Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Predictable ❯ Chapter 1

By Pink

Ranma 1/2, and all of its characters are property of Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, and other companies I'm too lazy to list.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is a story that I wrote back in 1997 when it was a much less harrowing feat to know about all the "major" stories in the Ranma fanfiction world. Such is no longer true as there are VASTLY more stories nowadays, so I have no idea how many of these elements are and aren't overused in Ranma fanfiction anymore.

I rewrote it anyway because it didn't take much time to. Enjoy, if you wish. ;

On with the story:

The Sunday morning sun crept into Nerima, pouring itself liberally onto sidewalks, dancing through trees, sweeping over joggers, and wandering into Akane Tendou's blinds. Fingers of light swept gently across her eyes, waking her rather rudely. Akane yawned, as the sun moved further into her room. She stood and scratched her head groggily as she headed towards her closet, looking for something to wear.

"Hm, this looks okay. I hope it's not gonna be a scorcher like yesterday." Akane held up a pair of shorts. "Summer's been so boring. All Ranma does is exercise and eat, Nabiki is always 'working,' Kasumi's always busy with the house, and all my friends at school seem to be gone all the time. I guess this is going to be another fanfic in where circumstances lend themselves to the point where Ranma and I can advance our relationship some more, so that everyone else can pair up in weird ways once we're off the market. Then what should I wear? A tight shirt with no bra on underneath?

Akane thought about this a minute and frowned. "No, let's not. My back still hurts from the last lemon fic we did." Ignoring the shorts, the young and exquisitely -nubile- teenager stepped over to a drawer. "Well, it doesn't have to be a lemon..."

Akane smiled devilishly, changing out of her nightclothes.

"So, Saotome, wanna bet on who gets together in this one? I've got three to one odds today that Ryouga gets with Ukyou before the sun goes down. Whaddya' say?" Nabiki brushed a lock of auburn hair off of her face and flipped a couple of beads on her abacus. "Ah, stereotypes are nice, I'm always rolling in money..." she trailed off. Nabiki smiled and wrote down some notes in a book.

"That's nice. If you're getting so much cash, do I still owe you that 5000 yen?" Ranma said in between bites of rice.

"Absolutely, any other way would compromise the integrity of my business, dear Ranma!" Nabiki frowned a minute. "You know, I wonder why nobody has written me with a calculator instead of this boring little abacus. I'm quite sure there's enough of a budget to buy one. Well, maybe next--" Nabiki's abacus and record book disappeared into oblivion and in its place appeared a laptop computer, turned on and displaying the figures Nabiki had recently recorded. Ranma stopped in mid-bite to witness the change.

"Man," Ranma grumbled. Some rice flew from his mouth as he spoke. "How come I don't get cute little toys like that?"

"Oh my. Don't complain, Ranma-kun, it's not polite." Kasumi entered with another plate of food and like clockwork, Genma Saotome (in panda form) materialized at the table hounding Ranma for his meal. Kasumi smiled. "Besides, Ranma-kun, all of those nice lemon writers make sure that you get laid much more than the rest of us. Oh my, I wish that my catch phrase wouldn't appear in so many sentences, oh my."

"Well, Sis, it's like I kinda mentioned earlier..." Nabiki fidgeted with the built-in mouse on her laptop to the backdrop of Ranma and Genma fighting for food. "...you do something a couple of times in the anime and those fanfic writers go berserk. Just look at me, for example. I sell a couple of photos to Kunou-chan and almost every time I'm put into a fanfic I've got the omnipotent gift of generating enough cash to buy Japan ten times over. We all win!" Nabiki looked up and noticed her father crying in a corner.

"That's great for you Nabiki," sobbed Soun. "Look what they've reduced -me- to." Soun continued to weep and Kasumi rushed to his side with a box of tissues in hand.

"Oh my, Father, whatever are you crying for?" Kasumi smiled, of course, and the camera lens flared. Somewhere outside a butterfly crapped sunshine.

"Because I'm so ha-- ha..." Soun blew his nose. "I'm so happy that things are redundantly normal for our standards of liiiiiiife..."

"Oh my," whispered Kasumi insightfully, as she handed Soun another tissue. "I wish that I would stop saying, 'oh my.'"

Nabiki raised an eyebrow at Ranma and Genma, whose input in the conversation was far beyond lost due to their epic battle over the Ranma's food. Nabiki's divine skills of observation naturally made her the first to notice Akane descending down the stairs behind them, decked out in sexy black leather that was low-cut to show maximum cleavage and high-cut to showcase her thighs and hips. Black leather boots that came up just above her knees accented the outfit.

"Morning Akane," Nabiki muttered casually. "Care to bet on the Ryouga/Ukyou match today? Three to one odds..."

