Author: Leopold Goenitz
Email: Leopold_Goenitz@hotmail.com
Author notes: I'd like to thank you all who have posted your reviews
regarding this story of mine. I'm not sure if you realize how much it
means to me to see that people actually read what I write and even liking
it. I've always thought I was unimaginative and unfit to write anything
even remotely decent...but I guess I was wrong. Thanks.
PS: Sorry for the delay, but first I had to rewrite this thing for five times,
then my hard drive somehow misplaced the final version of this chapter
before I could release it, and so I had to rewrite it completely...
Also, as on the behalf of few readers request, I'll be keeping Shampoo,
Cologne, and Mousse's names in their original forms after this chapter,
instead of using variations like Xian Pu and such. This is to avoid any
headaches I might get from them and from the future readers. Sorry if
this is inconvenience to some of you.
Disclaimer: "The government denies the existence of this file, what you
see does not exist. What you're reading is just a figment of your
imagination..."
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(Ranma 1/2 - Alternative universe multicrossover fanfic story)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
When Fates Collide
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Chapter 2 - Rush Hours
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The sun was rising and the people of Tokyo were all slowly waking up into
their daily activities. To some it meant eating breakfast and going to work,
school, or some things like that. Not many could claim that they started
their day by being thrown out from a second story window.
Ranma could.
"Hey! What the hell do you think yer doing old man?!" the boy shouted
indignantly as he shifted his body into proper landing position, touching
the ground with his stance making him resemble a cat ready to pounce on
its prey. He had been lucky that he had awoken when his father first
pulled him off the floor before he threw him out from the window,
otherwise he might have landed quite differently.
"Its time for training boy," shouted the balding man from the window
where Ranma had been thrown through. He quickly climbed through the
opening himself and followed his son down to the backyard with surprising
dexterity. "You've become too slack lately and I see it as my duty to make
sure you stay fit!" he shouted as he pointed his son with a finger before
taking his own more traditional stance.
Ranma snorted through his nose and stood up while looking at his father
through his narrowed eyes. "Look, pop, you haven't been able to beat me
ever since we took up these bloody curses. What makes you think that
you could do it now?"
"Silence, foolish boy!" Genma bellowed and tried to tag his son with a
swift flying kick, but quickly found his foot kicking nothing but air. "Wha-?!"
"I warned you old man," the boy said while appearing directly behind his
father's back. "And while I don't practically care whether you'll learn your
lesson or not, I'm going to pound it into your skull once more..."
Genma snarled angrily at his son's uppity and tried to backhand the
obnoxious boy, but before he could come even close, his wrist had been
caught and was given a rather strong squeeze that was preventing his
circulation into that particular hand.
"This grows boring," Ranma commented and before his father could try
any other foolish act, he twisted the arm he was holding, violently, and in
the process made the heavier man to flip off his feet and slam to the
ground with pained look on his face. "Had enough yet?"
"...respect your elders..." Genma muttered as he tried to shake the sudden
dizziness out from his head. There was no proof whether he simply was
too proud, or too stupid to admit that his son's claim was true, but it was
certain that he wouldn't probably be able to say it even if his life
depended on it.
"Have it your way then," the boy sighed and promptly lifted the older man
from the ground by grabbing his collar and belt. "Let's just end this
stupidity!" he shouted and quickly threw his father towards the koi pond
before the fool could clear his head enough to start struggling.
The pond gave a satisfactory splash as the fat man submerged
underneath its surface, with large mass of white and black fur sprouting
from its center only moment later.
"Insolent son!" said the small wooden sing Genma had been able to whip
out from somewhere again as he slowly climbed back up from the pond.
"Yeah, yeah...whatever," Ranma sighed and waved his hands in casual
manner before taking more serious stance this time. While he had been
throwing his father around so far, he knew that the old man could pull out
some nasty surprises if he wanted and thus made him an adversary that
should not be underestimated at any point.
And so the two charged and met in mid air with both trading blows like
there would be no tomorrow...
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It had been early in the morning when the youngest Tendo daughter had
left for her daily morning jogs, she said they helped her to think. But
today it didn't quite work the way it should have.
Ranma, the obnoxious perverted boy that she had met yesterday, just
wouldn't leave her mind alone, no matter how hard or how far she ran, he
would always be there, waiting at her home. 'Her' home!
"I'll get back at that bastard tonight!" she mentally swore to herself while
trying to stay confident that she could actually do it. It had taken quite an
effort from her to convince herself that the boy had simply caught her
with surprise and that she hadn't been ready when he attacked her, but
she had done it. As how else the boy could have beaten her, right?
That was when her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of something
slamming against a concrete wall and the sudden bulging of the wall right
next to her, the concrete crumbling off due the sudden blow that had
occurred on the other side. "I warned you old man! I'm getting tired of
your crap and I want it to end!" came annoyingly familiar voice from the
other side of the wall.
"Ranma..." the girl muttered darkly and quickly jogged through the front
gates to see what had happened.
Leaning against the wall, a halo of an impact crater decorating his upside
down standing body, was Genma, in his panda form. It was quite apparent
that he was in great pain with the way his teeth kept clenching together.
"Get real old man, you should start to realize that you stand no chances
against me," spoke the boy across the backyard, dusting off his hands on
his slightly grained hakama pants that he had kept on during his sleep.
His robe top was off, thus leaving his torso quite clearly into the view and
thanks to the tight black sleeveless t-shirt he was wearing his well
muscled torso was almost like a needle into the eye for the youngest
Tendo.
"..." was all that Akane could get out from her mouth as she quickly
averted her eyes from his torso, her face blushing red, and quickly dashed
into the house. "I...I can't believe that... that... PERVERT!" she mentally
screamed as she continued to run up stairs and straight into the bathroom
where she intended to take a good, long cold shower to clear out her
thoughts.
She never saw her older sister, Nabiki, smirking at her rushing form in the
hallway. "I wonder if this has anything to do with our young guest..." she
spoke silently to herself and began to make way to the first floor,
intending to find out what had made her sister blush so badly.
Her answer came in the form of her family's younger guest who's current
attire quickly made her mind wander in the area she rarely let it go into,
but quickly shook it off and removed her eyes from his chest area to look
him into the pair of cat-like eyes. Her cheeks were slightly red.
"Huh? Something wrong?" Ranma asked as he caught the middle Tendo
daughter staring at him and then shake her head before laughing
nervously and waving her hands.
"Oh nothing, nothing at all, I'm just fine," the girl babbled almost
nervously and quickly walked past the boy and towards the kitchen where
she hoped to find something to calm down her nerves.
Ranma blinked at her behaviour but quickly shrugged it off. "Girls..." he
muttered and climbed up the stairs to the second floor to get his Chinese
robes, as he couldn't go anywhere outside the building without them
unless he wanted to be caught in the form he was.
But just when he was about to open the door into the guestroom he and
his father shared, the familiar tingle from last night came back to him,
much weaker than before, but still. It was like a pull, or a tug to certain
direction. He wasn't even sure what it was, nor whether it was good or
bad, all he knew about it was that it was definitely beckoning him.
"What is this..." he mumbled but stopped when the feeling suddenly
disappeared again. "Just what the hell was that?" he wondered out loud,
not moving for several moments until he remembered what he had come
there for. "Oh yeah, the robes..." he muttered and went into the room, his
mind putting aside the strange sensation for time being...
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Across the town...
Inside a certain small room that was located inside a medium sized
private home next to an old and traditional looking shrine, just over the
Juuban and Nerima district border, there was a young girl sleeping
contently with a blissful smile on her face. Her long black hair spreading in
a wide halo around her head with the bed sheets all tangled up in a mess
around of her body.
This scene would have remained unchanged if it hadn't been for the sound
of someone running across a boarded floor just behind the wall. Then
suddenly the door into the room burst open with small young boy, no
older than probably nine or ten, with short black hair rushed into room
and to the older girl's side.
"Onee-chan! Onee-chan!! Wake up, mom told that you'll need to get up
now!" the boy shouted while shaking the girl's shoulder.
"Huh...? Umm...go away, lemme sleep..." the girl mumbled and turned on
to her side, leaving the small boy glare at her back.
"Onee-chan, today's Monday," the boy said bit angrily, obviously trying to
hint something.
In response the boy's sister just grabbed the pillow and folded it around
her head while mumbling her reply, "...ummumm...so what?...just leave me
alone Sota...I wanna sleep..."
"Sleep? It's school day Kagome-chan! You'll be late if you don't get up
right now and get yourself ready!" the boy shouted and forcefully turned
his sister on her back again.
"...School?" the girl mumbled as if trying to connect the particular word to
something, her mouth working at the word as if trying to taste it, but then
her eyes blew wide open when it suddenly became clear to her. "School?!!"
she screamed and shot up from her bed while grabbing her alarm clock
that she had seemingly forgotten to set.
"Oh god, I'm going to be late from my English test!" she gasped before
jumping out from the bed and rushing out from the room and into the
bathroom.
The boy shook his head and sighed tiredly as he exited the room, giving a
short glance towards the bathroom door where he knew his big sister to
be getting ready for her day. He never understood why girls were so picky
about their looks and believed that he probably never would, and just let
the matter drop as he began to descend the stairs and into the kitchen
where his mother had already prepared the breakfast.
"Hi mom," Sota greeted the slightly over middle-aged woman with short
dark brown hair and gentle smile on her face. "I woke her up just like you
told me, but I'm not sure how long it'll be until she can actually get down
here."
His mother nodded and smiled at him. Then she turned her eyes up to the
ceiling with slightly tired sigh passing through her lips. "Sometimes that
girl makes me wonder..." she muttered quietly to herself, but then just
shook her head and smiled.
Sota looked at her with slightly puzzled look on his face, but then ignored
in the favour of the food that was laid on his plate.
Not too long after that there was a sound of someone rushing in the
second floor, the sound some incoherent muttering that was accompanied
by various shuffling sounds, and then the sound of running feet coming
down the stairs.
"I'm going to be so late!" Kagome repeated to herself for the hundredth
time today as she rushed to the kitchen table within her school uniform
that was consisted of white sailor shirt with dark green collar and similarly
coloured skirt that was ended slightly above the knees with white line
running horizontally near the edge of the hem.
"Please just give me my bento and I will get going right away," she said to
her mother and without missing a beat grabbed the small box, with light
blue wrappings around it, that her mother had been already holding for
her when she first came down the stairs.
Sota sighed as he watched silently how his sister dashed through the
room and towards the front door. "I wonder if I'll turn out to be the same
when I get to be as old as she is," he muttered and turned back to his
food. Kagome's fifteenth birthday was tomorrow and it made him slightly
uneasy to think the fact that the older she came, the less time she
seemed to have.
"I hope I'll never become a grownup," the boy thought and resumed his
eating.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"School?" Ranma repeated the word his father had just said to him,
looking at the serious looking man before him, or as serious as he could
look considering that he was a complete idiot. "Are you nuts? People
would notice me if I went into a public place like that!"
"Son, now look here," the bald man began calmly while crossing his arms
firmly across his chest. "You're going to school and that's final. As how
else do you think you could even hope to get to know your fiancées? Only
one here is Kasumi," he said and pointed towards the kitchen where the
mentioned girl poke her head through the doorway with that seemingly
ever present cheerful smile on her face.
"Get to know my fiancées?" Ranma repeated again, "Pop, that place is a
school, a place with lots of people stacked tightly into tiny rooms, with
everybody extremely close to each other!" Then he almost considered
lunging over the table and stuff the small school bag his father had just
given him into the old man's throat, but was satisfied to just slam it on
the table.
