See 1st chapter for disclaimer
As was usual for his morning routine Ranma stood in a private room of the police office while his 'boss' at this current time sat on the desk in front of him. "So then," Ranma said as he tapped his foot. "I take it we have a deal?"
"Your request is a bit odd," Saito told him after pulling out the cigarette from his mouth.
"Well the government is paying me for this right?" Ranma asked. "Just think of this a part of that. Besides, since you worked for the Shogun's side I figure you'd be the best person to find the old intelligence reports from that time."
Saito just shrugged. "Very well, although it may take me a little bit of time for my contacts to dig something like this up," the policeman told him. "I suppose you want an update on his current status as well?"
"Yes," Ranma said before heading towards the door. "I'll come by tomorrow with another update, see you then."
Chapter 11. Ranma's Agreement: A Glimpse of Things to Come
Yahiko Myojin, first apprentice of the Kamiya Kasshin Style stood at his favorite spot for private practice, the river bank, next to an old dead tree while trying out various sword stances he had seen before. However, unlike in the dojo the forms he was going through were not usual to his type of style, or any style that made use of a bamboo sword. Instead, they were things he had seen Kenshin, or people who fought Kenshin, do.
After taking one final round of warm-ups, Yahiko turned towards his opponent and readied his stance. Not bothering with a war cry he lunged at the target and swung with all this strength…missing the wooden plank hanging from the tree by a few centimeters and collapsing to the ground thanks to a loss of balance.
Which was the main reason his was out here. If anyone, such as Ranma, Kaoru, or Sanosuke, ever saw him making such a fool of himself he'd never live it down. That, and Yahiko would never hear the end of it from his teacher for trying to learn different styles.
No one to be deterred, Yahiko got back up on his feet and prepared to try again; trying to find just the right stance in the process. "No that wasn't right," he scolded himself. "Kenshin's stance was way different than that." After finding the right location for each one of his body parts, the boy charged his target once again…this time swinging far too close and hitting his hands on the wooden board instead of with his sword, and then getting clocked in the face by the thing when it came swinging back around, also making one of his sandals fly off in the process.
Actually, starch all the people in the dojo, if anyone saw him like this he'd just curl up and die.
"Um, excuse me," a sweet, feminine and rather mousy voice from behind Yahiko said as he was rubbing his head in an attempt to clam the pain he was feeling. Two seconds later Yahiko was sitting up to see who was bringing on this sudden urge to find a hole to crawl off into upon him.
It was a girl, and a rather young one at the still pre-teen age, probably close to Yahiko's own. She was dressed in a light pink kimono and had her chestnut hair cut short in a slightly wild pageboy style and eyes the color of light purple. "Um excuse me," she said again before holding out a hand with his shoe in it. "You dropped this."
Yahiko took a moment to brush the grass out of his hair with his fingers before reaching up and taking the article of clothing the girl was offering with a quick mummer of thanks. However after putting it on he soon discovered the strap was broken.
"Oh your strap," she said before kneeling down and taking off the slipper while Yahiko was still too dazed to do anything. A few moments later she had torn off a piece of cloth from her own clothing and made it into a makeshift middle strap for Yahiko's footwear, while he just sat there speechless.
A few moments later the girl was done she a brief apology of interrupting Yahiko's training and then quickly took off back up the slope that led to the main rode.
Yahiko's eyes momentarily shifted to his repaired shoe, then back to the retreating girl. "Oh geeze, I didn't even get her name!"
"Back off it's mine," a female, but hardly feminine voice said as the sound of wood hitting wood echoed throughout the room.
"No way you got the last big one, so that means this belongs to me," a rather crude and loud man replied in the same tone.
"Big deal, we're treating you to this meal so that means that you can't have the best stuff," the girl argued.
"Hey I'm just trying to give you a hand here," the man countered. "You could stand to loose a little weight."
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" the girl shouted while the sound of chopsticks snapping could be heard.
Kaoru, along with everyone else at the table including Kenshin and Gensai's grandchildren, winced as she heard Ranma's response to Sanosuke's jab before taking this opportunity to grab some beef from the pot. Meanwhile the redhead in the light blue kimono frowned at her broken chopsticks for a moment, and muttered something in what must have been a foreign language as Kaoru didn't recognize the word plastic and didn't catch much else.
