Ranma ½

I Saw a Light Shining and Thought of You.

A R1/2 and GGX/XX crossover. This Chapter took a while as I lost the original and had to rewrite the whole thing from memory. To make it worst, the other one was not even finished. Oh well, here we go.

Chapter 6: Apologizing is the Hardest Thing.

Waking up to the sun, shining through curtains of cheap material that was too thin to really keep out the sun in the first place, Ryouga sat up with a look of annoyance on his face. The sleep he had been in was not that deep in the first place and he was still a little tired from being on the dirty road and not being able to rest properly while he was on the road. It was irritating to be woken up but the man figured that he might as well start cleaning up so that he would not keep anyone waiting. It was more of a just in case type thing, plus it was courteous to not try to make the owners of a house evacuate due to ones own body odor. Making his way slowly up the stairs after removing himself from the bedroll and putting his things up, Ryouga careful looked for a door that would make it clear to him that it was the bathroom. Most of the doors in this house were typical Japanese sliding doors with rice paper taking up the space between six inch squares of wood. The only exception was the room that he had come to find out led to the bathroom which swung outward on even spaced hinges and opened by turning a handle. The man slowly opened the door as if he expected something to explode in his face as soon as he did so.
When he realized that nothing had happened, Ryouga looked around at the bathroom and shrugged. It was not a particularly spectacular room, holding two baskets for clothes and a washer and a dryer for clothes. Throwing his dirty clothes in the proper hamper, having smelled the aroma of sweat coming from that one, the man continued into the room where he found a rinse bucket and an empty tub that he started warm water running in. Once he started the water, the man filled the rinse bucket with cold water and poured it over himself. There was a slight tingling as he transformed into his cursed form, a form that was given to him by curse springs long ago and one which brought him not end of trouble, and proceeded to shake the water free before he made a running leap into the bath which was now half full with warm water.
Feeling the change back to his normal, human, form, the man sighed as he started to wash himself off. Really this was the only way he could take a bath, he supposed to was himself when he was outside the tub but that was hard to do when he had hooves instead of normal human hands. Once he finished washing he got out of the tub and used a bucket of warm water to rinse himself off once again before he dried off and exited the wash room to the laundry room with a towel around his waist. As he looked around for his clothes he found that clean clothes had been laid out for him, his own dark green pants and a yellow short sleeve shirt, and his old clothes had been but in the washing machine and started washing. For a second he wondered who had done it but then shrugged when he realized that it did not really matter anyways. Removing the towel, Ryouga dressed in the fresh clothes, adjusted a newly donned bandanna, tying it around his head to hold his unruly hair in place and allow his bangs to hang over the top of the cloth.
When he finished he walked back down the stairs where he smelled what could only be breakfast cooking. The smell was sweet in his nose, the aroma was pleasant and made the man's stomach growl in protest at being kept from what had to be a feast. When Ryouga made it downstairs he found a girl sitting at the table, she had blue hair from what he could see and it was done in a lose pigtail with a yellow bow. From the back she looked ordinary if you discounted her hair color, but as the man took a seat next to her he found the truth a bit more startling.
Where her hair should have been the same color all the way around, it was broken in the bangs, not a lot but just a little, by red highlights. Her eyes were an interesting color, or rather they were interesting colors. One was dark blue like Ranma's and the other was red like her mother, Dizzy's. Her face was angular, cute by most standards. It took Ryouga a second to get over the strange hair coloring and the eyes but once he did he realized that she was actually pretty normal looking.
The girl rolled her eyes upward as she chewed on her food and paused to swallow still staring at him. It was an inquisitive stare that seemed to wait for his judgment on what he thought about how she looked. Ryouga could imagine that she got picked on quite a bit by the kids in school and he felt a little sympathetic for the girl. There was much of that he could relate to, granted it did not happen that much because of how strong he was, but those who knew he would not hurt someone who was defenseless hesitated little to pick on him. This was part of the fuel that flamed the rivalry between him and Ranma. It was childish but he was a lonely kid and it was the only way to make anyone notice him.
"How you doing?" Ryouga said after a while when he realized that she was still staring at him.