"While I might able to hide my features when were walking in the public,
but it's a whole different story when I'm forced to just sit around and be
stared by a bunch of students! I'd be discovered by the end of the lunch
break!"
Genma frowned admonishingly at his son, the boy's obvious point not
making through his thick skull. "Don't raise your voice to me boy! You'll
go to school and..." his phrase was left unsaid as his head was suddenly
thrown back, the last image in his memory being someone's heel being
introduced to his face.
"Oyaji no baka!" the boy ranted at his father after settling down his foot
on the floor again. "I might be stupid at times, but not _that_ stupid!"
This was the point where Nabiki decided to make her presence known, she
had gone upstairs to get her school bag after having finished with the
breakfast and was now standing behind the upset looking Ranma. "What
was that all about?" she asked.
The boy snorted as he turned to look at her and then turned back to look
at his father's prone form across the room, the fat fool's head had made a
small crack on the wall. "My old man had seen it as a great idea to sing
me to the same school as you and your sister, but after our little
'discussion', I'm sure he sees that it wasn't such a good idea after all."
There was a rather disturbing looking smirk on the boy's face, one that
revealed that his fangs were quite distinctively pronounced.
Nabiki quirked an eyebrow at this but left her thoughts unsaid after
recalling the last night's events. She made a mental note not to mention
that she had agreed to help his father to sing Ranma to their school last
night. The girl had been eager to find out the entertainment value he
might have brought up to the recently boring school, but after seeing how
the boy had expressed his opinion about it to his father, she decided that
perhaps it would be for the best if she too just dropped the issue and let
the school board know that he wasn't coming after all.
"Oh well, I still need to go to school and so does my sister," the older girl
shrugged and moved towards the hallway that would lead her lead to the
main entrance. "Just don't get into trouble while we're gone, ok?" she said
with small wink before disappearing behind the corner.
"Yeah, yeah..." Ranma nodded waved his hand at her as he moved
towards the open doorway that would allow him to step on the veranda.
He sat down on it with his hands and legs crossed, his thoughts
concentrated on the strange pull he had encountered twice already right
after arriving into this household.
There was nothing else in the world that bugged Ranma more than not
knowing something, the nature of his curse included. A human he wasn't,
of that much he was certain, but neither was he any animal like his father,
not entirely at least. Then what was he? A some sort of monster? Demon
perhaps?
"No, better not go there..." the boy shook his head to clear his mind of
such thoughts. He didn't want to consider the possibilities and allowing
them to wrack his nerves as long as he could not find the correct answers.
But no matter how much he tried, there was always a small part of his
mind that was constantly mulling over the matter, he wanted it or not.
Sighing deeply the boy raised his vision from his lap and looked upon the
serene backyard of the Tendo household, ignoring the depression his
father had made into the wall after he had thrown the fat fool into it this
morning.
He felt bored and he wanted to have something to do. While he had been
travelling with his father he had never felt the urge to actually do
something, Genma had always had some kata or new technique for his
son to keep himself busy with, but not anymore, now things had changed.
Drastically.
His father had very little to offer to him the ways things were going. The
old man could hardly keep up with him when he went full out and as far as
he had seen his father was not going to improve this situation anytime
soon. And so, he needed something to do to keep the boredom away.
He looked up over the walls and frowned. He hardly knew the
neighbourhood; perhaps it would be a good idea to get to know it a bit
better. "Yeah, that'd be a good idea," he thought and stood up.
Quickly dashing up to the wall, the boy jumped and vaulted over the wall
before continuing from there with a massive leap that carried him more
than thirty feet into the air and fifty in length, and thus allowing him to
cross over the street and land on top of the small private home across the
Tendos.
The boy smirked back at his performance, clearly satisfied with it, and
then continued to bound over to the next rooftop and then again to the
next, repeating this for countless times as he went on with his sightseeing
around the town, not looking for anything particular.
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A little bit to the west, approximately a few hundred miles or so...
There was a small rowing boat that was slowly making its way across the
China Sea. It had a single passenger, a young boy with long black hair,
white robes, baggy pants, and some seriously thick eyeglasses that were
obscuring his eyes completely when viewed from the other side.
The boy suddenly reared his head back and yelled in Chinese, "Xian Pu!
I'm coming for you, just you wait! I will not let you fall into the hands of
that outsider coward!"
Then a large passenger ship came through and rammed the boy's boat
into smithereens without stopping to notice what had happened.
"AAAARGH! This has to be someone's fauuuuult!!" the boy screamed
before he fell underneath the waves.
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"I must get out! I must get out!" screamed the voice inside Ryoga's head
as he rushed out from the small broken metal gage where the little
kleptomaniac girl from last night had locked him. He was still in his
female pig form, a cute little pink piglet with tiny legs that wiggled
desperately as she tried to escape from the large house.
Her greatest worry next to escaping was the collar she was wearing with
small golden name pad hanging from it. The word 'Charlotte' was
imprinted onto the name pad with small rose like figurations carved
around it. But as far as she was concerned her 'owner' could keep the
damn collar, she just wanted to get away from thus madhouse. The last
night's events inside the girl's room had disturbed his mind to the very
core, enough to change his views towards all that was normally
considered cute.
Never before in her life had she seen so much pink colour, she had been
afraid at one point that she might have fried a brain there, or so many
disturbingly cute objects that had framed the girl's room.
"Must get out! Must get out!" the piglet repeated the mantra inside its
head as it rushed through the expensively carpeted hallways, desperately
looking for an escape. She knew this all had to be somehow connected to
Ranma who just had to have his hands in the earlier misfortunes in her
life, as how else things like this could have kept happening to her?!
"Charlotte?" The piglet stopped when it heard the voice, the voice she
would never forget. It was the sound that promised humiliation and lots of
pink colours. "Where do you think you're going? I thought I locked you up
into the gage," the girl with the painstakingly pink dress said. "Oh well,
now I will just have to take you back."
"Oh god, NO!!" Ryoga mentally screamed and began to run as if a demon
from hell would be after her tail. And Azusa Shiratori could be accounted
as such in his books.
"No, bad piggy!" the girl shouted as she dashed after her wayward pet she
had just found last night. Didn't it know what was best for it? "Charlotte!
Come back to mommy so that she can take you back where you belong!"
"I'd rather go into hell than back in there!" the piglet thought fearfully as
it passed a corner after another. This scene replayed for some time, the
poor animal not realizing that it was running in circles until it suddenly
noticed that it had somehow managed to rush outside, and that it was
now standing admits what looked to be large number of black roses.
She looked back and noticed that he was no longer being pursued. With a
heavy sigh passing through its snout the little piglet began to wander
around in search for hot water, or would have if it hadn't been for the
sudden, chilling voice, that while unlike Azusa's, still held equally
disturbing quality to it.
"OOHOHOHOHOHOO!" laughed the haughty voice of the girl that appeared
before the small animal. She was approximately sixteen, long black hair,
green eyes, pale skin, and dressed into a black leotard that threatened to
cause a terminal nosebleed to the poor thing that was looking at her from
a very admirable viewing angle.
She had a strange glint in her eyes as she looked down on the small
animal. "You look like to be just what I need to finish my latest
experiment. Yes, you'll do just fine. Oohohohohoo!" she laughed and
reached out for the small animal that had suddenly doubled the size of its
eyes as if understanding what she had just said, but that couldn't be true,
now could it? It was just another stupid animal.
"BWEEEEEE!!" the piglet squealed and rushed into the opposite direction,
hopping to escape yet from another lunatic. "Damn you Ranma, this is all
your fault!!" the piglet screamed mentally and made it into the bushes,
hoping that it could this way ditch its latest 'admirer'.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
On top of a tall dark grey apartment building, a pair of women stood on
it's edge, quietly looking down to the streets where the numerous
commuters streamed along their paths like a never-ending current of a
large river.
"It seems that my soon to be son-in-law is on the move," the other one of
the women noted. She was a small, no taller than a fire hydrant and
probably even uglier, was dressed in robes that thankfully hid most of her
frame underneath it, and carried a long gnarled staff that exceeded her
own size by two times at least.
The other woman was much, much younger, and a hell of a lot more
beautiful for that matter. She was dressed in what seemed to be a skimpy
looking Chinese dress that made her assets rather prominent to anyone
who would see her. Her she was about five and a half feet tall, quite
achievement for someone who was obviously Chinese, something that her
dark purple hair did not seem to reflect tough.
"Aiya! What are waiting for here then?!" the girl snapped at her
companion in Chinese dialect.
The older woman raised her gnarled staff to halt the girl in where she
stood, glaring at her through her narrowed eyes. "Patience, patience Xian
Pu. Your impatience will become your downfall later on if you do not learn
how to control it," she advised while giving the girl a stern look, then she
turned to look down in the streets again. "Your husband-to-be has proven
to be hard to catch, repeatedly so. We must not rush blindly with this or
we might endanger to loose him from our sights again."
This silenced the younger woman rather quickly, but not without making
her pout. The girl had become rather excited now that they were this
close to her groom to be, a quite a contrary of how she had behaved last
night when finding him had still seemed like a faraway dream.
Xian Pu sighed wistfully at the memory of her 'husband'. She wondered
why hadn't she realized it before, but she was finding it rather hard to
ignore how handsome he had seemed when she had first met him. And
those eyes, those strange golden yellow eyes, were the ones that had
completely captivated her mind. And no, it never occurred to her to
wonder how someone could have such eyes. But then again, neither did
anyone seem to wonder the strange hair colours that seemed to be a
trademark among her fellow tribesmen...
Not noticing the dreamy look on her great grand daughter's face, the head
elder of the Joketzuko amazon village, narrowed her eyes and motioned
the girl to follow her before she took off from the rooftop and bounding
over onto the next that stood almost ten to fifteen feet away from the one
they had been standing on.
The purple haired girl didn't notice this at first and just stood there with a
dreamy smile on her face, that is, until the small stone that her great
grandmother had thrown at her threw her head back and snapped her
back into the reality.
"Snap out of it girl, we must hurry now and cut off son-in-law's path
before he steers too far from our current position!" the old woman
shouted angrily before turning away while muttering something about
slacking youth.
Xian Pu glared at the old crone for breaking her daydreams, but left it at
that and quickly followed after the older woman's lead.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Few minutes later and two blocks away...
There were few things Ranma could appreciate in life. One was martial
art, one that he had been practicing for most of his life. Then as a good
second came freedom of which he had not been even aware of until he
became cursed with the form he now possessed, which in its own right
was bit ironic on the boy's opinion. And of course then there was honour,
but he wasn't so sure anymore whether he knew what it exactly meant,
his father having obscured his view of the true honour long time ago and
thus giving the boy rather hard time in viewing some things.
But now he wasn't thinking any of these things. In fact, his mind was
completely empty now, blissfully concentrating only on the feeling he was
getting from the air rushing up against his face as he bounded over the
rooftops of the residents of Nerima.
He wasn't sure whether it was the thrill of speed or what, but running over
the buildings, far over the other passing pedestrians like a bird of prey
looking for something to hunt, was giving him a rush enjoyment he got to
feel rather rarely. It was also during moments like these that he forgot
that he was supposed to hate his current form, and not have it filling him
with joy and satisfaction.
For almost an hour he had been doing nothing but bounding from house
to house, crossing over streets and alleys with only few people ever
noticing him as he passed overhead.
His speed was admirable, but nothing that would strain him. Ranma knew
he could go faster, but not without taking the risk of falling down since it
also lessened his reaction time to a possible loose tiles that might start
slipping underneath his feet on some rooftops. It was during his leaps that
he truly let go and took everything he could from his new body's ability to
glide so fast and so high.
