FATE
A Ranma1/2 fanfic by PansutoTarou5925
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Disclaimer to follow at end of chapter
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The next morning, the silence of a Nerima morning - a silence that had been the norm for years - was shattered by the distinctive and destructive sounds of a Saotome family early morning sparring session.
"If my daughter only had half the dedication I had to the Art!" Ranma screamed, using Chiyeko's body as a springboard to remain aloft, and sending the blond girl into the koi pond at high speed. "But no! She doesn't take it seriously at all!"
"You obsessive bitch! Die!" Chiyeko said, firing double Mouko Takabishas upwards at her mother, who deflected them with her own. Leaping up, she exchanged blows with the older, taller woman at a lightning pace.
From the sidelines, Atasuke Ono looked on with wide eyes. "Pinch me, mother, I'm still sleeping," he said to his mother, looking at the two from the covered porch.
"I remember when Ranma and Genma fought in the morning. It seems that some things never change," Kasumi said to her son. "Now go and get changed. Your aunt will be by soon for your morning sparring session, and you won't want to keep her late."
"Sure thing Mom!" Atasuke said, running back up to his room for a change of clothes... and his video camera. He wasn't willing to risk physically peeping on his fiancee, but where there was a perverted will, there was a wily way. Or so the ancient master of Anything Goes had told the young Ono, before his untimely demise.
Atasuke clapped his hands absently, in memory of the honored dead.
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"Hey Akane!" Ranma said cheerfully, dragging the mostly insensate Chiyeko along the ground with one arm and waving to her ex-fiancé with the other. "Ready to beat up your heir today?"
Akane laughed and shook her head. "Not quite that badly; I like my students to be able to walk to school under their own power after training." She looked at the young Saotome girl. "I don't remember the old panda going this hard on you," she said.
Ranma snorted dismissively. "The old panda never had Chinese Amazons after his ass, as well as some of the other psychos. Besides, Chiyeko has some fairly strong rivals of her own, and she doesn't push herself to beat them the way I did." Ranma shrugged, as if to say she found that completely incomprehensible. "So I push her instead. She'll be up an' about before breakfast, though, she got that from me along with the raw talent."
Akane shook her head at Ranma's egotism and shouted for her own student. "Atasuke! Get your butt out here so I can kick it!"
Atasuke quickly came running out of the house, to snap to attention in front of his sensei. "Yes sensei!" he shouted enthusiastically.
"Aren't you full of energy this morning," Akane noted wryly. Usually the boy seemed to have taken more after his aunt Nabiki in the mornings, very slow to awaken. Well, he had probably been startled by the Saotomes' sparring session slash deathmatch happening first thing in the morning, she figured. Then Akane realized she was woolgathering and pointed to the dojo. "Unlike our guests, we'll be sparring where we're supposed to, like civilized people. So get moving!"
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Just like Ranma said, Chiyeko was perfectly fine and showing no signs of having been clobbered by one of the best martial artists in the world less than a half hour ago when she sat down at the table, Akane noted. She also noticed that neither Ranma nor Chiyeko were stealing food the way Ranma and her father had, so many years before. In fact, though their arms were blurring over the plates, they didn't seem to be making the sort of headway on their food she had expected them to. Then she realized why: each of them was using the Parley De Fois Gras to simultaneously force-feed the other one, and defend against attempted force-feeding.
Chiyeko was visibly angry at Ranma, though, just the way Ranma had always been pissed at Genma so many years ago. "Stop trying to feed me, mom! I'll get fat!" she snapped angrily.
"You need to eat before you starve yourself to death!" Ranma yelled back. She then slipped back into the sort of overdramatic pseudo-despair that her father had used: "Oh, that my own flesh and blood would become an anorexic. The shame!"
"I AM NOT ANOREXIC!" Chiyeko said, lashing out and capturing Ranma's chopsticks with her own. "Heh!" she said, "Now what are you gonna do, obaba?"
Ranma answered by stealing Atasuke's chopsticks with her free hand and slipping Chiyeko a quarter of her plate before the younger girl could react.
'Chiyeko isn't always hungry the way Ranma and his father were, but Ranma's found another way to motivate her,' Akane realized. Her speed training was also a lot more than Ranma had gotten out of his own food battles, too, because Genma was more interested in eating than teaching.
It wasn't long before Ranma finished harassing Chiyeko and pronounced herself satisfied that her daughter wouldn't "starve herself" and finished off her own plate in blazing speed.
"At least I'm not a pig like you..." Chiyeko grumbled.
"Whatever," Ranma said. She pulled out a bag of school supplies and tossed them to her daughter. "You'll need these for when you go to school."
