This piece of fanfiction is set post Volume 38 after the failed wedding of Ranma and Akane. Please do not offer any comment regarding timing or schedule, because that is the Ranma 1/2 series greatest weakness. There simply is no way to know how long Ranma and his kin have been staying at Tendo-ke, neither is the number of days their adventurous trip to China took. If you have a problem with the time line of this story, call it an alternate universe story, or just ignore the story altogether and read something written by someone else.
WARNING! THIS STORY DOES HAVE ADULT CONTENT.
There is clearly some OoC in this story, but I have a different understanding of the characters in Ranma 1/2 than most other readers have, so you are hereby forewarned. I think that the largest changes I have made to the standard characterizations are to Kasumi and Nabiki; these changes from the usual perception are likely to grind on the nerves of the exceptionally sensitive. You are advised to consider what Takahashi-sensei has said in her interviews about the Tendo and Saotome clans; issued in her chart of who is in love with whom, while ignoring what she has said about Ranma's sexuality. There is contradictory evidence to what I feel were her commercially motivated claims about Ranma's sexuality in the published story.
I have made slight changes to the influence of a Jusenkyou curse. The curses now have slightly greater influence on the minds and thinking of its victims than it did in the original story. In my carefully considered opinion, hormones are all but impossible to ignore no matter what the source of those hormones is, be the source from your genes or from a magical curse. Hormones are hormones and that is all there is to it. The influence of hormones for most people is both subtle and powerful and very few folks are able to recognize those influences prior to age fifty.
Return to Normalcy Chapter 01: Return from Jusendou
Saotome Ranma turned eighteen on his way home from the Battle of Jusendou. He, his father, Genma, and his fiancée,Tendou Akane, traveled together. Hibiki Ryoga, no surprise here, got lost on the way back to Japan. They lost track of him during the first week of the trip.
The trip home was pleasant at first. They were eager to go home and glad to turn their backs on the confusing horror of China. Jusendou, which fed the springs of Jusenkyou, where Ranma and his frenemies had acquired their curses, had been a horrifying place. Even worse, heavy rains came and flooded running all of the springs together into a single lake. This made for some very dangerous swimming. Ranma, his father and even Shampoo, were denied their cures. The springs had formed a lake with waters which bore every curse found at Jusenkyou. You could go in as a human and then clamber ashore as hideous and dying chimera. The curses one could acquire at Jusenkyou were easily blended and several combinations of them were not remotely viable. Ranma was brave, not stupid, besides, he had finally decided that he could live with his curse. He had learned that being female had some very distinct advantages over being male.
The guide assured them that the water would eventually go down, and that the springs would return to their ordinary virulence shortly after that happened, but it would take a month or so for the springs to normalize themselves. Ranma's little impromptu expedition did not have a month. It would take them a month or so just to reach the coast. They had no choice but to turn their backs on the place and head for home.
They were footsore and weary by the time they left the Bayankala mountains. They were also starving, being short on both money and lacking favors from the locals. In fact, the locals themselves were scrounging for every calorie they could get their hands on. China was still a nation of want in those days. The trip home to Japan was miserable and seemingly interminable, but they survived it once again.
By the time they reached the port of Tsingtao on the eastern seaboard of China, Ranma knew right down to his bones that he would never go back to Jusenkyou. It was an awful place; he was as done with it as he could get. There is nothing like a prolonged hardship to make one fully appreciate a so-called curse. He decided he needed to focus on the good parts of his aqua-transexuality, rather than its drawbacks. Not only was it for the best, it was now necessary insofar as he was concerned. China had never been anything but a source of misery for him and his.
He and Akane would simply have to learn to live with his sex changes. If she could not tolerate his bouts of being female, then she would simply have to marry someone else. He knew right down to his bones that Akane would be unable to find a more manly husband than himself. He did not know of anyone able to kill an entity like Saffron as he had.
"Femboy I ain't!" He muttered half aloud. "Taro wouldna lasted a minute in that fight."
An achingly tired Akane responded with a puzzled stare. After a moment of staring into his eyes, Ranma could see that she decided not to dispute his claim. They kept trudging toward the coast.