It was a quiet way for him to release his stress too. He had been packing
quite a lot of it during his ten years long training trip and it was good to
get some of that steam out for a while in other means than just beating
down the old man.
That thought made the boy frown. His father, Genma Saotome, had
revealed himself to be nothing but a greedy little thief with an appetite
that exceeded his brains in size tenfold. It wracked the boy's mind to no
end when he began to wonder why he hadn't left the idiot excuse for a
father long time ago, he knew that he could have made it out alone in the
world as he was and probably still could. But would he ever be able to
make that decision before it would be too late?
While normally he would have hated to admit such thought, he could no
longer deny that he had lost all of his respect towards his father, the man
who had both raised and trained him through the last decade. Genma had,
time after time, done nothing else than proven his stupidity and lack of
real honour, one that he so many times used as an excuse to get away
from whatever crap he had landed on. That had to come to an end.
"The panda has to go as soon as I'm rid of this marriage deal," the boy
thought firmly to himself after stopping a nearby rooftop of a five-storied
apartment building to look up to the eastern horizon. Or would have if it
hadn't been for the sudden flaring of his highly sensitive ears and nose.
"Wha-?!"
Spinning around provided the boy with nothing; he was alone on the roof
with only few air ventilation tubes sticking out from the roof. But then why
did he have the feeling that there was someone close by?
"I know there's someone here, I can feel it..." He glanced to his sides and
yet saw nothing. He couldn't see or feel nothing out of the ordinary, but
then he did pick something with his nose, something else than just the
exhaust fumes coming from the countless cars that were pumping it up
into the air all around the city.
"What is this smell?" he thought while rubbing his nose. "There is
someone close by," he muttered out loud, but then stopped when he
heard the light rustling of someone's feet upon the small rocks that were
covering the flat rooftop. It would have gone unnoticed for human
capabilities to sense, but Ranma already knew that he wasn't quite human
anymore...
"Who's there?!" He demanded and dropped into ready stance, his clawed
hands hidden into his sleeves tough. "Show yourself, you can't hide from
me anymore!"
For a moment there was complete silence, well as far as the general
commotion from the streets below and the constant gentle howling of
wind were accounted. But then it was broken.
"My, my..." came the voice of an old woman not too far from Ranma, "You
have some rather keen senses, boy." The mentioned woman came into
view from behind one of the air ventilation tubes that were sticking off
from the rooftop.
The old woman wasn't very tall, few feet if even that, long silver grey hair
that was longer than her body, badly wrinkled skin, and some old dark
green robes that covered her withered body like a blanket. She also had a
gnarled wooden staff in her hands.
"Whoa," the boy muttered, looking rather impressed about something, but
then broke the mood with one of his usual foot-to-mouth comments.
"Never seen a living mummy before."
The old woman narrowed her eyes at the boy who already had lowered his
guard by crossing his hands back into his sleeves, but did nothing to move
against him, yet. "You should show some respect to your elder's, boy. Its
called politeness."
As in response Ranma just snorted through his nostrils and eyed at the
woman lazily, but then suddenly snapped out from it when he heard
something closing in from his right, just beyond his field of vision.
Ranma mentally cursed himself for letting his guard down and prepared to
fight for his life, or would have if his sudden shift of stance wouldn't have
made his hands grab at something large and soft that was covered by a
rather tight looking Chinese dress.
"Nihao, airen," greeted the girl whose breasts he was now holding, her
eyes sparkling with mischief as she stared right back into his.
"What the...?!" was all that he could say before he managed to jerk his
hands off from the girl's assets as if burned by them, and earning a
slightly disappointed look from the girl. But that was just the beginning.
"You!" He shouted and pointed at her, as realized it was the same girl
whom he had defeated in that amazon village three months ago.
The girl just smiled and nodded before lunging at him with her arms wide,
promptly tackling the shocked boy to the ground like a tree trunk. And
before he even manage to put up his defences, her realized that his both
arms had been incapacitated by the girl's surprisingly strong and firm
embrace that left him defenceless against the pair of soft lips that quickly
descended and meshed perfectly with his.
"Mmmwwwhaaaat?!!" was all that the poor boy managed to stutter
through their joined lips, his mind reeling over with confusion created by
this unfamiliar situation.
"Heh, may I introduce ourselves? My name is Cologne, and this is my
great granddaughter, Shampoo." The old crone snickered after walking
beside the two, smirking at the heavily blushing boy who was attempting
to dislodge himself from the over affectionate mass of curvy flesh.
"Eh...well, nice to meet ya, but...uh, could you, like, let go of me?" the boy
whined almost pathetically as he continued to squirm, constantly moving
his face so that the girl couldn't lip-lock him again. Of course he could
have simply wrenched himself free from the girl's grasp with sheer
strength, but not without causing some rather permanent injuries.
"Wo ai ni!" the girl purred and rubbed her face against his, almost causing
the boy to blow an artery.
"Whoa! W-Whoa lady! I-I must say t-that I'm flattered b-but...I d-don't
think this is quite proper..." Ranma muttered lamely, trying to find
something to get the girl off him. He was slowly falling into desperation,
his father had never taught him any counter moves for situations like this,
and thus was finding himself in quite a bind.
"Proper?" the old ghoul snickered, "Boy, this is your wife. You're expected
to be doing things like this from now on."
"Huh? What do you mea..." the words died in the boy's mouth as he
realized what had been said. "WIFE?!!" he bellowed, and in the process
somehow slipped away from the affectionate embrace, his eyes staring at
the old woman with shock evident on his face.
"S-She can't be my w-wife!" the boy almost screamed while pointing his
finger at the girl, pacing back according to the girl's attempts to re-
embrace him. "I haven't gotten even married yet!"
"Oh, but you have, son-in-law," Cologne replied with a smile, she was
finding this show rather amusing. "When you defeated her back in the
village you legally became her husband according to our laws, which was
just now confirmed by the kiss of marriage that Shampoo gave you."
"What?!" the boy cried while jumping over the purple haired girl who had
tried to grab him by just simply lunging herself at him. "But...but...but I
just can't do this! I'm not ready for this kind of stuff!"
Shampoo stopped advancing towards him and took slightly hurt look on
her face as she continued to look at him right into the eyes, a small tear
drop falling down her left cheek. "You...no like Shampoo?" the girl almost
whined. "Think wife...ugly?"
There were three things in the world that Ranma Saotome could not
resist. Challenges, food, and crying girls, and with the way purple haired
girl in front of him was preparing to wail was a perfect trap for him.
"I'msorry! I'msorry! I didn't mean it!" the boy panicked and quickly
rushed to the girl's side while gently embracing her, not realizing that the
girl had returned the favour until it was too late. "Ack! You cheater!"
"Tehee," the girl giggled bit 'too' girlishly as she latched herself firmly onto
his chest. There was no way she was going to let him go this time.
Unfortunately she had never met anyone like Ranma, and thus was ill
prepared to the sudden leap that he made, which tore her beloved away
from her grasp rather effectively.
Before neither Shampoo nor her great grandmother could react, the boy
was already on the edge of the roof and down in the streets after making
one of his impressive leaps again.
"After him!" Cologne snapped at the girl, "You don't want loose him again,
do you?"
The girl shook her head, her long purple ponytails with two large hair
ornaments billowing violently after her trial as she did, and then without
another word she was off the roof, following her husband's lead through
the crowd as fast as her abilities allowed.
Cologne didn't follow them, as instead of doing that, she had taken an
alternative route, thinking of cutting the boy's escape route off before he
could get too far. The old crone hadn't lived for two centuries for nothing,
and thus could evaluate tactics quite efficiently.
"The boy is bit resistant, but I think we can work on it before we go back,"
she thought with a chuckle escaping from her throat. Cologne had very
little doubt that her son-in-law could ditch her great granddaughter, she
had been trained to be quite a tracker, even in urban environment like
this, and thus didn't keep too much of a hurry as she bounded towards
her own destination.
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"What the hell is my life becoming to?!" he thought as he bounded over
the rooftops, the persistent purple haired girl still visible as he looked over
one of his shoulders.
While Ranma knew he could normally outrun her by sheer speed, the
irregularity of the terrain was preventing him from going onward with his
top speed lest he wished to risk falling onto something he couldn't see,
and running on the streets would draw too much attention, so that option
was out.
Every time he looked behind his back he could see a glimpse of his
pursuer and would always change his course a bit so that he could have
better chances in shaking her off. He had considered just hiding, but the
risk was too high, and would he be caught he doubted could squirm his
way out from her grasp for the third time, the mere thought of it making
him blush.
"Damn! I gotta lose her somehow!" the boy mentally cried with
desperation etched on his face. He had fought opponents ten times
stronger than himself, faced hordes of wolves, he had gone through the
Neko-ken, swam across the China sea, received a curse from Jusenkyo,
but none of those experiences were comparable to this.
"Airen!" came the amorous call of the purple haired amazon who had
somehow caught up with him, but was still over hundred feet behind.
Ranma was starting to have a feeling that the only way he could get rid of
the girl was to exhaust her.
There was no way he was going to let himself to be caught like this.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Kagome wasn't having much fun today. As not only had she been forced
to rush into school, but also had she been late from the English test that
hadn't gone as well as she had been hopping it to go.
"Waaaaaah! I'm going to fail that damn test! I just know it!" she wailed at
her desk during the lunch break. Her friends were trying to console her,
but not with much success.
"Now, now...it can't be 'that' bad, now can it, Kagome-chan?"
"Oh yes it can! You don't know how hard I studied for this test, and only
to have it ruined just because I slept bit too long this morning!" Kagome
wailed right back at her friends.
There was very little the others could say to that, fully aware that when
Kagome was like this there would be nothing that they could do to break
her out from it.
For moment Kagome didn't do anything else than rest her forehead
against the desk, her mind brooding over and over how badly her test had
gone. But then suddenly she felt something strange, tug of some sort.
"Huh?" she muttered while raising her head to look around.
The class was mostly empty due to the lunch break and her friends had
given her some room to brood alone. Then the tug became stronger,
reminding her from the strange sensation she had felt yesterday when she
had been in Nerima.
"What the?" she gasped as he felt the tug turn into almost violent wrench,
but without any psychical effect on her. The tug was coming from her left
side where the windows where. She couldn't see nothing more than the
dark grey buildings that stood in rows at the other side of the school, and
was beginning to wonder what the heck was going on with her. But that
was when she noticed something else.
A figure, a young man in black hakama and gi top was on top of one of
the buildings, or rather jumping off them and only to land on the next.
"Eeeh? Who is he? How is he doing that?" she gasped out loud, catching
the attention of her friends who were no staring at her.
"Kagome-chan? Is everything alright?"
Instead of answer Kagome just rushed closer to the windows and watched
with fascinated eyes as the figure atop the buildings made several thirty
feet leaps as if the laws of gravity weren't applied to it.
"What are you looking at Kagome?" asked one of her three friends who
had been in the class from the start of the lunch break. She had moved
closer by now, the two others trying to look for what ever it was that their
friend was staring at.
Then they too noticed the figure.
"Wha-?! There's somebody on the roof!" pointed the girl with the short
brown bowl cut. The two others quickly turned their gazes along the path
that the girl was pointing and soon gasped in unison when they saw the
figure make one more leap, this time one carrying over forty feet in
length.
"Wait! Look, there's someone following him!" the same girl added, this
time pointing at the purple haired girl who was bounding after the long
haired boy with impressive leaps of her own.
And that was also when Kagome realized that the first figure they had
seen was now turned towards the school. She wasn't sure how she knew
it, but she was absolutely positive that he was staring right at her.