"You enrolled me in school here?" Chiyeko said, rifling through the bag. "Hey! There's no uniform!"
Ranma waved her hand artlessly. "They won't care, seeing as you're my daughter and all and I never wore a uniform to Furinkan. I just want to make sure you don't grow up ignorant."
"Well, sending me to the school you graduated from doesn't seem like a winning strategy!" Chiyeko growled. "Besides, I want a uniform. Last time-"
"-you wore a headband and bracers with your uniform, which sort of defeats the purpose of wearing one," Ranma said reasonably. "I don't see what the problem is of just going in your normal clothes."
There was a ringing slap, and Chiyeko removed her hand from Ranma's face. "Maybe I don't want to be a weirdo like you were!" she yelled, running out the door.
"Jeez," Ranma said, rubbing her cheek. "If it's really that big a deal, I'll buy you the stupid uniform," she said, not really caring that Chiyeko had run off to cry alone.
Kasumi and Akane stared at her for a while. "Ranma," Kasumi said slowly, "I know you didn't mind your life on the road with your father. Much. But perhaps you should give Chiyeko the chance to be a normal girl for a little while?"
Ranma shook her head. "No kid of mine will ever have a chance to be a normal girl for a while." She held up her hand to forestall the argument she was about to get. "Last time I settled down in one area for any length of time, Chiyeko got in a fight with some girl in class who kept calling her a demon and attacking her, and she'd be ambushed every so often by a robot. I just don't think it's in the cards for her."
Akane looked at Ranma quizzically. "Are you sure your family doesn't have some sort of weird hereditary curse? Maybe it's a good thing that our engagement went out the window after all."
Atasuke looked in surprise and confusion between the two women. Akane and Ranma... together? All sorts of hentai images came to mind at that. Very interesting ones.... which if Ranma or his aunt realized, they'd probably kill him for. "Excuse me, Mother, Aunt Akane, Ranma-san," he said, standing up unsteadily, "but I think that maybe I should talk to Chiyeko and try to calm her down." Sounded good. He ran away from the table and possible death as fast as he could.
The adults watched the heir to the Tendo school take off. "Seems like a nice enough kid," Ranma said. "Ahh! Reminds me of myself at that age."
"Why thank you, Ranma," Kasumi said, knowing what Ranma had really meant, underneath the ego.
Akane snorted. "You were never that polite, Ranma."
Ranma stuck out her tongue at her former fiancee.
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"Damn she's fast," Atasuke said, running down the street. He had seen her off in the distance as he exited the gates of the Tendo house, and run after her as fast as he could. He had been pushed hard to follow her, given the fact that the girl ignored little things like houses and walls, jumping over them instead of running around them like a normal person would. At least it made her easier to catch up to.
Finally, she stopped at the canal. Atasuke was relieved that she'd finally decided to stop running; any further and he'd have collapsed. Even as it was he had dipped into his reserves and was breathing hard. He got the feeling that Chiyeko hadn't even really been trying, though. "Hey there," Atasuke said, puffing.
Chiyeko shot him a sour glance. "Leave me alone." She sat down on the edge of the concrete wall lining the canal and starting crumbling off bits of the concrete like it was styrofoam, and throwing the chunks in the water.
Atasuke sat down next to her. "Listen, Furinkan's a weird place, Chiyeko-chan," he said, trying to use the sort of cheerfully calm voice his mother always used. "Plenty of students don't wear uniforms there. It's no big deal."
Chiyeko threw another chunk of concrete in the water with a splash. "Great. The weirdo goes to a school full of weirdos,"she mumbled.
Atasuke stirred uncomfortably. He'd have defended the honor of his school, except that Furinkan really was a school full of weirdos. He needed to distract her. "So," he said, going with the first thing that popped in his head, "what's with the headband you're always wearing?"
Chiyeko growled and turned away from him. "It's none of your business, that's what it is."
"Ok, ok, I was just curious," Atasuke said, holding his hands out placatingly. He made a mental note not to bring that up with Chiyeko again. Instead, he got up. "C'mon, we've got to get going to school, anyways. Don't want to be late on your first day."
"I guess," Chiyeko said, hopping up. "Lead the way."
Atasuke walked slightly ahead of her, giving the brooding blonde her own space to stew in. He was sort of familiar with women acting like that, thanks to his sometimes temperamental aunt. Once after getting clobbered by a moody Akane, the master had once told him, 'The stormiest women wear the grayest lingerie.'"
He had meditated on the wisdom of Happousai many times, and still the sayings of the master remained enigmatically wise.