The girl swallowed some of the food she had been chewing and grinned, "Good, mister, are you one of dad's friends?"
With a grin of his own the man nodded, "Yeah, you could say that."
"Can I learn some martial arts from you too?" the girl asked, seeming to pull such a question of of nowhere.
"Um, I'll have to talk to your dad first," Ryouga said nervously, all the moves he knew were more likely to kill the user if not done properly, "So how's the food."
The little girl took another bite with a shrug, "Good, I really don't have anything to compare it with though. Mom always cooks for me and Dad."
Ryouga raised an eyebrow at that, "Really, Ranma doesn't seem like the type to make her do such a thing."
"That's not it," Dizzy said suddenly as she appeared with a plate almost overflowing with freshly cooked food and set it down in front of him, "I enjoy cooking for people. Seeing people happy makes me happy, that's why I do this."
Ryouga nodded and took a bite, then his eyes widened and he had to suppress the need to feel like he wanted to cry, "This food is so good, Dizzy."
The woman smiled, "Thank you."
"Why are you crying if you think it's so good?" the little girl asked.
Dizzy looked over at the girl with a startled expression, "Hinata!"
Ryouga waved his hand, "That's alright, Dizzy. I'm just so happy that I get to eat such good food so I cry, as some people do when they are happy."
"I see," The girl said with a look that communicated the fact that she really did not see what he was talking about.
With that Ryouga continued eating his food along with the girl and within minutes both of their plates were clean. The man proceeded to walk into the kitchen and stat to wash his dish, taking the girls dishes he washed those also and but them in the dishwasher. It was after he finished that Ranma came down from the stairs, dressed only in his black pants and still using a towel to dry his hair. Ryouga looked up as the man threw the towel over his shoulders and leaned down to give Dizzy a kiss, causing the little girl to screw up her face in a look that showed that she might not totally like the scene.
"Do you guys have to do that here?" Hinata said in a lilting voice.
Ryouga stared down at the dishes in his hand that he was still holding in his hand and developed a thoughtful look on his face. Shaking his head he sighed and finished loading the washer. Closing it and starting it he started to collect his things.
"You leaving?" Ranma asked.
"Yeah," Ryouga replied.
Dizzy gasped, "So soon? Are you going back to you house, I'll take you there if you want. I have not seen Baiken in a while."
The man shook his head and continued packing, "No, I'll manage on my own."
Remembering what had taken place the previous night, Ranma walked up to the man and placed a hand on his shoulder, "Go back home, Ryouga, and take Dizzy with you."
The martial artist was slightly surprised at the seriousness in the man's voice but he was not thrown off by it. He still believed that Baiken needed some time to herself to work some things out. How much time would that be though? A year or more? He did not have these answers, nor did he want to think about them too much. What he wanted was to go back home to the woman that had been caring and while a little argumentative, had also cared for him. She had cared for him as no other woman in his life had and he really did not want to take the chance to ruin that beyond repair. The man had to admit that he could have been doing that anyway if he did not go back and figure out exactly what was wrong with her. Maybe it would be good to go home and see her again with Dizzy.
Sighing the man let a resigned grin cross his features, "Fine, just don't blame me if she's not in the best of moods."
"That's not so bad," Dizzy assured the man with a light touch on his shoulder, "I'll talk to her, maybe she will have a change of heart."
Ryouga nodded and picked up his back, starting to walk towards the door as he did so, "Alright, then what are you waiting for? Let's go."
The woman nodded and with a thought her black sweatpants and shirt changed into a black and white dress. Ryouga shook his head at this for a second, being unable to fully come to terms with such an action even after such a long time. Ranma waved them off before he sat down next to Hinata and joined the girl in eating the meal that his partner had cooked. Pausing in the middle of his meal, he looked over at the girl next to him and gave her hair a slight mussing. The little one, for her part looked a bit annoyed at this.
"Dad!" The girl exclaimed.
The man chuckled, "Sorry, I just couldn't resist doing it, I missed my little girl."
Giving her dad a hug the girl mumbled, "I missed you too dad."
