Path of Destiny: Part Three: Troubled Waters
Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma 1/2 (Like I could be so lucky). The character's names and likeness along with locations are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am only borrowing the characters and plan on giving them back when I'm done. All other characters and places that don't appear in the acutal series (Anime and/or Manga) are of my own creation and are my property. Enjoy.
Chapter One: Making A Point
They knew it wouldn't last. The chaos that has been a normal part of their lives since Ranma showed up two years ago was bound to resurface. What they didn't know was the size, shape and form the chaos would be in. Whether it was monsters, demons, spirits or wandering martial artists, neither of the teens knew what the insanity would be or when it would eventually appear.
Compared to the last two years, the last few weeks since their little trip to another dimension, things have been relatively quiet. Ranma and Akane had hoped the calm that had fallen over the area would remain for a few more weeks so the couple could get married without anything disturbing the peace leading up to and including the wedding.
Sure enough, the serenity was broken a few days after the couple's separate visits to the mall. Ranma had decided to take a stroll through the park alone one day after school had finished. While taking his leisurely walk, the boy noticed a large group of girls chasing after a miniature figure of a man with an overstuffed bag flung over his back. Instantly the teen knew who it was.
'I was wondering when the old goat would be back,' thought the teenager, sighing to himself, 'Might as well stop him.'
"Heh heh, come on ladies. You'll never catch me if you don't hurry up," said Happosai, laughing out loud.
"Get back here, you prune!"; "Give us back our panties, pervert!" and other various shouts could be heard from the angry mob.
"Never!" yelled the old man, getting away.
He continued to run until an unseen force landed on top of his head, pushing him into the dirt.
"Hey, old geezer," the boy greeted him, hopping off his head.
"Oh, it's you, Ranma. Come to help your master?" asked the old coot, standing up and brushing himself off while the angry mob of girls got closer.
"No," said the boy, quickly grabbing the sack of underwear from Happosai's grip.
"Then why are you here?" wondered the pervert, raising an eyebrow.
"To do this," replied Ranma, tossing the over-sized bag to the approaching gang of females.
Happosai's eyes widened with shock as the girls began to rummage through the sack. He went to stop them, but was stopped himself by the boy using his foot to push him into the dirt again, leaving him helpless. All the old goat could do was watch in horror as the contents inside his bag were returned to their rightful owners. As the mob of girls started to walk away, arms loaded with their intimate clothing, the very old martial artist began to cry, seeing his sack lay there empty.
"My...precious...beauties..." he sobbed, laying on the ground in disbelief.
Coming to his senses, Happosai squirmed his way out from under Ranma's foot.
"How could you do that? It took me all day to get that haul," complained the old man, getting angry.
"Cry me a river why don'tcha. Don't you have enough of those things already?" asked the youth, sounding disgusted with the lecher.
"I'm a collector and one can never have enough of the thing they love," answered the old goat with a matter of fact tone. Happosai's aura flared as he continued, "And for what you have done, you have incurred your master's wrath."
"Give me a break," said Ranma, rolling his eyes, "Your 'wrath'? What's it going to be this time? Graffiti all over the house? Tacks in my shoes? Endless takeout? Whatever it is it can't be that bad."
"Oh, it's much worse this time, my boy," the old man pointed out, "You're going to see firsthand what it is I've learned these last two months I've been away."
"Bring it on," insisted the boy, cracking his knuckles.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," said the freaky old man, moving in a blur.
Ranma crossed his arms over his face to protect himself in case Happosai went to hit him there, but the blow never came.
The old man instead began to poke and prod the teenager all over his body while saying, "Why'd you do it?" with each poke.
Gritting his teeth, the boy was getting angry with the old pervert. Instead of dropping both of his arms, Ranma cocked back his one fist and aimed a Straight Right Punch at the old man when he was standing in front of him.
The boy shouts, "This is what you learned in two months? How to be even more annoying?"
But in a flash, the old goat was gone and the attack missed. The next moment passes and the boy finds the old coot sitting on top of his head, smoking a corn-cob pipe.
