Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to any characters and/or symbolism in this fic. I think. Unless this is all a part of an elaborate conspiracy. Which... it isn't.

The Inner Demon

Ten years ago...

"Genma. Please take Ranma and raise him to be a man," Nodoka urged Genma as they stood on the Saotome family's front porch.

"I will not return until he has properly developed..." Genma paused,"... on pain of death."

"I do intend to hold you to that," Nodoka said. Genma nodded his head solemnly in response, before leading the young Ranma away from home...

Chapter 1: It begins...

One rainy afternoon in Nerima...

"Tendo,

Coming back from China with the boy.

,Saotome."

"Now now, Saotome and I go way back. I'm sure whichever one of you Ranma chooses will find the engagement agreeable, " Soun stated confidently to his three fuming daughters directly prior to a rapping on the front door, " Ah! I'll bet that's them now!"

What was on the other side was the last thing they had envisioned. A large, panting panda stomped in, leading a leashed, pouting redheaded girl behind.

The panda looked like it had leapt into an empty swimming pool a couple of times and it was also missing clumps of hair. The redhead,however, just looked unhappy. She was wearing a badly stained gi.

Soun blinked, then fainted dead away with a thump. Kasumi held her hand to her mouth, Nabiki laughed with caution at the sight, and Akane simply stared.

"It is a very long story, " Read a sign that the panda held up. "Please get me a kettle of hot water," read a following one. Kasumi blinked once, then headed dazedly for the kitchen in compliance.

Akane, feeling sympathy for the shy, sad girl that now sat on the floor in front of the open door, took a step toward her, but the panda angrily interposed itself, blocking her, but with a wary eye trained on the leashed girl.

"NO!" read the panda's simple sign.

It was at this point that Kasumi made her re-entrance with a kettle of hot water.

The panda snatched said kettle and poured the contents onto itself, then shrank into a man that managed to somehow find himself in a white gi.

"I think this requires a long explanation," stated the not visibly shaken Nabiki, who had been quietly assessing the situation while she had been dragging her father away from the entryway.

"In due time," The now bespectacled man replied grimly, "I must speak with..."

It was then that the man noticed that the other end of the leash was looped around the now closed door.

The realization then hit that no one had noticed any activity before.

"Sweet merciful powers! The boy is loose!" the man shouted in wide eyed horror.

"Boy?" Nabiki thought with a raised eyebrow.

"Saotome! " Soun shouted in surprise as he awoke, "I had a terrible hallucination!"

"Now where did Akane get off to?" Kasumi wondered aloud.

There was a loud slamming sound from the dojo.

"Oh GODS!" Genma paled, "He's already started!"

There I saw the pearl gleaming

beauty of a princess seeming.

Saw I no indicator of her merriment,

So I then thought to feed on painful sentiment...

It had been awhile since I had any fun.

Akane found that someone had turned the lights out in the dojo upon her entrance to the dojo, "Who-who's there? Is that Ranma?"

"wanna spar?"

"I-I d-don't want to s-spar in the d-dark!" Akane replied to the voice.

"i guess that's ok Sorry for scarin' ya"

"That's okay," Akane calmed.

"say, akane?Do you know what a kamaitachi is?"

"W-what?" Akane stammered as she heard the dojo's door slam shut, "How do you know my name?"

Eerie sounds began to whisper in the void of the darkened dojo

"Raanmaa! Cease and Desist! Cease and Desist!" Came with the sound of a loud pounding behind her.

Without warning the lighting returned and the door smoothly opened. The sudden light revealed a redhead softly sobbing(?) in an uncomfortable position against the wall.

The rest of the bunch flooded in, with the man eyeing Akane carefully. Kasumi and Soun helped the redhead up.

Nabiki stopped for a moment and met Akane's eyes as if to ask, "Don't tell me you were picking on her," before closing in to listen in as Genma joined with Soun and Kasumi. Somehow... this did not seem like Akane's work.

"Let's get you washed up," Kasumi said to the girl as they helped her past the stunned Akane.

Akane was almost certain that she heard a faint snicker as the girl passed her.

Shortly later, Akane decided that she could use a bath herself. She couldn't help but wonder what the Hell was happening here. She'd be damned if she'd get involved with whatever panda man, Saotome, was doing.

Elsewhere, Mr. Saotome was explaining to Soun what had happened in China...

"Okay, boy, if this doesn't make a proper man of you, nothing will," Mr. Saotome stated as he dragged Ranma behind him, toward what was known as the "Pool of Drowned Well-adjusted Man."

