Well, friends...

This is an unfinished draft of that Lake Wobegon interpretation of 
Ranma 1/2, and I'm just kinda curious to know what you think of it 
so far.  Thanks, BTW, to Bob Schroeck for the title...

NERIMA HOME COMPANION
a Ranma 1/2 fanfiction by Ukyou Kuonji
en stijle du Garrison Keillor

The stage is dimly lit, and empty, and the audience awaits the featured 
speaker.  He walks onstage, carrying a metre-high three-legged stool. 
He sets it down, center stage front, and as the spotlight falls upon 
him, we notice the dark circles under his eyes.  He has aged twenty 
years or so since we recall him, but it is clearly Hikaru Gosunkugi. 
His days of dabbling with voodoo long behind him, he now holds forth 
weekly on this very stage, and his gravy-like voice (well, it's brown 
and lumpy, anyway, as he would say) is carried across Japan on NHK 
public radio.

The audience is silent as he begins his monologue:

It's been a quiet week in the Nerima district of Tokyo, my hometown -- 
which is really rather unusual.  Even more so, when you consider all 
the folks that showed up there again after long absences.  Soun Tendo 
passed away a little while back, and everybody, but everybody had to 
return to pay their respects.

Even me.  I don't come back very often, I'll admit, for all the talking 
I do about the place.  Matter of fact, it's all the talking I do that 
tends to render me somewhat unwelcome there.  The district got enough 
unwanted publicity back in the days when a Ms. Takahashi made a comic 
book series out of the strange goings-on there when I was still in high 
school.  Now, the fact that a former resident is making a profit off 
the curious events in Nerima is sufficient for some to regard me as a 
bit of a turncoat.  I can understand it, and I accept it.  So I stay 
away, most of the time.  Like Nabiki, I still have my sources, though.

But for Mr. Tendo's funeral, I had to come back.  Besides, there's 
something about a funeral that causes everyone to be more civil.  You 
remember how long it's been since you've last seen so-and-so, and how 
they don't look as good as they used to, and how you'd better make 
their last remembrance of you as pleasant as possible.  And they're 
thinking the same thing about you, so all around, everyone acts a 
little nicer toward everyone else, and everyone feels a little more 
comfortable.  And that's an important thing in a place like Nerima, 
where comfort can be a fleeting commodity.

Not only were folks actually civil for a change, but even the mourning 
itself was rather subdued.  Not that there weren't plenty of tears for 
old man Tendo -- he was a good man, and he'll be sorely missed -- but 
the flow wasn't anything more than he himself could have conjured up 
from his own eyes, given a good excuse... or even a flimsy one.  Even 
then, it was enough to eclipse the funeral of former PM Hashimoto, as 
far as actual grief goes.

Even the district councilmen sent a ridiculously large wreath to the 
dojo in his memory; as if the place wasn't conspicuous enough already, 
now Ranma and Akane have to contend with this eight-foot crepe, sagging 
under the weight of Kami alone knows how many and what kind of flowers.  
There was no good place to put it but outside the gates.  Only Ryoga 
himself could miss the place now.  Neither Akane nor Ranma likes the 
thing, but it wouldn't be polite to just get rid of it.  Nor would they 
let their son Akima use it as a practice dummy, much as Ranma may have 
liked the idea in theory.  Their daughter Noriko may have hit upon a 
solution, though; she's been picking a few flowers out at a time and 
bringing them to her flower-arranging class.  Unfortunately, at this 
rate, she thinks it may take a year or so to dismantle the thing...

It's really rather strange, having a funeral in Nerima.  Sometimes 
you'd think no one ever dies here.  Certainly, Happosai and Cologne are 
both still alive and kicking, proof positive that only the good die 
young.  Or is it that only the young die good? 