"That should be enough punishment for one day," said Happosai, blowing out a flume of smoke. He then leaped off the teen's head and bounded out of the park and out of sight.
"Okay," replied the boy with one raised eyebrow, "That was weird."
Ranma patted himself down to assess the damage. It appeared to him that the old geezer had done nothing except be annoying. Not ready to dismiss his encounter with the lecher as just unusual, the boy was convinced the old man had done something to him, but what that was he wasn't sure of. Scouring his memory bank, Ranma tried to remember every trick Happosai has pulled, in hopes one of his memories might lead him to an answer. Thinking for a moment that the old goat might have done another moxibustion on him, the teen walked over to one of the park's stone statues and lifted it with ease. With each passing moment after putting the statue down, the teenager was no closer in discovering the right answer than when he began. He continued to think as he walked back to the Tendo home. All through dinner his mind and attention was divided. He ate slowly, barely putting food in his mouth. He didn't even acknowledge his father stealing food from his plate. Akane noticed Ranma's inability to focus and thought it might be because of her cooking.
For the past four weeks, the girl has been allowed to cook one night a week. She never told her family which night she cooked so they wouldn't be hesitant to eat what was served. Only after they started eating did she tell them. She worked away the evening in the kitchen under the watchful eyes of her older sister Kasumi. She'd gently correct any mistake her younger sibling would make and those mistakes became less and less with each passing week. Now Akane rarely adds the wrong ingredient to her meals and she tastes what she makes before serving it to her family. By her family's reaction to the meal she knows she is getting better, but she also knows she has a long way to go to match Kasumi's culinary skills.
"That was your best yet," said Soun, placing his chopsticks on his empty plate.
"I agree, an exquisite meal," added Genma, who had ate not only his food but half of his son's as well.
Akane smiled at them to say thank you.
"Wouldn't you say so, boy?" asked the boy's father, turning his attention to his offspring, nudging him in the arm.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, it was great," replied Ranma in an inattentive tone.
He slowly stood up and headed in the direction of the dojo without looking at anybody or saying another word. Everyone watched him as he left.
"Maybe you should see if anything is wrong with him, Akane," insisted Kasumi, clearing the table, "I'll take care of the dishes, you go check up on Ranma."
The younger of the two girls thanked her older sister and followed the boy outside. She slid the door of the dojo open a crack and looked in to find him sitting in the middle of the room, cross-legged and eyes closed, apparently in a mediative state. She entered and shut the door behind her without making a sound. She made her way over to him trying to make the smallest amount of noise she could. She was a few feet away when she stepped and the floorboard creaked under her foot. The boy's eyes shot open and he turned to find his fiancee standing behind him with her hands behind her back.
"If you wanted to be alone I could leave," she said, staring at the floor.
"That's okay," he told her, turning back around.
Sitting down next to him with her knees against her chest, Akane asked, " Are you okay? At dinner it looked as though something was bothering you. Anything I can help you with?"
"I'm fine," lied the boy, looking away, "I just had something on my mind that's all."
"Oh. For a moment there, I thought it might have been my cooking, you barely ate anything," responded the girl, trying to look him in the eyes.
"The food was great, that wasn't what was bothering me. I was thinking about something that happened earlier," replied Ranma, turning his gaze towards her.
"What happened?" she asked.
"I'd rather not talk about it," said the boy, looking down at the ground.
"Oh," answered Akane, also turning her eyes to the ground.
She didn't want to upset him so she decided against pressing the issue. There was an awkward silence between them, so to pass the time the girl's eyes began to wander around the dojo, looking at the walls, the ceiling, the closets packed with training equipment and finally at the front door. By this time the silence was getting to be annoying.
Suddenly Ranma blurts out, "While I was taking my walk through the park I saw a large group of girls chasing after someone. It turned out to be the old goat on one of his panty raids."
He had gotten Akane's attention by the end of the first sentence.
