One Week:

"Waaah!"

THUD

"Owie…"

One of the most important elements of any martial arts is learning how to fall. How to roll with a blow, fall in such a fashion that you are both unhurt .and be ready to attack again. Dojikko-ken is no different in that sense. Learning how to fall was the first thing the book taught.

"OK... I can do this." Akane said, standing up again. She took a deep breath, popped another piece of bread into the toaster she had set into the dojo and waited for it to pop out. With a ding, the fresh toast popped up. She began the form. "Holy crap I'm late!" She grabbed the toast, shoved it into her mouth, and began to run while munching down the toast.

However, with the Dojikko-ken the Fall is perhaps the single most important element of the Art. A well timed trip could bring about a great victory. One master of the Dojikko-ken in the Warring States era subdued over a hundred angry bandits with nothing more than a tray of drinks through the use of a single well timed trip.

As Akane reached the end of the dojo, she suddenly seemed to trip. "Waaah!" She shouted, her hands flailing about as she fell. THUD. She hit the floor face first. "Owie…"

Indeed. The first form of the Dojikko-ken is a masterful technique. Seemingly tripping over nothing, to land face first into the ground. This position allows a near unlimited number of potential attack options.

Akane pulled herself off the ground, her face was red. After all, the key part of the first form is being able to trip over nothing and fall flat on your face…. yet be utterly unharmed. She had not gotten to that point yet. The book, fortunately, acknowledged that it was quite possible that someone learning the Dojikko-ken might be doing it alone due to the patriarchal tendencies of the Martial Arts community. So the book was much more detailed than the usual martial arts manuals were, which were typically written with the expectation that an experienced Sensei could point out any problems.

So, with a sigh, walked back over to the toaster, pulled out another slice of bread, and began the process anew.

One Month:

"I'm home!" Kasumi announced. It was, after all, her last year of High School. Nabiki was trailing behind her.

"You back sis?" Nabiki asked, Furinkan High was a fair bit further away from home then Akane's school.

"Y-yeah…" Akane's uneasy voice came from the kitchen. Had she been getting a snack? Kasumi and Nabiki entered the kitchen, and froze mid step.

Food was everywhere. On the ceilings, the walls, the counters. Dishes and utensils were similar scattered. Akane was sprawled out in the middle of the kitchen and for some reason neither Kasumi nor Nabiki could fathom she had a mixing bowl on her head.

Kasumi's left eyelid twitched, once. "Oh my. What happened here Akane?"

"Did a Dojo Destroyer attack the kitchen or something." Nabiki said.

"I just… uh… wanted to try making a cake?" Akane, the girl who had never made anything beyond a sandwich in her life said.

The truth was, of course, that the Dojikko-ken had several forms that relied on innocuous elements like cooking, or even food itself. Once a practitioner who served as a bodyguard for the Shogun thwarted no less than three simultaneous assassination attempts with a plate of cookies!

As such, with the proper techniques a Dojikko-ken master could be, from all appearances tumbling around and ruining a kitchen. Yet, by the end of the day something would be successfully cooked and she will have made the kitchen an impenetrable obstacle to any intruder.

Akane had never had any interest in learning how to cook (as far as she was concerned once she was in charge of the dojo it would pay for all the frozen dinners and takeout she wanted), but she knew that if she wanted to master this form she needed to be at least passable. Turning a seeming kitchen disaster into a potent weapon… Dojikko-ken was dangerous indeed.

Neither Nabiki nor Kasumi knew that. So, instead Nabiki just laughed and headed upstairs. Kasumi bent down and began helping clean up, "How about I help you learn how to make a cake?" She suggested to her youngest sister.

"Uh… sure!" Akane said, laughing nervously. The bowl on her head falling off. Great. Now the difficulty had just increased ten fold. How was she going to get anything from this cooking lesson while also being able to practice the form! (Which, of course, involved a lot of spilling around and tripping).

Three months:

Classes and clubs were over for the day. So it was time for the students to disperse and head home. Bookbag in hand, Akane was ready to walk home with Yuka…

When she saw him. The asshole captain of the Martial Arts club. Even now, three months after that humiliation and rejection. She was not naturally a vindictive person, but the jeers about her loss (everybody ignored the circumstances, all they said was that Akane had tried to get into boys clubs and failed). There had to be some way she could get back at him. Something to make up for the loss.

He was laughing about some joke with some of his friends from the club. Akane gritted her teeth.

"Akane…?" Yuka asked, "Are you OK?"

In a flash Akane had a sunny smile on her face again. "Yeah. Sorry! Spaced out a bit." She bonked the side of her head.

Yuka shook her head. "Fine."

Akane internally berated herself for breaking character. An important part of Dojikko-ken was presenting the a pleasant, slightly ditzy image. Tricking the opponent to underestimate you was a perfectly fine tactic to someone who had grown up learning a martial art called "Anything Goes" so it didn't take much thought to go along with it. Holding her books up to hide her grin, Akane executed the technique.

