Chapter Two – Maybe not a real boy. (bit of a rewrite)

Gaara looked around him, it was dawn in the sand village, and the sun was rising above the canyon walls that surrounded the village, here and there light reflected off glass windows creating an effect Gaara found… pretty. The possessed Genin had in the past occasionally came to the tower, it was technically the kazekage's residence, but noone really minded, or at least objected, if he climbed up to the tallest point of the village before watching the sunrise creep over the sand covered buildings.

The Sand ninja rarely smiled, but these was one of those occasions, the sunlight leant a glimmering ethereal quality to the sand speckled buildings below him, the grains of glass always reflected well if you were at just the right distance during the right time of the day. It really was quite pretty.

Dawn had passed and the inhabitants of the hidden village of sand awoke and began to move around purposefully, like ants, Gaara frowned, no…. Not like ants. Like people. Naruto had taught him that much…


"Where's Gaara?" Temari asked as she seated herself on a bench, careful to arrange her legs just so, it wouldn't do for any perverts to get a look. "Come to think of it, he has been late a few times... since... " Her voice trailed off, it wasn't a pleasant thing to remember, their villages betrayal of the leaf and its foolish actions. And worse, the humiliation that followed…

"I am here." Gaara said calmly as he appeared in a miniature storm of sand. He eyed his two teammates a little, they were sitting just enough apart that he could… but he hadn't done this before.. he knew Kankuro was chasing a girl who lived a few blocks down from Gaara's residence….so they shouldn't get mad or anything… "Not too long to wait." Gaara said in what passed for cheerfulness. Temari and Kankuro froze, cheerful Gaara usually meant dead people. Gaara ignored his frozen teammates and dropped his Gourd on the ground, forgotten before it landed, before sitting down between them. "The people who are precious to me." The Sand Ninja whispered under his breath.

"Did you say something Gaara?"


The ceiling was made of brown planks of wood. That was kind of unusual, but for the house that Ranma had just woken in, it looked… right. The house was old; Ranma had figured that out before even stepping into the house on the previous evening. Homura-san had retired early, and Ranma had done the same not more than a few minutes later. That lead to his current situation, it was just before dawn and Ranma didn't know what to do. He could train, if he knew where he could do it without offending his host, he could get up and cook breakfast, but he didn't think that Homura-san would be up for a few hours yet and it would be a waste to make all of that mess just for him… and Ranma just wasn't sure as to what else he could do.

"Ranma-San." Said Homura softly from just beyond the door. Ranma sat up straight in bed, "I just realized that you had no clothes..." the old woman sounded far too cheerful for Ranma's liking, "So, I dug around this morning," talking of mornings, Ranma scratched his head as he tried to figure out why Homura-san was up so early. "And found you some clothes, I'll just leave them by the door for you."

Ranma's eyebrow rose as he called out through the door. "Thankyou Homura-san!" that was rather nice of her, he could have gotten away with wearing his old clothes for another day though... Well. Maybe not, decided Ranma as he critically looked at the very torn red shirt. Tossing the shirt and similarly torn pants on the bed Ranma slid the door open and peeked out to check to make sure the picture-laden hallway was clear. Nodding to himself Ranma stepped out off the cold wooden floor of his new room and onto the rug covering the center of the hall, as he picked up the clothes the young man checked them over, there was a black long sleeved shirt with a floral red pattern on it, Ranma particularly liked the thorny vines that connected the flowers together. The pants were simply black without a pattern to distract from the shirt, also in the pile was some small clothes and a black headband covered in white swirls.

As he donned the clothing and tied his hair back with its old cord Ranma glanced over at the mirror, the changes astounded him, his wounds from the fight with Saffron weren't healed anywhere near completely, and the ones that were, were colored lighter than the rest of the skin... That, combined with the loose clothing that shouted 'I'm a Bad-Ass!' Ranma looked quite different from merely a few days ago.. and he looked somehow more… mature. Akane would probably snort and insult him… Ranma's breath caught, he knew that Ryoga would have gotten her away safely, none of the phoenix people would have been able to stop him... But what was Akane doing now? Ryoga had not seen the end of the fight, although Genma and Shampoo may have… and if so… Ranma would be presumed dead. In all truth, thought Ranma, he was close enough to dead; he would not be able to return for years… if at all. Ranma had to face that possibility; this wasn't like the Nanban mirror episode... 'Although if Nabiki hadn't have broken it, they might have been able to easily rescue me.' Thought Ranma sourly.

