Chapter No. 1
"Which way to China?"

A normal day in Nerima ended early in the morning, when Ryoga Hibiki stumbled into town.

Ryoga was a nomadic martial artist serving under no master, which was a roundabout way of saying that he was lost. The first person that he caught sight of was a girl in shorts jogging down the vacant lanes. Though her body was feminine in shape, it was rather toned and there were distinct muscles on her arms and legs. Also, she had blue hair. Ryoga had never, in all his sixteen years, seen anything like the spectacle before him.

The girl apparently noticed Ryoga gawking at her for she stopped and said, "You look lost."

An accurate summation.

Ryoga began to stutter. "W-Would you…"

She wondered what he was going to say.

Of course, she had had quite enough experience with boys to know most of them were hopeless perverts. Possible requests from the boy in front of her (Not that she would accept) could be "Date with me," or "Kiss me," or maybe even "Sleep with me."

But Ryoga didn't look the type. There were some people in the world who looked as if they didn't know what a G-String was or what lingerie was used for or where babies came from and Ryoga was one of them. He had missed out on a lot of the rites which boys normally went through in puberty, mostly because he didn't know where to go. Goodness knows what his parents must have put up with. At any rate, it probably wasn't all too surprising that Ryoga ended up asking the girl where China was.

"China?" she repeated, a bit surprised. "Are you running away from home or something?"

Ryoga meekly replied that it was none of her business.

The girl said nothing for a second or two, and just as Ryoga was about to excuse himself and walk off, she burst out:

"Would you like to have breakfast at my house?"

"Why?" Ryoga asked. Then his stomach growled.

"What's why," the girl smiled. "My name's Akane Tendo, by the way." She extended her hand to shake his, Western style. "Pleased to meet you," she said in English.

Ryoga took her dainty (compared to his) hand. And as he looked into Akane's beaming face, his heart gave forth a loud thump that shook his very soul.

The Tendo dining room was unaccustomed to accommodating adolescent boys and Ryoga could sense it the moment he sat down to eat. Mr Soun Tendo had three daughters and none of them were in the habit of bringing boyfriends home. Eldest daughter Kasumi was too busy acting as surrogate mother and had no time for men. Second daughter Nabiki would never have dreamt taking her a boyfriend home when he could take her out to an extravagant restaurant free of charge. And Akane was just, well… no.

You might very well wonder why Akane invited Ryoga in. The truth is, Ryoga had been so bedraggled and exhausted from countless days of wandering the country that Akane had been moved to help him. She had never seen anyone as pathetic as Ryoga in her life. She didn't look down on him, only felt charitable to him as she would have been to one of her girl friends in need. Kind at heart, Akane felt pleasure when she noticed Ryoga smiling shyly at her in gratitude, and this was quite a new thing for her as she often didn't take notice of boys at all.

Soun pretended to ignore Ryoga's presence but he pricked his ears when Kasumi said, "Who's your new friend, Akane?"

Akane replied that Ryoga was lost and that he needed to get to China as quickly as possible and oh, daddy, can I keep him? The last part Akane didn't actually say but Soun, being a good father, naturally assumed that she implied it.

Nabiki, ever the practical-minded one, asked Ryoga if he had any money.

"Um," he smiled nervously. He didn't want to mention that he was as good with money as he was with a compass, which was not too good at all.

Before Ryoga could adequately answer, Akane glanced at the clock on the wall and figuratively jumped out of her skin. "Oh, I'm going to be late for school! I'm going!"

"Wait!" Ryoga shouted. "You didn't tell me the way…" Akane's footsteps receded into the distance, "…to China," Ryoga finished glumly.

"It's all right," said Nabiki genially. "If you give me 5,000 yen I might be able to give you some directions instead."

Ryoga sighed. He missed Akane already.

"Oh dear!" Kasumi exclaimed suddenly. "Akane was in such a hurry I forgot to give her lunch."

"I'll take it to her," Ryoga offered eagerly and before anyone could refuse him he plucked up the lunch box from the table and set off to goodness-knows-where.

Kasumi sat and watched him.

"Does he know where he's going?" she asked doubtfully.

"No," Nabiki responded tartly.

Nabiki was generally right about things, not that Ryoga knew it.

Akane and I share a bond no one can possibly comprehend, Ryoga thought ecstatically. Even with my sense of direction I will easily find Akane because love guides the way!

He promptly walked into a trash can.

"Are you all right?" a concerned voice asked Ryoga as he got to his feet and shook off the rubbish that was clinging to him.

There was nobody in the world who could get depressed quicker than Ryoga. "Of course I'm not all right," he answered miserably. "I thought I would be able to find my way but I couldn't." He sniffed, and wondered whether he would ever see Akane's dear face again.

"Do you know roughly where you're going?" the owner of the kindly and concerned voice asked. Looking up, Ryoga discovered that it was a tall, fit, bespectacled man, a few years his senior, who was beaming down at him in a benign and gentle manner. Ryoga instantly felt at ease.

"I don't know," he confessed easily. "I'm looking for Akane Tendo's school…"

"Ah!" The man's glasses flashed. "I'm the Tendo's family doctor, Tofu. You're not intending any trouble for Akane, are you?"

Ryoga shook his head.

"Good," said Dr. Tofu. "I'll take you to Furinkan High, then. That's where Akane goes."