So I had to go a see what it would be like, and to possibly even catch 
up with a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while.  Once I got out on 
the road, though, I remembered one other reason why I hadn't been back 
in so long.  I may only live a few wards away, nearer to downtown 
Tokyo, but it still takes some three hours to drive out there, with all 
the traffic and the convoluted roads -- and the inevitable construction 
(or destruction) projects.

Needless to say, all that travel makes one both hungry and nostalgic, 
and Ucchan's Okonomiyaki-ya is the perfect place to satisfy both needs 
even now.  As I walked in, I recognized a number of regulars as 
classmates from Furinkan -- in fact, I dare say the entire chem club 
had shown up there for lunch today.  Of course, they'd long since 
traded in their high-collared school uniforms for the jacket and tie of 
the engineer salaryman, but with their glasses and shirt pockets 
bulging with pens, you could tell they were the same nerds they'd been 
in high school; they were just older, and making a living with it, 
rather than being ostracized for it.

Ukyou continues to tend the grill, side-by-side with Konatsu.  Age 
hasn't caught up with their appearances, but there's certainly a world-
weariness in Ukyou's eyes that wasn't there before, at least, not to 
this extent.  The two of them seem to have weathered thick and thin 
together over the past nearly twenty years -- they'd be a perfect 
match, you know.  But try asking if there's more than appearances to 
their arrangement, and Konatsu will just smile sadly.  And Ukyou?  
Well, depending on her mood, she might send you flying out the door 
courtesy of her trademark spatula, or just laugh mirthlessly.  She 
never got over Ranma's marriage, and claims to have joined the ranks of 
inveterate spinsters from that day forth.  Others aren't so sure... 
there are whispers that she and Konatsu may well marry or get married, 
but it'll be a secret thing when it happens, and she'll deny it to her 
dying day -- unless one of them get pregnant, and I'm not quite sure
which one of them it'll be.

As you well know, 'okonomi-yaki' means 'as you like it,' or words to 
that effect, and Ucchan's lives up to that.  Up to a point.  You can 
have anything to eat that you want, provided that it's okonomi-yaki.  
There once was a poor fool who made the mistake of asking if the place 
served ramen.  He was given what could be diplomatically referred to as 
'an invitation to the world,' and he got to see most of it upon being 
sent into lower Earth orbit for his transgression. 

Ramen, in particular, is a touchy subject with Ukyou, because it's a 
constant reminder of her real arch-rival, Shampoo.  Never mind that 
both of them lost in the battle for Ranma's heart, and never mind that 
Ukyou has always gotten on well with Akane, the one who defeated them 
both.  The two restaurateurs just don't get along, though it doesn't 
ever seem to have much to do with the restaurant business.  Maybe it 
has to do with Shampoo's husbands...

Since losing Ranma, Shampoo has gone through five husbands in the 
course of fifteen years.  Now, this would normally be a major topic of 
local gossip, but this is Nerima, and everyone there is above that sort 
of thing.  Besides, they all know the story, anyway.  Turns out that 
defeating an Amazon is the easy part.  What's hard is to conquer her 
every night, night after night.  Apparently, her stamina in the boudoir 
is unmatchable by any male, although five strong men have died of 
exhaustion so far trying to prove otherwise.  So, she's wearing a black 
cheongsam to the funeral for reasons other than Soun's demise.  A five-
time widow must dress the part, after all.

The irony is that the one person who probably could have satisfied her 
and survived she has passed over all five times.  And believe it or 
not, Mousse still works at the NekoHanten, still cleaning up the place, 
still too gentle to actually beat Shampoo up as tradition demands, 
still believing the she'll come to her senses naturally some day.  And 
still wearing those rotten glasses, too.  He tried contact lenses one 
time, and upon seeing the world clearly for the first time, decided he 
didn't like it.  What he saw must have been just too intense for him.  
Between Shampoo's unreachable beauty and Cologne's indescribable 
ugliness, it didn't surprise me one bit to find out he was back to his 
glasses within a week.  Besides, he was seeing spots in the cafe he'd 
missed umpteen times while cleaning that had transformed them into 
intractable stains.  Even industrial-strength cleansers couldn't get 
the dirt out that he was seeing.  Best not to see it, and at least 
think the job is done, than to see clearly that the job will never be.