Over the past few weeks of living with Ranma, the assistant master of the Kamiya Kasshin style had noticed a few things about her gender-bending student. Despite Ranma's claims when s/he first arrived, the (current) redhead didn't seem to be 100% male, at least when in female form. She owned a few kimonos (one of which Kaoru was quite jealous over as it had a lovely design and looked incredibly expensive) and was as quick to react as Kaoru herself when it came to jabs on her weight, looks, and any other thing a female took pride in. In fact the only thing that stayed the same in both forms was Ranma's interest in the female sex, which led to a few tiny awkward moments during a shopping trip with the shorter girl when she was getting a look at the females in Tokyo as it took awhile for Kaoru to catch on.
Kaoru was suddenly broken out of her thoughts/food grabbing when Kenshin said something to Yahiko. "You know you haven't been eating that much today. Are you alright?" In fact upon saying those words, everyone's attention shifted to the boy.
That's when Kaoru noticed something. Yahiko's sandal had a red toe strap instead of the normal blue colored. From the close distance she was sitting to the boy, Kaoru could easily tell it was a patchwork job, not done by a professional. "Yahiko, what happened to your shoe?"
"Hey I know," Sanosuke said with a smirk. "He must have gotten his girlfriend to tie it together for him."
"H-hey it's not like that!" Yahiko explained while trying to address everyone at once then quickly grabbing his bowl of rice and stuffing his face to obviously avoid further conversation. As if Kaoru would let him get away with something like this that easily.
"Well good choice Yahiko," Ranma said. " Take it from me, women are nothing but trouble." After putting in her two cents the young woman raised her hand and called for the waiter, needing some chopstick replacements.
Then when the waiter came with their order of tea and Ranma's replacement eating utensils, everything started to fall into place. Tsubame was a new waiter at the Akobecko, who had just started working this week. Kaoru and Ranma had met her during one of their trips to the market when her student had gotten a little hungry and couldn't wait till they got home. Apparently the girls had met her too since they were the ones to call out her name.
Yahiko just responded to her entrance by choking on his rice and then quickly clearing his windpipe by quickly spitting it all out over to his side, and right onto Sanosuke. Of course he didn't even seem t notice what he had did, and just stared at the girl with an open mouth.
"Oh you've never met her before," Kaoru said. "Well Yahiko, this is Tsubame."
The whole incident didn't last long as another patron called out, asking the girl for water, which it seemed she needed to get from the well out back as she immediately took off. "Oh I forgot to say something to her before," Yahiko said before jumping up and hurrying after the girl while leaving the rest of the group speechless at what just had occurred.
The silence seemed to hang in the air for a few moments before Ranma's voice finally broke it as she looked over to the big street fighter sitting next to her. "Oh thanks for the shield big guy." She then reached down and grabbed the piece of meat they had been fighting over previously that Sano had seemed to of forgotten about with all the commotion.
Sanosuke just growled and clenched his fists, snapping his chopsticks in the process.
After putting on his shoes Yahiko walked out to the back yard of the restaurant, to find the girl from before struggling with pulling the bucket's rope up. In a few seconds Yahiko was at her side and grabbed the object Tsubame was having trouble with. "Here let me do it," the boy said, his tone a mix of frustration over what he was trying to work out in his head.
After he got the bucket up Yahiko poured it into the one meant for carrying water and then handed it to the girl. "Look uh," he said before looking up at her. She just looked down at him with those bright eyes of hers, the same way she did when he had made a fool of himself and didn't laugh or anything. Feeling a little foolish Yahiko got up and turned around. "About earlier, I just wanted to say, thanks." Although Yahiko wasn't sure whether he meant how she helped him, or didn't mock the boy after landing flat on his butt.
"I can't believe we're doing this," Ranma mumbled as she watched the two kids from behind her hiding spot of the firewood pile while standing next to Kenshin and the others while they just giggled or chuckled at the sight of Yahiko and that Tsubame girl talking and her 'training' partner getting embarrassed. Maybe I should give this in my next report to Saito, he wants it to be through and it should really piss him off, she thought to herself why wondering for the hundredth time how she got railroaded into this assignment.
"No, I should be thanking you," Tsubame said so softly that Ranma had to strain to hear it. The girl seemed to be a carbon copy of that Sailor whatsherface from that stupid television show that got its lines and dress designs from Kuno; the one with the purple skirt.
"Oh, well I'm Yahiko Myojin," he said, introducing himself.
"Myojin," Tsubame repeated the name, as if tasting it. "Well, thank you, Little Yahiko." She then turned and ran back into the restaurant, leaving Yahiko standing there in the open. Even from where she was Ranma could see the dissapoiment written clearly across the boy's face.