"Ranma-San, breakfast is ready." Homura called out from the kitchen, one aspect of being a former ninja that Homura always enjoyed, was the speed that had come from a result of being a top specialist in that, and the use of fire ninjutsu meant that the old woman was able to prepare cooked meals in mere minutes. Her youngest son always had liked to watch her cook, and had even learnt a little about doing so from her, Homura wondered idly if Ranma would be swayed into learning. "Good morning Ranma-san."

"Good morning Homura-san" Ranma said cheerfully, he then paused and licked his lips in unashamed abandon as the table in front came into focus, it was laden well with enough food that not even a Saotome could eat all of. "Wow…" Ranma said with more than a touch of awe flowing in his voice, "You cooked this much food faster than it took the smell to wander up to the room."

Homura cackled for a moment as that came out, it seemed to her that she had quite a good chance at coaxing him to learn some of her techniques after all. "Thank you Ranma-Kun…" Homura shrugged to herself as she realized that Ranma had become that to her, "And after breakfast there's two hours for you to practice in" Ranma's eyes verily shone with fire as she mentioned that, Homura could tell she's have to replace the training machines regularly again. "Before you go to do some schooling with Ebisu-san." Ranma immediately opened his mouth in order to object, but Homura overrode him quickly, "The schooling will take a few hours every day, it will mostly be learning the basis for our techniques," Ranma shut his mouth quickly, "however there will be a little bit of maths, probably just revision to make sure you know how much food to pack every time you go on a mission and so on." Homura inwardly cheered as a much younger version of herself danced around inside while Ranma nodded and cheerfully accepted his days tasks without complaint.


"Good Morning" "Good Morning" Blah, Blah, Blah.. Koharu really hated the morning greeting time for the committee, it was a waste of time really… but he needed this done this morning, while Homura was out setting a teacher up for Ranma… it wouldn't do for the committee to be swayed by her words about the boy. Technically, this wasn't a committee meeting, which required all members to be present or accounted for, it was just a small gathering for midmorning tea, Homura had declined coming the day before, so for once, Koharu had chosen to turn up and exploit her absence.

"Good Morning Chimanu-San." Intoned Koharu politely, Chimanu-san like half of the committee members, was a former ninja and was so fastened in the past he wore the traditional ninja uniform under the committee robes, "I managed to convince Homura-san to meet Ebisu-kun near here, we could see Ebisu's testing of the boy from the balcony over there, in around ten minutes or so…" Chimanu would definitely panic when finding out someone not even from the village, was capable of that, without even using chakra… "He's stronger than Lee-kun I believe, I'm not even sure that Lee-kun could beat him by opening all the gates to be honest." Yes, that would do, the committee could not be too supportive of Homura and the boy… they could try ad get the boy back alive instead of sending a hunter-nin to kill him if Orochimeru wished to take him

"Is that so, Koharu-san." Chimanu said calmly, Koharu had been getting a little odd lately, in fact, it had started a few weeks before the attack by Orochimeru… it was probably just coincidence, the changes in the man hadn't gone away after the attack, that supported the coincidence theory, but in the last two days Koharu had been working pretty hard against the boy, not so hard to actually get rid of him, just hard enough to make the committee wary of the boy… an interesting stance to be sure. "So, you think he is that powerful?"

Koharu nodded a little too sharply, "Yes, and reckless to boot, yesterday he was doing some dangerous practice in the hospital grounds," the elderly man frowned, hoping he wasn't too obvious, "If he had lost control during the exercise, he could possibly have killed someone…"

Chimanu felt his eye twitch, he hadn't seen the exercise himself, but Homura had described it quite well, and it had been impressive indeed. "Well, I think we might need to keep a close eye on the boy.." Chimanu said in a sudden flash of inspiration, "Perhaps, an ANBU member or two to watch over him?" his eyes sparkled with fervent zeal, and Koharu sweat dropped a little, "No! Wait, we'll assign him to a team, his teammates can watch over him!"

Koharu had walked away mid speech.

Maharo smiled politely and joined Chimanu as they went to the balcony, "That doesn't sound like a bad idea Chimanu-san." Maharo was a bit of a lateral thinker, and had shunned the traditional clothing for a pair of comfortable and fashionable slacks and a white shirt covered by a black robe which was secured by a belt around his waist. "Placing the boy on a team that will both slow him down, and convince him to become more loyal to the village.. sheer genius, even I must admit that." Maharo rarely complimented the other committee members, intelligence was almost a bloodline within his family, his son had been above normal, and his grandson Shikamaru was a genius level boy.

"Thank you oh great and wise genius!" said Chimanu sarcastically, "your words do ring true for my great intellect." They both shared a friendly laugh, but a sudden thump down on the street below them recognized the beginning of Ebisu's testing. Looking around Chimanu realized that most of the comitee was watching the boy run, and run he did, very fast.

