Ranma 1/2: Localization Part the Second
fanfic by Logan J. Goodhue (foxboy2000@hotmail.com)
07 June 2001
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FIRST FIC ALERT
This is an attempt at a ham-handed localization of the Ranma 1/2 story to the American Wild West. Seriously. Hey! Stop laughing! Um, wait a sec, it's supposed to be comedic... So, go ahead and laugh, enjoy any WAFF's that show up, and give me feedback, please!
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Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 characters, etc. are Copyright and TM Rumiko Takahashi. Characters appearing in this fic who are *NOT* obviously from the Ranmaverse (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) are copyright 2001 Logan J. Goodhue, most notably Xi Mei-Ling, Master Xiao Xien, and any self insertion I can't resist putting in. (I'll try to avoid the temptation, really!) Any real people in the fic have been dead for a long time, so they don't care and are public domain/fair use, anyway.
A special note on ethnicity: In order to keep the confusion to a minimum, "Indian" in this fic refers to "Native Americans," and "Hindu/Hindi" refers to natives of India. I am attempting to be sensitive in the use of epithets, slurs, etc. (i.e., I ain't using 'em unless the CHARACTER would, and only if I can't dodge it any other way!) In the interest of fairness, most, if not all, of the tribes I will be using are made up of whole cloth, so I don't embarrass myself by having an Apache act like a Seminole or some such thing.
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Seated around the coffee table in the parlor, the Tendollar family was discussing the telegram, its contents, and their significance.
"Fiancé?!?" Anne said incredulously. "What's all this about a fiancé?"
"Now calm down, Annie," Cassandra said soothingly. "Why don't we hear Father out first?"
"That's easy for you to say, sis," said Naomi. "You're practically engaged to Doctor O'Neill anyway."
"Girls, please!" Sam said nervously. "This was all decided long ago. My friend Gene and I were scouts together in the War of Secession under the same commanding officer. We had both studied various forms of unarmed combat together, and didn't want them to disappear from the earth. So, we decided to marry two of our children, to carry on the tradition of my father's tribe, the Muskakur."
"Then why," Anne spit out, "are you telling us about this for the first time, the day our supposed fiancé is due to arrive?"
"Heh heh heh…" he chuckled lamely. Changing the subject a little, he continued. "Anyway, my friend Gene and his son have spent the last ten years traveling across the country, improving their skills! Why, they've even been to New Orleans!"
"New Orleans?" Annie asked, incredulously. "What's so great about going to New Orleans? It's not like they went to China or anything, right?"
"Well, I suppose you're right about that," Sam conceded, "but, well, taking ten years to train in anything is rather special, don't you think?"
A calculating look crossed Naomi's face. Thinking a bit, she turned back to her father.
"So what's this Robin Sayerton like?" she asked. "Is he at least good-looking?"
"I have no idea," he said genially. "I've never met him." Looking around the room at his thunderstruck daughters, he realized he was in trouble.
In unison, his daughters reacted.
"WHAT?!?"
"Daddy, how could you?"
"Dad, this is going to cost you."
"Oh, my!"
Realizing his error, Sam Tendollar did the only thing he could do. He cried. Immediately, Cassandra embraced him and began the long task of calming him down.
"Shh, Father," she said. "It will be all right."
Just then, a knock was heard at the front door. Springing up, Sam shouted for joy.
"That must be them!" he exclaimed, all tears forgotten.
"I'll get the door, Dad," said Naomi, getting up. "It's my turn anyway."
Sweeping towards the front door with her father in tow, Naomi put on a false smile. She felt that she should at least pretend to be glad to see her potential fiancé. She opened the door, then immediately wished she hadn't. Standing before her was a great, big . . .
"BEAR!!!!!!!" she screamed as she turned and ran. Her father followed very close behind; so did the bear. "Do you know this bear, Dad?" Seeing her father's enthusiastic head shake, she added with a touch of venom, "So bears just show up every day, right?"
The merry chase ended in the parlor, when the bear's previously unnoticed burden awoke and tapped it on the shoulder.
"Dagnabbit, Paw! You're scarin' 'em senseless!" the buckskin-clad figure said. Stopping, the bear set its cargo down in a chair and stood back.
"And you are?" Sam asked incredulously.
"I'm Robin Sayerton," she replied glumly. "Sorry 'bout this."
Tears welling up in his eyes, Sam embraced Robin. "Oh, Robin, what a great day this is!"
"Oh, he is cute!" Naomi said, then blinked. Looking closer, she saw something wrong. Reaching out to touch it, she encountered a softness on Robin's chest she wasn't expecting. "Daddy, 'he' is a girl!"
Blushing furiously, Robin muttered softly, "Um, could you not do that?"
Meanwhile, Sam was in shock. What was going on? What was this his daughter was saying? Why was a bear sitting on his sofa?
"Some fiancé this is!" Naomi exploded. "Couldn't you have made sure your friend had a son before you engaged one of us?"
"But he said he had a son…" Sam trailed off. The tears were beginning to flow again.
"Do you see a son here?" Naomi asked hysterically. "Do you ?" Unconsciously, her hand was still examining Robin's chest.
"Um," Robin said, "I really wish you wouldn't do that."
Anne extricated Robin from her father's death-grip and her sister's probe and took her aside.
"Hi," she said, smiling. "I'm Anne Tendollar. Wanna be friends?"
"Um," Robin replied cautiously. "I think I'd like that."
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Robin had come to on her father's shoulder. No, that wasn't right. He had come to on his father's shoulder. He glanced around, and noticed that he was in a rather nice house, and that his father was still in bear form. Therefore, the residents of the house were panicking. He tapped his father on the shoulder.
