you knew Nabiki Tendo you would, of course, know what kind of woman she was. It just wasn't possible to see her that way.

The smug look on the savant of all things materialistic completely ruined any chance of capturing the hearts of men. The way her sharp eyes pierced their way through your soul and right to the contents of your wallet was truly something to behold as if she was a robot who didn't have the processing power for any other function. Meeting her once would tell any potential suitors all they needed to know, and they would surely back off immediately.

Ah, what a shame for those buffoons. If only I could somehow redirect Kuno's attention to Nabiki and forget Akane and I...

We looked at each other for a moment, and I realized that Nabiki wasn't moving. She was looking at me from the doorway, all of her attention thrust on me. There were two reasons Nabiki would approach me like this, and neither was any good.

I gulped.

"Yo, Nabiki."

Her eyes glinted. "Hello, Ranma." Saying nothing more, she gestured for me to follow.

Uh-oh. This really couldn't be good. I quickly decided that it would be in my best interest to follow her now.

Seeing her climb the stairs I realized that this really was something important. At this very moment, the two fathers that lived in this home had gone out drinking after dinner and were no longer in the the other hand, Kasumi and Akane were bustling around the kitchen on clean-up duty. While it was improbable, it was theoretically possible to hear a conversation going on in the living room from the kitchen. It was clear that Nabiki didn't want whatever she was about to say to be heard by anyone but me.

I climbed the stairs right behind her somberly and followed her directly into her room.

Nabiki's room was one I rarely went in. It was a neat and tidy place, except for the desk which bore what seemed like hundreds of individual sheets of paper, all scattered and strewn about except for one notable exception, a piece of paper attached to a clipboard. The walls were a quiet purple, and the few bits of furniture that adorned the dwelling were not either too plain nor too fancy.

There wasn't a table for welcoming guests, so I sat on the floor cross-legged instead. Expecting Nabiki to sit at her desk, I was surprised when she joined me on the floor, a few feet away from me and facing the door behind me. She laid out her left leg at a straight angle while she stuck her right leg's knee straight up into the air. She rested her right arm on said leg and put her hand on her face. Her well-manicured fingernails were gleaming in the evening sun pouring into the room. Once she was comfortably in position, she lazily completed this action and stared me down. Seriously, was she purposely finding the spots where the sunlight would make her look the most god-like? I wouldn't be surprised.

"So, Ramna." She drawled, immediately catching my focus. "We need to talk about something."

"I can tell. What about?"

Nabiki leaned over to her desk that was above her head and grabbed a paper blindly. It seems she was actually familiar with that mess because whatever she grabbed was exactly what she had wanted. She placed the paper right in front of us, but face-down.

I see. She set her Trap Card.

Nabiki finally opened her mouth to respond. "We need to talk about your debt."

I started. Okay, so this really wasn't what I had been expecting. Not at all.

The debt Nabiki was speaking of was something that had started long ago when I first started staying with the Tendo's. Whenever there was something I needed, like an outfit for a disguise, I would simply knock on Nabiki's door and 'rent' some clothes for a bit. If I needed to borrow money for a new manga volume that was released, Nabiki was the person to go to. She was like a small bank that gave out small sums of money here and there when you asked for it. She also didn't seem to have any sort of problem giving out money to whoever asked, as long as you signed her contracts promising to pay her back.

"My debt, huh? Well I've been paying it back to the best of my ability, right? I'm seriously not lying or trying to dodge responsibility or nothin... I'm honor-bound to repay my debt to you."

Nabiki nodded. Good, she knew this already. "That isn't the problem, Ranma. I have no doubt that you would work to repay me for years to come if that's what it took. But the issue is you might never be able to fully pay it back."

I couldn't help but laugh at this. "But there ain't no rush, right? Even if I haven't cleared my debt by the time my senior year is over, the worst case is I'll pay you back with money that I earn from a real, adult job. Not that that'd happen. I'm willin' to do any job that you'd want me to right now in order to pay it back. Working to repay a debt ain't exactly uncommon, right?"

The loan shark sitting before me nodded her head once again, but this time with some sort of vague smile. It made me nervous. "And there you go. That's exactly it Ranma, I need you to do something for me or else this debt might never be cleared." Nabiki now had her hand on the downturned piece of paper that would most likely spell my doom. How though, I couldn't figure out.

"'Never be cleared?' That seems a bit far, don't ya think?"

She almost laughed at that. Just what was going on?

"You see Ranma, it just isn't that simple for you. You've driven both of us into quite the corner this time, for different reasons."

"A corner? What?"

Like a gust of wind, Nabiki's hand tore through the air. Perhaps more theatrically than intended, the paper fluttered like a message from the gods before laying itself gently on its other side. Now I could read its contents.

And it seemed Nabiki Tendo really had just lured me into her trap after all.