The trip across the Sea of Japan was rougher than usual. Everyone on the ship, including the most seasoned members of its crew, got seasick. Ranma was never so glad to leave a ship in all of his young life as he had been when the ancient tramp steamer docked in Fukuoka harbor. He and his companions were so eager to go ashore that the crew had to wave them off the handrails. They were about to jump onto the dock-an illegal act-which was also dangerous to normal people. Even though Ranma and his party were anything but normal physically, the sight of security guards the first thing that dissuaded them. Even Akane could have withstood the puny nine meter drop onto the pavement without so much as spraining an ankle, but the crew became very irate; Genma advised them to not be so eager as to cause trouble for themselves. Even though Ranma decided that his sleazy father had made a good call, not taking that jump had been one of the most difficult things he had ever done.
Once ashore, Akane telephoned Nabiki who in turn wired them the money buy tickets for the Tokaido Shinkansen back to Tokyo. The only thing that Ranma found discomforting about that was their fellow passengers were wearing their Sunday best, while Ranma and his companions were wearing clothing that was much the worse for wear. Their clothing had taken a hard beating from the exposure they had suffered in the remote rural regions of China. They looked like a group of tramps among wealthy people on that train.
As short as the trip between Fukuoka and Tokyo on the Shinkansen train is, Ranma felt like it was yet anther interminable trip and his stomach growled and grumbled the entire time. So did the stomachs of his father and Akane. No one of the three had been able to get the amount of food they needed for some ten weeks. Ranma, for his part, very much regretted not being able to stop off in Busan for dongnae pajeon, the Korean version of seafood okonomiyaki.
Busan's style of okonomiyaki had great quantities of green onions in them-he smacked his lips and his mouth watered as he sat back and dreamed about them. To his utter amazement,Nodoka, Nabiki and Kasumi were waiting for them when the Shinkansen stopped at its Tokyo station. He was so happy to see them that he nearly squeezed them to death. He was also very happy to see that Kasumi and his mother had fetched along great hampers loaded down with food.
Ranma, his father and Akane wolfed down food from the main station all the way out to Nerima. Ranma was so full that he appeared to be pregnant-so was Akane-yet the three of them were still hungry. It had been that rough of a trip. Ranma was so happy be home where he could get as much food as he could eat that he broke down into tears-as did his father and Akane. The three of them were thrilled beyond words.
Much to his dismay, however, his mother and father had plotted with Soun Tendou to force him and Akane to marry within a single week of their return from China-which was well before he and Akane could recuperate from their excessively torturous trip. He and Akane were still very badly rattled from the horror of what had happened.
Ranma considered that particular trip to be almost as bad as the Nekko-ken training had been. In fact, he rated it just short of being that bad and that is saying something, given the level of his ailurophobia. The overall level of torment had been higher, but not as intense as the Nekko-ken training. He and Akane needed several more weeks to recuperate, but no, their parents insisted on throwing a wedding for them, even though neither he nor Akane were ready to be married, physically, mentally or emotionally.
It all ended in tears, of course. Nabiki had invited all of Ranma's betrothed, both real and imaginary, to the affair. It turned out to be a formal brawl rather than the Western style wedding the ceremony was intended to be. Shampoo and Ukyou both threw explosives around. Kuno Tatewaki, actually drew steel on Ranma. Kuno Kodachi had arrived wearing a black wedding dress. Happosai drank what he thought was sake, but was actually water from the Spring of Drowned Man. The explosives caught the dojou on fire and burned most of it and gave Ranma a concussion.
He woke up in the wreckage of the dojo wondering what had happened. What he could remember after several days effort did not make him happy in any way. In fact, it left him speechless with anger. He had a feeling of outrage that bordered on what he might have felt if a gang had managed to hold down his girl-half and raped her. Every time he thought about it, he gritted his teeth so hard that it gave him a headache. He consumed so much willow bark tea every day that his stomach rebelled. He discovered a day later that aspirin would give him such sever heartburn as well. He was obliged to switch to acetaminophen to kill his pain.
The only good thing to come out of it was that he and Akane started to get along better, but that was a case of her joining up with him against the rest of the family-especially Genma and Nodoka, but Soun and Nabiki as well. Even Kasumi, to a much lesser extent, became an opponent in the struggle. Truth be told, she never liked Ranma or any of the other members of his family. He did not blame her because he could not. His father was a worthless layabout and his mother was touched in the head.