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It had been almost an hour since Ranma began his race against the over
amorous amazon girl that amazingly had not yet given up on him. "Damn!
How long can she keep this up?! We've run through half of the city by
now!"
"Whoa!" he cried out as he avoided the sudden brick that had been
thrown from above. He hadn't seen or heard it; he had just somehow
sensed it, and had he not dodged it, it would have surely made him
stumble upon his feet and get caught by his pursuer. "What the...?!" he
gasped while turning to look up where saw the familiar crone smirking
down at him.
"Why you...!" he growled while shaking his fist, but quickly stopped and
leapt up when he realized that he had been standing around and that
there was that distinctive feeling of something, or rather someone, coming
from behind his back.
From atop the taller building Cologne was smiling to herself as she
followed the boy's movements. "Hmm, it seems that son-in-law has some
truly remarkable instincts. He is too young and obviously inexperienced to
have learned the secrets of chi manipulation, so there is no other way of
explaining how he avoided the brick and now my great granddaughter. His
contribution to our tribe will be a notable one." The smirk on her face was
growing to be rather disturbing.
Back on the other rooftop Ranma was running again, cursing the amazon
girl's persistence. "Whoa! Hey, now look her miss! I can't marry you just
because some stupid laws of your village says so!" he snapped at the girl,
almost causing him to be caught that time thanks to his carelessness.
"Airen stop running away now, so that Shampoo can show how good wife
she be," the purple haired girl responded giddily. Despite her appearance,
however, Shampoo, or Xian Pu as her mother language would express her
name, was starting to get weary with the way her quarry kept avoiding
her.
"Damn, this is getting nuts!" the boy thought desperately as he turned
and jumped onto the next rooftop, his mind half-wondering why the girl's
great grandmother hadn't tried anything new yet, and making him worry
that she might have already laid a trap for him.
But as his thoughts were averted from that, he realized that the strange
sensation that he had felt at the Tendo dojo last night was back again.
"Huh? What's with this weird tugging again?" he wondered as he jumped
down on the building rooftop. His eyes quickly locked with the large white
school building across the street, few hundred feet away. There were lots
of students strolling around building, telling him that it was a school
building, but none of them caught his attention, not until his eyes locked
on one of the third floor windows. There was a group of four girls watching
at him.
If he hadn't been so focused on thinking why he was feeling the tug
coming from them, he might have had realized that his vision had zoomed
in and that he was capable of seeing them with disturbing clarity, as if
there wouldn't have been more than few feet between them instead of the
actual three hundred.
Unfortunately his momentary distraction was all that Shampoo needed to
catch him. "Aaaaa! Leggo! Leggo of me damn it!" the boy cried out as he
found himself hopping up and down with the girl firmly latched onto his
torso.
As in response the girl just shook her head and continued to keep that
seemingly ever-present smile on her face. This time she had the boy in
quite good grasp, her other arm wrapped over his right shoulder while the
other went underneath his left, giving her a perfect position to twine her
hands together from the front and this way allowing her to lock herself
across his back.
But with the way Ranma kept bouncing around, she was having problems
with locking her legs around his waist or else she would have already
subdued him.
However, that was when a unexpected factor came into play.
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Ryoga was lost and he was angry, nothing new there. It had taken most
of the day for him to escape from that weird gymnast, much thanks to the
bath house he had somehow stumbled upon. He had been kicked out for
not having paid for entry tough.
Now human, fully clothed, and set upon his familiar path of vengeance,
Ryoga was back on track. Surely after such trials the gods would see him
fit to find his nemesis so that he could extract his revenge.
"Damn you Ranma! Show yourself so that I can finally regain my honour!"
the boy cried angrily up into the heavens, drawing several odd looks from
the bystanders that quickly gave him a wide area of clearance as they
moved away from him.
It irritated the boy that he had been chasing for the other boy for almost
four years now without success, and now that his hated rival had changed
his appearance according to what he had heard was not making things
any easier.
"Curse you for trying to disguise yourself from me!" the boy cursed out
loud with his fists shaking in fury. "But no matter, I now know what you
look like thanks to that farmer you visited week ago." It had been through
sheer luck that he had met the farmer, the man had been clearly upset
about the pair who had visited him and had given helpful descriptions of
Ranma's new appearance. It seemed that the pair had runoff with some of
the man's valuables.
Or at least Genma had, not that it would have mattered to Ryoga.
"When I get my hands on that honourless..." Ryoga began his ranting
again, but paused when he realized that there was two people jumping
over the rooftops two blocks ahead. Other one was a girl with long purple
hair tied into twin ponytails and form fitting Chinese dress, and the other
was a long black haired boy in pitch black hamaka and gi top.
Despite the small size of his brains that didn't change much during the
transformations, it didn't take more than a second for Ryoga to recognize
his target.
"Ranma!! I've finally found you!" the boy bellowed, a maniacal look on his
face that made the other pedestrians on the street to run away from him.
In a few instants he was on the rooftops, and surprisingly heading to the
right direction.
"You won't get away from me this time!!"
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Ranma Saotome! Prepare to DIE!!"
Both Ranma and Shampoo's head snapped up towards the dark silhouette
that descended upon them from the taller building that stood beside the
one they were on, and with a quick dodge the black clad boy avoided the
earth shattering blow that caved in the rooftop as if it were mere paper.
"Huh? Who the hell are you?!" Ranma snapped at the stranger while
trying to dislodge the amazon from his back.
"I've finally found you Saotome," the new boy stated grimly while pulling
his bamboo umbrella out from the partially crumbled rooftop. He was
dressed in what seemed to be dirty and well worn travelling clothes and
black slacks, but the details that caught the pairs attention the most was
the yellow bandana and the distinctive fangs that showed quite clearly
when he snarled at the other boy. "I won't let you run away from me
anymore!"
"Run away?" muttered the longhaired boy while trying to scratch his neck,
the girl hanging from his back was making it rather hard tough. "Why
would I run away from you? Who the hell are you anyway? And why did
you attack me? I think you owe me an explanation buddy."
The bandana-clad boy sneered at him and took a swipe with his obviously
heavy umbrella. Ranma was quite positive that letting that thing hit him
would cause some bad injuries, as the rooftop could testify that.
"Don't tell me you've forgotten me Saotome!" the boy roared angrily as he
lunged at the entangled pair, ignoring the fact that the girl was not part of
his revenge. "I will get my revenge, as because of you I've seen hell!!"
"Eh? What the hell are you talking about, man?!" Ranma snapped angrily
as he skilfully leapt over the boys enraged swings that took off one of the
air ventilation pipes in the process. "And stop swinging that thing so damn
carelessly, you might hurt someone with it!"
"That's the idea!" the other boy replied angrily as he tore his bandana off
his forehead, only to reveal that there had been another one waiting
underneath it.
What happened next caught the longhaired boy off guard, as never before
had Ranma seen anyone throw a piece of cloth as if it were a solid
projectile, not ones that could cut through metal at least.
"Whoa!! Hey, quit it already! At least tell me your goddamn name and
why you're attacking me like this!" Ranma snapped indignantly. "Can't
you see I'm bussy?!" he continued while pointing his thumb at Shampoo
who was still clinging onto his back with rather satisfied look on her face.
This seemed to enrage the umbrella wielding boy even further. "How dare
you to take me this lightly, Saotome?!" he bellowed before tearing four
more bandanas off his head, revealing that there was more of them than
just two. "And don't play fool with me! Not after running away from our
man-to-man fight four years ago!!"
"Man-to-man...fight?" Ranma muttered with a slightly dumb look on his
face. Then suddenly a look of recognition lit up his face. "Ryoga?...Ryoga
Hibiki? Is that you?!" he said while smiling. "How have you been man?
Haven't seen you in a long time."
Up on the other rooftop Cologne was starting to wonder if it was safe for
her great granddaughter to stay so close to the two boys, especially with
the way the newcomer had started to glow with slightly sickly green aura
of depression. "Shampoo! Get off from son-in-law and stay away from the
fight!"
The girl in question gave a questioning look at the great grandmother but
did not question her orders and quickly dislodged herself from her quarry,
much to Ranma's relief.
That was also the point when Ryoga finally made his furry known. "You
dare to speak so friendly to me after what you've done to me?!" the boy
roared and then leapt at his nemesis while throwing his choice of weapons at him. "Die Ranma!!"
"Cool down Ryoga!" cried the other boy as he easily dodged the bandana
barrage and the overhead smash which had followed right behind them,
one that made the rooftop crumble even further. "I don't know what
you're so heated up from, but it wasn't me who ran off form that fight four
years ago. I waited three days for you!"
"Yes, but when I came on the fourth you were already gone, you lying
coward!" Ryoga shouted angrily while throwing his umbrella, aimed at his
opponent's head, but instead of hitting its target it found itself embedded
into the wall of the building right next to the one they were standing upon.
"Lying coward?!" Ranma gasped with surprise evident on his face. He had
been called to be many things during his life, but being called a coward
and a liar to boot, was something that he wouldn't stand for.
Then before anyone, even Cologne who had over two hundred years of
experience under her belt, could react, Ranma had lunged towards his
attacker and was now grasping the other boy's throat with vice like grip.
"Nobody...nobody calls me that and gets away with it!" Ranma was staring
at Ryoga right into the eyes, his hand keeping the eternally lost boy just
over the edge of the rooftop.
Ryoga cursed his own carelessness and tried to kick his nemesis into the
face, but found himself flung across the rooftop instead. "Argh! Damn
you!"
Ranma just shook his head as he pulled up his sleeves, revealing his long
claws that now somehow seemed to be longer than normally, and took up
a stance. "If this is the only way we can solve this problem, then lets get
it over with."
Up on the rooftop both Cologne and Shampoo, who had climbed up there
few moments ago, gasped when they saw the claws on the boy's hands.
"What on earth is going on here?" the old crone muttered to herself with
shocked look on her face, but it lasted only for a moment as it turned into
smirk again. "I see...heh, well this explains a lot of the boy's aura..."
At her side, her great granddaughter was giving her a odd look. "What are
you saying great grandmother?" the girl asked in her native language
instead of using her broken Japanese.
"Oh, nothing much," the old woman chuckled with a pleased look on her
face. "I just discovered why the boy's aura has been acting up and why he
is so strong and fast as he is."
"..." the girl continued to just stare at her.
"He is obviously a youkai, or a hanyou," Cologne continued while pointing
her staff at Ranma. "I'd suspect the later since the boy still looks mostly
human, but I can't be sure since he doesn't show any other distinctive
animal or beast like psychical appearances aside his claws."
Shampoo wasn't sure what to make out of what her great grandmother
was saying. "Great grandmother?"
"Yes, what is it child?"
"What is a youkai or hanyou?"
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
End of Chapter two...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Next chapter: The duel, discoveries, and schoolgirls...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ok, so how was it? Good, bad, or total crap? Tell me what you think and
I'll see what I can do to improve the future chapters. This one was done in
rather choppy manner, so I don't expect any extraordinary amount of
praises coming from this one...especially with the way I ended it. 8P
Also, for those who have been bombing me with requests to write faster I
can only say this. I'm a working student who has to go both to work and
school, school in the morning and work on the evening, so I think it would
be understandable if my pace isn't the fastest, especially when I feel that
what I write should be finished, and not just, "acceptable".
Anyways, I hope I can write the next chapter bit faster than this one, but
I can't guarantee anything since my old man has been threatening to
throw me out of the house if I don't pass my next tests...yes, life tends to
suck on some of us.
"Angels have always given me the creeps."