Everything seemed to freeze for a moment and a cold wind blew in across the yard. "Little…Yahiko," he mumbled before collapsing to the ground and sitting cross-legged style. "Do I really look so childish?"
"Ok I think I've seen enough," Ranma mumbled before getting up and heading back inside. It was bad enough that they dragged her out here away from the food, but watching the kid get embarrassed to death was even worse than watching it get all mushy. "Hey I'm gonna go get some fresh air, see you guys back at the dojo."
Later that evening when Ranma returned from her stroll around town and a quick checkup on her daughter she found the Yahiko kid had multiple bruises all over his body. Ranma learned from Kaoru that right after she had left where was some big fight with some gang that had beaten him up over something Tsubame had. It didn't take much eaves dropping to find out that the gang also planned to rob the Akebecko family's home tomorrow night either.
The next morning it didn't take Ranma long to find Yahiko had run off to his usual private training ground. During his time at the dojo Ranma had always gone off to see what the other residents and freeloader were up to when Kenshin was doing something that probably had other manslayers rolling over in their graves in embarrassment while they were forced to watch him doing laundry in Hell. Sure Ranma had to do those things, but he was a parent for crying out loud! Anyway, as the older fighter predicted, Yahiko was practicing with not just the usual one board, but a little under a dozen of them…and getting pummeled.
While the boy was busy trying not to get nailed his in the back of the head Ranma made his way down behind the boy. "Hey Yahiko look out for the guy behind you, he's pretty fast," Ranma said in a light and joking tone. Which of course caused the boy to turn around and look at Ranma with a puzzled expression before the board he had just knocked with a thrust flew back and clocked him on the head and sent Yahiko to the ground. "Told you to watch out behind you."
"What the heck are you doing here," Yahiko asked in confusion after pulling his face out of the dirt.
"Oh nothing really," Ranma replied before lounging against the side of the hill. "Just watching the idiot make a fool of himself, it's actually pretty funny. Please, continue."
"WHAT WAS THAT?" Yahiko yelled with his teeth gritted and a frown on his face.
"You heard," Ranma replied before sitting up. "Let me guess, this has something to do with that encounter you had with those thugs the other day right?" Ranma smirked at the boy's dumbstruck expression. "Kaoru dragged us out yesterday so we pretty much saw everything that happened, if you're wondering. So, let me guess, now you're trying to train yourself to fight the whole group."
"Of course, what else do you expect me to do?" Yahiko demanded. "Just stand aside and let them rob from Miss Tai's family. Wait a second, you all saw that?"
"Well yeah, but I seriously doubt that Kenshin or the others are going to get involved unless you come running to them for help. Speaking of which, you could just run you know," Ranma said before falling back onto the grass.
"WHAT?" Yahiko shouted. "What the heck would that solve?"
Ranma looked up at the younger boy and blinked. "Wait a second, Yahiko, let me see your sword real quick," he said while holding out his hand. Yahiko looked at him strangely for a moment, then gave Ranma the small bamboo training sword, at which point the Jusenkyo cursed manslayer whacked Yahiko across the head.
"OW," Yahiko yelled before jumping back. "Hey! What the heck was that for?"
"I'm hoping that knocked some sense into you," Ranma replied. "Now sit!" he pointed the weapon towards the ground and Yahiko just grumbled before he sat down. "Look I may not be the first student, but I know a stupid idea when I see one, and if you want to go ahead and fight those guys tomorrow well, can I have your stuff after the funeral?"
"Quit talking like that, it's bad luck," Yahiko told the other boy.
"And fighting against a group ten to one is just plain stupid," Ranma said. "Now shut up and listen. I'm older than you Yahiko, and while I may not have the same experience with the sword as you, I do know more when it comes to things like a street fight, so shut your yap, sit down, and listen."
To emphasize his point Ranma whacked Yahiko on the foot to cause him to jump up and onto one foot, then fall to the ground when Ranma hit his other one and pushed him back on the chest with the bamboo sword, which in turn caused him to fall on the ground. "Now are you gonna listen?" he asked.
"Fine, what do you want to say?" Yahiko asked while nursing numerous pains.
"Listen Yahiko, I'm not going to make your decisions for you and tell you to go running to Sanosuke or the raccoon girl and have them do your fighting for you, and I'm not going to tell you that you have to do this either, the decision is up to you. What I am going to do is tell you that unlike last time when you got your sorry ass kicked, this time those thugs are probably going to be using cane swords and instead of becoming a living bruise, you'll be a dead corpse. It's just plain stupid to get into a fight when it's ten to one odds."
