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* Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction * Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction * Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction *
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Switch Part 13 of 12: "The End of Switch" by Nikholas "Switch" F. Toledo
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Please do remember that Ranma 1/2 is a trademark and a copyright of and
by some big name people and companies I am not even worthy to introduce.
Anybody who says that I took any of their stuff better not find me
hiding. Also, great thanks to whoever reads this and likes it, good
thanks to whoever reads it anyhow, and teeny-weeny thanks to whoever else
even saw this. Wouldn't Switch be a little more understandable if we - ?
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 Why?
 or
 Wouldn't Life Be a Little More Understandable
 If We All Spoke English (or Japanese)?



 There are no innocent people in Nerima.
 There are only two major partitions in the populace in Nerima. The
first of which is the one separating active and passive people - the
active people are the main cast and some of their friends, who might have
been passive before, except that they got witty one-liners or had to be
first in line to be victimized by whatever monster of the week had
arrived. The passive people had been given all their actions in passive
voice, obviously - whereas Ranma would have the wind run through his
hair, the random passer-by would have his hair run through by the
self-same wind.
 Nonetheless, the wind would be thorough with the strands of hair on
each and every single person in Nerima.
 Nerima is that kind of place - where it would make no distinctions
on doling its inescapable attentions, it would make its choices on who
gets to do what to who.
 The secret to this led, inevitably, below the surfa

 "What the hell?!"
 Across the room, the hand that flicked on the light switch waved
off the animosity that came from near the low-rad screen it had managed
to outshine.
 "Mr. Switch." The man stepped closer. An author's spider-sense
would immediately be alerted to the fact that he was wearing genuine
Ray-ban sunglasses, in a spiffy three-piece suit with tie, all in a
funereal tone that said that someone somewhere was dying, and that
someone would be joining soon.
 The author sat up and thought:

 If I'm going to be dying soon, there have to be a few things that I
have to say. I've done a lot of things badly, a lot of things wrong.
It's been, what? Barely four years. I've been writing for almost four
years, and I've done nothing but gripe. [3] If I haven't given you a
bad impression of my personality, I've probably given you such a wrong
impression of this place, Nerima, which has been my home.
 I've never really changed my impression of this cozy little nook.
You might have read about how I've described the weather conditions here,
about the way the climate is accelerated. It's really nothing that
goofy, at least before Ranma came, that is, and that the Principal from
Hell came back, so I've heard. I mean, hearing that he came back, that
is. I keep thinking of the canal along the way to Furinkan as a river,
but I've always been a city boy, even back in the Philippines, so I've
never really seen a river that clean.
 Neither have I tried to change most people's perception of this
strange rectangle on the dot of Tokyo. You figure most of the gossip in
school goes around the topics of who's been seen with whom, who's been
chasing whom, who's engaged to whom, but with friends like Daisuke and
Hiroshi (more of the latter, of course), add to that list who's been
fighting whom, when and where did they say the challenge would take
place, how Ranma found out about this latest move,
 But, you may wonder, what have I been doing in the last year or so?
Wouldn't you like to know. What happened when we all graduated from
J____? Or that last, fateful summer? Did I go to Furinkan, like all my
friends and lover? Or, as someone with more tact would have mentioned,
what happened between me and Yuka so that she'd end up with good ol'
'suke-boy, and that it took me that long to mention?
 But wait, my tormentor wishes to say something.

 [3] Before that, of course, a footnote. I had wanted to try
annotating Switch to clarify all the nitty-gritty throwaway references
and expressions I had used in the series. [4] I tried it with the
prologue, and ended up with 30-odd notes to tack.
 Where was I? Oh, yes. [5]

 [4] 'Twould give a Pratchett feel to it. I also tried removing the
chapter separations, but 'twas never written in that way. Strange how
the first parts of this series reminded people of Pratchett, when I had
first read "Good Omens" in the second year of writing.
 Douglas Adams had always been an influence, however. I had read
the Hitchhiker trilogy in the order of 2-5-1-4-3.