-John Constantine to Tim Hunter,
"The Books of Magic"
Email: Leopold_Goenitz@hotmail.com
Author notes: I'd like to thank you all who have posted your reviews
regarding this story of mine. I'm not sure if you realize how much it
means to me to see that people actually read what I write and even liking
it. I've always thought I was unimaginative and unfit to write anything
even remotely decent...but I guess I was wrong. Thanks.
PS: Sorry for the delay, but first I had to rewrite this thing for five times,
then my hard drive somehow misplaced the final version of this chapter
before I could release it, and so I had to rewrite it completely...
Also, as on the behalf of few readers request, I'll be keeping Shampoo,
Cologne, and Mousse's names in their original forms after this chapter,
instead of using variations like Xian Pu and such. This is to avoid any
headaches I might get from them and from the future readers. Sorry if
this is inconvenience to some of you.
Disclaimer: "The government denies the existence of this file, what you
see does not exist. What you're reading is just a figment of your
imagination..."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(Ranma 1/2 - Alternative universe multicrossover fanfic story)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
When Fates Collide
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Chapter 2 - Rush Hours
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The sun was rising and the people of Tokyo were all slowly waking up into
their daily activities. To some it meant eating breakfast and going to work,
school, or some things like that. Not many could claim that they started
their day by being thrown out from a second story window.
Ranma could.
"Hey! What the hell do you think yer doing old man?!" the boy shouted
indignantly as he shifted his body into proper landing position, touching
the ground with his stance making him resemble a cat ready to pounce on
its prey. He had been lucky that he had awoken when his father first
pulled him off the floor before he threw him out from the window,
otherwise he might have landed quite differently.
"Its time for training boy," shouted the balding man from the window
where Ranma had been thrown through. He quickly climbed through the
opening himself and followed his son down to the backyard with surprising
dexterity. "You've become too slack lately and I see it as my duty to make
sure you stay fit!" he shouted as he pointed his son with a finger before
taking his own more traditional stance.
Ranma snorted through his nose and stood up while looking at his father
through his narrowed eyes. "Look, pop, you haven't been able to beat me
ever since we took up these bloody curses. What makes you think that
you could do it now?"
"Silence, foolish boy!" Genma bellowed and tried to tag his son with a
swift flying kick, but quickly found his foot kicking nothing but air. "Wha-?!"
"I warned you old man," the boy said while appearing directly behind his
father's back. "And while I don't practically care whether you'll learn your
lesson or not, I'm going to pound it into your skull once more..."
Genma snarled angrily at his son's uppity and tried to backhand the
obnoxious boy, but before he could come even close, his wrist had been
caught and was given a rather strong squeeze that was preventing his
circulation into that particular hand.
"This grows boring," Ranma commented and before his father could try
any other foolish act, he twisted the arm he was holding, violently, and in
the process made the heavier man to flip off his feet and slam to the
ground with pained look on his face. "Had enough yet?"
"...respect your elders..." Genma muttered as he tried to shake the sudden
dizziness out from his head. There was no proof whether he simply was
too proud, or too stupid to admit that his son's claim was true, but it was
certain that he wouldn't probably be able to say it even if his life
depended on it.
"Have it your way then," the boy sighed and promptly lifted the older man
from the ground by grabbing his collar and belt. "Let's just end this
stupidity!" he shouted and quickly threw his father towards the koi pond
before the fool could clear his head enough to start struggling.
The pond gave a satisfactory splash as the fat man submerged
underneath its surface, with large mass of white and black fur sprouting
from its center only moment later.
"Insolent son!" said the small wooden sing Genma had been able to whip
out from somewhere again as he slowly climbed back up from the pond.
"Yeah, yeah...whatever," Ranma sighed and waved his hands in casual
manner before taking more serious stance this time. While he had been
throwing his father around so far, he knew that the old man could pull out
some nasty surprises if he wanted and thus made him an adversary that
should not be underestimated at any point.
And so the two charged and met in mid air with both trading blows like
there would be no tomorrow...
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It had been early in the morning when the youngest Tendo daughter had
left for her daily morning jogs, she said they helped her to think. But
today it didn't quite work the way it should have.
Ranma, the obnoxious perverted boy that she had met yesterday, just
wouldn't leave her mind alone, no matter how hard or how far she ran, he
would always be there, waiting at her home. 'Her' home!
"I'll get back at that bastard tonight!" she mentally swore to herself while
trying to stay confident that she could actually do it. It had taken quite an
effort from her to convince herself that the boy had simply caught her
with surprise and that she hadn't been ready when he attacked her, but
she had done it. As how else the boy could have beaten her, right?
That was when her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of something
slamming against a concrete wall and the sudden bulging of the wall right
next to her, the concrete crumbling off due the sudden blow that had
occurred on the other side. "I warned you old man! I'm getting tired of
your crap and I want it to end!" came annoyingly familiar voice from the
other side of the wall.
"Ranma..." the girl muttered darkly and quickly jogged through the front
gates to see what had happened.
Leaning against the wall, a halo of an impact crater decorating his upside
down standing body, was Genma, in his panda form. It was quite apparent
that he was in great pain with the way his teeth kept clenching together.
"Get real old man, you should start to realize that you stand no chances
against me," spoke the boy across the backyard, dusting off his hands on
his slightly grained hakama pants that he had kept on during his sleep.
His robe top was off, thus leaving his torso quite clearly into the view and
thanks to the tight black sleeveless t-shirt he was wearing his well
muscled torso was almost like a needle into the eye for the youngest
Tendo.
"..." was all that Akane could get out from her mouth as she quickly
averted her eyes from his torso, her face blushing red, and quickly dashed
into the house. "I...I can't believe that... that... PERVERT!" she mentally
screamed as she continued to run up stairs and straight into the bathroom
where she intended to take a good, long cold shower to clear out her
thoughts.
She never saw her older sister, Nabiki, smirking at her rushing form in the
hallway. "I wonder if this has anything to do with our young guest..." she
spoke silently to herself and began to make way to the first floor,
intending to find out what had made her sister blush so badly.
Her answer came in the form of her family's younger guest who's current
attire quickly made her mind wander in the area she rarely let it go into,
but quickly shook it off and removed her eyes from his chest area to look
him into the pair of cat-like eyes. Her cheeks were slightly red.
"Huh? Something wrong?" Ranma asked as he caught the middle Tendo
daughter staring at him and then shake her head before laughing
nervously and waving her hands.
"Oh nothing, nothing at all, I'm just fine," the girl babbled almost
nervously and quickly walked past the boy and towards the kitchen where
she hoped to find something to calm down her nerves.
Ranma blinked at her behaviour but quickly shrugged it off. "Girls..." he
muttered and climbed up the stairs to the second floor to get his Chinese
robes, as he couldn't go anywhere outside the building without them
unless he wanted to be caught in the form he was.
But just when he was about to open the door into the guestroom he and
his father shared, the familiar tingle from last night came back to him,
much weaker than before, but still. It was like a pull, or a tug to certain
direction. He wasn't even sure what it was, nor whether it was good or
bad, all he knew about it was that it was definitely beckoning him.
"What is this..." he mumbled but stopped when the feeling suddenly
disappeared again. "Just what the hell was that?" he wondered out loud,
not moving for several moments until he remembered what he had come
there for. "Oh yeah, the robes..." he muttered and went into the room, his
mind putting aside the strange sensation for time being...
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Across the town...
Inside a certain small room that was located inside a medium sized
private home next to an old and traditional looking shrine, just over the
Juuban and Nerima district border, there was a young girl sleeping
contently with a blissful smile on her face. Her long black hair spreading in
a wide halo around her head with the bed sheets all tangled up in a mess
around of her body.
This scene would have remained unchanged if it hadn't been for the sound
of someone running across a boarded floor just behind the wall. Then
suddenly the door into the room burst open with small young boy, no
older than probably nine or ten, with short black hair rushed into room
and to the older girl's side.
"Onee-chan! Onee-chan!! Wake up, mom told that you'll need to get up
now!" the boy shouted while shaking the girl's shoulder.
"Huh...? Umm...go away, lemme sleep..." the girl mumbled and turned on
to her side, leaving the small boy glare at her back.
"Onee-chan, today's Monday," the boy said bit angrily, obviously trying to
hint something.
In response the boy's sister just grabbed the pillow and folded it around
her head while mumbling her reply, "...ummumm...so what?...just leave me
alone Sota...I wanna sleep..."
"Sleep? It's school day Kagome-chan! You'll be late if you don't get up
right now and get yourself ready!" the boy shouted and forcefully turned
his sister on her back again.
"...School?" the girl mumbled as if trying to connect the particular word to
something, her mouth working at the word as if trying to taste it, but then
her eyes blew wide open when it suddenly became clear to her. "School?!!"
she screamed and shot up from her bed while grabbing her alarm clock
that she had seemingly forgotten to set.
"Oh god, I'm going to be late from my English test!" she gasped before
jumping out from the bed and rushing out from the room and into the
bathroom.
The boy shook his head and sighed tiredly as he exited the room, giving a
short glance towards the bathroom door where he knew his big sister to
be getting ready for her day. He never understood why girls were so picky
about their looks and believed that he probably never would, and just let
the matter drop as he began to descend the stairs and into the kitchen
where his mother had already prepared the breakfast.
"Hi mom," Sota greeted the slightly over middle-aged woman with short
dark brown hair and gentle smile on her face. "I woke her up just like you
told me, but I'm not sure how long it'll be until she can actually get down
here."
His mother nodded and smiled at him. Then she turned her eyes up to the
ceiling with slightly tired sigh passing through her lips. "Sometimes that
girl makes me wonder..." she muttered quietly to herself, but then just
shook her head and smiled.
Sota looked at her with slightly puzzled look on his face, but then ignored
in the favour of the food that was laid on his plate.
Not too long after that there was a sound of someone rushing in the
second floor, the sound some incoherent muttering that was accompanied
by various shuffling sounds, and then the sound of running feet coming
down the stairs.
"I'm going to be so late!" Kagome repeated to herself for the hundredth
time today as she rushed to the kitchen table within her school uniform
that was consisted of white sailor shirt with dark green collar and similarly
coloured skirt that was ended slightly above the knees with white line
running horizontally near the edge of the hem.
"Please just give me my bento and I will get going right away," she said to
her mother and without missing a beat grabbed the small box, with light
blue wrappings around it, that her mother had been already holding for
her when she first came down the stairs.
Sota sighed as he watched silently how his sister dashed through the
room and towards the front door. "I wonder if I'll turn out to be the same
when I get to be as old as she is," he muttered and turned back to his
food. Kagome's fifteenth birthday was tomorrow and it made him slightly
uneasy to think the fact that the older she came, the less time she
seemed to have.
"I hope I'll never become a grownup," the boy thought and resumed his
eating.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"School?" Ranma repeated the word his father had just said to him,
looking at the serious looking man before him, or as serious as he could
look considering that he was a complete idiot. "Are you nuts? People
would notice me if I went into a public place like that!"
"Son, now look here," the bald man began calmly while crossing his arms
firmly across his chest. "You're going to school and that's final. As how
else do you think you could even hope to get to know your fiancées? Only
one here is Kasumi," he said and pointed towards the kitchen where the
mentioned girl poke her head through the doorway with that seemingly
ever present cheerful smile on her face.
"Get to know my fiancées?" Ranma repeated again, "Pop, that place is a
school, a place with lots of people stacked tightly into tiny rooms, with
everybody extremely close to each other!" Then he almost considered
lunging over the table and stuff the small school bag his father had just
given him into the old man's throat, but was satisfied to just slam it on
the table.