Kasumi was both a Christian and a Buddhist, which in Japan, meant that she was a Catholic and a Buddhist. She did not approve of her own family or the way they made their living. She certainly wanted nothing to do with Ranma and his family, but she was determined to play the hand Divine Providence had dealt her. She was a stoic at heart, but she could only be pushed just so far, and the failed wedding proved to be the final straw for her.
She had started allowing her disapproval show through her saintly facade. She still cooked and cleaned, but she no longer hesitated to let the occupants of her home know what she thought of them. They were sinners all, and Ranma, he came to realize, was one of the worst in her eyes. He did not really understand why at first, but that is what she considered him to be. She let him know about it in no uncertain terms numerous times.
Kasumi also gave Akane a bad time whenever she felt ruffled. Ranma decided that it was inevitable that she would have run out of patience with everything that happened at Tendo-ke. After all, so many outrageous and bad things had happened during the two years he had been there that even the neighbors were given to talking about the sad state of the Tendou demesne. This embarrassed the entirety of the household, Tendo and Saotome alike.
Add on to all of this the fact that he and Akane had missed almost twelve weeks of school-without having given prior notice or even making arrangements of any kind-their Chinese misadventure had cost them an irreplaceable year of schooling-something that was literally unforgivable in Japan. Ranma finally figured out that it was Akane's academic loss was what really set Kasumi off.
In Japan, the mother of the family is expected to see to it that their children do well in school. Kasumi had given up her own education to look after her two sisters. Now, thanks to Ranma and his furry oaf of a father, Akane was about to fail her second of three years in high school. The Japanese school system was not set up to accommodate students who failed to attend class. They were expected to show up on time, work hard and do well. Those who fell behind were allowed to quit and get by on their own as best they could. Falling behind on schoolwork was a seen by everyone with any self-respect as a disaster. He and Akane were so far behind that not even the harshest of private cram schools or, "juku," could help them overcome such a lengthy absence.
In educational terms, both of them were now on a reef of sharp rocks. Both of them would be ronin-or worse-part of the two percent of Japanese society who never graduated from high school at all. This was a hell of a note for a young man of eighteen to be dealing with. Not only was his education about to be cut off, that of his fiancée was about to be chopped off at the ankles. Even worse, it was most definitely his fault.
As far as Kasumi was concerned, this was all Ranma's responsibility to fix; she had a fair argument. This was, Ranma had to admit, a situation that could not be to tossed off lightly. Akane's education was something he held himself accountable for, but Kasumi's derision did not help matters one bit. He decided that it was time to rethink his and Akane's future. What to do? He had no clue and he was not about to go to his father or even his prospective father-in-law with that kind of question. Nabiki would have to do; he desperately hoped that she could point him and Akane in the right direction.
He knocked at Nabiki's door. "Come in, Ranma-kun."
"How did you know it was from me?"
"From the way you knock on a door, of course. Why the long face?"
"Because your sister and I have a problem that I cannot figure out how to solve."
"Oh, really? When did you figure that out?"
"Today at school."
"Hmph! No surprise there. What did they tell you?"
"That I should start looking for a construction job or something."
"That is undoubtedly good advice, but you are not a member of a union, are you?"
Ranma shook his head. "No, I'm not and I don't know anyone who is a member of a union either."
"See what happens when you stick your head up?"
"You get hammered."
"In Japan you do. This country is not made for people like you, Ranma. Now you know why your father created the Umisen-ken technique."
"I can't see myself making a living as a thief."
"Me either. All I can see is you going to jail for thievery-or something worse."
Ranma sat down on the floor and started rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. Nabiki threw her cold coffee on him forcing him to become a girl. "You could make a living as a hostess, you know."
"Don't tempt me."
Nabiki broke out in raucous laughter. After her paroxysms subsided she asked. "I thought you hated being a girl?"
"I decided that I could live with it while I stood in the rain watching the springs of Jusenkyou run together into one big lake. I am comfortable with the idea of being a part-time girl now."
This made Nabiki blink. "Have you said anything about your acceptance to Uncle Genma or Dad?"
"Are you crazy? Sometimes I think that the best thing I can do for Akane is to pretend that my curse is locked and runaway with Ukyou."
"With Ukyou?"
"Well, at least she's a friend of mine-or was a friend. I think that Konatsu is finally starting to make headway with her now, though."
"Hot damn, Ranma-kun. You are desperate, aren't you?"