What is this? Huh? Nabiki was joking, right? She just accidentally grabbed someone else's debt off the cluster of papers and mistakenly showed me this one instead, right? Wait, this is real?

Nabiki beamed at me in a frightful way, like a snake that had just wrapped around its prey.

"3,200,000 yen."

I was speechless. There was no way I had amassed such a debt, right? Nowaynowaynowaynowaynoway…

"But don't worry. I have a plan to quickly unbury you from this massive weight on your shoulders."

Somehow, my brain was saved from short-circuiting by the very person who had placed me in this mess to begin with. I looked at her and came back to reality.

"Before that… How did this even happen to begin with? A thousand yen, sure… Maybe even tens of thousands. But 3 million yen?"

"3,200,000." She cut in. Yeah, leave it to Nabiki to correct something like that. "And if you must know, it's a mixture of losing track of how much money you were borrowing, and not paying back interest."

Interest? There was interest?

"Yes, there was interest," Nabiki smirked as if reading my mind.

So the debt had been growing for a long time. That almost felt like cheating in a way. Taking advantage of a man's critical weakness like that… I knew I wasn't good with money, but I thought I at least had a good grasp of who and what I owed. But supposedly, the chips had been stacked against me from the very start. Damn you, Nabiki Tendo. What a truly terrifying foe.

"Well, I can still pay that back. It's a lot, but when I become an adult and have a real job, I can easily pay that back, right?"

"Perhaps… But you forget." Nabiki tapped the side of her cranium as if asking me to use my head. Despite what people think, I'm not brain-dead, so there was no reason to belittle me like this. "Interest, brother-in-law. Leaving it until then would cause the debt to grow to 10 million yen. And before you say anything-" She raised her hand to cut me off as soon as my mouth unhinged in protest. "It's theoretically possible for you to earn 10 million yen as an adult. But that could take a few years, and the debt would have once again grown. You're buried under this mountain, Saotome."

It wasn't impossible to pay off, not completely. We weren't speaking of an insane sum of money here. However it was clear that I could spend a good chunk of adulthood working to pay this thing off, so I was obviously adamant about doing whatever it took to clear this thing as soon as I could. I sighed in defeat.

"So, what is it you want, then?"

"Oh, like I said. I want you to work for me and complete a job. Once the said job is completed, consider your debt and any related fees completely waived."

"You'll wave at it?"

Nabiki stifled a giggle and ignored my comment. I tilted my head in confusion.

"I will clear the debt," she repeated simply.

"So I just need to do something for you, and it's gone, right? Well, that's easy. I'll do whatever it takes, whatever you need. So what did you have in mind?"

Saying that simple thing calmed me down considerably. I can do this. Of course I can. I'm Ranma Saotome, heir to the Anything-Goes Martial Arts school. Whatever Nabiki needed, it would be a cakewalk for me.

"Entertainment."

My heart skipped a beat as Nabiki spoke that single, ominous word that hung in the air as if it were mocking me. I felt like I was being continuously strangled even after my body had gone limp from oxygen deprivation. And I could feel that it wasn't over.

"Entertainment? What?"

"Let me put it this way: there is no job that you could do for me that would value 3,200,000 yen. And not even a series of jobs would be able to pay that off, either."

"So then what? You want me to… 'entertain' you?" I shuddered at the word. I was finally getting to the core of the matter, what Nabiki was planning all along.

"Right," she nodded once again. She was good at nodding, as strange as it may sound. Her neck would slither smoothly like a snake's slippery body sometimes. It made me wonder if there was a Spring of Drowned Snake, and how difficult it would be to douse her in it. And then I imagined a snake Nabiki slithering around the house and shivered. I better not do that.

"The simple fact is, there's nothing finite that you can do for me or give me that will clear your debt. So that leaves entertainment. You must entertain me equal to the value of 3,200,000 yen."

"T-Three million's worth of entertainment?!" I stuttered a little. That was pretty uncool of me. "But besides martial arts, I don't really have any skills at all. Nothing entertaining for sure!"

Nabiki grinned smugly, somehow an even worse look than I'd ever seen her with. "Entertainment is completely subjective, Ranma. Unlike gold or other precious metals that have a set value attached to them, entertainment does not. A novel one person finds to be exceedingly entertaining, another might not, and thus the book would have no value to them."

"So you want entertainment that you'll find valuable, equal in value to a large sum of money. I get that, but I have no idea what you could want me to do."

Nabiki's smug look seemed to be plastered onto her face at this point. "Oh, but Ranma. It's a specific type of entertainment that only you can bring."

"Only me?" My thoughts immediately jumped to the Jusenkyo curse. That made me extremely nervous.

"Only you. Ranma Saotome, I want you to pretend to be a girl for as long as I see fit."

I blinked.

There were a few seconds that felt like a lifetime in which I stared at Nabiki, wondering what her thought process on this could possibly be. She's messing with me, is that it?