 [5] Chronicled in "In-Between the Lines", Years 1 through 3, by
Switch, the second prequel to the Switch series, after "The Way of the
Parting Waters", by Switch, goo, Yebah, Pervert and Vector. Unless
anyone else is interested, episode one will never be written, nor will
there be a third trilogy. To anyone whose interests lean toward a
concatenated series of fanfiction, I suggest Radler's mega-crossovers.
 However, there are rumors of a "Young Switch Gets a Hand" in the
making.

 "You seem to have a lot on your mind."
 Ah? Sorry. "Ah?"
 "A lot on your mind, Mr. Switch," he reiterated, and held a cloth
petal of a plastic plant standing on a corner with fingers in a morbidly
black leather glove.
 "Always liked plants," the author replied, all weary. "Too lazy to
water, though."
 "Maybe you were a little busy doing your research." The man ran
the hand on top of the blue water bottle on the dispenser. "Too busy."
 "Okay, okay," Switch said, noticing that the man was relishing the
fact that no fingerprints would be found in the room. If he was not
careful, even the author would have no fingerprints in the room.
 He shook off the sudden and unnecessary recollection of
Encyclopedia Brown, and focussed on his companion. "Enough hyperbole.
Is there something you're here to give me or do I have to beat it out of
you?"
 It would be hard to believe that the short, frail-looking teenager
would be able to make good on his threat, and the man raised his eyebrow
to convey that remark. Daisuke knew better, at least that, if anything,
there'd be at least a two-chapter fight from it.
 If the man were unarmed, that was.
 "You will get what is coming to you, Mr. Switch," the man assured.

 It would be easier to understand all this diplomacy if I were to
elaborate. Let him think that I'm zoning out due to fear.
 My name is Michael, often Mike, sometimes Mikeru, recently Switch.
Four years ago, I came to Nerima. Two years ago, Yuka and I were
something of an item. A year ago, I thought I was going back home.
 Last summer, I went back to the motherland, touching base with the
parents, the siblings, the dogs. Three years in Japan had been good to
me, they said. Maybe now I should go to the special high school (t)here?
 I'd be a freshman as old as a senior.
 Funny. What was important to me was to become normal. Being a
normal student in a special school didn't necessarily occur to me as
something that ended up, in the absolute scale, according to my plans.
 I came back to Nerima after two weeks.
 Admittedly, the first thing I did was look for Yuka. Right after
the big break-up, the last thing on my mind should have been looking for
her.
 I missed her. A whole damned lot.
 I transferred to Furinkan the next week, right into 1-F. I
remember the first time I stepped into the homeroom. The teacher had
called me in, and I hadn't told any of them that I had come back. The
moment I stepped through the door, I looked for her, trying to catch her
expression.
 She was sitting next to Akane - a surprise, since they weren't that
close in junior high - across her was Sayuri, and the two of them -
Sayuri and Akane, that was - were talking, apparently clearing a topic
that came in class. Yuka was writing something down, bowed over her
hands, leaned slightly forward.
 Another step forward, and she had raised her head. She sighed,
done with her small chore, leaning slightly back, lips in position for a
simple kiss, it would seem now, and met my expectant eyes.
 She smiled.

 "Something about this... situation... amuses you?"
 You could feel that this was the type of man who pressed downward
with ellipses to emphasize his point.
 "Nothing," the boy known as Switch demurred, "it's just the way I'd
phrase it."
 As though nothing was obviously wrong, he fished in the drawers of
the relatively low-slung desk supporting the computer's monitor for a
free diskette. This motion was made harder by the fact that the boy was
sitting on an air-filled bean-baggish chair. He placed the keyboard he
was cradling on top of the printer, taking care not to jostle the nearby
phone handset.
 He found a pink 3.5", and plugged it into the disk drive of the
CPU, standing to the right of the desk, all carefully.

 Scene break here.

