After tailing Akane long enough to be sure she headed home, Ranma set off for Doctor Tofu's office. The "For Sale or Lease" sign with its contact names and phone numbers was clearly visible in the light provided by a street lamp. After making sure he would be unobserved, Ranma slipped into the small fenced in area next to the front door. Crouched out of sight, he counted three up, four over and pulled the loose tile from the ground. Nothing but dirt.

'Damn it,' Ranma thought as he replaced the bit of stonework. 'I shoulda known Doc wouldn'ta left a key here if he was plannin' to sell the place. I bet the realtor's got it.' Further berating himself, he added, 'It was a stupid idea anyway. The minute I turned the lights on, somebody woulda noticed and maybe even called the cops.'

Quickly leaving the area, Ranma realized that despite coming up with Plan 'A', he hadn't thought up a Plan 'B' just in case Plan 'A' failed. He knew he didn't have enough money for even a cheap hotel room. He might have enough for a youth hostel, something that Hiroshi had described to him once. Unfortunately, he didn't know where in Tokyo one might be. Ranma pretty much had resigned himself to sleeping outdoors despite the unseasonable chill and threat of rain. As he'd told Akane, he'd camped out in worse weather.

While looking for a good spot to pitch his tent, Ranma realized that once he got through the night, he would still have the same problem the next day. Money, or more specifically, the lack of it. The loan from Cologne was nearly gone and he would at some point have to pay it back. There was no way he'd run out on the debt because that was something that Genma might do.

Growing up, Ranma never handled money except for coins he found in the street. On the few occasions when money was exchanged for something, his father... former father... always took care of it. When he was nine, Ranma found a wallet with twelve thousand yen in it and was amazed when Genma threw it into the nearest mailbox without emptying it first. He'd said something about money not being important to a true martial artist. It was one of the few times he'd been proud of the man after the Cat Fist training.

Looking back, Ranma admitted to himself that Genma had been relatively flush at the time. They hadn't been flat broke the entire ten year training journey after all. So where had the money come from? There had been a pattern, what was it?

A rumble of thunder in the distance snapped Ranma's attention back to the most pressing of his problems. A good campsite was something that required careful consideration. The right choice meant waking up dry in the morning and the wrong choice, which could be just a meter away, would leave him soaked and female. That last point merited more notice than it would have a week earlier.

Finding a decent looking spot, Ranma made camp and slid into his tent ahead of the first raindrops. After a brief downpour, Ranma found that he'd chose correctly. Satisfied that the rain would be no problem, he returned to thoughts of money.

Where had Genma gotten his money? Theft seemed a strong possibility at first. He'd certainly stolen enough stuff at Happosai's direction, not to mention stealing Ukyo's dowry. But the raw effectiveness of the Yama-Sen-Ken and the Umi-Sen-Ken gave the young man pause. With those skills, Genma could easily steal anything he wanted. They were simply that good.

But the old man hadn't used them. Until the fight with Ryu Kumon, those techniques had been sealed. 'As far as I know', Ranma thought cynically. After further consideration, Ranma dismissed his doubts. There had simply been too many opportunities for Genma to have used those techniques for his own benefit. The seal on them had been sincere.

What could (or would) Genma do to earn money? He'd been Doc Tofu's assistant until the Doc had disappeared during the Moxibustion Weakness incident. So it wasn't like his ex-father was completely unwilling to work.

Ranma figured the old man had actually earned much of what little money they'd had. But how? Other than menial labor, what use could someone get out of Genma? The only things he was good for were eating, sleeping and martial arts.

Ranma realized his own skill set was pretty much limited to those three areas and it bothered him. Once things were settled, that would have to change. But short term, he needed money more than he needed additional skills. But how to get it?

Rain rattled down on his tent as Ranma considered and discarded possibilities. He would not use the Yama-Sen-Ken or Umi-Sen-Ken to steal. Stealing at all was out of the question. He was too proud to beg. He would earn his money even if he had to resort to waitressing.

The answer came to Ranma with perfect clarity and absolute conviction. The key wasn't martial arts, it was fighting. Mere fighting. No questions of honor, no worries about 'fighting fair', not even a reason other than to earn some cash. Just fight and get paid for it. Whether or not his former father had earned money that way was irrelevant.