"I am running out of time, Nabiki! There is so damned little of it left that I don't know what to do. The bad part of it is, Akane is in the same exact jam. If it was just me I would blow off the whole thing, but it isn't just me. I want to find work, so I can at least help Akane pay for cram school. Which is really what she needs right now."
"Now you know why I blew the wedding up."
"Yes, I do, but it got completely out of hand, Nabiki-chan."
"I agree. It did get out of hand. I did not count on the madness of the social circle we happen to be in. I apologize."
"Okay, but it's time to move on. We've gotta do something about getting Akane through school."
"Have you discussed this with Akane?"
"No, why?"
"Because, we can find a way to pay for it all. You could work twenty hours a day and I could scheme and scam every dime to be made from here to Juuban, but it would all be for naught if Akane is not interested in schoolwork."
"If she could just learn bookkeeping that would help," Ranma said. "Then she could help me keep the dojo in the black at the very least."
"That's based on the assumption that you two eventually marry."
"You're right about that. I don't even know if she still wants to marry me or not, let alone help me run a martial arts school."
"You need to focus on the art of self-promotion if you are going to succeed at running a school, Ranma. Daddy never bothered and you see where we are now. He and Genma are living under the delusion that you and Akane will sort it all out for them."
"Gee thanks, Nabiki. That's just what I needed-more pressure."
"Them's the breaks, kiddo."
"Damn Shit-daddy's eyes! He got me into this situation."
"Yes, I agree with you on that, Ranma. He and my father should have done a lot more to prepare you for all of this, but they haven't. They simply fly by the seat of their pants. Each day is a completely new day for them. They have made a habit of living without a reference to the immediate past. To them, today has no connection to yesterday and no connection to tomorrow. It's just get up and do whatever you need to do to get by that day."
"And that has gotten all of us where we are now."
"Yeah, but remember this, Ranma. You gotta start where you stand. If you don't like where you are, pick a direction and start moving that way."
"Spoken like a true martial artist, Nabiki-san," Ranma replied in a dry tone of voice. "I wonder how you picked that up?"
"I never said that the martial art is not useful, it just isn't popular enough to be self-sustaining. You will have to hold down a job of some kind while you take on students."
Ranma found himself making an ugly face. "What makes you say that?"
"Hah! Just look around you Saotome-kun. Do you see any men who look like they practice martial arts? This is Nerima, a place famous for its martial artists, yes?"
"Yeah, so?"
"What percentage of the population here do you think actually practices the art?"
Ranma was stumped by this question. After some thought he answered, "I'm guessing something like five percent."
"Not even close, Ranma-kun. It's more like one half of a percent. In the rest of Japan that number drops even further. Nerima is the exception, not the rule."
Ranma opened his mouth to respond, but Nabiki held up her hand for silence.
"How many of Daddy's students ever earned a black belt?"
Ranma had to think about this for a while. The purists disliked giving out tokens of accomplishment in the art. Most of them wore white belts until they had accomplished something significant, but that was a poor match for those who wanted to know for a fact that they were making progress in their studies. "I don't know, ten?"
"Try two."
Ranma felt his heart fall into the pit of his stomach as Nabiki continued.
"The turnover rate for students this day-in-age is horrendous. If the school starts with thirty students at the beginning of a given month, it will be lucky to have two left at the end of that same month. Over the course of the years, it gets worse and even more demoralizing. People lose their jobs; they move; they get divorced; they get married; just about any excuse is enough to encourage them to quit studying the Art, and who can blame them? Learning the Art is so damned repetitive that it gets boring after a mere week."
Ranma shook his head at this because he knew that Nabiki was speaking from long hard experience. "Why did you quit?"
"I decided that I liked boys-boys tend to shy away from a girl who can kick their asses with one hand tied behind her back. I have warned Akane about that repeatedly."
Ranma's face showed his feelings.
"The real trouble with the art is that we no longer need it, Ranma. It isn't necessary to our survival the way it was prior to the Meiji Restoration. It just isn't!"
"Well if you could provide enough motivation ..."
"Oh, sure! Start a war just to make your school profitable."
"I wasn't thinking about it that way. There are the police and the..."
"Soldiers don't need extensive training now-a-days. They rely on their rifles and machine guns. The cops have their own schools run by their unions. That leaves the intelligence agencies and good luck getting into that market. Daddy tried for years and he got no where."