 Some people have probably figured, "he's the man."
 I'd normally respond, "'the man'?"
 They'd, of course, have to continue, "you know, the man. The guy
who was moving around in the series. The guy who talked to Nabiki. [6]
The guy who told Nodoka that Genma had sold Ranma to the Triad. [7] The
man in the room with the broken switch [8], whose narrations are out of
sequence."
 Some people are saying, "when did Nodoka think that Genma sold
Ranma to the Triad?" Others are going, "huh?"
 Now, why would I self-insert as a completely unremarkable plot
device? At least, that's what he seems to me. The man, I mean. How'd
you think I'd know that he's completely unremarkable? You'd figure I'm
just really lazy, trying to pass him off as that. You should see the
guy. Blends in better than Tsubasa in a junkyard. And he acts just like
a convenient plot device, right?
 Now I know this would be confusing, with the man in the room with
me, and the completely unremarkable man in my chronicles.
 Let's say that, for clarity, the unremarkable man, the man who
talked to Nabiki, talked to Nodoka, sleeps in a dark room, and is not me,
his name was Bob.
 That should be a bit clearer.

 [6] Switch Book I, "The Light on the Fourth Floor".
 [7] Switch Book I, "Ten to One Against".
 [8] Switch Book I, "The Light on the Fourth Floor".
 It was funny that the chapters had titles which had numbers,
straight from chapter one, "First Flick", through to chapter twelve, "The
Flirty Dozen". Chapter thirteen was called "The Empty House" because I
really felt that I wanted to poke at the superstition. "Fourteen Snakes
and Ladders" through to "Seventeen Myths and Legends", then "Parental
Guidance" for chapter eighteen, "Chapter 19" (really witty, non? :),
"Twenty Questions Unanswered", "The Jack of Spades is Wild!" for
twenty-one, then "Wheel of Fortune".
 The last is a slightly mistaken take on the Tarot deck, which has
22 cards in the Major Arcana. "Wheel of Fortune" is numbered 21, of
course, I think, unless you're using Hitomi from Escaflowne's deck.

 Thought break here. A really neat eye-catch, with the name
"Switch" emblazoned in Japanese and in English. Then a neat pose of
mine. Then a commercial about aluminum siding.

 I've always hated posing for pictures.
 That's why my space in our yearbook was a black rectangle, under a
suspiciously American-sounding name of a Filipino transfer student in a
Japanese junior high school. Sounds trite?
 I never bothered. Don't have a yearbook. The graduation pictures
are enough.

 Ranma arrived about a month after I did.
 Of course I'd heard about Kuno's stupid proposal. Watched the next
day, never bothered for the reruns.
 Of course I fit in well with the rest of the weirdos. The gang
I've had for three years were all there, our sentai group, and even Akane
and Hikaru were there. It was as though I'd never left, as though I'd
never thought of leaving.
 Of course I spoke perfect(ly passable) Japanese and I was acing
English. Been here three years, remember? I remember when it was hard
enough getting directions to the public bath - I even remember how hard
it was getting used to using the public bath. Still felt the need to be
normal, though. Good thing - being Miss Hinako's pet student was not,
despite all indications otherwise, the best of career moves. That woman
is a back-breaker.
 Of course Yuka and me got back together.
 I wished. I wished really hard. I even asked, thrice.
 ...

 ...
 If Yuka knew everything I was doing for the past months, she'd
probably say, "you saw Ranma and Akane naked?!" [9] She has had quite a
nudity fixation, by the by, as most of the girls in Nerima did.

 [9] Switch Book I, "4X4 FWD/RWD". What's Book III? [10]

 [10] A little joke, of course. I wouldn't want to explain how I
got "Tree", "Park Life", "Battle of Witlesses", "First to Last", "Letter
#361" and "Just Damp", though. "Three White Lies" might not be
sufficient. "Letter #361" and "Battle of Witlesses" were written that
way because I was so bored that I wanted to try things out.
 And don't ask me how I was able to write "Battle of Witlesses" if I
wrote "Eighth Hour's Sleep and a Moment's Dream" through "The Flirty
Dozen".
 Come to think of it...