"Ok then what do I do huh?" Yahiko asked in a tone that said he really had no real intentions to listen to Ranma's advice.
"Well if you don't happen to get a brain by tonight and do decide to go through with this, then you might as well do it smart," Ranma told him. "When the thugs show up at the house they're obviously going to have a key or a set of lock picks to get past the front gate. If you can, take them by surprise and get that away from them, then start running. They will of course chase after you, when they do most likely their minds will on catching you and they won't have the brains to stick as a group and the faster one will break out into the lead. When that happens, you turn around and fight them in one on one or two on one battle. However, if they do move as a group, position yourself somewhere that's too small for a large number of people and do it that way. Fighting ten one on one fights is a lot easier than fighting one ten to one."
"You know….that actually makes a lot of sense," Yahiko said. His face brightened up a bit and he let out a little laugh. "You must have gotten beaten up at lot when you were a kid to figure something like that out!"
Ranma just groaned before tossing the bamboo sword to knock him on the head and standing up, then walking away. Dear god I hope I wasn't that easy to manipulate when I was that young, Ranma thought with a somber expression as he walked away from the kid who started practicing once more.
"Anyway I don't think you have to worry about the Battousai showing up," Ranma said. "He's staying out of this and letting the kid handle it."
From his desk in the police office Hajime Saito looked at the small redhead standing across the room from him and scowled. "You want me to do what?" he asked for clarification.
"I don't see what's so hard about it," Ranma replied as she brushed the droplets of water out of her hair. Personally Saito couldn't see how Ranma could be so blind to the world to not notice a woman with a ladle and water until it was too late. The girl had obviously lost much in skill during these times of peace. "Just act like a normal policeman and patrol the street for some thugs tonight and interrupt them if anything starts to go wrong. That's all I'm asking."
Saito just sighed before going over the papers in front of him that reported various other little crimes in his area that had yet to be solved and had fallen to him; it was only a matter of time of course and nothing really important, but nothing escaped notice of the Wolf of Mebu.
"Very well I supposed that I could do as you ask," he said. It would serve his greater purposes in the end anyway. The people Kenshin was living with would be easier to accept him if they saw Saito once and could remember the face.
He was about to dismiss his partner in this job when another piece of paper caught his eye, oh yes he had almost forgot. "By the way my men might have found what you were looking for."
"So soon?" Ranma asked. "I thought you said it might take weeks."
"Actually it's more of just the confirmation of her death than an actual intelligence report," Saito told her. "But it would serve the same purpose in the end. The person who was actually there is still alive, actually, I think he would have been a boy at the time of her murder. All things considered I thought you might want to hear it from his own lips rather than reading it second hand."
"Thank you," Ranma said after walking over to take the small sheet of paper. She looked at it curiously for a moment before looking back up at Saito. "That name, the informant was her brother?"
"Apparently," Saito replied. "Now get out of here would you? I've got work to do."
Looking up from the finished pile of folded laundry Kenshin noticed the sun was setting. If what he had overheard about Yahiko and that girl's words was correct, then the boy would be taking on those thieves tonight when they tried to rob Miss Tai's house.
A few moments later Kenshin exited the dojo, a little surprised to find Kaoru missing, but then again she had probably had the same idea he did. Of course Kenshin had no intention of getting involved with the scuffle, unless things got out of hand that is.
Relaxing in the bath and thankful to be male once again, Ranma brought the piece of paper Saito had given him up to his face to read it for the hundredth time today. It gave the man's birthrate, family name, and last known location; which Saito had assured him was correct. So Tomoe had a little brother who worked as a spy for the shogun did she Ranma thought to himself. Looks like you really have been keeping secrets from me, eh mother? Of course he couldn't just drop everything right now to go hunt for the boy, maybe in a few days. Then he would finally find out what happened to Tomoe in the time that he was away.
Preview of next chapter: On the dark streets of Tokyo, a boy fights for his life and his pride. In alleyways, a wolf watches with his teeth barred, hidden in shadow. While in the sky the scarred swordsman looks on down below. What is going on in the minds of these men, what secrets to their blood soaked hands hide? But more importantly…WILL THEY NOTICE EACHOTHER?
Next time on Ranma ½: Side story 2: Memories of Manslayers