Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Changes ❯ Chapter 5 ( Chapter 5 )

Chapter Six

`For a weekend and a non-school day today isn't starting out that well.' Ranma thought.

Ranma watched the cityscape pass beneath him as he flew, another clear and beautiful day. Nerima passed beneath him and soon he found himself flying over neighbouring Juuban. Having already reached the apex of his flight Ranma now started to look at his likely landing spot and started as usual to align himself using minor bursts of ki.

It was as he neared his landing point that he noticed a battle in progress and watched amused as he continued to drop to the battle being waged between a monster of some kind and a group of girls dressed in sailor uniforms.

The girls were throwing around some reasonably powerful attacks he noted, but unfortunately for them the monster seemed to be able to dodge all of the attacks with ease. He supposed he could assist the girls, but it would be rude to just jump in without asking and besides today had been a pretty good day.

Kuno still wasn't back after four days away, he had managed to arrange some quality time with Nabiki in the guise of requiring assistance with homework and Akane was off to some appointment or other and would be gone all day

`OK' he thought `Akane did just drive me out of sight but apart from that.'

* * *

Ranma set down lightly in the middle of the battle between the monster and the girls. He grinned sheepishly at the stunned combatants.

"Sorry about this."

The monster, a youma loomed over Ranma and gave a deep throated growl. Ranma looked up and arched an eyebrow at the menacing creature. Nonchalantly he raised his hand up in front of the youma's face and summoned a small ball of ki that floated lazily in his cupped hand.

"Now" said Ranma "I am having a very good day and I hope you aren't going to do anything to spoil it."

This reaction wasn't quite what the youma was expecting, usually growl No.14 (Patent Pending) was enough to instill fear and the need for a change of underwear in mortals, but this floating ball of ki and the casual demeanour of this young man was upsetting to say the least.

"Maybe" Ranma continued "things are done differently in Juuban, but in Nerima….."

At the word Nerima the youma froze.

The youma all spoke of Nerima in hushed tones, if you go there it was said you never came back. Full of crazy and powerful martial artists who actually argued over who got to fight any youma foolish enough to venture there. His cousin Bob stumbled into Yerima once and was folded up like a paper crane by a practitioner of martial arts origami and hung in a tree as a good luck charm where he languished for eight years. The last thing this youma wanted was to upset a martial artist from Nerima.

The youma looked on in fear as Ranma continued his lecture on the protocol for dealing with who got to fight which youma in Nerima as the girls looked watched in amazement.

"So" Ranma concluded "are you going to spoil my day?"

The youma shook his head emphatically "No!"

"OK then" Ranma smiled at the youma, the girls and started roof hopping back to Nerima.

"Wow" said the girl with short blue hair drooling slightly as she gazing at the rapidly disappearing Ranma.

"What a hunk!" breathed the blond haired girl.

"Mmmmmm" agreed the other girls.

"Scary" said the youma.

A moment later the youma was sorry he spoke as the sound of his voice broke the girls from their reverie and they turned their attention back to him, reducing him to a pile of unappetising looking sludge with a combined attack before he could react.

The last conscious thought from the youma before thought became no longer possible was `some days it just doesn't pay to climb out of the pits of hell.'

The girls stood for a moment trying to etch into their memories the vision of the flying Nerima native who had flown into their midst. One of them pulled out a small computer and proceeded to check if the computer had managed to capture any images of their visitor that she would maybe be able to print out for her scrapbook.

"Well…" one of them finally spoke "I suppose we can't waste all of Saturday just standing here.."

"SATURDAY!" yelled a girl with long yellow hair looking up in surprise.

"Catch you later" she called over here shoulder as she ran off "I'm late, I'm late."

* * *

The streets of Nerima are designed like the streets of no other city in the world. Some cities are designed on strict geometric principles, others follow the contours of the local geography and others just grow like mould on leftovers. More magically inclined cities often follow ley lines and other lines of magical power or are aligned to display certain astronomical and astrological events, usually foretelling dire events for anyone in the vicinity.

But not Nerima, Nerima is unique.

The streets of Nerima are designed to funnel rampaging martial artists towards parks, open areas and even neighbouring towns.

Neighbouring areas of course design their streets to funnel those same martial artists straight back where they came from.

The original concept for the streets of Nerima came from the late Neolithic era, when martial artistry was in it's infancy. At that point in history martial arts usually consisted of a lot of yelling and waving large wooden clubs.

It should also be noted that martial and marital arts were also a lot closer related at this point in time than ever before or since. The yelling, clubbing and then dragging a prospective mate back to ones hut where she proceeded to make the rest of the martial artist's life hell continues to this day, clubbing (night clubbing in the modern era), yelling and years of torture remain almost constant.