"No, I'm good today, sis." Akane took a seat next to Ranma. "With these newer fanfic writers and their growing knowledge of Akari, I wouldn't be surprised if Ryouga got with her this time." Akane grinned, as Ranma hadn't looked her way yet. She gently put a hand on his shoulder and said in a contrived, voluble voice: "Good morning, Ranma!"

"Yo Aka--" Ranma took notice of Akane and froze. Genma took advantage of Ranma's stupor and snatched his bowl with ease, laughing like a... a panda that stole someone's food would. If the panda were really a man with a human mind and a panda body, anyw--

"Ahem." Nabiki pointed to Ranma.

Ranma blinked, a droplet of drool beginning to inch out of the corner of his mouth. His nose spurted blood without abandon. It gushed in a perfect arc, flying over Akane and spattering across the back of Soun's gi. Soun continued to cry.

Nabiki and Kasumi applauded and held up score cards high in the air. Kasumi's read a 10, while Nabiki was less generous with her 9.95.

Upon realization of what he did Ranma regained a little composure, wiping his nose. "Is-- are we scheduled for another lemon fanfic? What day is it?! I thought the next one was in two weeks, I'm not prepared!"

Akane laughed, filling a bowl of rice for herself. "Nope. I just wanted to be funny." She proceeded to eat her breakfast while Ranma cleared his throat for his famous catch phrase.

"You..."

"NO, Ranma, for the sake of differentiation!" yelled Nabiki and Kasumi in unison.

"are..."

Soun didn't react. He was too busy sobbing, or something.

"so..."

Nobody cares where Genma was.

"UNCUTE!!!"

Akane yawned, casually reached a hand into MalletSpace, and hammered. Spouting a lazy " Ranma no baka" she finished her food.

"KIYYYYYAAAAAHHHH!" A fist shot high into the air. Ranma's kata was complete. Akane was situated against a wall, now clad in a white T-shirt and cutoff shorts. She gave Ranma a thumbs-up and headed towards him. Ranma blinked at Akane.

"What?" Akane folded her arms.

"Well, this is the scene where you're supposed to be deep in angst because I insulted you, isn't it? I've scarred you again with another insult to your obvious femininity simply because I'm afraid of commitment so each time I think you're cute I push you away by belittling you and calling you names and because of that you should be here right now blowing off steam in the dojo by practicing your martial arts and then I can walk in, scrutinize your technique, you cry, I apologize in an awkward manner and we have one of those 'moments' where we realize that we love each other even though I can't say--" Ranma suddenly toppled to the ground, out of breath.

"Ranma, you dolt." Akane giggled. "Don't you read anything ahead of time? If you look at more fanfics you would know that in most of them you're the one who ends up in the dojo more often because you're always contemplating your future and wonder what you're going to do with your life, pondering how your future in pursuing the Art or thinking about your unresolved feelings for me because people see this dojo as a good place to focus your energies because of its pretense of serenity despite all of the crap that takes place--" Akane keeled over in mid-sentence as well, just as out of breath as Ranma.

Being conveniently out of breath, Akane and Ranma lay in the center of the dojo as time progressed. Half an hour passed and Soun appeared with tears in his eyes as he noticed the pair lying together on the floor. Sighing, he sobbed, "I'm happy that you two are finally together, but really. I hate cleaning up after you two when I want to use the dojo." He wandered off. "Ah, I remember back when the dojo was used for -practice- and now look at it. I should speak to those lemon writers..."

Akane sat up, looking down at Ranma's prone form. "He looks so cute when he's immobile, almost like a baby." She patted down some of Ranma's hair with her fingertips and sighed.

Ranma perked up. "Am I really that cute?" He sat up, looking into Akane's eyes. "'Cause you know, you're not all that hideous yourself." Ranma gave Akane a lopsided smile. Their eyes locked. Ranma bent forward to kiss Akane, but she pulled away before Ranma could make contact. "What?"

"Ranma, I know you're only saying that because the Fanfic Writer of the Day wanted you to. I'm not going to listen this time, if it's okay with you." Akane stared sadly at the floor. "But that's too bad, because I meant what I said."

"WHAT?" Ranma say up straight. "You're saying that I'm just being phony? However you're above something like that because you're better than everyone else?" Ranma folded his arms.

"Aww, don't get pissed off, Ranma! This is only happening because we're written this way. Now, if it were up to me I'd just get with you right here, and go have a normal life where I can do what I want without any writer screwing around with stupid twists about how you die, or about how I wear slutty, chafing, leather bondage outfits that don't breathe and give me a rash!"

Ranma's eyes suddenly grew wide. He clapped his hand over Akane's mouth, looking wildly around in fear. "Akane... maybe right now's not a good time to mention that leather thing you wore this morning."

