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Ranma woke up.

There was this unusually bright light, which quickly concentrated to a door open before him. He squinted his eyes - soon it became manageable to identify silhouettes.

He edged ever closer, holding the door for support. The word came from his mouth much sooner and clearer than he expected: "Mom?"

"Sweetie!" She dropped whatever she was holding and beckoned him closer. "How's my baby...? I missed you..."

"Missed you, too, Mom," he breathed, becoming soon short of it.

She disengaged, smiling at him brightly. "You hungry?"

It was enough for him to hear the words to follow. He sat at the table, cracked two sticks apart, then turned.

He caught the meal as it almost hit him in the face. "Wow!" Again, he turned from the plate, "thanks, Mom."

"So... tell me about your trip."

She ran her fingers through his hair, a sensation so familiar that years could not dilute or remove remembrance. Neither could he forget the tang or the crunch of a freshly-cooked okonomiyaki, grilled to perfection.

"Mom, you wouldn't believe what Pop and I've seen." He felt the bubbling excitement, remembering the chases (literally) and the wide, open spaces.

-----

"Genma..."

He stared back into the darkness behind him, but did not dare stop.

"Genma..."

He felt the cold run through him, along his sides, and he froze, paralyzed through the entirety of his body by the sheathing of steel.

"I didn't mean to! I tried to stick to my promise!"

"Genma..." The eerie monotone was starting to wear at him.

"Please! It can all be set through!"

Silence. He almost supplied his own name, just to make the rhythm continuous. The voice said, instead, "set?"

"Yes!" He had to shout, as his own voice was beginning to wear thin in his ears. "Yes! He can get over this! He can still be a man among men!"

Again, silence. The winds let him go, and he turned.

"So be it."

-----

"And then we met Ucchan, and we had a lotta fun fighting over his okonomiyaki, and makin' sauce'n stuff and then there was this carnival'n this weird man - "

Ranma stopped, when he realized that, somehow, it was raining on him.

"Wait! Wait! STOP!" But the rain did not.

"What is it, Ranma? What happened to you?"

He wanted to hide himself, hide the changes he could feel happening, the reshaping, but his mother - all mothers do - knew.

"What's this Ranma? Why are you a girl?"

"I'm not a girl! I'm a boy! I'm Ranma! I'm your little boy!"

His mother seemed alien. "I used to have a little boy... but his father took him away. My Ranma is a girl..."

"NO!"

-----

Ranma woke up, sweating.

Immediately, he turned, checking to see if his father had been roused. The old man was turned away, mumbling, but apparently still asleep.

He slumped back into the sleeping bag, wondering what to make of their return trip to Japan and why he could not remember his mother's face.

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Ranma was created by Rumiko Takahashi, and these are all her characters and creations. The copyrights to it are also held by Shogakukan and Kitty Film in Japan, and by Viz Communications in the Northern Americas.

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Age Don't Matter

a Ranma 1/2 alternate history fanfic

by Nikholas "Switch" F. Toledo