To Yuka, it looked like she suddenly lost her balance. "W-woaaahhh!" She tipped forward, and her bookbag flew out of her hands. Spinning through the air, the impromptu projectile hit its target with unerring accuracy. Namely, the back of that jackass's head.

Akane, meanwhile, landed flat on her face. Yet she was completely unharmed!

"Ohmygod!" Akane stood up, a look of panic on her face. She pulled him up, "I'm so sorry…"

"Uh what…?" The dazed boy said.

"Sorry! I tripped. I'm so clumsy lately I can't help it!" She bowed to him in seeming apology. Except her bow was also a headbutt, and he was knocked to the ground again.

"Sorry!"

Yuka frowned. Something odd had been doing on with Akane the past few months. She had gotten a lot more clumsy (it had always been there when she got nervous). Yet she didn't seem to notice it much or seem frustrated about it. A part of her was worried that the traumatic experience in the Martial Arts club had broken her.

Six Months

Kasumi didn't know how it worked.

Ever since that day in the kitchen, Akane had a sudden interest in learning how to cook. Kasumi, being the loving big sister that she was, gladly agreed to help out a bit after school. Cooking with Akane was becoming quite an experience. Namely that every time it happened it was like a miniature war zone in the kitchen. Not a lesson passed that Akane didn't somehow trip over her own two feet and nearly scatter food everywhere. Yet it somehow all turned out fine in the end.

After five months Akane was becoming a passable cook. Kasumi was fairly sure that she'd never be a particularly great one. She lacked passion for it. To tell the truth, Kasumi didn't know why Akane was doing it. The girl seemed happy after cooking, but it didn't seem to be for the sake of making good food.

It was almost like Akane was enjoying the cooking process in and of itself, rather than any result. She was cheerful even if the recipe went completely wrong, after all.

Akane took a bite into her slightly burned cookies. She was in a good mode. She had mastered the third Kitchen Form the Dojikko-ken! "Slipping over the Spatula" used spatulas and other baking tools as blunt weapons.

Eleven Months, one week.

Ultimately, there are several tiers of martial artists. There are your novices, who either just recently began to practise or, quite frankly, aren't very good at it. They are generally only slightly above your typical random person in terms of fighting ability, if a touch more athletic. Then there are your hobbyists, who are pretty good in a fight but don't really take it too seriously.

Then there's the level that Akane had languished at. Practitioner. These people took it seriously. In the real world these are the people that do it seriously and are paid to be good at it. Soldiers, MMA fighters, boxers real professional martial artists. And if Akane Tendo had been in the real world, she'd have walked all over most of them by age 17 with the level of training she had before taking on her new martial arts style. Doesn't that say something about her bullheaded, stubborn nature, that she could push herself to being that good with that level of care being given to her by her teacher? That is to say, the barest minimum attention with most of her recent years being self taught, self motivated and self disciplined.

Practitioner is pretty much the top tier level in the real world. But in the world of Ranma 1/2, we can go a couple of steps further. Sure, a Practitioner could run headlong into a bunch of athletes her own age and tear them apart, but an Expert could do so without breaking a sweat. Similarly, a Master did not need to do so because they could simply show up and make everyone back down with a mere look. And a projected aura the size of a semi-truck.

That sounds all well and good, yes? A level of skill can be accomplished that is downright superhuman. Hard work, perseverance and determination. Except, well, for one small problem that Expert-level martial artists have to face. Maybe at some level Soun had sensed it or had been aware of it, having dealt with it himself. Maybe he didn't want to put his daughter through it. Maybe that's why he slowed down her training in the hopes that she wouldn't cross that barrier at too young an age, that she could be a little more mature and have more backup for the day that it did happen.

Because, you see, an Expert martial artist has a rather severe problem that we shall refer to as "Weird Shit". What is "Weird Shit"? Well, it can take any number of forms. The most common was suddenly being approached by people in distress because of unusual circumstances, and so they seek out someone that instinct tells them is physically and mentally capable of handling it. Or there was the second most common, in which that same instinct triggers a different kind of reaction from a particular kind of person. Not "this person can help me," but rather more...

Mariko Konjo was doing her very, very best not to grit her teeth in frustration. Here they were, her school taking on the Furinkan Middle School in a game of inter-school volleyball. It should be an easy win for her team. It was always an easy win for her team! After all, wasn't she of the Cheerleading-style Martial Arts school?

It sounds like a bizarre and esoteric style, but it's really, really diverse. It combined flexibility (high kicks, stretching poses), dexterity (backflips, jumps, precise movements), strength (lifting fellow team members) and, above all else, being absolutely and utterly adorable. You appealed to the crowd to get them to cheer, motivating the players with your L-O-V-E!

You also interfered like crazy. Which Mariko did by tossing her baton in a spinning arc to catch one of the Furinkan players and take them out of the game - Only for the bitch with dark blue hair to stumble over it instead, giving that player the perfect chance to spike the ball just at the same moment that the baton rolled under the net, tripping up one of their own players and costing them the point. And hence the game.