Maharo's eyes widened when he saw Ebisu jump out of a window, land on a balcony halfway down the building and then hit the ground running. The boy Ranma had simply jumped and ran, not bothering to slow his fall at all… "He's definitely stronger than Gai…" he murmured, next to him one of the other committee members nodded tersely. "While everyone's watching him, May I suggest that we attach him to a team that's not doing so well? Or is short a person." The seven people on the balcony all seemed to like that idea, and Maharo smiled.


"Good Morning Homura-Sama." Ranma looked curiously at the man in front of him, he was wearing a cliché ninja outfit with an added pair of sunglasses and a handkerchief on his head, the front of it was covered with what Ranma had recently learnt was the symbol of Leaf Villages Ninja's, a forehead protector with a stylized leaf set in the middle.

"And good morning to you Ebisu-San." Homura responded politely, "This is Ranma-San." Ranma waved his fingers at Ebisu, he didn't look much of twenty, maybe twenty-five was Ranma's guess. "Ranma's the student I asked you about, after seeing him practice this morning, I doubt you'll need to teach him much apart from Chakra, Ranma-San's skill in combat is at least Chuunin level in Taijutsu."

Ebisu's eyebrows rose, at least chuunin... and that level just based off observing the boy practice… "Excellent, I'm sure I'll have Ranma-Kun up to speed within a few days, Homura-San." Ranma looked a little odd about being called Ranma-kun… Ebisu mentally shrugged, "You don't mind if I do call you Ranma-Kun do you?"

Ranma shrugged easily, now that the guy had asked, it didn't seem like much of a problem, "Nah, no problem Ebisu-San."

Homura smiled at the both of them, "Good, I'll see you in a few hours then Ranma-kun."

Ebisu watched Ranma as the boy looked a little uncomfortable being left alone with a man he knew only the name of. "Ranma-Kun, we'll start off with a little practice to establish where you're at in both stealth and fighting, and then work on chakra and a few basic seals…" Ranma nodded, it seemed to make sense, "Good, now Ranma, to start off I can either chase you, or you can chase me, tag is one of the best ways to measure skills, especially when it gets going and people start being stealthy."

"I've had a lot of practice of being chased…" Ranma mentioned thoughtfully, Ebisu smirked and wondered why the boy had been chased… "And I'm not bad at catching people being sneaky… Although I'm not sure if Happosai was just letting me catch him.. I don't think so, as he usually got pretty beaten up whenever I did catch him. Damn Pervert." Ebisu's eyebrows rose, there would be a definite good story behind that.

"I think I'll chase you, I won't use any shadow techniques, and of course you can't yet." Ebisu declared smugly as he stretched, ready to chase the boy. Ranma smirked and jumped out the window of the building they were in, "WHAT?" Ebisu dashed to the window and saw Ranma hit the ground running, dashing around the corner and out of sight before the trainer could lift his jaw, "At least a Chuunin..heh." mumbled Ebisu.

Ranma hit the ground running, and left a foot deep crater behind where he landed, dashing forward he sprinted around the corner, and ducked into an empty garbage bin. Ebisu came into view and looked around before jumping off onto a nearby rooftop, Ranma popped his head up out of the bin and jumped in surprise as the trainer tapped the bin impatiently. 'He can sense aura's…' thought Ranma grumpily as he dashed off again, this time being careful to suppress his aura.

'A lot more control than I thought someone who did not know of Chakra could have' chortled Ebisu as he fought to keep up with the very fleet-of-foot boy he was to train. The boy had suppressed his body's energy and so was hard to keep an eye on, and if he got out of sight, Ebisu would have to start using techniques to keep finding him… Powering a little Chakra into his legs the trainer sprinted forward suddenly, near catching Ranma again.

Ranma scowled, Ebisu was pretty good, and he was using some weird energy, it was quite similar to the stuff he had used when he had taken Saffrons energy and used it up… Shaking his head Ranma glanced over his shoulder to see Ebisu sprinting at nearly double his previous speed, deciding that he too could play the speed game Ranma rose his aura slightly, just outside of the visible range and doubled his own speed, leaving Ebisu in his dust.

As he dashed around a corner Ranma dived under a bench that two guys were sitting on, flattened his aura out and did his favorite Yamasenken move, the I Am Not Worthy To Notice move, it didn't have a name that Ranma knew of, but he had figured it out when Genma had suddenly seemed to vanish mid fight while teaching him the rest of the school to combat Ryuu Komon. Ebisu skidded around the same corner he froze, and Ranma grinned silently, the trainer looked around quietly and cursed for a second before pushing his hands together and muttering something.

