Subject: [FFML] [Fanfic] [Ranma] Facing Reality 1/5(?)
From: "Dragoth" <FFML@softhome.net>
Date: 6/14/1999, 2:41 AM
To: <ffml@fanfic.com>, "Ryan Hibbler" <hibb@nexdes.net>

This is being posted for a friend, reply to me and he'll get it.  All C&C
appreciated, good or bad.  No flames please, he's new at this.  This one
will be pretty short (14k) but the rest should get longer. We hope. =)

Thanks..

-Mat (aka Dragoth)

----------------------------------------------

     -+--------------+-
      |FACING REALITY|
     -+----Draft-----+-

      By Ryan Hibbeler


Prologue
--------

   Now it seems so much like a dream.  At the time it seemed like a dream.
But it could not be a dream.  Dreams fade, but these memories remain firm in
my mind.  That, and a dream could not feel so real.  No, I am certain it was
not a dream.  Exactly what happened I am not sure, but it was no figment of
my imagination.


Chapter 1: Welcome to Nerima
----------------------------

   I suppose I should begin by telling a little bit about myself.  My name
is Christian Van Allen.  I live in Backwater, Illinois.  I am a normal high
school junior.  I have, no, had no friends, no plans, no life.  Perhaps it's
a bit of an exaggeration, but I often felt like I was just getting along,
waiting for something to happen, whatever that something was.  I used to
think it was graduation.  "Just get out of high school," I'd tell myself.
"Then you'll get to college and find yourself."  I'm not so sure that's what
I was subconsciously waiting for anymore.  Anyway, continuing on, I worked
at the local Quick-e-mart.  Late shift.  That's where my story begins, I
suppose.
   It was about three weeks ago.  I'd had a particularly long day, and was
feeling excited as usual about my job.  Which is to say I would have rather
been anywhere else.  Things just got better when I found myself dozing off
at the counter, which at one point ended with me being wakened by some big
hairy guy wanting a pack of cigarettes and a rather questionable magazine.
I decided to close up early; I was tired, had had enough, and we rarely got
anyone coming in after midnight anyway.  It was a small town, and there were
other convenience stores.  Let anyone who was up this late deal with it.
   I got in my car and headed home.  The drive wasn't particularly long, but
it was particularly dull.  Of course, so was the entire town.  Nothing ever
happened here.  I doubt anything does now, for that matter, but my life has
been anything but dull lately.  But I digress.  The drive was dull, I was
tired - to make a long story short, I fell asleep.  At the wheel.  I thought
I heard someone shout, "Look out!"  I snapped awake just in time to hear a
horn blaring and to headlights straight ahead of me.  No time to think about
what was happening.  I jerked the wheel, and tried to swerve, but it was too
late.  I felt a jerk and was plunged into darkness.

   -==-

   "...told you to look out, what were you thinking?"
   "Hey, it might have helped if you'd stopped trying to kill me... but I
don't remember seeing him until I ran into him..."
   "Feh.  And you accuse me of-"
   "Quiet! Both of you! He's coming around..."
   My head was already throbbing and the bright sunlight bombarding my
barely open eyes didn't help.  I tried to open my eyes further, but as I
did, I was greeted with a wave of extreme disorientation.  I put my hand to
my forehead, and was surprised to feel something warm and wet.  Blood.
Hurray.
   "Are you all right?"
   "Wha...What's going on here?"  I said in my most eloquent tone at the
time, so I sounded something like a drunk with brain damage.  I tried to
stand up, but promptly fell on my backside.
   "Woah, I guess I hit you harder than I thought.  Sorry, I wasn't watching
where I was going and kinda ran in to you."
   There seemed to be something funny about the way they were speaking, but
I wrote it off as due to the fact that my head was still spinning.  I
groaned as I opened my eyes and looked up to see three blurry faces staring
down at me.  I took my hand off my forehead and used it to shade my eyes
from the sun. Wait.  The last thing I remembered it was the dead of night.
"How... How long have I been out?"  I asked, by speech already getting
better.
   "Only about two minutes."
   "You're bleeding!"
   "I'll live," I hoped.  The pain was pretty central to my head.  In fact,
nothing else hurt.  I was amazed.  I found it hard to believe I had escaped
with only a concussion.  Then it hit me.  I seemed to be pretty slow at the
moment.  Two minutes, no way that'd be enough time to put me in the middle
of the day.  The spinning and disorientation had lessened, so I tried once
again to stand.  This time I actually made it.  My legs were rather shaky,
but I was on them.  I looked around.  And recognized nothing.  "What the--?"
I managed to get out before another, larger wave of disorientation hit me,
and I fell over, meeting the ground once more.  My head was swimming again,
and everything seemed distant.  I was about to black out again.  Before I
did, I heard another fading conversation.
   "Come on, we've got to get him to Dr. Tofu's."
   "But I just ran into him, how could he be-"