 "... is that why you're here?"
 "What?" The MiB was taken aback. "Come again?"
 "The way I've been writing it, I mean." Playing it cool, hmm?
"The way I've been writing 'Switch'."
 "Oh, the way you've been writing... 'Switch'," he said with some
distate, "has been... interesting. Too -"
 "Too interesting," Switch ended. "It's not perfect or anything,"
he admitted.
 "But it... it explains so much," he countered.
 Switch could have mentioned similarities in his narrative to the
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which, while exhaustively
comprehensive, was mostly apocryphal. "I've had time to think about it."
 "Really?" The man (not-Bob) seemed surprised. "Doesn't seem like
it."
 The boy (also not-Bob) flapped his mouth open, about to say
something, but suddenly caught the gist of the last statement. It was
sad that his brain didn't need to be consciously in control for him to
make sounds with his mouth. "They're interesting people," it said.
 "They are," he acceded. "So much going on with them."
 This was the heart of the problem, of course.

 That is the head of the matter.
 Ranma came to Nerima one month after I did.
 Suddenly, there was nothing else anyone could talk about
animatedly. His single-handed defeat of the athletic-club membership of
the school was headline material, and his engagement to Akane Tendo, who
was once the perpetually sad Madonna, now the fiery and angry
bachelorette [11], was grist for the rumor mill. His manga-like
hyper-powered martial-arts skills, calling out stranger single-minded
adversaries, coupled with his mystical gender-changing abilities [12],
made for the most popular ring of the largest circus in Tokyo, the other
two rings covered by aliens and robots, excuse me, androids.
 Many a conversation now was opened with the line "how's about that
Saotome today?" basically because the weather was predictably rainy when
something was bound to happen to Ranma, and it sped up ice-breaking
rather handily.
 I... I wasn't jealous. Surely, he was just a transfer student, a
martial artist, as I wanted to become. Daisuke was just one belt ahead
of me, dammit! That was a chasable goal. This... this new guy was a
windmill.
 (Okay, so maybe even Kuno was way above my league but, gods, the
guy had a stick. Ranma didn't even use his hands on him.)
 I... I wasn't jealous. I was curious. But I didn't want to ask
him straight out. It wasn't right that way. I may just have been not
curious enough.
 Then... she came along.
 I didn't notice her at first. Hell, I don't think anyone would
notice a male transfer student anymore, until they showed an interest in
Ranma, then an interest in rearranging the landscape with his face. Then
he'd usually be another grumbling face in the crowd.
 Ukyo... Ukyo is different. You could tell that she's living off of
some kind of death in her feet. I mean, no one deserves to be so sad.
She loses her family's cart of livelihood. Then she vows revenge, gives
up her womanhood and takes on the life of a modern samurai or something.
And then, when she finally finds him, finds Ranma, he goes and twirls her
head so fast she's reeling.
 I mean, how can fate be that cruel? Each time she gets to a major
turning point, the sign always says "Detour".

 [11] Anybody would've probably snapped into annoyance with guys
trying to beat you up just to get a date. Akane was very popular, even
then.

 [12] It's strange that no one really knows how Ranma came about his
"curse". There's probably some sort of dimensional displacement, some
other world where the female Ranma comes from, otherwise the mass
differential would probably cause chaotic thunderstorms about everywhere
except Peking, where there was always a butterfly.
 So, anyway, I figure, I'm writing this for the company, right?
They did say that it was a continuing work, of sorts. They must have
some idea on how this whole situation came about. Imagine my surprise
when I found that they had a whole library on Jusenkyo, and all the
cursed springs, and about Nerima, and -
 Oh. Oh shit.

 "Too much," Switch concluded. He started to stand.
 "And that started me thinking," he said, pushing the boy down with
one hand on a shoulder. "I'm thinking, 'some of those insights, some of
those ramblings, they said too much. It's like he knows some of the
things that are really going on.' And, suddenly, it's too late, because
you did know it, you bastard!"
 "Hey! HEY!" He saw the gun. The shiny black barrel did not even
end in a silencer. Hell, it was a damned shiny black-barrelled pistol,
you can't even put a silencer on that. "You're gonna kill me because I
wrote a damned STORY?!"
 "YOU POSTED IT ON A DAMNED MAILING LIST!!" He put an exclamation
point on the exclamation point.
 Switch was surprised he was taking it so calmly. Then again, he
figured it would happen, since he noticed that the last e-mail to the
company he had cc:ed to ffml@fanfic.com.
 "As fanfiction! Fan Fiction! Fiction! You know, make-believe!"
 "It would've been that, wouldn't it? If you kept to the damned
narrative!"
 He shot.
 "Oof." It would've probably been a scream, except that he barely
was able to get out harm's way, the heart moved only by inches. Blood
was flowing into the left lung.
 "Wha... what... tipped you off?" The participle hung painfully.
"The bit... on... exporting... males?"
 The man who was not named Bob did not bother to advance. "Nope.
You got careless, Switch. You had to write about the prince, didn't
you?"
 Switch was coughing blood and phlegm, and knew he didn't have time
left. "Prince...?"
 "You had to put that in, had to make her talk. You had to make the
Storyteller weave her tale once more."
 Switch smiled crookedly. "'twas... a... good... story..."
 "But the Storyteller doesn't talk." He took aim. The boy pulled
himself up, a very painful motion, along the desk, a hand leaning on the
mouse. "Because I cut her tongue long ago."
 Two fingers tensed.
 Switch stared at him, blood welling in his mouth, tried to focus,
tried to say what he wanted to say, but didn't have the breath...