"Thanks, kiddo," Ranma said as he gave the girl a quick kiss on the forehead, "Now go get dressed, we'll meet your mother later, okay."
The girl nodded and ran off up the stairs while Ranma just shook his head after her and continued eating his food. He had slipped up just now and let Dizzy go ahead without him, but it was something she obviously wanted to help with. Her face was practically begging him to let her go and he was not near ready to go out so he let her and Ryouga go ahead with the intention of catching up later.
Dizzy and Ryouga were unaware of any of this of course, and were busy chatting while they walked to the man's house. Dizzy had visited a few times before today so she knew where it was from back then, however she had the most difficult time making sure Ryouga did not wonder off. When they finally did arrive, it was the woman that knocked on the door first with Ryouga standing back and just to the side so he would not be seen right away. It was his hope that this way Baiken would at least allow them to get a word in edgewise before she slammed the door in their face. Luckily his hope was good enough to make what happened go his way and get a better response then he had intended. Baiken opened the door and stood their regarding Dizzy for a second, not yet noticing he was standing there. When the pink haired woman looked up finally she blinked in surprise and looked as if she was stunned to see him there.
"Hello, Baiken," Ryouga said nervously, "Fancy meeting you here."
The woman sighed, "This is your house, idiot, not that you would recognize it since you're never home."
Recognize the cue when it was given, Dizzy jumped in before anything could be said to upset the woman, "May we come in? I thought it would be nice to talk to you since I haven't seen you in so long."
"Why would you think that?" Baiken asked with a slight surprise.
Dizzy giggled at that, "Well with the way you act most of the time I thought you would have gotten in over your head."
The pink haired woman let a small smile slip past her lips, "I see, you worry too much Dizzy. Oh, sorry to make you two stand here, please come inside."
The two of them wasted no time stepping inside, and when they did they found a scene that was unexpected. The house was not dirty, as both of them had expected it to be, it was surprisingly clean. To Ryouga this only brought out just how poor the two of them actually were, it was hard to find a job for those who knew only how to fight against killing machines. Baiken had taken a job as a teach at a local school and though she was often feared by the kids, she enjoyed her job. She would never admit it, both Ryouga and Dizzy knew this for a fact. She always wanted to play the strong one because that was all she knew how to play. Loosing everyone in your family as young as she did will do that to a person. Ryouga knew the other side of her, the side she kept hidden from those she did not trust, and she tended to not trust a lot of people. Even what he knew of the other side of the woman did not prepare him for what he witnessed when he walked into the room then.
Kitchen counters beamed with fresh cleaner, there was the smell of sweet fruit in the air, the carpet was vacuumed, and even the windows had been cleaned inside and out. The man stood in awe at the scene, unable to speak at the unexpectedness that was the clean house. Dizzy for her part was equally in awe at how neat everything was lain out, she had been over many times and at no time had it ever been as clean as it was right now. That was not to say that it was a pig sty most of the time. In fact it was clean a lot of the time but that was usually because Ryouga cleaned the house himself whenever he returned from his unintended excursions.
"You guys seem to be awfully quiet," Baiken remarked, with a smirk that indicated that she knew exactly why they were surprised.
With a voice that did no good part to hide his surprise, Ryouga responded, "Baiken, you cleaned the house."
"I noticed the house got a lot more dirty when you left so I decided to clean it, especially since you were gone for so long," The woman sighed and said almost to quiet for him to hear, "I thought you were gone for good."
The man blinked without words to respond in kind, so Dizzy responded for him, "It looks very nice, Baiken, but why so clean."
"I just felt tired of living in such a dirty place," the woman said, "Plus, I realized that my child, our child, was not happy to be living in such filth."
"I'm glad to see you like that," Dizzy said, although she had to admit that it was unexpected, "I guess having a child does change some people. It even changed Ranma a little."
With that cue, a knock came at the door and Baiken excused herself to answer the summons. When she came back, she was smiling and behind her was Ranma with Hinata looking bored in tow. The man waved at them and took a seat next to Dizzy while she looked at him with a questioning look.