"So, your saying that the school itself will lose money."
"No, I am saying that you will have to work your ass off everyday to make it pay. Your turnover in students will be quite high. You will have to go out of your way to make friends with and be an influence on your students, that's all."
Ranma felt a cold wind pass through his soul and then run up his back. He was not all that good at making friends under the best of circumstances, let along being friends with a person that he had to teach. His opinion of his teachers at Furinkan went up by several points, whereas before today, he had looked upon them as his opponents. Now he was obliged to consider them as colleagues. "It's not fair."
"Life is never fair, Saotome-kun. You of all people should know that by now."
"Oh, I know, but here I am having worked my ass off for years to master the Art and learn everything I can know about it and making it worthwhile comes down to things that are completely unrelated."
"In a way, this is partially mine and Kasumi's fault as well."
"Huh?"
Nabiki shrugged her shoulders. "Had she or I decided to marry you, matters would have been very different. Kasumi does not have the head for business that I do, but she is the most community oriented of us three. You could have counted on her to keep a steady stream of students coming into the dojo. Had it been me, you would have been far better off because of my skill with money, but that is not what happened. We stuck you with Akane. She is so much like you that she can't cover your weak spots. The two of you have the same strengths and weaknesses. There's no way you can cover for each other."
"So how did your Dad get by while your Mom was still alive? Didn't they live off of the dojo?"
"Sure they did, but Mom was so much like Kasumi now that you would not have believed it."
"Wait, you said Kasumi is now. She wasn't always like she is now?"
Nabiki shook her head. "No. She was a lot more outgoing and carefree before Mother died. She only became obsessed with housework and our educations after Mom was buried."
Ranma visibly winced as he felt his moral sag even further. What have me and Shit-daddy done? Why did Tendou-san agree to take the old man and me in? Did he not realize that he was bringing destruction down on his entire house? Why are we still here? How could he do such a thing to his own daughters? A sharp pain in his right shin brought him out of his plunging reverie.
"Yo, Saotome, Don't go there, man. Come back to the land of the living."
"Sorry, Nabiki. I was just doing some long overdue thinking."
"What do you mean, Saotome?"
"I'm wondering why creeps like Pop and me are doing here, that's what."
Nabiki howled at the heavens with her laughter. She even started hooting the way Kodachi always had. Just as Ranma began to fear that Nabiki had lost her mind, she stopped abruptly and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.
"Welcome to reality, Saotome-kun."
"It's not really all that pleasant, is it?"
"No, but it is funny."
"I don't see how you can laugh at this, Nabiki-chan," Ranma said in an aggrieved voice. "Had it been me, you and your father would have been long gone."
"No we wouldn't. If our roles were reversed, you would have been a woman and unable to oust us, just like I have been unable to oust you two."
Ranma was now seeing his father and himself through the eyes of the Tendou daughters and he did not like what he saw. The vision plunged him into the depths of yet another horrific guilt trip.
"Oh, don't make such a long face, Ranma-kun," Nabiki said in a cheery voice. "It isn't your fault. I can't even blame that worthless patch of fur you call a father for this mess. It's all Daddy's fault. He is fascinated with the vision of the combined "Anything Goes School of Martial Arts" that he can't see or even think of anything else."
"It's not worth the price..."
"Speak up, Ranma-kun. I couldn't understand what you said."
"I said it's not worth price we paid," Ranma all but shouted. "It certainly wasn't worth the price I paid when I endured the Nekko-ken training."
"Well, I have to disagree with you there, Ranma. On the face of it, it is not such a terrible idea. I mean, who wouldn't love to go to a school where all the best techniques are used and taught? No one, right? Well, no one who is serious about martial arts at least."
"Okay, but look at where we all are now! Good techniques are not supposed to bring misery on the people who know them. They are supposed to make earning a living possible."
"Oh, really? How do you think that they do such a thing?"
"I don't know the answer to that. I mean, I have been going along all this time expecting Shit-daddy to explain what it was all about, but he never has!"
"Open your eyes, Ranma. Sniff the wind and then tell me what you senses are saying to you. What do you do when you hafta have money fast?"