The more he thought about it, the more Ranma liked the idea. The practice would be nice and it would certainly be easy enough. Even finding a fight wouldn't be too difficult. Ranma figured he'd go to the nearest seaport and follow the first group of drunken sailors he found. A fight, planned or not, would be inevitable. A paying fight might be tougher to locate, but not impossible.

Sure that the immediate future was taken care of, Ranma fell asleep to the drumming of raindrops on his tent.

-----

Sunday morning dawned clear and cold. The sun shone brightly as if to make up for the previous night's storm. Ranma awoke refreshed and still male, if slightly chilled. For a brief moment, he was at peace. Then he remembered the reason he was sleeping in a tent instead of the Tendo home. Shunting his negative emotions aside took only a brief focusing of his will.

Ranma quickly broke camp and began walking south. A stop for breakfast left him with a little over seventeen hundred yen. Realizing that might be a cheap lunch and dinner if he ate in restaurants, Ranma stopped at an open-air market and converted his remaining cash into a few days worth of supplies. He knew Kasumi would have made better deals than he managed, but didn't feel cheated.

As he walked, the idea of using his girl form to scam gullible guys into buying food for him crossed his mind, turned his stomach and crossed right back out. Cutting through the East Komaba campus of Tokyo University, the idea came to him again. While wrestling with it, Ranma got whapped upside the head by an errant Frisbee®.

"Sorry!" an overweight young man called from a good twenty meters away. Ranma picked the piece of stray plastic off the ground and negligently flicked it back to its owner. The disc floated gently into the man's hands without him needing to reach for it.

Intending to put the incident behind him, Ranma looked around to regain his bearings. The sheer number of flying discs, boomerangs, Frisbees, CD's and other flat tossable objects were impossible to ignore. Obviously, something was up. Ranma briefly thought about stopping to investigate and reluctantly decided to press on. While interesting, it wasn't helpful. Ranma continued walking south.

"Is this thing on?" an amplified voice said from across the rugby field before continuing, "Why yes! Yes it is! Good afternoon ladies, gentlemen and disc golfers of all ages! This is Jun Junnosuke, along with my partner Eimi Aoki, coming to you live from the rugby field on the East Komaba campus of Tokyo University for Q-Rock's Second Annual Disc Golf Challenge!"

"And a lovely day it is Jun. The sun is shining, there's not a cloud in the sky and there's just enough wind to make it interesting for all the disc golfers here for the Challenge!"

As the two announcers continued their professional patter, Ranma smirked in spite of himself. He knew what a challenge was and it didn't involve tossing a piece of plastic from Point A to Point B. His thoughts began to wander. 'Prince Herb? That was a challenge. Ryu Kumon? A challenge. Saffron?' Ranma's mind seized momentarily. Saffron had been something beyond a challenge. He didn't have words to properly describe what the fight with Saffron had been, had meant, to him.

"...and with almost two million yen in cash and prizes up for grabs, we're bound to have lots of Q-Rock fun!" the male half of the announce team said excitedly.

Ranma snapped his head around at a speed that would have given a lesser man whiplash. His full and undivided attention was directed toward the stage that had been set up between the rugby field and the school track.

"But let's not forget our sponsors. Q-Rock's Second Annual..."

-----

Ranma stood with a few hundred others along the baseball field's warning track. Women congregated near the foul poles while the men stretched between the power alleys. Each had a disk with their name written on the underside, the men's blue, the women's pink, emblazoned with Q-Rock's emblem and call sign. The target was a pole, strung with chains and holding up a large basket, sitting on home plate. The ten closest men and women to the pin would be entered in the tournament. Anyone landing in the basket would receive a free set of golf discs from Kobiyashi's Sporting Goods.

Ranma hoped the twenty minutes practice time he'd had would be enough. He not only needed to be one of the closest to the pin, he needed to nail the shot so that he'd have competition legal discs to golf with.

Eimi Aoki counted down, "Three... Two... One... THROW!"

Ranma whipped his disc downrange and was over the center field fence before it went 20 meters. Splashing himself with cold water he'd left there in advance, he raced toward the right field foul pole. Jumping back over the fence, his pink disc joined the assault on the target just as his first throw clanged off the top of the target pole and ricocheted away.