"No WAY!" Ranma shouted at the top of his lungs as he drop kicked his father into a pool, then jumped onto a bamboo pole near the pool Mr. Saotome had landed in. Mr. Saotome,however, was not what emerged from the pool. The emerging panda executed a rising front kick out of the pool, sending Ranma into another pool, from which emerged the red head, who immediately somersaulted out of the pool, "You fool! I'm all wet now!"

The elder Saotome sweatdropped.

"Oh! And I seem to have changed," Ranma shrugged.

"The boy is taking this a lot better than I am," Genma flinched.

"Ah well, I suppose panda meat tastes the same no matter what gender ya are!"

Back to the present...

"That was before we learned that the curse could be temporarily cancelled," Mr. Saotome finished, arms folded. It was during this recollection that Soun noticed that his old friend was badly scarred up. Saotome looked like he was about to say more when a timely loud smash sounded upstairs.

I could not understand why Kasumi had been so surprised when I shifted forms. Or that whole "I don't like people to talk to my voices" thing. I thought it was fun. Oh! It's that Akane girl! I don't get enough fun.

Akane walked past a pale, sweating Kasumi. Surely there was nothing that whimpering girl could have done to upset Kasumi, of all people. It was then that Akane saw who was splashing in the tub like a two year old.

Downstairs it was visible that something had landed in the Koi pond. Ranma-chan crawled bawling at the top of her lungs, "I've got dirty water all over meeeee!"

"Defcon 5!" Saotome bellowed as he swiftly stood with a terrified look in his eyes that had previously been saved only for the Master, as far as Soun remembered, "I knew it was foolish to let anyone else handle the boy!" Saotome was out of the house faster than a bullet. Unfortunately, Ranma-chan was a shade faster. She side kicked her father into the Koi pond with an intensified bout of tears.

Akane ran downstairs to follow the boy just in time to witness this unusual spectacle, just as had Nabiki. Kasumi decided it would be best to go to bed early.

Akane felt the slightest tinge of guilt. That is, until the panda rose from the pond. It became clear to her when Ranma-chan beat the tar out of said panda that there was no way her mallet could have hurt the girl in question. Which brought up an interesting dilemma: What flaw in judgement led her to believe that the boy she'd smashed was the same as the redhead? She decided that the boy must have flown even farther away than the backyard and that the girl had been thrown into the koi pond by the boy by some evil means. Yeah, that made sense. (despite this, Akane wondered if maybe she was beginning to imagine boys appearing everywhere.)

Nabiki, however, suspected that this was some sort of con game perpetrated by the Saotomes. This was trouble that she would have to deal with in the most careful manner...

Soun comforted the young lady and led her to the guest room, not believing that this gentle soul could be the same as the Ranma that his old friend (who had indeed suffered many head injuries) had described. (Despite having witnessed her toss a panda around)

He was reluctant to chain and padlock the girl to the bed, but Saotome was violently opposed to letting the girl go free in any way, shape, or form.

God! The iron snakes made it hard to move. And some kind of magic ward clasped the snakes together. Oh well! My Sensei handled worse than this. I'll just sleep now. Tomorrow is a new dawn! A new dawn for...

Kamaitachi! Mwahahahahahahaaaa!

"Soun. This is important. I did not bring Ranma here for the engagement," Genma whispered with as much intensity as he dared.

"That is quite obvious, Saotome," Soun stated seriously.

"You don't understand," Genma clenched his teeth, "I want you to help me seal him away!"

AN 7/29/03: The insanity begins. Don't worry, things will get more interesting soon enough. Since it'll probably come up a lot when Ranma gets loony, a Kamaitachi is a fast moving death machine of a monster. Ranma's ego gone bad. Way bad.

AN 7/6/04: It's been almost a year and now a revision! Well, it's not as rewarding as a new chapter, I guess... But I think that I have improved this as well as cleaned up some errors that bugged me in re-reads. I'd like to apologize now for not detailing this opening chapter very much, but it's not like you haven't seen something of this kind a million times.

AN 4/27/05: Nostalgia! Hopefully it will display correctly. By the way, you could actually skip these first three chapters without losing out very much. By that, I mean my chapters, not the chapters. Originally I was going to separate the clump of three chapters that made the first chapter and post them individually, but got lazy and posted them together. You can still see this in chapters 4-6. So technically, my 20 chapter fanfic is really a 16 chapter fanfic, and what I call my 16th chapter is really my 12th. Needless to say, the first two real chapters (1-3)&(4-6) will eventually be renumbered and the parts renamed. For now, my revised 1-3 (further revision to be done in the uncertain future) are separate. And completely ignorable. Seriously, only like one thing happens that has any meaning whatsoever. Unless I'm lying.