Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Ranma ½. I do have a few of my own characters in here though, so I would appreciate it if you asked before using them.

Notes

This was originally done for NanoWrimo in 2007. With this story I made the word count!

Characters form Ranma ½ and Naruto may be out of character

While in the Neko-ken, characters roll their rs (I am not going to spell it that way, since it is to hard to write/read that way)

"Hi" Speaking

'Hi' Thinking

Painful Pasts and New Beginnings

By: Shlandria

Chapter 1

Pain, unimaginable pain. It was excruciating, there was nothing but pain, agony. There was no thought, no other feeling, nothing. Her world was pain. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, her voice long gone. Her body was twisting and turning, writhing in agony. However she did not know this, nor would she for some time.

How did she get here, how long had she been here, why was she in such pain, how could she get away, get help? Those thoughts and many more had flown through here mind at one point in time; however that was before her world became agony. Now there was no room for such thoughts, only the white hot pain.

At first there had only been darkness, then a damp smell, like a cave dug from the earth, then the smell of fish, dead fish and other fish smells. After that she saw eyes, yellow and silted eyes looking at her, scaring her, there were so many eyes. Then she heard a terrible noise, and before she could identify it, she felt pain. Something was biting her, clawing her, she tried to get away, but she couldn't move. Now she was terrified out of her mind in a world of agony, being eaten alive and bleeding profusely.

Somewhere in a tiny corner of her mind, she knew she would die, possibly soon. If she didn't die from blood loss, she would be eaten alive. There was no one to help her. She had cried when she realized what was happening to her, when the questions were there, but like her voice, her tears were long gone. She had lost hope, when she lost her voice and tears, this would be her grave, and no one would even know where to find her.

He was wandering through the woods, thinking. Thanks to his pops his life was royally messed up. He needed a way out, an honorable way out. If he were anyone else he wouldn't have cared so much, however honor is what he values above all else. He wanted a way out without damaging anyone's honor. Who was he kidding? He was so desperate; he was contemplating destroying his own personal honor, which he held above even his family's, if it meant salvaging everyone else's.

Why did he hold his honor even above his family's? That was simple enough to answer; his father had all but destroyed his family's honor with his actions. Why value honor so much? That was easy too. Because it was all he had that was of any value.

He was smarter than most thought; he was simply acting to buy time, time for a way out of this mess. Currently he has two fiancés, one wife, by her village's law only, and a crazy girl, no make that a crazy rich girl, all vying for his hand in marriage. All with legal claims, well except for the crazy rich girl. Did he love any of them? Did he even like them? Even he wasn't sure.

Not only did he have that mess to deal with, he had rivals and enemies coming out of the wood work. So far though, only five of them hung around for any length of time to bother him the most. Two are back in china, and he hopes they will stay there. And the other main ones are mostly just annoyances.

Now he was walking through the woods, trying desperately to find a solution. No one was there to distract him, simply because he had told them he was going on a training trip for a week and would be back, after that, he had made sure he was long gone before they even thought of following him or looking for him. Despite what they all thought, when he wanted to keep from being found, he could do so.

He was 17 and would be 18 in a month, was (4'10") tall, Japanese, had black hair, his bangs hanging slightly in his blue eyes, the rest tied into a pigtail in the back with a dragon's whisker. He was wearing a red Chinese shirt and black silk pants tied at the ankle. He also wore slipper like shoes on his feet.

As he was thinking about his problems, he caught a whiff of something disturbing, not only that, but his sixth sense was screaming that something was wrong, extremely wrong. Since it was a scent that started the alarms going off in his head, he decided he needed to identify it, and then possibly investigate. First though he needed to hide, because he wasn't sure if it was even safe at the moment.

Once he was sure he was well hidden, he did something most thought impossible, he activated the neko-ken, since his sense of smell was far grater like that than if he were to use his ki to enhance it.

Once the neko-ken was activated, he began sorting through the smells coming from the surrounding forest, automatically categorized them and filing them away until he came to the one that didn't belong. 'Blood, and human blood at that, not good, it's fresh too, this is very bad. That means someone's in trouble, better be careful though, I don't want to walk into an ambush.' He thought as he remembered doing something similar, not long after he had gained control of the neko-ken. He was just lucky his sensei was there to bail him out that time.

Slowly, cautiously, he moved towards the scent of blood, every sense on high alert, every nerve taught and ready for action. As he moved closer, he continued to test the air, trying to discern whether it was a trap or not, and what condition the person was in. Soon he was close enough to tell that it was not a trap, this however only worried him more. 'I can smell two people one male and one female, the scents are similar as well, that means that they are related. The male is older, possibly father and daughter or uncle and niece and only one of them is still here, the female. The male left already, days ago by the smell of things.' He thought to himself.

Now he moved quicker, intent on finding the girl. He knew, without a doubt, the blood he could smell was hers and he was worried. It didn't take him long to find where she was. When he got closer however, he began swearing under his breath at the other scents he was picking up. 'Cat and fish, now I'm really worried, no one is as stupid as pops, right? No one else would teach that technique, would they?' He thought worryingly.

Once he got to the spot the scents were the strongest he knew someone was that stupid. Whoever it was had not only covered the pit the girl was in, they piled dirt on top to ensure that it would be extremely hard to find. In fact if it weren't for the heightened senses he got from the neko-ken, especially the sense of smell, he would never have found it.

He immediately began digging with his ki claws and hands, until he had the pit uncovered. The smell was unbearable; however the sight that he found was worse. There was a girl in there, younger than him, but not by much, maybe by a couple of years. The only way he knew this was her scent and size.

She was a bloody mess, and there were cats crawling all over her. What was worse, was the fact that he could see bones from where they had torn into her. She had already lost a great deal of blood and her breathing was ragged and slow, worse yet was that her heart beat was weak and erratic.

She needed immediate medical attention. He assessed her in mear seconds and was in the pit throwing the cats off of her, growling feraly at them when they tried to approach her, and attacking and killing the ones that ignored him in favor of their meal. Once she was free of cats, he picked her up as carefully as he could and leapt out of the pit and set her down so he could tend to her wounds and keep her stable enough to get her to a hospital.

His main concerns were the wounds showing bone and the deeper lacerations. He set to work cleaning those and binding them, thanking Kami he had been taught to carry medical supplies wherever he went. While he was doing this he was trying to determine where the nearest hospital was, unfortunately, it was over five miles away, by foot, she would never make it. Even if he got her to a road and found transportation, or managed to find a phone and call for an ambulance, at best, she would die in route. This of course prompted some colorful curses as he tried to find a way to get her the help she desperately needed on time.

Once he had her wounds bandaged up, he automatically grabbed some blood clotting pills and food pills and forced them down her throat, as he was doing this, he remembered where exactly he got them and realized that he could take the girl there for the help she needed. It would be risky getting her there on time, but that was the only option he could think of that might have a chance of her living. Without another thought, he began to create a gateway to where he needed to go.