Shrugging, the man responded to her silent questioning, "I decided yesterday that I would make up for being late yesterday by staying next to you as much as possible."
"He insisted on dragging me along too," Hinata said with a pouting look on her face.
Baiken shook her head with a wry smile on her face, she knew that the little girl had an attitude on her even from when she was younger. It seemed that that had only gotten worse as she grew up, though she knew that the girl was starting to show her caring side also from what her son had told her.
Dizzy frowned, "Hinata, don't be rude."
"Sorry, mommy," The girl said with the appropriate downcast expression on her face.
"You're the only who seems to be able to do that," Ranma said with a helpless shrug.
"Mom, who are these people?" A voice said from the entrance to the room.
Baiken looked over at her son, "These are my friends, though I have not seen them in a while. Come over here and introduce yourself."
The boy walked over with a calculating look on his face, appraising the guests for a bit before he bowed and returned to the standing position, "My name is Kaneda Hibiki, pleased to meet you."
Hinata took in the appearance of the kid as the adults said there hello's and introduced themselves. He had short black hair that stood up in spiky clumps on the top of his head, his eyes seemed to take in everything and study it piece for piece, he was in shape and judging from who his parents were he most likely studied a martial art of some sort. His clothes were a little off, black shorts that went down to his knees and a loose black shirt with faded letters on it that looked like it was second hand. The girl realized then that this was probably not family with a lot of money to spend and that the boy might misinterpret her studying if she spent too much longer looking at him. Hinata took her eyes off of the boy and looked at the adults having their own conversation. She hated being with other adults because she could not relate to a word they said, as young as she was she was lost in her boredom. A thought occurred to her suddenly and she got up and went over to the boy who was standing with that calculating look over in the corner.
"Hey, you want to go do something else?" The girl asked.
He looked over at her from a sidelong glance and looked her up and down, "Something like martial arts perhaps?"
The suggestion was from knowledge he seemed to have previously and reaffirm by looking at her, "Uh, if you want, we could have a sparing match."
His face had been stern and seemingly uninterested in things around him before, even when she came up and talked to him, but when she mentioned sparing he seemed to become a totally different person. Quickly agreeing he told her to meet him in the backyard in about a half an hour to allow him to set up for training. She nodded and agreed with a shrug that showed that she would not really have any choice in the matter anyways as she was probably not going anywhere until everyone was done. The boy nodded and ran off towards the back of the house where he disappeared from her sight.
While they were having their conversation the adults were busy trying to figure out what Ryouga had done to make Baiken mad. Dizzy had talked to the woman and she seemed to be confused about the whole night as if it did not even exist. Recently they had made progress when it was learned that the pink haired woman had drank a little too much that night. That explained the lack of memory and even the yelling at Ryouga to some extent. This done, Dizzy asked Ranma to go talk to Ryouga somewhere else while the two of them caught up on old times. Once the two of them were gone, she had to admit that it had only been a ruse so that she could talk to Baiken about some things that were worrying her.
"Baiken, have you quit drinking since then?" Dizzy asked strait out.
The woman shrugged, "For the most part, I just never connected the two, I doubt the poor guy even knew I was drunk."
Cocking her head to the ceiling for a second, the blue haired girl took on a look of thinking, "So he tends to wonder off a lot, have you talked to him about it?"
"He said it's been like this since he was a kid," Baiken said as she started looking depressed, "I want to believe that, and maybe Ranma could confirm that but I'm afraid to ask. If it's not true then that would mean... Anyways, it just gets so lonely without him around. I know I can be a bit... outgoing sometimes but I can't imagine him being gone now."
Dizzy put a hand on the womans shoulder to reassure her, "Ask Ranma about it, I'm sure he's not doing it on purpose. He was practically lifeless when you threw him out. He looked like he had no reason to live."
With a sigh, the one eyed woman sighed and shook her head, "I'll talk to him, but I just don't know."
"Trust me, Baiken," Dizzy said reassuringly, "he really missed you."
"I'll talk to him then," Baiken said as she got up, "I guess I should apologize first."
The blue haired woman nodded in agreement to show that she approved of the course of events, "Thank you, I hope it goes okay."