"While I might able to hide my features when were walking in the public,
but it's a whole different story when I'm forced to just sit around and be
stared by a bunch of students! I'd be discovered by the end of the lunch
break!"
Genma frowned admonishingly at his son, the boy's obvious point not
making through his thick skull. "Don't raise your voice to me boy! You'll
go to school and..." his phrase was left unsaid as his head was suddenly
thrown back, the last image in his memory being someone's heel being
introduced to his face.
"Oyaji no baka!" the boy ranted at his father after settling down his foot
on the floor again. "I might be stupid at times, but not _that_ stupid!"
This was the point where Nabiki decided to make her presence known, she
had gone upstairs to get her school bag after having finished with the
breakfast and was now standing behind the upset looking Ranma. "What
was that all about?" she asked.
The boy snorted as he turned to look at her and then turned back to look
at his father's prone form across the room, the fat fool's head had made a
small crack on the wall. "My old man had seen it as a great idea to sing
me to the same school as you and your sister, but after our little
'discussion', I'm sure he sees that it wasn't such a good idea after all."
There was a rather disturbing looking smirk on the boy's face, one that
revealed that his fangs were quite distinctively pronounced.
Nabiki quirked an eyebrow at this but left her thoughts unsaid after
recalling the last night's events. She made a mental note not to mention
that she had agreed to help his father to sing Ranma to their school last
night. The girl had been eager to find out the entertainment value he
might have brought up to the recently boring school, but after seeing how
the boy had expressed his opinion about it to his father, she decided that
perhaps it would be for the best if she too just dropped the issue and let
the school board know that he wasn't coming after all.
"Oh well, I still need to go to school and so does my sister," the older girl
shrugged and moved towards the hallway that would lead her lead to the
main entrance. "Just don't get into trouble while we're gone, ok?" she said
with small wink before disappearing behind the corner.
"Yeah, yeah..." Ranma nodded waved his hand at her as he moved
towards the open doorway that would allow him to step on the veranda.
He sat down on it with his hands and legs crossed, his thoughts
concentrated on the strange pull he had encountered twice already right
after arriving into this household.
There was nothing else in the world that bugged Ranma more than not
knowing something, the nature of his curse included. A human he wasn't,
of that much he was certain, but neither was he any animal like his father,
not entirely at least. Then what was he? A some sort of monster? Demon
perhaps?
"No, better not go there..." the boy shook his head to clear his mind of
such thoughts. He didn't want to consider the possibilities and allowing
them to wrack his nerves as long as he could not find the correct answers.
But no matter how much he tried, there was always a small part of his
mind that was constantly mulling over the matter, he wanted it or not.
Sighing deeply the boy raised his vision from his lap and looked upon the
serene backyard of the Tendo household, ignoring the depression his
father had made into the wall after he had thrown the fat fool into it this
morning.
He felt bored and he wanted to have something to do. While he had been
travelling with his father he had never felt the urge to actually do
something, Genma had always had some kata or new technique for his
son to keep himself busy with, but not anymore, now things had changed.
Drastically.
His father had very little to offer to him the ways things were going. The
old man could hardly keep up with him when he went full out and as far as
he had seen his father was not going to improve this situation anytime
soon. And so, he needed something to do to keep the boredom away.
He looked up over the walls and frowned. He hardly knew the
neighbourhood; perhaps it would be a good idea to get to know it a bit
better. "Yeah, that'd be a good idea," he thought and stood up.
Quickly dashing up to the wall, the boy jumped and vaulted over the wall
before continuing from there with a massive leap that carried him more
than thirty feet into the air and fifty in length, and thus allowing him to
cross over the street and land on top of the small private home across the
Tendos.
The boy smirked back at his performance, clearly satisfied with it, and
then continued to bound over to the next rooftop and then again to the
next, repeating this for countless times as he went on with his sightseeing
around the town, not looking for anything particular.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A little bit to the west, approximately a few hundred miles or so...
There was a small rowing boat that was slowly making its way across the
China Sea. It had a single passenger, a young boy with long black hair,
white robes, baggy pants, and some seriously thick eyeglasses that were
obscuring his eyes completely when viewed from the other side.
The boy suddenly reared his head back and yelled in Chinese, "Xian Pu!
I'm coming for you, just you wait! I will not let you fall into the hands of
that outsider coward!"
Then a large passenger ship came through and rammed the boy's boat
into smithereens without stopping to notice what had happened.
"AAAARGH! This has to be someone's fauuuuult!!" the boy screamed
before he fell underneath the waves.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"I must get out! I must get out!" screamed the voice inside Ryoga's head
as he rushed out from the small broken metal gage where the little
kleptomaniac girl from last night had locked him. He was still in his
female pig form, a cute little pink piglet with tiny legs that wiggled
desperately as she tried to escape from the large house.
Her greatest worry next to escaping was the collar she was wearing with
small golden name pad hanging from it. The word 'Charlotte' was
imprinted onto the name pad with small rose like figurations carved
around it. But as far as she was concerned her 'owner' could keep the
damn collar, she just wanted to get away from thus madhouse. The last
night's events inside the girl's room had disturbed his mind to the very
core, enough to change his views towards all that was normally
considered cute.
Never before in her life had she seen so much pink colour, she had been
afraid at one point that she might have fried a brain there, or so many
disturbingly cute objects that had framed the girl's room.
"Must get out! Must get out!" the piglet repeated the mantra inside its
head as it rushed through the expensively carpeted hallways, desperately
looking for an escape. She knew this all had to be somehow connected to
Ranma who just had to have his hands in the earlier misfortunes in her
life, as how else things like this could have kept happening to her?!
"Charlotte?" The piglet stopped when it heard the voice, the voice she
would never forget. It was the sound that promised humiliation and lots of
pink colours. "Where do you think you're going? I thought I locked you up
into the gage," the girl with the painstakingly pink dress said. "Oh well,
now I will just have to take you back."
"Oh god, NO!!" Ryoga mentally screamed and began to run as if a demon
from hell would be after her tail. And Azusa Shiratori could be accounted
as such in his books.
"No, bad piggy!" the girl shouted as she dashed after her wayward pet she
had just found last night. Didn't it know what was best for it? "Charlotte!
Come back to mommy so that she can take you back where you belong!"
"I'd rather go into hell than back in there!" the piglet thought fearfully as
it passed a corner after another. This scene replayed for some time, the
poor animal not realizing that it was running in circles until it suddenly
noticed that it had somehow managed to rush outside, and that it was
now standing admits what looked to be large number of black roses.
She looked back and noticed that he was no longer being pursued. With a
heavy sigh passing through its snout the little piglet began to wander
around in search for hot water, or would have if it hadn't been for the
sudden, chilling voice, that while unlike Azusa's, still held equally
disturbing quality to it.
"OOHOHOHOHOHOO!" laughed the haughty voice of the girl that appeared
before the small animal. She was approximately sixteen, long black hair,
green eyes, pale skin, and dressed into a black leotard that threatened to
cause a terminal nosebleed to the poor thing that was looking at her from
a very admirable viewing angle.
She had a strange glint in her eyes as she looked down on the small
animal. "You look like to be just what I need to finish my latest
experiment. Yes, you'll do just fine. Oohohohohoo!" she laughed and
reached out for the small animal that had suddenly doubled the size of its
eyes as if understanding what she had just said, but that couldn't be true,
now could it? It was just another stupid animal.
"BWEEEEEE!!" the piglet squealed and rushed into the opposite direction,
hopping to escape yet from another lunatic. "Damn you Ranma, this is all
your fault!!" the piglet screamed mentally and made it into the bushes,
hoping that it could this way ditch its latest 'admirer'.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
On top of a tall dark grey apartment building, a pair of women stood on
it's edge, quietly looking down to the streets where the numerous
commuters streamed along their paths like a never-ending current of a
large river.
"It seems that my soon to be son-in-law is on the move," the other one of
the women noted. She was a small, no taller than a fire hydrant and
probably even uglier, was dressed in robes that thankfully hid most of her
frame underneath it, and carried a long gnarled staff that exceeded her
own size by two times at least.
The other woman was much, much younger, and a hell of a lot more
beautiful for that matter. She was dressed in what seemed to be a skimpy
looking Chinese dress that made her assets rather prominent to anyone
who would see her. Her she was about five and a half feet tall, quite
achievement for someone who was obviously Chinese, something that her
dark purple hair did not seem to reflect tough.
"Aiya! What are waiting for here then?!" the girl snapped at her
companion in Chinese dialect.
The older woman raised her gnarled staff to halt the girl in where she
stood, glaring at her through her narrowed eyes. "Patience, patience Xian
Pu. Your impatience will become your downfall later on if you do not learn
how to control it," she advised while giving the girl a stern look, then she
turned to look down in the streets again. "Your husband-to-be has proven
to be hard to catch, repeatedly so. We must not rush blindly with this or
we might endanger to loose him from our sights again."
This silenced the younger woman rather quickly, but not without making
her pout. The girl had become rather excited now that they were this
close to her groom to be, a quite a contrary of how she had behaved last
night when finding him had still seemed like a faraway dream.
Xian Pu sighed wistfully at the memory of her 'husband'. She wondered
why hadn't she realized it before, but she was finding it rather hard to
ignore how handsome he had seemed when she had first met him. And
those eyes, those strange golden yellow eyes, were the ones that had
completely captivated her mind. And no, it never occurred to her to
wonder how someone could have such eyes. But then again, neither did
anyone seem to wonder the strange hair colours that seemed to be a
trademark among her fellow tribesmen...
Not noticing the dreamy look on her great grand daughter's face, the head
elder of the Joketzuko amazon village, narrowed her eyes and motioned
the girl to follow her before she took off from the rooftop and bounding
over onto the next that stood almost ten to fifteen feet away from the one
they had been standing on.
The purple haired girl didn't notice this at first and just stood there with a
dreamy smile on her face, that is, until the small stone that her great
grandmother had thrown at her threw her head back and snapped her
back into the reality.
"Snap out of it girl, we must hurry now and cut off son-in-law's path
before he steers too far from our current position!" the old woman
shouted angrily before turning away while muttering something about
slacking youth.
Xian Pu glared at the old crone for breaking her daydreams, but left it at
that and quickly followed after the older woman's lead.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Few minutes later and two blocks away...
There were few things Ranma could appreciate in life. One was martial
art, one that he had been practicing for most of his life. Then as a good
second came freedom of which he had not been even aware of until he
became cursed with the form he now possessed, which in its own right
was bit ironic on the boy's opinion. And of course then there was honour,
but he wasn't so sure anymore whether he knew what it exactly meant,
his father having obscured his view of the true honour long time ago and
thus giving the boy rather hard time in viewing some things.
But now he wasn't thinking any of these things. In fact, his mind was
completely empty now, blissfully concentrating only on the feeling he was
getting from the air rushing up against his face as he bounded over the
rooftops of the residents of Nerima.
He wasn't sure whether it was the thrill of speed or what, but running over
the buildings, far over the other passing pedestrians like a bird of prey
looking for something to hunt, was giving him a rush enjoyment he got to
feel rather rarely. It was also during moments like these that he forgot
that he was supposed to hate his current form, and not have it filling him
with joy and satisfaction.
For almost an hour he had been doing nothing but bounding from house
to house, crossing over streets and alleys with only few people ever
noticing him as he passed overhead.
His speed was admirable, but nothing that would strain him. Ranma knew
he could go faster, but not without taking the risk of falling down since it
also lessened his reaction time to a possible loose tiles that might start
slipping underneath his feet on some rooftops. It was during his leaps that
he truly let go and took everything he could from his new body's ability to
glide so fast and so high.