"Dagnabbit, Paw! You're scarin' 'em senseless!" he hollered. Hearing his voice, he realized he was still in girl form. Damn. If these people were the Tendollars, then his father had screwed up their first meeting. His father reached up and set him down on a couch in the well-decorated parlor. The unusual activity for a bear had startled his hosts, so he took the opportunity to examine his surroundings. The parlor was fairly typical, if more tasteful than most, with decoration that seemed to come from someone's military past. Ignoring the doodads for now, he turned his focus on the people in the room.
Three girls and a man surrounded him. The man was about Paw's age, and obviously a half-blooded Indian. That must be Mister Tendollar, Robin thought. The two eldest girls were in rather conservative dresses, and their youngest sister was in the somewhat daring attire of loose jacket and trousers. All of the girls were beautiful, but each in a different way. The eldest was graceful, with long auburn hair tied in a loose ponytail over her shoulder. She seemed to give off an aura of kindness, compassion and warmth. The middle sister had a rather severe look with her brown hair done in a straight style that ended at her jawbone. She just radiated ice and a mercenary air.
The third sister, however, had a look that set Robin's hormones to racing. Her hair was a black as a raven's wing, and flowed straight down to the small of her back, where It was loosely tied with a blue ribbon. Her attire was perhaps a little scandalous to the rest of the world, but on her it looked right. Robin felt the energy he had come to expect off of people who had studied the combat arts, but a little inexperienced. He was in love. Maybe this arranged marriage thing could have worked out, he thought, if only Paw had thought to get some hot water before we came.
He was shaken out of his reverie by Mister Tendollar's voice, asking him who he was.
"I'm Robin Sayerton," he replied. "Sorry 'bout this."
Things devolved quickly, with Mister Tendollar hugging him and babbling about something or other. Things further got weird when the middle daughter flew off the handle and started fondling Robin's chest. He blushed furiously.
"Um, could you not do that?" he muttered softly. Embarrassed, he was too numb to realize what was going on, until she fondled his chest. Again. "Um, I really wish you wouldn't do that."
Things were looking dismal, until the youngest daughter extricated him from her father's death grip. She pulled him away from the ball of spite and angst of which he had formerly been a part.
"Hi," she said, smiling. "I'm Anne Tendollar. Wanna be friends?"
"Um," Robin replied cautiously. "I think I'd like that." Gee, she sure is pretty when she smiles, he thought.
Anne led him on a tour of the house, showing him where the important things were, and telling him about some contraptions around the house. His curiosity was piqued by the running water in the kitchen and the indoor outhouse.
"How does that work?" he asked pointing to the huge chamber pot with a huge box on a pipe over it. "And, what is it?"
"It's called a flush commode," Anne said, embarrassed. "My father has helped a lot of inventors in this area, and one of them made this for us. It keeps the, um, waste from smelling up the house. It's really quite sanitary."
"Oh," Robin said. Embarrassed himself, he decided to get out of the situation. "My Paw said your family ran a gym. Can I see it?"
Relieved at the chance to avoid the topic they'd been on, Annie took him out the back door to the gym. They walked through a quiet garden with a large fish pond. Robin stared, knowing that he and that fish pond were going to know each other very well. He shivered slightly.
"What's wrong?" Anne asked.
"I have this . . . thing about water," he said cautiously. "It's nothing major, but I'm a little skittish about large pools, lakes, whatever."
Poor girl, Anne thought, she probably can't swim, either. Their wandering stopped as they reached the large building behind the house. It was a combination of gym, stables and bathhouse. They entered through the stables and Anne stopped and talked to the three horses there.
"Those are some nice horses," Robin said. "What breed are they?"
"Well, Butternut here," she said pointing to the palomino mare she was standing next to, "is a Quarter horse." She pointed to a smaller, chestnut mare across the aisle. "That's Wildfire, a Morgan. And this," she said walking up to a snorting black gelding, "is Diablo, a Mustang."
"Huh," he said intelligently. "Well, they certainly look well-cared-for."
"Thanks," she said. "We all take the time to keep them happy. Daddy says it's part of our heritage to care for animals, and I don't want to disappoint him. Well, on to the gym!"
Stepping into the next room, they entered the gym. Robin whistled a low note of appreciation. The set-up was nice, and everything in the room made sense. Well, almost; Robin couldn't quite figure out what that thing in the corner that looked like a tree with its foliage cut off was. Seeing his look, Anne supplied the answer to the unasked question.
"That's a training apparatus Dad bought in Chinatown," she said. "We haven't quite figured it out yet, but I'm sure it will help. As dad says, the single most important tenet of the Muskakur combat arts is, 'Hey whatever works!'" She raised her shoulders in an expansive shrug and winked. They both laughed, Anne giggling and Robin chuckling.
"That sounds like something my Paw would say, too," Robin replied dryly.
"Really?" Anne asked, curious. "Do you know the Muskakur arts?"
"Among others," he said. "Do you wanna spar?"
"Sure!" Anne replied.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would greatly appreciate some "C & C" on this one… I've worked out the analogues of just about all of the normal Ranmaverse, except Ryoga. So, here's a chance for your voice to count for something. Should I have Ryoga be Meiji-era Japanese, or convert him to an American, as well? He's the only character I could see as remaining unchanged, but I also want him to fit the setting. . .
As a further note, the name Muskakur comes from the Japanese musabetsu kakuto ryu, which means School of Indiscriminate Grappling or Anything-Goes Martial Arts. Sorry there was no fight this time, but next time may well have two or three... And that's just with Anne (Akane) and Robin (Ranma)!