All the wilie that girl was sitting on her big fat rump and rapping her hand atop the side of her head, with her tongue sticking out. How horribly uncute! Every single time she had tried to do something to help out her team that same clumsy girl had done something to get in the way, countering her attacks so that it gave Furinkan the advantage instead!

In short: She had lost. Mariko Konjo had lost. She didn't see it as her school losing, or the volleyball team losing. She had personally lost to this girl. This nobody. This non-cheerleader had creamed her in a contest of cheerleading martial arts! It was unthinkable! Impossible! It was burning her b-l-o-o-d!

"Thanks for helping out, Akane!" she heard one of the Furinkan girls say to the bitch. Akane. Mariko bit her lip. She would remember that name. She would hate that name! She would l-o-v-e to h-a-t-e that name!

"Um... Mariko? I think it's time for us to leave," one of the other girls said, and so Mariko reluctantly departed. For the time being. Menacingly twirling her retrieved baton in the process.

She was skipping home, and she couldn't help herself. Inside and out, Akane was beaming with pride. She was doing it. She was actually doing it! She could feel herself getting better, faster, cuter, clumsier and growing as a martial artist with her own unique fighting style!

The only downside was that the boys at school were paying her a bit more attention than she especially enjoyed, but still! That was a small downside when she felt so overwhelmingly happy and good and was that a battle aura she was sensing?

"Two, four, six, eight! Who's the girl I've come to hate? Seven, five, three, one! My revenge has just begun!"

... Was that a cheerleader doing a series of high-kicking knees while whirling around a pair of pompoms? Ah! Danger instinct kicking in! Akane did the "dive of the friendly puppy," which involved seeming to trip over your own feet and upon hitting the ground roll over so that you landed on your backside, leaving you in the seemingly vulnerable yet extremely deadly "pose of the begging duck," from which Akane could launch any of a dozen cute, clumsy attacks or counterattacks. Good thing she had as well, since the pompom had been thrown and she'd just barely ducked under it. That wouldn't be something she'd normally care about except that it had embedded into the wall behind -

"Don't you get it, don't you see? Always watch your enemy!"

A kick swept across towards Akane's head. This girl meant business! Akane bent forward as if touching her toes, then bopped her head up to catch the girl on the underside of her knee. To Akane's amazement, the cheerleader somersaulted on the spot, landing perfectly on her feet.

Akane gulped, and her heart pounded in her chest. This girl was a real martial artist, wasn't she? Akane made to stand up, and made use of the "ring-tailed lemur's rise" to try and sweep out the cheerleader's feet from underneath her. Her currently unnamed opponent skipped over the attack, narrowed her eyes, pulled a baton seemingly out of nowhere and jabbed it towards Akane's throat. Playing for keeps?

"Whoops!" Akane said, waving her arms forward and making her bag lash out, knocking the arm away and clipping the cheerleader's chin. The enemy stumbled back a little, oblivious to the real nature of Akane's attack. "Sorry about this!"

"On that topic we shall see, just how sorry you will be!"

Oh, goodness, enough with the rhyming already. It was getting so obnoxious and - An opening appeared before her eyes. Instincts took over from a lifetime of martial arts, and she dove forward to exploit it without a moment's hesitation, even though the rational part of her brain was telling her to back off. And then her fist struck pompom, leaving her hand swept aside, and this time Akane was the one left wide, wide open. Akane's eyes went wide as she realised what she had just done. It was because she was not experienced enough in using this style of fighting against a serious opponent. If only she could have kept to it, maybe she could have -

Oof! Right in the breadbasket. This girl was fast and Akane had to - Too late! A foot landed on the back of her head, and Akane suddenly got to know exactly what pavement tasted like. For a moment the cheerleader stood triumphant with a foot on top of Akane's head.

"There's no need for your thanks, because your butt I've truly sp-"

And then the brick Akane had been carrying in her bag for weight training landed squarely on top of Mariko's head. Of course, she hadn't even noticed it flying out earlier when Akane had flipped it up at her, but that was the full nature of dojikko-ken: Misdirection was a key, crucial element. If only she had stuck to it, she could have avoided scuffing her face up.

"Oh, dear!" Akane said to her downed opponent. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine how are you?" the cheerleader replied on wobbly legs. She raised a finger, got distracted by it and fell forward. Akane caught her. The cheerleader then began pounding on Akane's shoulders with little balled-up fists. "Haaaate you so much!"

"That's nice," Akane said with a smile. "But maybe I should take you to Doctor Tofu for the time being?"

The cheerleader made as if to argue, but then tilted her head a little and nodded meekly instead, blinking with her eyes out of synch. "I'll kick your ass later."

"That's nice."

"In a martial arts cheerleading context!"

"You mean contest?"

"That's the word!"

And as Akane carried off her newfound rival for medical treatment, there was a boy with dark rings around his eyes, holding a camera at chest height. He watched them go by with raised eyebrows and held breath, then once they were out of sight he said:

"That was weirdly hot and I want to see more."