With that the woman walked off and started towards the door, intending to go to where the other two men were practicing their martial arts with one another. When they arrived they found the two of them engaged in an intense round of fighting that looked almost serious to the untrained eye. There was one thing that made it clear to the two of them that this was no real serious match. It was partly the fact that neither of them had drawn blood and it was partly the fact that not one punch from either of them got through. They were have a leisurely get together fight rather than even a sparing match. What resulted looked more like a choreographed dance than actual fight and to Baiken it was a little boring after a while. Looking over at Dizzy she found the woman entranced by the way the two seemed to flow around each others moves. It was a testimony to how different the two of them were, Dizzy never was one for a fight. She would fight to survive but she never liked hurting even the worst kind of people. Baiken was a polar opposite by comparison.
Still she had her good points, though most would be hard pressed to think of them off the top of their head. One of the points that shone through the most was her perseverance under pressure, the other being her strong sense of honor. For what was honor except fighting for what you believe in and never giving in under a great burden. The Japanese had a sense of honor that, while working exceptionally well, was too skewed to stay around forever, which was why the ended up how they did. Even American with it's self important interest in itself had honor that seemed to be on the right track. But such an honor was young and not seen as a threat in its infantism. As such, they were all but left alone in the Gear War until they decided to join in near they end. Much like in wars past, this saved them from getting their hands too dirty but did not save them from the greed and fear that consumed them later. History tends to repeat itself and in this case there was no exception.
And that was in the end how she had come to be here, not that she blamed the whole country for such a travesty. They could not have known that it would turn out the way it had in the end. How could they, nobody can be prescient, especially in matters like these. No, Baiken blamed one man for he led the travesty that took place in Japan without so much as a pause to reflect of the wrongness of such an act. And so it came full circle and she was now seeking revenge against the man who had left her for dead so many years back.
But as she watched Dizzy's face and the two men mock fighting, she was not so sure that that was what she wanted anymore. She had survived this long on revenge, and now her heart was starting to break out of the stone that had encased it. All because she had met this man, but she had questions that needed answers. Not the least of which was 'why'. What had Japan been the scene of an attempted genocide? She could find no answers but she was sure she was still in pain over her homeland being destroyed. She would get her revenge, it just would have to wait until she figured out what to do with her life. The woman nodded to herself and slowly walked into the middle of the fray with little concern for the scene before her. As she got closer she drew her sword quickly to block a blow from Ranma, surprising both of the men.
"Ryouga," She said with her one eye locked hard on his, "We need to talk. Now."
The man raised an eyebrow and let out a slow, drawn out, "Okay."
With those words the two of them walked into the house as the other two watched them go, "What was that about, what did you say to her Dizzy?"
For the first time in her life, Dizzy felt something she could not explain, something very close to outrage, "How should I know?"
"Interesting," Ranma said as he stared at her, "I think you might need to cut down on your stress. You seem a little touchy today."
The woman, normally very composed and quiet frowned and turned away with a scowl, "Just leave me alone!"
She started to stalk away but before she got more than three steps away she stumbled and fell to the ground clutching her stomach. Ranma ran up to her and grabbed her gently, not knowing what else to do he stared worryingly at the woman. She grabbed his arm and screamed, clamping down in a grip that was surprisingly vice-like. Ranma winced and barely managed to pull his arm away.
"Dizzy, what's going on?" The man yelled as he stared at her helplessly.
The woman shook her head and spoke though grit teeth, "It hurts, my stomach hurts. Ranma!"
"Why? What's going on?" Ranma was getting hysterical but talking as her face went slack and her eyes closed, though he could still feel her breathing however that did not ease his worry.
In a sense he was at a lose for what to do, he did not even know what had caused the woman to be in such a state. He was so worried in fact that he did not even feel the person sneak up behind him and release a dart of drugs into his bloodstream. All he saw was a blur as he stared helplessly at a blurred shadowy figure's feet before his eyes closed.

(Just to let all of you know, I had to do the formating by hand in order to get it to work. Hopefully it won't happen with the next chapter. Bleh!)