It was a quiet way for him to release his stress too. He had been packing
quite a lot of it during his ten years long training trip and it was good to
get some of that steam out for a while in other means than just beating
down the old man.
That thought made the boy frown. His father, Genma Saotome, had
revealed himself to be nothing but a greedy little thief with an appetite
that exceeded his brains in size tenfold. It wracked the boy's mind to no
end when he began to wonder why he hadn't left the idiot excuse for a
father long time ago, he knew that he could have made it out alone in the
world as he was and probably still could. But would he ever be able to
make that decision before it would be too late?
While normally he would have hated to admit such thought, he could no
longer deny that he had lost all of his respect towards his father, the man
who had both raised and trained him through the last decade. Genma had,
time after time, done nothing else than proven his stupidity and lack of
real honour, one that he so many times used as an excuse to get away
from whatever crap he had landed on. That had to come to an end.
"The panda has to go as soon as I'm rid of this marriage deal," the boy
thought firmly to himself after stopping a nearby rooftop of a five-storied
apartment building to look up to the eastern horizon. Or would have if it
hadn't been for the sudden flaring of his highly sensitive ears and nose.
"Wha-?!"
Spinning around provided the boy with nothing; he was alone on the roof
with only few air ventilation tubes sticking out from the roof. But then why
did he have the feeling that there was someone close by?
"I know there's someone here, I can feel it..." He glanced to his sides and
yet saw nothing. He couldn't see or feel nothing out of the ordinary, but
then he did pick something with his nose, something else than just the
exhaust fumes coming from the countless cars that were pumping it up
into the air all around the city.
"What is this smell?" he thought while rubbing his nose. "There is
someone close by," he muttered out loud, but then stopped when he
heard the light rustling of someone's feet upon the small rocks that were
covering the flat rooftop. It would have gone unnoticed for human
capabilities to sense, but Ranma already knew that he wasn't quite human
anymore...
"Who's there?!" He demanded and dropped into ready stance, his clawed
hands hidden into his sleeves tough. "Show yourself, you can't hide from
me anymore!"
For a moment there was complete silence, well as far as the general
commotion from the streets below and the constant gentle howling of
wind were accounted. But then it was broken.
"My, my..." came the voice of an old woman not too far from Ranma, "You
have some rather keen senses, boy." The mentioned woman came into
view from behind one of the air ventilation tubes that were sticking off
from the rooftop.
The old woman wasn't very tall, few feet if even that, long silver grey hair
that was longer than her body, badly wrinkled skin, and some old dark
green robes that covered her withered body like a blanket. She also had a
gnarled wooden staff in her hands.
"Whoa," the boy muttered, looking rather impressed about something, but
then broke the mood with one of his usual foot-to-mouth comments.
"Never seen a living mummy before."
The old woman narrowed her eyes at the boy who already had lowered his
guard by crossing his hands back into his sleeves, but did nothing to move
against him, yet. "You should show some respect to your elder's, boy. Its
called politeness."
As in response Ranma just snorted through his nostrils and eyed at the
woman lazily, but then suddenly snapped out from it when he heard
something closing in from his right, just beyond his field of vision.
Ranma mentally cursed himself for letting his guard down and prepared to
fight for his life, or would have if his sudden shift of stance wouldn't have
made his hands grab at something large and soft that was covered by a
rather tight looking Chinese dress.
"Nihao, airen," greeted the girl whose breasts he was now holding, her
eyes sparkling with mischief as she stared right back into his.
"What the...?!" was all that he could say before he managed to jerk his
hands off from the girl's assets as if burned by them, and earning a
slightly disappointed look from the girl. But that was just the beginning.
"You!" He shouted and pointed at her, as realized it was the same girl
whom he had defeated in that amazon village three months ago.
The girl just smiled and nodded before lunging at him with her arms wide,
promptly tackling the shocked boy to the ground like a tree trunk. And
before he even manage to put up his defences, her realized that his both
arms had been incapacitated by the girl's surprisingly strong and firm
embrace that left him defenceless against the pair of soft lips that quickly
descended and meshed perfectly with his.
"Mmmwwwhaaaat?!!" was all that the poor boy managed to stutter
through their joined lips, his mind reeling over with confusion created by
this unfamiliar situation.
"Heh, may I introduce ourselves? My name is Cologne, and this is my
great granddaughter, Shampoo." The old crone snickered after walking
beside the two, smirking at the heavily blushing boy who was attempting
to dislodge himself from the over affectionate mass of curvy flesh.
"Eh...well, nice to meet ya, but...uh, could you, like, let go of me?" the boy
whined almost pathetically as he continued to squirm, constantly moving
his face so that the girl couldn't lip-lock him again. Of course he could
have simply wrenched himself free from the girl's grasp with sheer
strength, but not without causing some rather permanent injuries.
"Wo ai ni!" the girl purred and rubbed her face against his, almost causing
the boy to blow an artery.
"Whoa! W-Whoa lady! I-I must say t-that I'm flattered b-but...I d-don't
think this is quite proper..." Ranma muttered lamely, trying to find
something to get the girl off him. He was slowly falling into desperation,
his father had never taught him any counter moves for situations like this,
and thus was finding himself in quite a bind.
"Proper?" the old ghoul snickered, "Boy, this is your wife. You're expected
to be doing things like this from now on."
"Huh? What do you mea..." the words died in the boy's mouth as he
realized what had been said. "WIFE?!!" he bellowed, and in the process
somehow slipped away from the affectionate embrace, his eyes staring at
the old woman with shock evident on his face.
"S-She can't be my w-wife!" the boy almost screamed while pointing his
finger at the girl, pacing back according to the girl's attempts to re-
embrace him. "I haven't gotten even married yet!"
"Oh, but you have, son-in-law," Cologne replied with a smile, she was
finding this show rather amusing. "When you defeated her back in the
village you legally became her husband according to our laws, which was
just now confirmed by the kiss of marriage that Shampoo gave you."
"What?!" the boy cried while jumping over the purple haired girl who had
tried to grab him by just simply lunging herself at him. "But...but...but I
just can't do this! I'm not ready for this kind of stuff!"
Shampoo stopped advancing towards him and took slightly hurt look on
her face as she continued to look at him right into the eyes, a small tear
drop falling down her left cheek. "You...no like Shampoo?" the girl almost
whined. "Think wife...ugly?"
There were three things in the world that Ranma Saotome could not
resist. Challenges, food, and crying girls, and with the way purple haired
girl in front of him was preparing to wail was a perfect trap for him.
"I'msorry! I'msorry! I didn't mean it!" the boy panicked and quickly
rushed to the girl's side while gently embracing her, not realizing that the
girl had returned the favour until it was too late. "Ack! You cheater!"
"Tehee," the girl giggled bit 'too' girlishly as she latched herself firmly onto
his chest. There was no way she was going to let him go this time.
Unfortunately she had never met anyone like Ranma, and thus was ill
prepared to the sudden leap that he made, which tore her beloved away
from her grasp rather effectively.
Before neither Shampoo nor her great grandmother could react, the boy
was already on the edge of the roof and down in the streets after making
one of his impressive leaps again.
"After him!" Cologne snapped at the girl, "You don't want loose him again,
do you?"
The girl shook her head, her long purple ponytails with two large hair
ornaments billowing violently after her trial as she did, and then without
another word she was off the roof, following her husband's lead through
the crowd as fast as her abilities allowed.
Cologne didn't follow them, as instead of doing that, she had taken an
alternative route, thinking of cutting the boy's escape route off before he
could get too far. The old crone hadn't lived for two centuries for nothing,
and thus could evaluate tactics quite efficiently.
"The boy is bit resistant, but I think we can work on it before we go back,"
she thought with a chuckle escaping from her throat. Cologne had very
little doubt that her son-in-law could ditch her great granddaughter, she
had been trained to be quite a tracker, even in urban environment like
this, and thus didn't keep too much of a hurry as she bounded towards
her own destination.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"What the hell is my life becoming to?!" he thought as he bounded over
the rooftops, the persistent purple haired girl still visible as he looked over
one of his shoulders.
While Ranma knew he could normally outrun her by sheer speed, the
irregularity of the terrain was preventing him from going onward with his
top speed lest he wished to risk falling onto something he couldn't see,
and running on the streets would draw too much attention, so that option
was out.
Every time he looked behind his back he could see a glimpse of his
pursuer and would always change his course a bit so that he could have
better chances in shaking her off. He had considered just hiding, but the
risk was too high, and would he be caught he doubted could squirm his
way out from her grasp for the third time, the mere thought of it making
him blush.
"Damn! I gotta lose her somehow!" the boy mentally cried with
desperation etched on his face. He had fought opponents ten times
stronger than himself, faced hordes of wolves, he had gone through the
Neko-ken, swam across the China sea, received a curse from Jusenkyo,
but none of those experiences were comparable to this.
"Airen!" came the amorous call of the purple haired amazon who had
somehow caught up with him, but was still over hundred feet behind.
Ranma was starting to have a feeling that the only way he could get rid of
the girl was to exhaust her.
There was no way he was going to let himself to be caught like this.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Kagome wasn't having much fun today. As not only had she been forced
to rush into school, but also had she been late from the English test that
hadn't gone as well as she had been hopping it to go.
"Waaaaaah! I'm going to fail that damn test! I just know it!" she wailed at
her desk during the lunch break. Her friends were trying to console her,
but not with much success.
"Now, now...it can't be 'that' bad, now can it, Kagome-chan?"
"Oh yes it can! You don't know how hard I studied for this test, and only
to have it ruined just because I slept bit too long this morning!" Kagome
wailed right back at her friends.
There was very little the others could say to that, fully aware that when
Kagome was like this there would be nothing that they could do to break
her out from it.
For moment Kagome didn't do anything else than rest her forehead
against the desk, her mind brooding over and over how badly her test had
gone. But then suddenly she felt something strange, tug of some sort.
"Huh?" she muttered while raising her head to look around.
The class was mostly empty due to the lunch break and her friends had
given her some room to brood alone. Then the tug became stronger,
reminding her from the strange sensation she had felt yesterday when she
had been in Nerima.
"What the?" she gasped as he felt the tug turn into almost violent wrench,
but without any psychical effect on her. The tug was coming from her left
side where the windows where. She couldn't see nothing more than the
dark grey buildings that stood in rows at the other side of the school, and
was beginning to wonder what the heck was going on with her. But that
was when she noticed something else.
A figure, a young man in black hakama and gi top was on top of one of
the buildings, or rather jumping off them and only to land on the next.
"Eeeh? Who is he? How is he doing that?" she gasped out loud, catching
the attention of her friends who were no staring at her.
"Kagome-chan? Is everything alright?"
Instead of answer Kagome just rushed closer to the windows and watched
with fascinated eyes as the figure atop the buildings made several thirty
feet leaps as if the laws of gravity weren't applied to it.
"What are you looking at Kagome?" asked one of her three friends who
had been in the class from the start of the lunch break. She had moved
closer by now, the two others trying to look for what ever it was that their
friend was staring at.
Then they too noticed the figure.
"Wha-?! There's somebody on the roof!" pointed the girl with the short
brown bowl cut. The two others quickly turned their gazes along the path
that the girl was pointing and soon gasped in unison when they saw the
figure make one more leap, this time one carrying over forty feet in
length.
"Wait! Look, there's someone following him!" the same girl added, this
time pointing at the purple haired girl who was bounding after the long
haired boy with impressive leaps of her own.
And that was also when Kagome realized that the first figure they had
seen was now turned towards the school. She wasn't sure how she knew
it, but she was absolutely positive that he was staring right at her.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It had been almost an hour since Ranma began his race against the over
amorous amazon girl that amazingly had not yet given up on him. "Damn!