'Hope that wasn't mine', he thought as he watched the second disk's flight. A graceful arc, it was dead on target all the way until it collided with another disc at the last instant. Ranma's heart skipped a beat as his throw got knocked into the front of the basket to join two others and the interfering blue disc sailed off for parts unknown.

Success. Perhaps a little less than honestly obtained considering he'd taken two attempts, but success none the less. That maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have to fight anyone for money, that he wouldn't have to pervert his Art, was far more important than the twinge of guilt he felt.

When the radio announcers called out the names of the ten closest men, Ranma's wasn't on the list. Disappointment crossed his then female features as the prize money in the men's tournament was twice that of the women's tourney. It would also mean spending a few hours female, something he would rather have avoided.

Necessity won out over convenience. When 'Ranko Tendo' was called, Ranma set aside his mixed feelings and walked calmly toward home plate. His emotional control was good enough that he only dislocated three fingers on the hand that tried to grope his ass instead of grinding the offending member into bloody pulp.

-----

As the sun headed for the horizon, Ranma counted his winnings. Between incredible amounts of raw skill and a nearly vertical learning curve, he joined the tie for third with his last shot and won 26,000 yen. His win of the throw, run and catch competition earned another 5,000 and dinner for two at Skylark's. The hole in one toss from the roof of the library to the entrance of the math building was worth two tickets behind home plate for a Giants game. Ranma wasn't a baseball fan, but he figured those who were might pay a decent price for them.

Overall, it was a good day. He'd almost managed to forget why he needed the money in the first place.

-----

On his way to Yaizu, Mousse spotted a petite redhead carrying a large pack. Since he knew only one person who fit that description, he stopped flapping his wings and glided downward. He'd heard conflicting reports on recent events in Nerima and wanted a few facts from the 'wild horse's mouth' as it were.

Acknowledging Mousse's existence, Ranma walked a few paces from the edge of the road and quickly put a kettle over a small fire. While waiting for the water to heat, Mousse observed his rival. In his opinion, Ranma was far too calm and collected for someone on a mission of vengeance.

The water turned out slightly hotter than necessary when Ranma poured it. "Geeze Saotome, you del-" Mousse began angrily.

"Don't call me that," Ranma interjected forcefully as he poured the remaining water onto his own head.

"Huh?"

"My so called parents disowned me when I told them what happened. That's why I left the Tendos. There is no Ranma Saotome. Just... Ranma." He hung his head and sighed heavily. The sooner he adjusted to his status as ronin, the better.

Mousse rubbed his temples. Apparently, he was the first person from Nerima to catch up with Ranma. He would much rather not have been. There was no telling how Ranma would react to the news. "Sao- Ranma. Do me a favor. Shut up and listen for thirty seconds while I tell you what the hell's happened the last two days." Ranma bridled, anger clearly visible on his face and in his aura. He opened his mouth to speak, suddenly shut it, and motioned for Mousse to continue. "You're still a Saotome. Your mother isn't head of your clan, so she didn't have the authority to disown you."

Ranma's head jerked up and he locked eyes with the young man before him. He desperately wanted to believe. It would make his life much easier if what Mousse said was true. It wouldn't change the past, but the future, the future as he wanted it to be, would become just a little more possible.

His natural pessimism kicked in. The scene at his parent's house, both the real and the imagined, ran past his mind's eye. How could that have led to Mousse's statement? Ranma's aura echoed his confused emotional state before fading away. "Then why..." Ranma began before trailing off. Understanding could come later, Mousse clearly had more to say. "What else?" he asked.

"According to what I heard, your father filed for a divorce first thing this morning on grounds of mental instability. Oh, and Nabiki is missing. No one's seen her since Saturday night."

-----

End Part 8

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Author's notes: Sorry about the ridiculously long delay on this. I received an e-mail that took me to task for not going into graphic detail about the rape this story is predicated on. It took about three weeks to stop seeing red. After I calmed down enough to write, I found I'd lost my groove.

With me, once the writing groove is gone, it takes a long time to get it back. To be honest, it isn't all the way back yet, so don't be surprised if it's quite a wait before I put anything else out. (And don't be surprised if it's something other than a chapter of this story.) But let me say that this story hasn't been abandoned and it will be completed eventually. I ask for your patience.