I'm not sure I agree with his point of view, personally.  A clear image 
of some other girl might be preferable to the fuzzy vision he has of 
Shampoo, and he might come to his own sense.  Of course, I'm one to 
talk:  I can't bear the thought of sticking something in my eye like 
that to begin with; so here I am wearing glasses as I'm telling you 
this.  Still, it allows me a sort of folksy, homespun look that serves 
me well, ne?

I should point out at this juncture that I wasn't the only one to have 
come in from downtown Tokyo for this occasion - Nabiki Tarou had 
actually come in several days earlier in order to make most of the 
funeral arrangements.  Yes, you heard me right: Nabiki TAROU.  Old 
Pansuto never did manage to get his name changed, but there was a point 
a number of years back when some American tourist interrupted him 
during one of his usual Happosai-related tirades.  The gaijin pointed 
out that, to his ears, 'Pansuto' sounded more like 'pantsuit' than 
'pantyhose.'

It was like divine inspiration had struck.  Tarou thanked the Yank 
profusely (had the fellow only known how rare an occasion this was, he 
would have considered himself the luckiest man on earth), went out and 
traded in his hosiery and dragon-scale tunic for a couple of Italian-
made suits, and went into business as a stockbroker.  Of course, what 
the Yank had failed to mention was that pantsuits were worn primarily 
by American businessWOMEN, but Kami knows, I'm not about to be the one 
to break the news to him.

Pansuto took to the stock market like a fish to water, as well he 
might.  Between his remarkable intellect and utter contempt for others, 
this was a profession that suited him very nicely, if you'll pardon the 
expression.  His 'people are idiots' attitude served him well at the 
Nikkei, which was just about to turn into a feast for the bearish.  And 
desipte his cursed form, Tarou was a bear among bears.  He made massive 
fortunes daily, feeding off companies grown fat and lazy, investing (if 
that is the proper term for it) in fleets of corporate jets to fly off 
to worldwide meetings, mahogany desks for the big honchos, and 
grandiloquent skyscrapers in downtown Tokyo rather than actually 
plowing their earnings back into their operations, where it might do 
them some good.  The news that 'the Minotaur is knocking' sent many a 
CEO scurrying off in fear, trying to figure out what to jettison in 
order to render his company seaworthy in the eyes of investors.  All to 
no avail.  For Tarou to sell a company short was a virtual death knell, 
and the other bears on the Nikkei followed him everywhere.

Needless to say, such moneymaking ability was not about to escape the 
notice of Nabiki Tendo, who hadn't seen a man with such financial 
acumen since the days when she was still dating (if you could call it 
that) Kinnosuke.  It wasn't long before she challenged him to a stock-
picking contest, which, much to his surprise (but not hers) she won.  
They began going out together, and Tarou was astonished as he began 
interfacing with a mind as sharp and contemptuous as his own -- and 
loving every minute of it.  Of course, marrying Nabiki meant having 
'fem-boy' as a brother-(sister?-)in-law, but Ranma was enough fun to 
tease that having to deal with him was reasonably worthwhile.  And what 
the hell... it wasn't as if he HAD to drop in on the dojo very often; 
just the occasional family function now and again.

Not even then sometimes, as I found out to my peril.  When I finished 
with my meal, I went straight from the Ucchan to the dojo, only to find 
the place deserted.  Turns out, the funeral was being held at the Tofu 
Clinic.  I guess I should have known.  Martial artists may meet and fight 
at the dojo, and they still do -- I hardly need to mention that, you've 
heard me tell about so many times -- but social gatherings (I mean those 
*without* fighting at their center) revolve around food, and there is 
none greater than Kasumi Ono when it comes to that.  Besides, the quiet 
gentle nature of herself and her dear doctor are a refreshing oasis, a 
sea of tranquility in the urban moonscape that is Nerima.  No one pointed 
out the irony of using a doctor's office for a memorial service; Soun 
deserved a quiet dignified send-off, and if he couldn't get it at the 
clinic, he wouldn't get one anywhere, and everyone knew it.