He continued, talking at a fast pace at first, but slowing down towards the end, "I stopped him and threw his sack back to the girls. He wanted to stop them, but I held him down as they searched for their things. He began to cry when they left and he saw his bag was empty. For what I did, he said I incurred his wrath. I mocked him for what he called his wrath in the past, but he told me this time was different. He came at me in a blur. I thought he was gonna hit me, but he began to poke and prod my entire body. After a minute I tried to punch him, but I missed. When he stopped he said that was enough punishment for one day and then he ran away. That's what I was thinking about during dinner, I thought he might have done something to me and I was trying to figure out what it was."
"Considering who it was, I wouldn't blame you for thinking that way," agreed the girl. She asked, "Did you find out what it was he had done?"
"Oddly enough, no," replied the boy, sounding surprised, "I guess he was just being a pain in the butt."
"That's good," she said, wrapping her arms around her bent legs. A few more seconds of silence pass before Akane asked a new question, "So what are you going to do now?"
"I thought I might stay here in the dojo a few hours before going to bed," answered Ranma, "Want to join me?"
"I can't. I spent so much time in the kitchen today that I wasn't able to do my homework," she told him, sounding sorry.
"That's okay," replied the boy, his eyes shifting towards the ground again looking as though he was hurt for not having a training partner.
Akane got on her knees, leaned in and kissed him on the cheek before standing up. She smiled at him when she reached the doorway.
"Good night," she said.
He smiled back, "Night."
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Keeping his motions steady and fluid, Ranma was going through the movements of his twenty minute kata for the second time. Drowning out all other thoughts in his head, the boy tries to forget the incident in the park. Nearing the end of his workout, the anger that was directly caused by the dirty old pervert was about gone. Before completing his kata, an image of Happosai flashed in Ranma's head. The flare-up of rage brought about from the sight of the image caused the teen to throw a forceful punch instead of a slow and smooth one.
'Ahh!' thought the frustrated boy, throwing his hands into the air, 'No matter what I do, I can't keep his ugly face out of my mind!'
Normally when Ranma performs his kata it has a calming effect over him, but even after going through it twice, the anger remained. Wiping the small amount of sweat from his brow with his bare arm, the boy walked over to the closets full of training equipment.
Sliding the doors open, he wondered to himself, 'What would Akane do to relieve her anger?'
The answer came almost immediately. Inside one of the closets were some broken pieces of equipment while other pieces were worn out from repeated use.
'Of course, she breaks things,' thought the teen, answering his own question.
Stacked neatly in the other closet was a pile of concrete slabs standing about waist height. He grabbed three of the bricks and set them up for breaking.
'I guess I can try it her way," he said to himself, standing over the concrete blocks.
Raising his fist, Ranma tried a few practice punches, bringing his fist down and placing it lightly on the bricks then pulling it back up. Hesitating for a moment, the boy imagined the top slab of concrete was Happosai's head before throwing the breaking punch.
"Yaah!" he yelled, seconds before he made contact.
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Akane was almost finished with the English homework Miss Hinako had assigned her class, when a shout lasting four seconds rang out through the house: "Aaahhh!"
'That sounded like Ranma,' she thought, quickly getting out of her chair.
She was met at the top of the stairs by her sister Nabiki, who also had a look of fear on her face.
"You heard it too?" asked Akane.
"I think the whole neighborhood hear it," replied the older of the two as they both raced down the stairs.
Akane ran inside the dojo expecting to find one of Ranma's former suitors or rivals having a battle with him. Instead she found her father standing over the boy, who was curled up in the fetal position, with her older sister Kasumi kneeling at his side. The youngest girl hurried over to her boyfriend and knelt beside him as well.
"Ranma, what happened?" she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
"It hurts," he told her, looking up at her. She noticed he was holding onto his wrist and that his hand was curled into an open fist.
She looked over and saw a pile of rubble that used to be three solid concrete blocks.
"Kasumi call Dr. Tofu and tell him he is about to have a visitor," said Soun in a semi-forceful tone.
"Yes, daddy," answered his oldest daughter, standing up and leaving the room.
"I don't get it," said Nabiki, peering from behind her father, "Why is Ranma on the floor?"
Akane helped him up before he answered her. The boy whimpered in pain as he reached a sitting position.