"Nice Technique Ranma-Kun." Ebisu said to the air, or to the boy that was hiding under the bench. "But come out from under the bench." Ranma complied grumpily, but didn't bother to run, "That technique of yours is pretty effective, if I hadn't have spoken to you for a few minutes before this, I'd not have found you at all…" Ebisu's eyes narrowed and he stepped forward to glare. "But, I was under the impression you don't know anything about Chakra…"

Ranma blinked, he didn't know anything about Chakra.. maybe it was closer to Ki than Homura had led him to believe. "I don't…" Ranma quietly, "I do know a few Ki techniques, but Homura-san told me that they were all made of Body energy not Chakra…"

Ebisu hmm'd thoughtfully, "We're near the classroom, we'll go there and chat… come on." The teacher said before jumping up onto a nearby roof and dashing away, Ranma snorted and followed, keeping up easily.

"Lets See…" Ebisu murmured as he entered his own office, a medium sized office, with a library lining one wall, each pigeon whole of the wall was filled with a scroll, and each scroll held precious information. Glancing back he could see Ranma's face was literally aglow. 'Well... At least I know he's seen technique scrolls before...' thought Ebisu with a grin. "Grab the first scroll on the right, on the top shelf."

Ranma immediately obeyed, and carried it reverently to the teacher; the pigtailed boy had been in a lot of monasteries and martial arts schools over the years, and by Kami-sama, he knew that when the scrolls got out, the real learning began. "Ebisu-sensai, what are we doing now?" asked Ranma, much more quietly and respectfully than before.

Ebisu smiled, this boy, unlike ungrateful Naruto, was ready to learn. "Chakra, we're doing Chakra." With that Ebisu took the scroll and opened it, laying it out on the wooden desk. The scroll looked fairly simple, and it was, simply a diagram and a few words, but it contained the base for nearly everything the hidden villages used in almost every task they set out to do.

"This is the entire basis of Chakra." Ebisu intoned, the diagram showed a stylized pair of lungs, one blue, and one red. "Chakra is the end result of the combination of Body and Spiritual energy, the end result is a malleable and powerful energy, Chakra." Ranma looked puzzled at the scroll.

"I can sense Ki... Homura-san tells me that its called Body energy around here, but... Where does the Spirit energy come from?" asked Ranma after a moment, his body produced the body energy, obviously, so where the heck did the spirit reside?

Ebisu sweatdropped, this was going to be a little harder than he thought… especially if any more of these left wing questions came flying out of nowhere. "Well… let me show you." Ebisu said as he grabbed another scroll, this one had arrows everywhere and little snippets of text written messily around. "The spirit energy is the energy that you can draw from.. Well, pretty much anywhere…" Ebisu paused as Ranma nodded his head a little in understanding, "so in short, you take in energy, store it within the spirit (at least, that's what the theorists think as the energy can't be sensed once someone absorbs it) and then convert it to chakra with aid of Body energy."

"Okay, I think I have heard about this before..." Ranma said slowly as he wracked his brain for information, "There was a temple in the Himalayas… they let me see a scroll that mentioned about the ability to combine natures excess energy and merge it with ki to make an extremely useful and more powerful third energy…" Ranma frowned tentatively, was he right? Or on a different track…

Ebisu nodded, "That's about it… although I've never heard of it as Natures energy… but come to think of it, it doesn't sound too far wrong."

Ranma grinned, he was getting closer! He'd have this chakra mastered in a week for sure. "Okay, so how do I get Spirit energy?" Ranma asked cheerfully, this would be easy.

Ebisu smirked, it was easy, but it sounded hard, at least to those who knew much about their own mind. "All you have to do is change the way you think. Your body will handle the gathering, you just have to get to it."

Ranma froze, change the way he thought? That was a damned hard thing to do… almost as hard as changing a habit…

Ebisu chortled heartily, "don't worry, it's not hard, despite what you think, all you have to do is call the energy from your head instead of your torso, it's a little harder to do both at once, and harder still to mix together the energies, but after a while you won't even notice the effort."

Ranma's eyes lit up, that explained why they called it Body and Spirit energy, "Okay, pulled the energy from my mind..." closing his eye, Ranma concentrated on ignoring his ki, it was hard but if he thought of it, it would rise for him. The pigtailed young man concentrated on all the memories of pulling energy he had ever done and analyzed as much as he could, Ki came from his body… So reach beyond the body to a different place. Concentrating hard the byo thought for a moment he had it, and then Ranma cursed and opened his eyes as he realized he had just summoned his ki instead of the spirit energy.