Akane slapped Ranma's hand away. "Ranma, this is serious! We're just puppets, waiting for someone else to put us in the same situation where we vomit out catch phrases in a disgusting caricature of our real personalities over and over! When do we get to live normal, REAL lives?!"

"Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, unless we're scheduled otherwise." Ranma said plainly.

"AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH, this is stupid! Ranma I swear, I really do care about you and... oh God... that's probably only because someone wrote me that way--"

Only the god of their universe, Rumiko Takahashi, that's who.

"... wrote me that way," Akane finished with less steam. Being naturally fiery, however, she started yelling again with more conviction than ever. "It's not FAIR! I can't love you, Ranma, not for real!" Akane covered her face with her hands, holding back angry tears.

"Yes! And for God's sake, can I please stop crying now?! That's enough!" Soun attempted to walk into the dojo but crashed into the side of a wall outside. "Come on now, I've cried so much today that my eyes are swollen over and I can't see! That's enough now!" Soun sat on the ground, sighing and sobbing at his misfortune.

Kasumi went to his side immediately with a first aid kit in hand. "Oh my, yes, and I am so very tired of saying 'oh my.' Can't you people come up with more intelligent dialogue for me or at least spare a couple of brain cells to look up a synonym for 'oh my' in a thesaurus?" She lay bandages gently onto her father's head.

"And," a wooden sign read, "I only seem to appear in this story to steal Ranma's food." The sign flipped over. "Can I have a bigger part?"

Nabiki walked into the dojo, because that's the way things were written. She plugged her computer into an outlet in the wall and began typing away until she realized that everybody was waiting for her complaint to the writers. She looked around and shrugged her shoulders. "Hey, as long as I get cute little toys like this, they can write whatever they want."

"Hey, now that's biased!" Ranma interjected.

"Whatever do you mean? It is -not-." Nabiki looked up from behind the driver's seat of a silver BMW Z3, absentmindedly running her fingers over the shifter.

"Oh my, Nabiki, you're not helping. !!!" Kasumi paused. She opened her mouth cautiously. "Oh my." Kasumi sighed, and straightened her apron, composing herself. "I DON'T WANT TO SAY THAT ANYMORE, NOW PLEASE STOP! OH MY!" Kasumi sighed, feeling slightly better until she realized what she had said.

She screamed loud enough to shatter glass and make babies cry from miles away. Kasumi kicked a hole through a nearby wall without flinching, growling and seething. "Now, look what you made me do. I'm SUPPOSED to be NICE, and hence I thought I asked NICELY FOR YOU TO TONE IT DOWN ON THE CATCH PHRASE! OH MY, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?! AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHH!"

Soun growled, facing the sky. "I believe this is getting out of hand, could you please write us into something a bit more docile, please?" Soun walked around a bit, repeating himself before crashing pathetically into another wall. Being the glutton for punishment that he was, this happened a couple more times.

Genma held up another sign. This time it said, "Hello, you forgot about me again!" Genma stole an innocent bystander's steaming cup of coffee and poured it onto his head, activating his curse. He yelped painfully as his human form surfaced but placed his hands on his hips. "NOW, will you pay more attention to me? I want a bigger ROLE, dammit!" Genma reached into MalletSpace, producing a bullhorn. "Can you hear me now?!" The bullhorn's feedback echoed into the neighborhood. "I didn't have to marry Nodoka and she didn't have to have Ranma, you know. I could have stupidly killed him in some sort of training accident, so think about that with every episode you watch! You wouldn't have your precious star of the show without me!" The bullhorn created such a disturbance that inevitable police sirens faded into earshot, growing louder by the second.

The star in question slumped, embarrassed yet wisely silent.

Policemen came to arrest Genma for disturbing the peace. "Let go of me! I have my rights!" Genma struggled and soon got into a dangerously amusing skirmish with the police and their attack dogs. Whether or not disturbing the peace is a punishable crime in Japan, and whether or not Japanese police officers actually had attack dogs was beside the point.

Nabiki blinked at the last paragraph of the current fanfic and looked up. "Now, that was just out of spite, wasn't it?"

...Akane screamed and stomped her foot. "This is beyond stupid, who the hell would read this anyway?" Ranma threw his hands up in the air and grabbed Akane by the shirt, sweeping his lips across hers. Surprised, Akane stared at Ranma.

Ranma remained quiet, whispering something to Akane about an early start and a lemon fanfic as he pulled her into the house.

Meanwhile Genma now danced past an array of bullets and a perpetually sobbing Soun who pawed for another tissue from the box that Kasumi gripped, her knuckles white and fingers digging into the damaged box as she screamed, "STOP WRITING, STOP WRITING, STOP WRITING!"

The writing then stopped, but for the record it was NOT because Kasumi demanded it.