 ... Rollo Tomasi...

 "Well, shit," he muttered, looking down at the profusely bleeding
body of the writer. Then he noticed something on the computer screen.
 The Eudora mailbox logo looked different. He realized, the flag
was down. It was up before.
 "Shit!" He sat down, tried to locate the last message sent, but
couldn't find it.
 This was definitely worse. He had to find a way to shutdown the
FFML before that last post was sent.
 He stood up, hearing the sirens that could not be more than three
blocks away, and shot at the water canister.

 Unnoticed, a woman with red hair clandestinely left the apartment
building where a tragic murder was committed that night. The suspect, a
twenty-something man in a three-piece suit and sunglasses, could not be
located.



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 (Detach here)

 THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE COMPLETE SWITCH RANMA½ FANFICTION STORY

 The Way of the Parting Waters*
 Originally the first Ranma fanfic conceptualized in the
 series – set in feudal Japan, a sort of altered universe
 Ranma story dealing with the original Tendo dojo. Bits of
 this story are what the Storyteller mentions. And, yes, this
 is a significant part of the entirety.

 Book III: Park Life
 The origin of Tsubasa Kurenai.

 Book III: Tree
 Ryoga and Ukyo: hit and miss and miss and twenty more
 misses.

 In-Between the Lines (Years 1 through 3)*
 Another prequel, this self-insert deals with the
 junior high mis-adventures of Hiroshi, Daisuke, Sayuri, Yuka
 and a Filipino student named Mike. Very little of this has
 any significance, although it was a nice thought. A spamfic
 was written before about this. Gosunkugi, Akane, Rio the
 fortune-telling girl make appearances.

 Book III: Letter #361*
 When Kasumi dumps Dr. Tofu. A one-act play.

 Book III: First to Last*
 Let's say I wanted to substantiate the Ukyo/Ryoga
 friendship. Okay, okay, RpM, I'm not.

 Book I: Day 1
 What if people that never met in the series met?

 Book III: Just Damp
 A dream that was moist.

 Book I: Day 2
 What if we got rid of Ranma for almost one day?

 Book III: Battle of Witlesses*
 Who did the most damage at Mt. Fuji? Comic-book
 script.

 Book III: Three White Lies
 Is Ranma a boy, a girl or a cat?

 Book I: Day 3
 What if everything you ever held true was wrong?

 Book III: Goddess of Cookery*
 When I come back and finish this after three years, I
 find myself writing way too much in chapter 21, so I take out
 the cooking sequence and place it here. A Stephen Chow send-
 up.

 Book III: Why?
 I slay me.

 Book II: The Episode Scripts*
 Now, take everything that was there, make new stories
 and somehow explain this entire mess. What happened to the
 Tendos, the Saotomes, the Kunos, the Onos, the Amazons and to
 Nerima, and why it has something to do with Bob and a company
 named Switch.

 Book III: Necessity's Child*
 In a parallel dimension, paradox occurs.

 SWITCH ENDS HERE

 Ranma 1/2 is by Takahashi Rumiko, Shogakukan, Kitty TV and Viz, LLC.

 Thank you for your characters. 
 I have learned much from them.

	(Detach here)
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