Furinkan High was a co-educational school. Ryoga learned this when he walked past the gates and spotted Akane beating up a few boys on the front lawn. More than a few, actually. Probably more than three-quarters of the school's male population was out there in the front being knocked over like dominos by Akane's deadly right hook. Ryoga turned to ask Dr Tofu what the meaning of this was but he was already gone.

Turning back to watch the action, Ryoga decided that it was both fascinating and shocking to watch Akane fighting off boys with consummate ease. This rather heinous display of violence ought to have been off-putting for anyone with feelings for Akane, but it only attracted Ryoga more to her. He wasn't the only one feeling that way. Although the Furinkan boys had their reasons for ganging up on Akane, it rather seemed as if their situation was either masochism or a substitute for another form of strenuous physical activity involving Akane.

The Furinkan boys did not hate Akane. In fact, their feelings were positively amorous. However, Furinkan boys have a reputation (a true one) of not being too bright and they were convinced that knocking Akane's lights out would win her heart. Every morning before school, Akane's daily routine involved fending off against boys of all shapes and sizes with only the aid of her school satchel. Needless to say, it kept her in her remarkably good shape.

As the bell rang out for class to begin, Akane was left facing off with only one last boy. The others had been felled, groaning and clutched their various injuries. Deftly stepping over the sea of bodies, the last boy waved his wooden training blade and roared, "It is time, Akane Tendo!" He was tall and broad-shouldered Kendo student. From the way he handled his blade, it was obvious he knew a thing or two about his sport.

It was at that time Ryoga decided to intervene. A variety of thoughts had been going through his mind but at last it occurred to him that there was a possibility that Akane might get hurt and that she was late for class.

He yelled out her name.

Akane, who had been settling into fighting stance, immediately swung around.

"Ryoga?"

One of the felled boys weakly grabbed onto Akane's leg as she was distracted. "I love y-" He was instantly silenced when Akane slammed her foot into his mouth.

"Ryoga, what are you doing here?" Akane demanded.

"Indeed," said the Kendo student, "what relationship does there exist between you and Akane?"

Ryoga had watched quite enough of Akane fighting but he still had no idea what it was about or what she was fighting for. He wanted to make it clear that he didn't want to fight her himself, so he said simply, "Akane forgot her lunch."

It was the wrong thing to say, apparently.

"What?" the Kendo student boomed. "You are living at Akane's house? Did you not heed my instructions: You must defeat Akane in order to date her?" He blinked. "And how is it that I, Tatewaki Kuno, have neither hear of yourd existence nor laid my eyes upon you? What name do you go by?"

It was during Kuno's ramble that Akane managed to whisk the baffled Ryoga inside the school building unnoticed. Thus, leading the entire school population (They were watching through the windows) to assume that she and Ryoga were an item.

Akane stopped for breath only when she was inside the empty locker room and behind closed doors. She would have yelled at Ryoga for the fiasco outside but she knew he was ignorant of her daily routine. She breathed through her nostrils, counted slowly to ten and, without opening her eyes, said, "Thank you for the lunch, Ryoga."

It heavily disheartened Ryoga to see Akane have to apply so much of her self-control for his sake. Ryoga should have been happy about that; Akane seldom calmed herself down when she was in a passion and even then, only for a select few. But Ryoga never saw the good side of circumstances like that. He apologised to Akane.

He didn't know half the school was eagerly listening through the door for what Akane would say next.

"No, it's all right." She opened her eyes, gazing briefly at her shoes before shutting them tightly again. "It's just…"

Ryoga (and the school population) waited with bated breath.

Akane could contain herself no longer. "I HATE BOYS!"

She didn't even look at Ryoga as she stormed out of the locker room, fortunately not bumping into any fellow students to unleash her wrath upon. Her lunch lay forgotten on the floor. Gingerly, Ryoga picked it up in an effort to dispel the sudden feeling of numbness that had come upon him. What had Akane meant? Well, it didn't take much theorising about. She had been abrupt, loud and to-the-point. The numbness faded, slowly being replaced by yet another wave of melancholy. Ryoga sighed heavily.

"You and Akane had a fight, huh?" a girl said sympathetically.

Ryoga dimly realised that he was no longer alone in the locker room. Quite the opposite, in fact. He didn't know where there was room to breathe being surrounded by such a large crowd.

"So how long have you and Akane been going out?" a boy asked.

Ryoga blushed. He was about to explain that he didn't have a girlfriend, thus he and Akane were not going out, when suddenly he noticed the crowd clear off and there was a wooden Kendo blade pointing at his throat.

"What is your name, you lout?" Kuno asked him in a low voice. The sword quivered dangerously in his grasp.

Even if it is wooden, nobody likes to be on the receiving end of dangerous gestures with a sword. Ryoga was no different. He could see a battle imminent, one that he would be quite firm about winning. Ryoga had heavily disliked Kuno the moment he had seen him in the yard fighting Akane.

The onlookers noticed Ryoga reaching slowly for his umbrella which he kept with his hiking pack. "My name," Ryoga growled as he flashed his canines aggressively, "is Ryoga Hibiki."

The handsome, grim-set features of Upperclassman Kuno curled into a cruel smirk. "Well, then, Hibiki," he said slowly, "now that I know your name, it is time for you to meet an honourable death."

He swung his sword swiftly.

"You shall not have Akane!"