Some neolithic locals, specifically those not martial artists found all the yelling, clubbing and dragging not conducive to a quiet late stone age life. So they enlisted the help of a shaman to find a way to quietly move all the martial artists out of the area or at least to the outskirts of the village.

So when someone leapt in the air yelling `Neolithic Big Wooden Club Strike' in preparation of knocking someone senseless they did it out of earshot of all but the soon to be senseless.

How a neolithic martial artist came up with an attack called `Neolithic Big Wooden Club Strike' remains a mystery to all but a bespectacled archeologist who fell through a time hole while cleaning a hot spring out the back of the inn where he lived with his wife and several of their mutual friends. Including the one who created the time hole. How he returned from the late Neolithic and why the machine that returned him needed to be powered by turtles remains a mystery even to him.

The whole street design had grown and matured over the years and still remained effective in channelling martial artists towards open parklands, sportsgrounds and schoolyards, it was especially effective against neolithic martial artists, which explains why they are rarely seen on the streets of Nerima.

Martial artists other than Neolithic ones often find themselves in parks without knowing why.

Just occassionally a Neolithic martial artist will manage to escape the parks and gardens of Nerima to wander the main thoroughfares before disappearing back into the denser thickets of trees and bushes of Nerima's parklands. One such sat in the gutter outside of an icecream shop several blocks from the largest park in Nerima nursing a broken club and a sore head.

It is said that Neolithic martial arts takes a particular mindset, prodigious strength, an inability to maintain rational thought. Thinking was actually an obstacle to the mastery of Neolithic martial arts.

So as he sat in the gutter watching the petite redhead with the well developed chest stride away he would have wondered something, if he was in fact capable of wondering anything.

* * *

"Neolithic big wooden club strike" Ranma growled to himself or herself as he or she actually was at the moment "what kind of attack is that?"

`Today is going really well' thought Ranma `minimal fiance activity, ice-cream, no Ryouga, Kuno still being held by the police for psychological testing and up until scamming some ice cream I've been male all day. OK Nabiki did give me that dinner invitation from Kodachi and not only no but hell no.

"I'd rather play Martial Arts Strip Poker against Happousai and Cologne" Ranma vowed. He stopped and shuddered as terrible visions flashed through his mind "Even if I won I'd still lose" he decided.

Ranma stopped as he reached the edge of the park.

"Why is it that whenever I go for a walk I end up in a park."

* * *

The past week had been painful for Mousse.

He had finally lost Shampoo. Not to the devil made flesh Saotome, but to the fiend in human form, the pig that walks like a man Ryouga Hibiki. As painful as it was to admit Shampoo had never really been his, in his dreams she was always his and he always felt that his dreams would one day come true.

But no more.

The past week of Shampoo fawning over Ryouga, Ryouga staying at the Nekohanten, Ryouga being dragged forcibly into Shampoo's room at night. It was too much his dreams had died and now he was empty.

"Hey Mousse!"

Mousse looked up and found Ranma's girl form standing before him holding two foam cups filled with steaming hot tea.

"Saotome" Mousse replied lifelessly.

Ranma passed one cup of tea to Mousse and then dipped two fingers into his own cup triggering the change back to his male form.

"What's up Mousse?"

Mousse sighed deeply "Shampoo, it's over."

"Ah" Ranma nodded sagely.

"It was bad enough when she was chasing you" Mousse stared at Ranma balefully.

"But she caught Ryouga."

"Yes" Mousse's shoulders slumped lifelessly and he seemed to shrink in upon himself "two or three times a night."

Tea exploded from Ranma's nostrils and Mousse thumped Ranma's back until the worst of the coughing had subsided.

"Of course most of the time he just passes out" Mousse laughed sadly "once an ambulance had to rush him to hospital."

"Hospital?" Ranma swallowed, Ranma was remarkably naïve about a great many things and compounding this problem had slept through most of the courses where the mysteries of human reproduction were expounded upon. Subsequently most of his knowledge was derived from schoolyard talk and a couple of scrolls of ancient martial arts/martial arts techniques, which he had mastered as much as he could without actually practicing with a partner. All this had left him scared, confused and with the impression that human reproduction involved some heavy duty combat between participants and at least nine months recovery for the loser.

Horrible visions of arcane, esoteric, nor to mention lewd and lascivious amazon ceremonies flashed through Ranma's mind.

Mousse watched amused as Ranma's thoughts were played out across his face, horror, wonder and complete confusion battled for control before a scared lost look settled on Ranma's face.

"Blood loss from excessive nosebleeds, one of the major killers of amazon husbands" Mousse deadpanned.