This brought Ranma up short. The real answer was that he would steal money when he absolutely had to have it. The world abounded with nogoodniks, and they were his chief prey, but he never robbed anyone within Nerima proper. He was always careful to go to other Tokyo districts to do that sort of dirty work. Genma had cautioned him against "Shitting in his own mess kit." Ranma said as much through clenched teeth.
"What was that again, Saotome-kun? I didn't quite understand what you said."
"I go out and rob somebody who deserves to be robbed. That's what I do."
"By deserving to be robbed you mean..."
"I mean that they got their money by robbing other people. Usually they're just street thugs with little to no training. Most of 'em rely on knives and clubs. None of that kind are eager to talk with the police so they don't ordinarily turn me in."
"Uh-huh."
Ranma had to think about the look that Nabiki was giving him for a minute before he thought the matter all the way through.
"You mean...that Shit-daddy and your old man have been..."
Nabiki did not answer verbally, but she gave Ranma a very sunny smile.
"How could they have been..."
"Well, not all of what they do is as honest or honorable as what you have done, Ranma-kun. Stolen panties are a growth industry in Japan. Happosai makes tons of money off of his silky darlings."
"You gotta be shittin' me!"
Nabiki shook her head. "Not one single gram, Saotome."
"Aw, man!"
"It gets worse. Happosai cases the places where Daddy and Panda-man intend to pull jobs as he runs around stealing panties. For him, the panties are merely targets of opportunity. The serious money is in the other stuff his two middle-aged students steal."
"Such as?"
"Oh, they repossess luxury automobiles, fast boats and yachts. Even airplanes on occasion. When they're doing that, they spot other stuff to steal that they never turn over to an insurance company or bank."
"Airplanes?" Ranma practically screamed the question at Nabiki. "Which of them knows how to fly?"
"I think you call him 'Shit-daddy' more often than not."
"My old man knows how to fly?" Ranma felt his eyes widen. Nabiki was visibly amused.
"Oh, yes. He's a pilot. Not a particularly daring pilot, but he can get the job done."
"Now I know why he...That bastard! Please explain why I'm the one feeling guilty. You keep the books for all of this, don't you?"
Nabiki gave Ranma a cat-got-the-canary grin for an answer.
"Then please explain to me why it is so important that the Art be taught by Akane and me? Why should we be burdened with the honest living part of the deal?"
"Innocence is a lot like virginity, Saotome-kun. Once you have lost it, it's gone forever. So long as you have it, remains a salable virtue."
Ranma had trouble making a logical connection between virginity and the necessity for he and Akane to run the dojo. "So Akane and I are virgins and that means we are the ones who...Oh, wait a minute. This doesn't have anything to do with sex, does it?"
"Not really, no. It has to do with the baby blue eyes in your dewy pink souls, Ranma-kun. You and Akane are well above suspicion. Neither of you have ever been on police radar. The old men, however, are a different story. So long as the two of you are innocent of violating the law-barring traffic violations and property damage-then you are pretty much home free."
"I don't get it. How were you guys making a living before Pops and I showed up?"
"We were living off the biggest score that Happosai and his merry band of two ever pulled off. Happosai got greedy-or maybe Daddy and Genma got greedy-and that's how the ancient panty thief got sealed up in a cave for all those years. That was just shortly before your Dad married your mother-so far as I can tell from the records I found in the attic."
"Let's see, that would mean that the Saotome clan was prosperous at one time, but it didn't last even as Pops took me out on the road for a yamagomori that lasted for ten years. When we came here, you guys were struggling to make ends meet, right?"
"Bingo, Ranma-kun. Ya see, it isn't what you make, it's what ya save that matters. Daddy and Furball had some investments go south on 'em and living expenses have eaten up what remained of that big score. Happosai came out of hiding just in time to save our assets."
Ranma really and truly did not like hearing this.
"My, what an ugly face, Ranma-kun. You look just like that when you sit down at the dinner table."
Ranma gave out a snort of disgust. "I don't like bein' beholden to that lecherous old fart, is all!"
"He does have his uses, you know."
"So I'm beginning to learn, Nabiki-kun." Ranma paused to shiver. "But that don't change nothin'. My skin wants to crawl right offa my body just the same."
"Well, it does make me want to get a quick bath, so why don't we discuss something more constructive?"
"Let's take a break. I need time to rethink some stuff."
"Okay, Ranma-kun. I'll be right here when your done. I'm not going anywhere until after I have taken my finals."