In a weak and shaky voice, he responded, "I wanted to relieve some anger, so I set some bricks up for breaking like Akane used to do. I punched the pile as hard as I could, but when I did a very painful feeling shot up and down my arm. I'm not sure, but I think I broke my hand."
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Dr. Tofu was about to close shop when he received a phone call. Hearing Kasumi's voice on the other end filled his heart with happiness. He loved listening to the sound of her sweet voice. The happy feeling drained away and concern took it's place as her worried tone told him something bad happened.
"Alright, bring him over," said the doctor, after Kasumi finished telling him what was going on.
As he hung up the phone, a part of him had been wondering when he might see the boy again. It has been a few weeks since he last saw the teen or Akane for that matter. He opened the door to his office and allowed Ranma to enter, followed closely by Akane who had accompanied him to Dr. Tofu's place. He then had them sit in adjoining chairs while he sat opposite of them.
"Kasumi told me you were in pain, where does it hurt?" asked the doctor as he was sitting.
Then he noticed Ranma was holding his wrist. "Never mind, "said Dr. Tofu, "Let me see your hand."
He took each finger, curled them forward and then straightened them, asking each time if they hurt. The boy replied "no" everytime. The doctor then took hold of the teen's wrist and rotated it again asking if it hurt. Once more Ranma said no.
With a confused look, Dr. Tofu asked, "What did you do that made it feel like you broke your hand?"
"I was trying to release some anger by breaking a few concrete blocks. When I punched them a very sharp pain shot up and down my arm," answered the boy.
"The good news is your hand isn't broken," said the doctor.
Both teens let out a sigh of relief.
"But I'm wondering as to why it hurt in the first place but isn't hurting you now. Did anything happen to you today that might be relevant?" asked Dr. Tofu.
Ranma told him about his confrontation with Happosai.
"He poked and prodded your entire body?" wondered the doctor.
"Yes,"replied the boy.
Taking off his glasses and closing his eyes, Dr. Tofu placed an index finger on his forehead before responding, "This sounds like shiatsu to me, although I've never heard of one that causes pain before. I have a colleague who specializes in shiatsu studies. I'll call him tomorrow and ask him about this."
"So what is Ranma suppose to do until then?" asked Akane, sounding worried.
"I recommend he refrain from anything that might caused him pain," answered Dr. Tofu, "It's the only logical solution I can come up with for the time being. Come see me after school tomorrow and I should be able to tell you more."
"Okay, I'll try to keep my activities down to a minimum," said Ranma as he and Akane stood to leave.
"Oh, Akane, before you go could I talk to you?" asked the doctor.
"Sure," she replied. "I'll see you outside," she told Ranma.
"Alright," he said back, walking to the door.
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When Akane walked out the door to Dr. Tofu's she was giggling slightly and had a big smile on her face.
"What's with you?" asked Ranma.
"Dr. Tofu wanted me to give Kasumi a message," she answered, wrapping her arm around her fiancee's.
"What's the message?" wondered the boy.
"I'll tell you if you promise not to laugh," she told him, looking him in the eyes.
"Okay, I promise," he replied with an honest look on his face.
"He asked me if I thought Kasumi would want to go on a date with him. I told him she has been waiting for him to ask her out on one. He looked very happy after I said that. Then he asked me to ask Kasumi if she would go on a date with him and to call him with her answer," she explained.
Ranma tried not to laugh, but ended up choking on it instead.
"You said you wouldn't laugh," she said.
"I know, but it's silly. You'd think he'd be able to ask her on his own," responded the boy.
"He's still a little shy around her. I think he might be scared of what her reaction might be to the question," replied the girl, "But at least he's come around to ask her out. Maybe this is a sign things are going to get better between them."
"Yeah," agreed the other teen.
They walked a ways down the street when Akane noticed Ranma's hands were clenched into fists.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
"I'm thinking about what I'm going to do to Happosai when I see him next," he explained.
"You can't fight him the way you are now," she pointed out, "If one punch to a pile of blocks caused that much pain, just think how much pain you'll be in if you fight him."
"I know. I'll have to wait until I return to normal," said the boy, thinking, 'Just you wait, old geezer, until I'm cured. Then I'll show you a thing or two. Just you wait.'