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After being introduced to the principal, who Chiyeko thought looked a little too young to be even a teacher, never mind a principal, the younger Saotome was walked to her homeroom by Atasuke Tendo. "My apologies, Saotome-chan," Atasuke said smoothly. "I'd have liked to have been in the same classes as you, but you are a year ahead of me." He hadn't known that until Chiyeko was told to go to a second-year homeroom, actually.
She shrugged. "It's OK, we have the same lunch period." She waved to Atasuke as he left. Smiling, she turned into the classroom, her earlier anger at her mother completely gone. "Hi!" she said, waving to the classroom.
The teacher nodded his head in her direction. "Class, I'd like you to meet our newest member of the class. She's recently been on a training trip to learn the martial arts, and has just returned from Thailand. So let's give her a big hello!" The class cheered, although the girls shot her a few dirty looks and the boys let loose with a few whistles.
Chiyeko ignored them and wrote her name on the board. "My name is Saotome Chiyeko-"
"Whoa! Saotome!" a few people said excitedly.
She frowned. That was never a good reaction, thanks to her idiot grandfather. "-and heir to the Saotome school of Anything-Goes martial arts."
A hand shot up. "Can you shoot ki blasts from your hands?" one boy asked.
"Er, yes..." Chiyeko said. That wasn't usually something people asked her.
"What's with the kamikaze headband?" a girl asked.
"What?" Chiyeko said, turning. "It's a gift from my aunt-"
"What are your measurements?"
"Yeah!" another boy chimed in.
"None of your business!" Chiyeko yelled.
"What ab-"
"SILENCE!" the teacher roared. "Honda, Sato, Yoshimoro, in the hall, now," he said, pointing. He paced up in front of the class. "What's gotten into you?"
"She's a Saotome!" someone said.
"So?" he asked. "I won't tolerate these sorts of outbursts in my classroom. Saotome, please sit down."
Chiyeko quickly grabbed an empty desk and sat in it.
"Now, please turn to page 43 in your textbooks..." the teacher droned, turning his back on the class. No sooner than he had done that than a snow flurry of notes had landed on Chiyeko's desk. The angry blond fried them with a showy display of ki, which quickly cowed the other students into leaving her alone.
"Great," she grumbled to herself. "I want to be a normal girl, and I end up being the most normal one in the class."
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At lunch, Atasuke watched a very wet and very irate Chiyeko walking towards her. He took a look at the bruised and bandaged group of second-year girls in the lunchroom and rumors of some sort of locker room brawl and quickly reached the correct conclusion. "You had some sort of fight?" he asked.
Chiyeko looked around before grabbing Atasuke and jumping onto the roof of the athletic equipment shed. "Listen, I hate to say this, but the other girls here are crazy! They attacked me in the locker room and one of them tried to boil me alive with a kettle! What the hell is going on? Are they all on drugs?"
Atasuke shrugged. "There's some rumor going around that you're a guy or something..." He gulped and backed up as a powerful, unusually heavy chi field jumped up around Chiyeko.
"WHAT!" she yelled.
"I find it hard to believe anyone could mistake you for a guy," Atasuke said soothingly, his survival instincts kicking in full force in the face of the angry girl.
Then she cooled down. "Well, at least that'll die down soon." She flexed her arm. "I've taught them a lesson. Besides, they saw me change." Her stomach rumbled suddenly. "Aw man, I forgot my bento," she complained.
Seeing an opportunity to curry favor with the girl, Atasuke quickly pulled out his own. "You can have some of mine." Given the whole breakfast scene with Ranma, she'd turn him down politely because she was trying to watch her figure, so he'd come out ahead without really giving anything up.
"Nah, I gotta watch what I eat," Chiyeko said. Atasuke smiled, knowing he had pegged that one, and opened the bento to eat. Then Chiyeko's stomach rumbled again. "On second thought, maybe I could use a bite to eat," she said, wavering. Atasuke handed her the bento. She handed it back after two seconds and got up. "Thanks for the food, Atasuke-kun," she said before jumping back down.
"Think nothing of it," he said, before looking at his bento. "My lunch!" he yelled. Only a few grains of rice were left. "She... ate... all... my mother's meal!"
He looked to the heavens. "NOOOOOO!"
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"Sounds like Atasuke got scammed out of his lunch by a girl again," one of the male students said, shaking his head.
"For a few minutes alone with the new girl? Man, I'd say that was worth it!" another one added.
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DISCLAIMER: Ranma ½ is the property of Rumiko Takahashi, Shonen Sunday, Viz, and other parties; I make no claims of ownership of any of the intellectual or other properties pertaining to it. Oh! My Goddess belongs to Kosuke Fujishima, Studio Proteus, Dark Horse, and other parties, and I make no claims of ownership of any of the intellectual or other properties pertaining to it, either.
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Author's Note: There, complete!
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