"Huh" was the only word I could muster. I was sure I had a bit of a panicked look on my face, but that was only natural. There was no way that for any reason, Ranma Saotome, man among men, would pretend to be a girl.

...Well, it wasn't that I hadn't done it before. But for an extended period of time? It wasn't happening.

"It's a prank, just a harmless trick," Nabiki said artfully. "A silly joke to pass the time. I want you to suddenly pretend that you were a girl who was cursed to transform into a boy at the touch of hot water. I want you to keep it going until I've had my fun and say you can stop. Then you can say goodbye to your debt forever."

I wiped away a few beads of sweat that were forming around my hairline. "You're seriously gonna make me do this? I can't do that, you know I can't do that. I don't even know how."

"Well, you'll have to clean up the way you speak and things of that sort, but it shouldn't be too hard. You've done that sort of thing before after all, don't get hung up on it."

"But Pops, he'll kill me. And think of my mother! She might literally kill me!" My brain was spinning, thinking about that stupid seppuku promise and how Mom might react to a prank like this. I was too young to die, dammit!

Nabiki shrugged. "They'll most likely react as if you've had some sort of head trauma. I'm sure they won't do anything too drastic, just go with the flow."

Go with the flow, she says. Wait, she's speaking as if I've already agreed. "Hold on, hold on. There's nothing else I can do? Seriously, anything but that. My pride as a man demands an answer."

"Absolutely nothing at all." Nabiki gave me a look of sheer victory. Yes, this was an unfair match to begin with. It was a game rigged from the start, with no chance of me winning. "Or you could work this debt off for the next decade. Your choice."

I grimaced. I guess I was going to have to bite the bullet this time. I didn't see any easy way out of this, to my displeasure. The snake really had me cornered today.

Nabiki smiled and grabbed another sheet of paper from her desk that was laid out on a clipboard. So that's what that was. It was a contract stating that I would agree with this trick and in doing so, rid myself of debt. Alright, so far so good. However when I glanced at the 'conditions' section, the reality of what I might be about to do really started to sink in.

For example, one of them stated that I "would not speak verbally of the above agreement to anyone, including any other party involved." In other words, I couldn't even talk to Nabiki about all this when it was ongoing. She was so meticulous that even the slim chance that someone might be eavesdropping on a conversation we might have in the future was too high of a chance for her. I didn't know whether to be scared or impressed.

And what was this one? An agreement for me to "not communicate any involvement with other parties in the event of your discovery"? She had even included a way to cover herself if things go south for me. This was harsh.

But I decided I could deal with all of it (though the condition that included me not breaking character around any other person made me shudder a bit). I looked over at the author of the contract herself.

"So you want me to do all this?"

"I think it's fair. It's 3.2 million yen, after all."

She was right. And I hated that she was right. What a mess this was.

What I gleaned from the contract was that the instant I signed it, the interest rate would freeze, and until the completion of the… er, "job", my debt would stay that way. If I failed, then the debt would start ticking back up again. That was a scary thought. Failure was defined as either revealing to someone that it was a trick or giving up early. Since Ranma Saotome doesn't lose, I was more concerned about the former. No way would I be giving up.

At the very least, Nabiki had been kind enough to make the start date for this charade exactly one week from now. That would give me time to prepare and think things through. It would be tough, but I felt that I could make it. Now that I was viewing it with the mindset that this was a challenge, it was far easier for me to process everything.

It was settled, then. This was happening.

I couldn't deny that my hands were shaking just a little bit as I signed my name and inserted the date. The signature was still legible, but I was nervous. The reactions from the Tendo's, the reactions from the students of Furinkan, the reactions of the other suitors. It would be chaos, that fact was plain as day. Nabiki's idea of entertainment was watching someone poke a sleeping bear with a stick, and it was slightly terrifying to think that I had lived in a house with this woman for so long.

I climbed to my feet. For once, I felt like I might be a bit sick at any moment, but I had to accept it. I was doing this. I was doing this so I could no longer have a debt and be happy after high school. That was why. So it was something I had to do. It's like… Training. Yeah, training. Like all those terrible things that Pop forced me through to make me stronger. When I thought of it like that, this was easy. Very easy.

And besides, wouldn't it be really funny to see everyone else's reactions?

"Okay. Challenge accepted." I looked right into Nabiki's eyes and smirked back at her. Finally, we were on equal footing. Now that there was nothing left to throw me off, I could accept Nabiki's challenge head-on. No more surprises, no more plots. Just Ranma vs. Nabiki.

"Alright, I'll have clothes and makeup for you right in here, I'll put it by my door. Come by tomorrow to pick up your new things, 'kay? Make sure you hide them well 'til the day we agreed upon. Oh, and I always thought Ranko was a cute name. Just throwing it out there."

I glowered.

Nabiki Tendo looked like she was about to have the time of her life.