"Not bad Ranma-Kun." Ebisu complimented, and indeed it wasn't, the boy had managed to pull a little of the energy before his body energy overwhelmed it, that was far more than most people did in the first attempt.

"Eh? But I drew on my ki… Body energy, not spirit energy." Ranma said grumpily.

"You got spirit energy for a second, but it seems your body energy is extremely powerful… it's going to be a little harder than for most people." Ebisu theorized, the Jounin had never come across someone like Ranma before, he'd trained people who were behind and still had potential, sure, but Ranma had developed his bodies energy to a state far beyond any single Chuunin for sure, and even all bar one or two Jounin, and the only possible person who the trainer thought might approach the boy in power would be Rock Lee or his Sensei Gai. "Times up." Ebisu said suddenly

Ranma blinked, time was up? For what?

"Tomorrow we continue from today, here, at midday, Ranma-Kun." Said Ebisu pleasantly, "You can, of course, practice between now and then, but I won't hold it against you if you don't."

Ranma snorted. "Of course I'll practice Ebisu-sensei, I'll have this down before dinner, and I'll be showing you new techniques this time tomorrow!" he bragged happily, and in his own mind, Ranma really didn't have any doubts about that.


Homura yawned as she covered her mouth with a hand, quickly making sure no one had seen, the committee member returned her attention to the short walk home. As the walls of the ancient residence came into sight the elderly lady made out the distinctive sounds of someone training, smiling the old woman snuck inside the compound walls and moved around to a viewpoint with all the skills of a ghost.

Ranma was using one of the training dummies, it was a rotating one that changed where it was safe to hit as it spun, Ranma seemed to have memorized the spots and was hitting each one perfectly, it was barely a minute after Homura arrived that Ranma muttered something about how boring that dummy was and moved onto another set of equipment.

This set was basically a climbing set, with traps built in, Ranma bounced around in it without a problem, either blind luck or sheer skill allowing him to avoid every trap. Homura sighed, the boy was in a position that training alone was close too worthless, she would need to find a sparring partner for sure… someone close in speed and superior in strength would be best… or the reverse to build up strength…

Ranma picked up a boulder to move it out of the way before starting up a vigorous bouncy Kata.

'Well, maybe not strength.' Thought the elder woman wryly. "Come on Ranma-kun, time to go inside." She said finally, it was getting dark and that meant it was less safe to train.

"I'd rather not, Homura-san" Ranma mumbled as he approached her, "If I'm going be a ninja, I need to work on my night time fighting…" Ranma shrugged, "Sure, lots of people attacked me randomly, but most of the time that was during the day, and I never had to be concealed or stuff like that." He sighed, as if terribly burdened by this situation. Homura snorted, causing an indignant rebuttal from Ranma, "This stuff is so hard..." whined the boy.

Homura stopped and laughed outright, "Boy, your liking this more than you can admit!" Ranma looked shocked and rubbed the back of his head as he grinned sheepishly, "The thrill of learning new techniques and so on… ha! You like it hard, without a doubt." The woman finished with another snort of laughter.

Ranma shrugged, okay, so maybe he did like it…just a little bit though. "Yah, but I still need to train…" the dark sometimes reminded him of the pit… hopefully he wouldn't see any cats tonight… it was bad enough being under this sky where the stars were different and the people were different... and… maybe he was a little homesick for Nerima... already, it was only the second day from when he woke up.

"For half an hour Ranma-kun. Then its dinner and bed for you." Homura said firmly Ranma nodded cheerfully, "But first ... we need to get you a few Kunai… and some Shuriken, and there's a few other weapons for you to look over." So, together, the elderly woman and the young man entered the house.


Ranma mumbled to himself as he placed the equipment Homura had given him in a cupboard in his room, there was five Kunai, well made heavy long handled throwing knives with a ring at the end of the handle, all bar two had their own strap on sheathes to be concealed on his body. Two dozen shuriken, the pouch that held them an a kunai was made to be strapped on his right leg and finally a set of throwing daggers, they were similar to the kunai but almost completely lacked a handle, the belt also held the last Kunai, a small sheath at the small of his back. All in all, he had more weapons than ever before in his life… and somehow, that wasn't as scary as Ranma thought it would be.


Authors Note: Okay, I removed the scene with Jiraiya and Naruto fighitng Itachi, it wasn't really nessacary and was only there to show the timeline.

The Comitee members may or may not be used as a continuing plot device once Tsuanade returns to Konoha.