Genma did his part to set a sober mood.  Not once did he turn into a 
panda, and even at the buffet table in the kitchen, he was quite 
restrained -- he only took three helpings of curried chicken with 
rice.  When he walked up to the casket, he set up the old shogi board 
on his old friend's chest.  He wasn't going to be playing shogi again, 
anyway.  Both he and Soun had tried to teach Nodoka the game, but she 
just didn't play fair; she simply wouldn't let them cheat.  So with Soun 
gone, all the fun was out of the game, and Genma knew it.  In tribute to 
his longtime partner, he had set the board up on Soun's chest in an endgame 
position for black to win -- Soun's color.  At the last, Genma had cheated 
to give Soun the victory.

Happosai added a tribute of his own to his weak-willed disciple; a pair 
of purple silk panties with a sheer mesh in the front panel.  Typical 
Happosai.  Some folks were quite naturally disgusted, others were curious 
as to whose they might have been (some even whispered that Happi was 
finally returning a pair that had belonged to Soun's long-dead wife), 
and others realized, looking at the garment, that this was a great 
sacrifice indeed for the Master to make, and high praise indeed for 
his former student.

Of course, not everyone approached Happi's offering with such reverence:  
"Frederique!  Frederique!"  

A short, pudgy woman bounded forward to the casket, and nimbly slipped the 
panty from Soun's fingers.  She clutched it to her own breast as if it was 
hers, and from her demeanor, it was pretty clear she already thought it was.

"Azusa, set that back where it belongs... have a little respect for the dead, 
will you?"  Mikado Sanzenin approached his wife, snatching the garment 
from her and placing it back in the casket.  Azusa's eyes went wide and 
teary, and then she began to look wildly about for something, anything... 
she *had* to get her Fredrique back from Mikki-chan.

She grabbed The Wreath.

"Give me back my Fredrique!"  Mikado stared, transfixed, as eight feet of 
solid flowers came crashing down upon him.  As unconsciousness 
decended upon him with the flowers, he wondered why he had been 
so stupid as to sleep with his dim-bulb partner some eighteen years ago, 
and wind up forced into 'doing the right thing' by her when something 
went horribly wrong shortly thereafter.  He had spent the last eighteen 
years discovering just how horribly wrong things had gone.

So had their son.  Seventeen-year-old Naruhito Sanzenin buried his face in 
his hands, and was wondering for the umpteen-millionth time very much the 
same thought as his father was.  His parents never failed to embarrass him 
in public.  Between his mother's weird kleptomania and his father's 
philandering, he was convinced that he had drawn nearly the worst parents 
in the world.  He never went so far in his mind as to wish that his mother had
gotten an abortion rather than marry his father, but he certainly wished 
time and again that the two idiots that he was forced to call 'parents' had 
used some kind of protection... or maybe not 'done it' at all!  Why, if 
they'd delayed by a few seconds, someone else could have put their quarter 
into the great cosmic vending machine before they had, and he could have 
wound up with a completely different set of parents, maybe in a completely 
different part of the world.  Why, he wondered, couldn't he have been born 
to some nice couple in Minnesota, say, where things are quiet and normal, 
and parents don't embarrass their children the way Mikado and Azusa did to 
Naruhito?

*****

Anyway, I've still got more to go, but I had hoped to get this out in a 
matter of a week, and it's taken over a week and a half... and it's STILL 
not nearly finished!  I'm also afraid I'm losing Keillor's tone as I keep 
adding scenes... maybe a little nudge in the right direction would be 
appreciated.  Thanks again, and I'll be writing more soon!

Itsu mo,
Ucchan   ^_^