Ranma recovered his composure and grinned at Mousse "Now I know you're kidding."

"Yeah" Mousse smiled back "except for the blood loss and the hospital."

Ranma watched Mousse as he settled back into the depressed state he found him in.

"So what do you do now?" Ranma asked trying to keep the conversation alive.

Mousse looked up at Ranma "I don't know. Every plan, every dream I had was about Shampoo. Now I have nothing."

"You've got your health." Ranma offered.

Mousse sneezed violently.

"Or maybe not" Ranma looked at Mousse "come on Mousse you're one of the top martial artists in Nerima, your not stupid. A little obssessed maybe, but not stupid. There's lots you could do."

Mousse was silent and stared blankly at his shoes.

Ranma tried another tack "You're a good looking guy Mousse lotsa girls'd go out with ya."

"Would you?"

"I ain't a girl" Ranma spluttered indignantly.

"Half the time" Mousse countered.

"And I ain't going out with ya."

Mousse laughed at the look of offended dignity Ranma was wearing and after a moment Ranma joined in.

"You know Mousse" Ranma said still laughing "maybe you should go to school."

"School?"

"Big building, boring teachers, you're supposed to learn stuff."

"School?"

"Lotsa girls" offered Ranma "none of `em Shampoo."

"I should move out of the Nekohanten" Mousse decided.

"Good idea."

"There's other restaurants."

"Loads of `em."

"School?" Mousse stood and started to walk back towards the streets of Nerima "Ranma?"

"Yeah?"

"When you go walking, do you always end up in a park?"

* * *

It was a tired and dirty Akane Tendo that trudged wearily down the twisting streets of Nerima. Her clothes were torn, her face smudged with soot and her once neatly combed and brushed hair was twisted, tufted and tangled into an unholy mess.

Akane reached up and pulled a duck feather from her hair and then dove her hand inside her blouse to remove another feather.

"How" she mused "I avoided being crushed by that car I will never know."

The car in question was a late model Mazda, a bubble car, a tiny bright red vehicle made only just large enough for people of modest size. Unfortunately in this instance the owner of the car was anything but modest.

Generous would be at term that would best describe Miss Nakajima if one was being polite. She always insisted on Miss when being introduced so that there could be no misunderstanding about whether she was available to any man who was looking for a wife. Sprawling was often used to describe Miss Nakajima, large if one had a talent for understatement.

There was a lot of Miss Nakajima and what there was she was determined to share. She billowed over the top of the bicycle shorts she habitually wore, waves of her crashed against the sports bra tops and halter tops she wore. To see her walk was to see a sea of flesh raging against the feeble man-made constraints that kept her constrained.

Likewise her voice boomed, it roared her displeasure, it boomed when exulting her approval and it broke like a physical manifestation over people pushing them away. Her whispers could and often did drown out the sounds of passing trains.

Like a lot of the native Neriman population Miss Nakajima was a martial artist. It was this skill that allowed her to drive. Unable to reach or manipulate the steering wheel and gear lever from where she was forced to sit in the back seat, the front seat having been removed, she used her prodigious martial arts skills to drive by operating the controls with the near perfect control she had over her skin.

All of this training and skill were all to no avail as she was side-swiped by a large truck launching her tiny car skywards and then through the third floor window of Nerima Tech.

If this accident had happened anywhere but Nerima the vehicle would have been reduced to it's component parts, but this being Nerima and Miss Nakajima being the size she was the little car landed safely and without additional incident or injury with a, for once speechless, Miss Nakajima still safely ensconced in the rear seat.

The truck was not so lucky, nor was the driver.

Yoshino-sensei as he was known to the other drivers at the Kouji Trucking Co. was the oldest, most senior and most respected driver at the company. For forty years he had driven trucks, big truck, little trucks, trucks hauling fuel, livestock, electronics, produce he had carted it all.

Today he was carting ducks, live duckst, over two thousand of them.

Five minutes ago Yoshino-sensei's major concern was whether he would ever find a way out of Nerima. For some reason he kept driving past the same park and if his sense of direction wasn't failing him he was due to pass it again in a matter of moments.

For a practitioner of Martial Arts Truck Driving with forty years experience it was becoming quite frustrating.

He had even blown his horn five times, something he had always prided himself on not doing.

His nerves were shot, his temper short and when his shipment detonated with a quack that could be heard over eight miles away he lost control.

He gunned the engine, he swerved, he hit an unexpected patch of oil he was suddenly sideways. He watched in horror as his trailer swung around launching a small red car skywards as he started heading sidewards down the road.

