DISCLAIMER: Don't own, don't sue.

Yesterday's Feelings

Father and mother had been very much in love, despite having had their marriage arranged before birth. They'd been married two years before mother became pregnant.

Father was happy to finally have an heir to train in the family art. Mother was happy to have a child, a symbol of her and father's ever-lasting love. Everyone was happy. Everyone was celebrating.

My father had always had a taste for alcohol, even more so when he began teaching me the art 4 years later. Drinking sake was his past time hobby.

A year later it was no longer a hobby, it was an addiction. He'd get drunk so often it seemed like the only time he was sober was when he was asleep. And even then he reeked of alcohol.

With his addiction came all the habits of a regular drunk. When I'd get a move or technique wrong he'd beat me and when I cried he'd beat me again. Every time I cried he'd beat me into unconsciousness. Later on I learned that after beating me he'd wander into the house and beat mother for "producing a lousy heir".

Eventually I just stopped crying altogether. I had to be strong for mother and myself.

This cycle continued for years. When I started school father stopped beating on me for a few weeks. I was bruise-free for two weeks. I'd thought father had turned over a new leaf, I'd hoped, kami how I'd hoped, that maybe he'd stopped drinking altogether.

He didn't give up drinking nor did he turn over a new leaf. And then the beatings started again. With twice the ferociousness. He refrained from hitting in places where the bruises and cuts would be seen by the public eye. So almost all my beatings were on my chest and back. A few times he even took the belt to me.

When I turned 13 I'd started trying to convince mother to divorce father. For an entire year I tried everything I could to convince her to leave him. On the day before my 14th birthday it worked. She was going to leave father.

I'd thought it was going to be turning point in our lives. One of the best ones yet. In a way I was both wrong and right at the same time. It was a turning point if nothing else...

I remember that day clearly. Too clearly. It was the morning after she'd decided and I was watching from the small open area made by my almost-but-not-quite-closed door. It started out with mother simply saying that she was going to leave him, divorce him. He was silent for a few beats before starting a full blown argument.

The argument quickly went from an exchange of words to blows.

All I could do was watch as the man who'd help father me beat his wife to death. I stared as the final strike splattered blood across the wall and began staining the carpet. I quietly moved to a spot under my bed and called 911. I gave them nothing more than an address and who to arrest before closing the line and sobbing beneath my bed.

The last coherent sentence from me that day being, "Happy Birthday...to...me..."

(-)

I had this anger that boiled inside of me as I watched them bury mother. I refused to look at my father as he sat in a drunken stupor while people tried to console him. People thought he actually cared that his wife was dead, he might've, once. Before my birth. But no longer.

I stood next to her grave and cried silently. I hated father. I hated the men who let him out of jail so he could "greive" over mother. And I hated the people who consoled father. Why? Why would someone console the man who did this? Why would you console a murderer?

A small voice in my head answered for me, it said that they didn't know any better. They didn't know that man like I knew him. They didn't have to live with his drunken violence. His twisted teachings.

(-)

The next day I was dragged into the dojo by father for our usual "training" session. He showed me a kata that was done perfectly, despite his being drunk. I tried to do the kata, picking up the first half quickly. When I tried to do the second half I tripped over one of the empty sake bottles in the dojo, despite doing my best to keep the dojo clean he always managed to litter the bottles around the building.

When I fell he beat me. Like he always did. This time was different though. He hit me with the sake bottle in his hand. The bottle broke over my head, miraculously keeping me free of cuts. I wasn't so lucky on the second strike.

The jagged edges sliced my face. Creating a gash from the tip of my eyebrow, just over the bridge of my nose, across my left eye and to the middle of my cheek.

I stared at him through my right eye and watched his eyes widen as he realized what he'd done. His eyes slowly clearing of the alcohol and bringing back the worried eyes that used to look at me back when I was little and he'd read me bedtime stories.

For a moment the father I once knew had come back to me...and I almost wanted to stay and make it work. Help him with his problem. Almost. Mother's lifeless eyes came back to me and I was finally sure of what I was going to do.

This was the last straw. I stood, albeit shakily, and covered my eye with my left hand. I walked slowly to the dojo doors and leaned against the door jam, I turned to him and simply said, "I'm leaving and I'm never coming back."

I went to the bathroom and tried to patch myself up the best I could. After that I made my way to my room and packed my backpack with all my valuables. Namely a few sets of clothes and the black bracers mother had made for me.

(-)

I left that day and I never once looked back. Even now, 8 years later, I don't regret anything I did. Though for a long while I blamed myself for everything that happened. If I hadn't been born father wouldn't have turned to alcohol. If I hadn't pushed mother to divorce father she'd still be alive.

Eventually, after visiting a couple shrines and learning under their masters I admitted that there wouldn't have been anything I could've done at that point in time. It wasn't my fault I was born, I had no control of the situation. It wasn't my fault mother had died, I was only thinking about what would be best for her, I didn't know.

That's what most of the masters said. They advised me against revenge and told me to heal myself before returning to civilization.

I remember sitting in one ofthe room one of the shrines had lent me for the duration of my visit. I had sat there, tracing over the freshly formed scar on my face. I went over what the healer had said, "The scar will remain, use it as a reminder of the past and never forget them, this way you will never repeat the mistakes of those around you." The healer had also said the eyesight in his left eye would be impaired. In laymen's terms, I was legally blind in that eye.

Being blind hadn't bothered me that much. Being blind in my left eye gave me the ability to see auras much clearer with that one eye. It was the fact that father's last moment of abuse had not only scarred my face, that I could live with, but my eye. There was a jagged line that ran the length of my eye, and it truly creeped people out, hell, it creeped me out until I was used to it twoweeks later.

I traveled the world studying every form of meditation, shiatsu, and martial arts I could. It took 2 years before I was satisfied with what I knew. I finally decided to settle down, but it wouldn't be in Japan. I didn't want to return to my birth place if only for the fact that it held bad memories I didn't want to face.

I started school in Colarado, a state on the western side of America. I passed all my classes with flying colors and graduated in the top 5. I went to a college that was centered around computers and mechanics and got my degree.

...I'm sorry, I never got around to introducing myself.

My name's Ranma Daimyo. I'm 22 years old. I can do a lot of things normal people can't. Like see auras, produce ki blasts, jump thirty feet in the air, and render someone immobile with a single touch.

And you know what? For a really long time, I had myself convinced that I'd outrun my past. That I'd never see anything regarding my father ever again. Kami, how wrong I was...

To Be Continued...

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