How long can she keep this up?! We've run through half of the city by
now!"
"Whoa!" he cried out as he avoided the sudden brick that had been
thrown from above. He hadn't seen or heard it; he had just somehow
sensed it, and had he not dodged it, it would have surely made him
stumble upon his feet and get caught by his pursuer. "What the...?!" he
gasped while turning to look up where saw the familiar crone smirking
down at him.
"Why you...!" he growled while shaking his fist, but quickly stopped and
leapt up when he realized that he had been standing around and that
there was that distinctive feeling of something, or rather someone, coming
from behind his back.
From atop the taller building Cologne was smiling to herself as she
followed the boy's movements. "Hmm, it seems that son-in-law has some
truly remarkable instincts. He is too young and obviously inexperienced to
have learned the secrets of chi manipulation, so there is no other way of
explaining how he avoided the brick and now my great granddaughter. His
contribution to our tribe will be a notable one." The smirk on her face was
growing to be rather disturbing.
Back on the other rooftop Ranma was running again, cursing the amazon
girl's persistence. "Whoa! Hey, now look her miss! I can't marry you just
because some stupid laws of your village says so!" he snapped at the girl,
almost causing him to be caught that time thanks to his carelessness.
"Airen stop running away now, so that Shampoo can show how good wife
she be," the purple haired girl responded giddily. Despite her appearance,
however, Shampoo, or Xian Pu as her mother language would express her
name, was starting to get weary with the way her quarry kept avoiding
her.
"Damn, this is getting nuts!" the boy thought desperately as he turned
and jumped onto the next rooftop, his mind half-wondering why the girl's
great grandmother hadn't tried anything new yet, and making him worry
that she might have already laid a trap for him.
But as his thoughts were averted from that, he realized that the strange
sensation that he had felt at the Tendo dojo last night was back again.
"Huh? What's with this weird tugging again?" he wondered as he jumped
down on the building rooftop. His eyes quickly locked with the large white
school building across the street, few hundred feet away. There were lots
of students strolling around building, telling him that it was a school
building, but none of them caught his attention, not until his eyes locked
on one of the third floor windows. There was a group of four girls watching
at him.
If he hadn't been so focused on thinking why he was feeling the tug
coming from them, he might have had realized that his vision had zoomed
in and that he was capable of seeing them with disturbing clarity, as if
there wouldn't have been more than few feet between them instead of the
actual three hundred.
Unfortunately his momentary distraction was all that Shampoo needed to
catch him. "Aaaaa! Leggo! Leggo of me damn it!" the boy cried out as he
found himself hopping up and down with the girl firmly latched onto his
torso.
As in response the girl just shook her head and continued to keep that
seemingly ever-present smile on her face. This time she had the boy in
quite good grasp, her other arm wrapped over his right shoulder while the
other went underneath his left, giving her a perfect position to twine her
hands together from the front and this way allowing her to lock herself
across his back.
But with the way Ranma kept bouncing around, she was having problems
with locking her legs around his waist or else she would have already
subdued him.
However, that was when a unexpected factor came into play.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Ryoga was lost and he was angry, nothing new there. It had taken most
of the day for him to escape from that weird gymnast, much thanks to the
bath house he had somehow stumbled upon. He had been kicked out for
not having paid for entry tough.
Now human, fully clothed, and set upon his familiar path of vengeance,
Ryoga was back on track. Surely after such trials the gods would see him
fit to find his nemesis so that he could extract his revenge.
"Damn you Ranma! Show yourself so that I can finally regain my honour!"
the boy cried angrily up into the heavens, drawing several odd looks from
the bystanders that quickly gave him a wide area of clearance as they
moved away from him.
It irritated the boy that he had been chasing for the other boy for almost
four years now without success, and now that his hated rival had changed
his appearance according to what he had heard was not making things
any easier.
"Curse you for trying to disguise yourself from me!" the boy cursed out
loud with his fists shaking in fury. "But no matter, I now know what you
look like thanks to that farmer you visited week ago." It had been through
sheer luck that he had met the farmer, the man had been clearly upset
about the pair who had visited him and had given helpful descriptions of
Ranma's new appearance. It seemed that the pair had runoff with some of
the man's valuables.
Or at least Genma had, not that it would have mattered to Ryoga.
"When I get my hands on that honourless..." Ryoga began his ranting
again, but paused when he realized that there was two people jumping
over the rooftops two blocks ahead. Other one was a girl with long purple
hair tied into twin ponytails and form fitting Chinese dress, and the other
was a long black haired boy in pitch black hamaka and gi top.
Despite the small size of his brains that didn't change much during the
transformations, it didn't take more than a second for Ryoga to recognize
his target.
"Ranma!! I've finally found you!" the boy bellowed, a maniacal look on his
face that made the other pedestrians on the street to run away from him.
In a few instants he was on the rooftops, and surprisingly heading to the
right direction.
"You won't get away from me this time!!"
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Ranma Saotome! Prepare to DIE!!"
Both Ranma and Shampoo's head snapped up towards the dark silhouette
that descended upon them from the taller building that stood beside the
one they were on, and with a quick dodge the black clad boy avoided the
earth shattering blow that caved in the rooftop as if it were mere paper.
"Huh? Who the hell are you?!" Ranma snapped at the stranger while
trying to dislodge the amazon from his back.
"I've finally found you Saotome," the new boy stated grimly while pulling
his bamboo umbrella out from the partially crumbled rooftop. He was
dressed in what seemed to be dirty and well worn travelling clothes and
black slacks, but the details that caught the pairs attention the most was
the yellow bandana and the distinctive fangs that showed quite clearly
when he snarled at the other boy. "I won't let you run away from me
anymore!"
"Run away?" muttered the longhaired boy while trying to scratch his neck,
the girl hanging from his back was making it rather hard tough. "Why
would I run away from you? Who the hell are you anyway? And why did
you attack me? I think you owe me an explanation buddy."
The bandana-clad boy sneered at him and took a swipe with his obviously
heavy umbrella. Ranma was quite positive that letting that thing hit him
would cause some bad injuries, as the rooftop could testify that.
"Don't tell me you've forgotten me Saotome!" the boy roared angrily as he
lunged at the entangled pair, ignoring the fact that the girl was not part of
his revenge. "I will get my revenge, as because of you I've seen hell!!"
"Eh? What the hell are you talking about, man?!" Ranma snapped angrily
as he skilfully leapt over the boys enraged swings that took off one of the
air ventilation pipes in the process. "And stop swinging that thing so damn
carelessly, you might hurt someone with it!"
"That's the idea!" the other boy replied angrily as he tore his bandana off
his forehead, only to reveal that there had been another one waiting
underneath it.
What happened next caught the longhaired boy off guard, as never before
had Ranma seen anyone throw a piece of cloth as if it were a solid
projectile, not ones that could cut through metal at least.
"Whoa!! Hey, quit it already! At least tell me your goddamn name and
why you're attacking me like this!" Ranma snapped indignantly. "Can't
you see I'm bussy?!" he continued while pointing his thumb at Shampoo
who was still clinging onto his back with rather satisfied look on her face.
This seemed to enrage the umbrella wielding boy even further. "How dare
you to take me this lightly, Saotome?!" he bellowed before tearing four
more bandanas off his head, revealing that there was more of them than
just two. "And don't play fool with me! Not after running away from our
man-to-man fight four years ago!!"
"Man-to-man...fight?" Ranma muttered with a slightly dumb look on his
face. Then suddenly a look of recognition lit up his face. "Ryoga?...Ryoga
Hibiki? Is that you?!" he said while smiling. "How have you been man?
Haven't seen you in a long time."
Up on the other rooftop Cologne was starting to wonder if it was safe for
her great granddaughter to stay so close to the two boys, especially with
the way the newcomer had started to glow with slightly sickly green aura
of depression. "Shampoo! Get off from son-in-law and stay away from the
fight!"
The girl in question gave a questioning look at the great grandmother but
did not question her orders and quickly dislodged herself from her quarry,
much to Ranma's relief.
That was also the point when Ryoga finally made his furry known. "You
dare to speak so friendly to me after what you've done to me?!" the boy
roared and then leapt at his nemesis while throwing his choice of weapons at him. "Die Ranma!!"
"Cool down Ryoga!" cried the other boy as he easily dodged the bandana
barrage and the overhead smash which had followed right behind them,
one that made the rooftop crumble even further. "I don't know what
you're so heated up from, but it wasn't me who ran off form that fight four
years ago. I waited three days for you!"
"Yes, but when I came on the fourth you were already gone, you lying
coward!" Ryoga shouted angrily while throwing his umbrella, aimed at his
opponent's head, but instead of hitting its target it found itself embedded
into the wall of the building right next to the one they were standing upon.
"Lying coward?!" Ranma gasped with surprise evident on his face. He had
been called to be many things during his life, but being called a coward
and a liar to boot, was something that he wouldn't stand for.
Then before anyone, even Cologne who had over two hundred years of
experience under her belt, could react, Ranma had lunged towards his
attacker and was now grasping the other boy's throat with vice like grip.
"Nobody...nobody calls me that and gets away with it!" Ranma was staring
at Ryoga right into the eyes, his hand keeping the eternally lost boy just
over the edge of the rooftop.
Ryoga cursed his own carelessness and tried to kick his nemesis into the
face, but found himself flung across the rooftop instead. "Argh! Damn
you!"
Ranma just shook his head as he pulled up his sleeves, revealing his long
claws that now somehow seemed to be longer than normally, and took up
a stance. "If this is the only way we can solve this problem, then lets get
it over with."
Up on the rooftop both Cologne and Shampoo, who had climbed up there
few moments ago, gasped when they saw the claws on the boy's hands.
"What on earth is going on here?" the old crone muttered to herself with
shocked look on her face, but it lasted only for a moment as it turned into
smirk again. "I see...heh, well this explains a lot of the boy's aura..."
At her side, her great granddaughter was giving her a odd look. "What are
you saying great grandmother?" the girl asked in her native language
instead of using her broken Japanese.
"Oh, nothing much," the old woman chuckled with a pleased look on her
face. "I just discovered why the boy's aura has been acting up and why he
is so strong and fast as he is."
"..." the girl continued to just stare at her.
"He is obviously a youkai, or a hanyou," Cologne continued while pointing
her staff at Ranma. "I'd suspect the later since the boy still looks mostly
human, but I can't be sure since he doesn't show any other distinctive
animal or beast like psychical appearances aside his claws."
Shampoo wasn't sure what to make out of what her great grandmother
was saying. "Great grandmother?"
"Yes, what is it child?"
"What is a youkai or hanyou?"
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
End of Chapter two...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Next chapter: The duel, discoveries, and schoolgirls...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ok, so how was it? Good, bad, or total crap? Tell me what you think and
I'll see what I can do to improve the future chapters. This one was done in
rather choppy manner, so I don't expect any extraordinary amount of
praises coming from this one...especially with the way I ended it. 8P
Also, for those who have been bombing me with requests to write faster I
can only say this. I'm a working student who has to go both to work and
school, school in the morning and work on the evening, so I think it would
be understandable if my pace isn't the fastest, especially when I feel that
what I write should be finished, and not just, "acceptable".
Anyways, I hope I can write the next chapter bit faster than this one, but
I can't guarantee anything since my old man has been threatening to
throw me out of the house if I don't pass my next tests...yes, life tends to
suck on some of us.
"Angels have always given me the creeps."
-John Constantine to Tim Hunter,
"The Books of Magic"