In the end it took another truck to stop him. Stalled across a busy intersection Yoshino-sensei could only watch in horror as the other truck loomed closer. When the drivers side of Yoshino-sensei's truck struck the drivers side of the stalled truck it catapulted Yoshino-sensei through the open window and down the street.

Easily clearing the empty tray of the stalled truck he watched the city street pass beneath him and it seemed somehow fitting to him that his last vision would be of a bitumen road as he had passed over so many roads in his life. It was if it was his life he was flying over.

His peaceful ruminations on his life were interrupted as he looked up to see a plate glass window before him. He had only time to read the business name `Shurikens, Caltrops, Shaken and Other Pointy Ninja Supplies' before he passed gratefully into unconsciousness.

* * *

Brunhilde was very proud of her voice. It had a clear, fresh tone a certain something, a wonderful vibrato as she held those long notes. Something she felt that raised her above the flock and would allow her to achieve super-stardom.

Brunhilde had a dream.

Opera.

Wagner to be exact.

To be a valkyrie, the lead of course, performing on stage in front of the nobility of Europe, a dream so beautiful the very thought of it could move her to tears.

She did however have a couple of major obstacles in her way.

One. She was a duck.

Two. No matter how good her voice, the only thing she could actually sing was quack.

`Nothing insurmountable' she often thought ` many singers go through their entire career without making a single identifiable sound and if they can do it so can I.'

Brunhilde was not alone either, Carmen, Figaro, and all her other siblings shared the same dream. They exercised their voices daily, improving the volume and timbre of their voices. In all better than 95% of the ducks loaded on Yoshino-sensei's truck shared dreams of performing opera.

So it was that when Mr Tanaka, the welding instructor from Nerima Tech shot through the side of Yoshino-sensei's truck like a fiery comet the resulting quack broke windows for 200 yards in all directions.

* * *

Teaching students the finer points of welding for his entire working life was not how Mr Tanaka envisaged his life turning out. Occasionally he would admit that a rare student made it all worthwhile. But mostly he was reduced to training brain-dead drones enough so they could venture out into the world and weld until they either dropped or retired.

The art of Martial Arts Welding would he feared die with him. He tried, oh how he tried to instill into his students the love of the art he had. But sadly they were more focussed on earning enough money to take their girl out on Saturday night.

Today was Saturday. So today more than ever his students shuffled listlessly around the classroom, the only real animation was when one of the students expounded upon his plans for his date that night.

Those that had been out Friday night shuffled with heads hung low, victims of hangovers made worse by the heat generated by the welding process and the noise some students decided was necessary to convince their instructor they were working hard.

The malaise that has settled over the classroom had also begun to infect Mr Tanaka. He should have noticed earlier, but of course he hadn't, a student had extinguished his welding torch but the gas had somehow remained on, leaking gas into the classroom.

Later he thought that if it happened again he probably would have done the same thing. He called out and had everyone turn off the tools they were using, extinguish their torches and turn off the gas. He had everyone file out of the room as he stopped to open the windows and let the tainted air clear.

There wasn't much gas to be sure but better safe than sorry.

There wasn't much gas, but enough.

Because lurking under one students desk was a far more insidious threat, lurking not four feet from where Mr Tanaka was opening the window. Gas filled balloons.

One student had a bright idea. They were having a party, wouldn't it be fun to fill balloons with gas, tie strings to them and then light them up causing a brilliant flash of light.

It was sure to scare his girlfriend, she would scream and hold him tight and who knows what he might get to squeeze when he held her!

But Mr Tanaka was oblivious to this threat.

So when the girl with her long yellow hair ablaze ran past his classroom, the leaked gas was just enough to ignite the gas filled balloons.

Firing him like a cannonball through the window

* * *

Usagi was not a good cook, her friends teased her mercilessly about it.

So she decided that was just one thing to do. Take lessons.

Not in Juuban though. Someone might spot her. So she came to neighbouring Nerima. Nerima Tech offered weekend courses in many subjects, cooking was one of them. There was Cooking for Beginners, Intermediate Cooking, Advanced Chefcraft, Preparing Traditional Dishes and Martial Arts Cooking (whatever that was).

Cooking for Beginners was the course she chose. The instructor was pleasant, the kitchen/classroom was the most amazing kitchen she had ever seen and her cooking partner was lovely.

Her name was Akane.

Akane looked just like her friend Ami. Akane was bright cheerful and had serious issues with someone called Ranma, though whether Ranma was male or female was still unclear.

Best of all Akane's cooking was at a similar level to Usagi's so they hit it off straight away.

The early session went well. Usagi was especially pleased with the amount of cooking theory that Akane had stored away.

`It must be the hair colour' she thought `soaks the information in. Just my luck my hair colour probably scares off any useful knowledge before I even get a chance to think about it.'

The second session was doomed from the start.

Theoretically speaking poaching an egg is a simple task.

It does not involve however a 44 gallon drum of engine oil, brandy, batter (strangely green in an almost radioactive manner) and bleach. This did not deter Akane and Usagi however. With a will and purpose normally reserved for the religiously fanatical or fanatically religious they went to work.

The first thing that went right or wrong from Akane and Usagi's point of view was they lost the oil. The teacher would have stopped them before they even started, as they assembled their ingredients in fact. But she was stunned. The simple process of poaching an egg was being transformed before her eyes into an exercise in chaos. Later the teacher was heard to remark that `it was like a train wreck, you see the trains rushing at each other, but all you can do is watch.'

Akane and Usagi, both obviously much stronger than they looked somehow managed to lift the drum of oil onto the bench nearest to the window, it was at this point that the banana skin which Usagi had carelessly tossed aside earlier in the day came into play. Akane slipped which in turn tumbled the drum of oil out the window where in broke open on contact with the ground leaving the oil to run down onto the roadway.

Still skating on the banana peel Akane rocketed through the classroom scattering classmates as she went as Usagi watched helplessly her new friend rounded the far end of the room and started back towards her flailing her arms hopelessly trying to steady her healong flight.

Seeing Akane heading back towards her and possibly even more importantly their cooking ingredients Usagi acted quickly. She leapt for the counter and the eggs and brandy, however she miscalculated and instead of gracefully snaring the ingredients and pirrouetting out of the road Usagi knocked the eggs into Akane's path smashing them and greasing the floor allowing her speed to increase even further.

The brandy was knocked back into the gas flames roaring beneath the happily glowing pan on Akane and Usagi's stove, breaking the bottle causing a bright blue flame to streak up towards the ceiling and igniting the ends of Usagi's long hair.

It took Usagi only a moments consideration to decide what to do.

She fled screaming out the doorway and down the hall.

* * *

Akane gasped, she drew large breaths of air deep into her lungs as she tried to steady herself after her impromptu circuit of the classroom. Everywhere she looked there was chaos, the teacher was pale and shaking, some students were standing, some lying and one girl while leaping out of Akane's way had managed to jam her posterior in the kitchen sink in the middle of the bench she at which she had been cooking.

As Akane stepped forward to help she heard a loud explosion from down the hall followed by a deafening explosion that shattered all of the windows which sounded suspiciously like a quack. She did not have long to ponder this however as a small red car filled by an impossibly large woman flew through the window and landed where she had just been standing.

Even as her mind was beginning to adjust to this latest event she was once against bombarded by things and events beyond her control as the largest mass attack by ducks ever recorded was carried out by two thousand ducks quacking Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

It is said `comes the moment, comes the man' or in this case the woman.

Unfortunately Akane's moment had come and she was passed out on the floor.

* * *

Fresh from his defeat at the hands of the red-headed big chested girl the Neolithic Martial Artist known as Krug wandered despondently back to the park. He would have rued the day he ever wandered out of the park, but the tales he would tell about the red-headed big chested girl he felt would make up for any discomfort he felt now.

It was then he spotted her, not as big chested as the red-headed big chested girl but very satisfactory.

Krug had found his mate.

Akane heard someone yell "Neolithic Big Wooden Club Strike!" and then darkness claimed her again.

* * *

It was late when Akane arrived back at the Tendo dojo. Only her father was still awake, waiting patiently for his friend Mr Saotome to return after he had disappeared that night a week ago.

Soun Tendo glanced at the bent and twisted golf club in his daughters hand and his eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.

"Don't ask" Akane hissed viciously "don't ask."

Soun displaying uncharacteristic wisdom remained silent.

He and his daughter remained staring at each other for a moment.

Akane started punching out the unasked for responses "Big pervert."

Soun's eyebrows raised further.

"Hit me."

His eyes widened.

"Knocked me out."

Soun's eyes narrowed.

"Drug me off."

Soun's face grew pale and a worried look passed across his face.

"Woke up." Flames crackled in Akanes eyes as she gave a low and nasty chuckle as she smacked her damaged golf club into the palm of her hand.

"Park, near Nerima Tech. Chased pervert and his friends around for hours" Akane chuckled evilly again she spun the golf club around until the `8' on the club head faced her father. "Akane Tendo 8 Iron Strike."

`Ah yes' Soun thought as he watched his youngest daughter trudge wearily up the steps to her room chuckling to herself `I know that park well, whenever I go for a walk I always seem to end up there.'