   "-mild concussion, he should be fine."
   I opened my eyes slowly, and found myself staring at a ceiling.  By head
wasn't throbbing too terribly much, and I wasn't quite so disoriented, but
the feeling lingered.
   "He seemed really out of it, and all Ranma did was run into him.  Could
he have some sort of other injury?"
   "I didn't notice anything, he probably just got knocked around a bit.
Perhaps we'll get some answers when he wakes up."
   Answers; yes, I had questions too.  I sat up, that did a number to my
head, but I needed those answers.  I started with the question that was
bothering me most.  "Where am I?"  Seemed like a good place to start.
   "Relax, my name is Dr. Tofu Ono," a young man said.  "And you are in my
clinic.  You've had a concussion, but you'll be fine."
   For the first time I noticed who was around me.  There was this Dr. Tofu
person, and three others, who looked about my age.  A short red-headed girl,
another girl with short black hair - both of whom struck me as rather cute -
and a boy with black hair wearing a yellow spotted bandanna, and leaning
against a wall.  They were all Asian.  "Dr. Ono," I said, thinking it over
in my head, "I don't recall hearing your name before.  Are you new around
here?"  It was a small town, the kind where everyone at least knows the name
of most everyone else.
   "Dr. Tofu's been in Nerima for years," said the black-haired girl.
   Nerima?  I'd never heard of a town called Nerima before.  "Nerima,
where's that?"
   "Not that far out of Tokyo...You mean you don't even know-"  The
black-haired girl started.
   "TOKYO?!" I exclaimed.  "You mean, as in Tokyo, JAPAN?"
   "Well, yeah.  Where else...?"
   "Geez, this one's bad as Ryoga," the redhead muttered under her breath.
   "I heard that, Ranma..." The boy leaning against the wall said, baring
his teeth.  He appeared to have fangs.  That probably would have struck me
as odd, had I not been more worried about the fact that these people seemed
convinced that I was in Japan.
   "How the hell did I end up in...Wait.  That's not funny.  How dare you
play a joke like that on someone who's just been in an accident!"  Everyone
just stared at me.  "Don't you think that if I were in the middle of Japan,
everyone would be speaking Japanese?  Hah.  If we're really in Tokyo, then
why are you all speaking English?"  Everyone continued staring at me, eyes
wider than before, then looked at each other.
   "I think you're a bit confused," Dr. Tofu said.  "Everyone here is
speaking Japanese...Including yourself."
   "Hah," I said.  "Don't you think I'd know if I were
speaking...Jap...a...nese...."  That nagging quirk in their voices
resurfaced.  If I thought about it, really listened to what everyone was
saying, I noticed that it was kind of strange...  But that was impossible.
It was preposterous.  I didn't know a word of Japanese.  How could I
possibly be speaking it fluently and not know it.   But there it was.  It
was as if what was being said and what I heard were two different things,
barely separable.  It was just too weird.
   "Umm... Perhaps we should address this topic later.  Right now we should
find out some more important information, like who you are, and where you're
from..."
   What the doctor said seemed logical, and I was always one to avoid
thinking about things that were difficult to think about.  "Okay, I'm
Christian Van Allen, but people usually just call me Chris.  I'm from
Illinois, in the US.  If this really is Nerima, I have no idea whatsoever
how I managed to get here.  The last thing I remember is driving home from
work..."  I looked at my watch.  Another wonderful surprise.  I probably
would have actually bothered being stunned, but it seemed to follow suit
with the rest of the day's events.  My watch read the same date, and only
about an hour from when I left work.  "...about an hour ago...in
Illinois..."  I trailed off.
   Again, I got quite a few looks from everyone present.  Most were
skeptical, but Dr. Tofu's were speculative.
   "Hmm..." He began, "can you remember anything else about what you might
have been doing?"
   "Well, I thought I had been in an accident.  I seem to remember seeing a
pair of headlights and trying to swerve, but I don't remember anything after
that until I woke up on the sidewalk with these three," I said as I pointed
to the other three occupants in the room.
   "And you say you don't ever remember being in Japan?"  I shook my head.
The doctor seemed to contemplate for a moment then his eyes brightened
behind his glasses and he snapped his fingers.  "That's it!"
   "What?"  The black haired girl and I inquired in unison.
   "It doesn't happen often, but you seem to have a very acute type of
amnesia.  Sometimes when a person experiences two traumas or head injuries,
their mind loses the information in between, and splices the time before the
first and after the second together."
   "But I was home just today, mere hours ago!"  I protested.
   "Most likely disorientation from the memory splice."
   While I soaked all of this in, the redhead, apparently named Ranma spoke
up.  "Is it permanent, doc?"
   "Rarely.  These sort of things have been known to last years," Ranma
tensed, ever so slightly, "but the vast majority of cases generally last
between 24 hours and a few weeks."  She seemed relieved.
   "What can I do to get my memory back?"  I asked, hoping the doctor was
right.
   "Unfortunately," he said, "you'll have to wait for your memory to return
on its own."
   This was all getting to be too much.  I needed to stand up for a while.
That irksome thought of how I was speaking Japanese began to resurface, so I
pummeled it back down as I got to my feet and stretched my back.  My knees
were a little shaky, but other than that, I felt fine.  I needed to get to a
phone and call my parents.  They'd be the people most likely to be able to
help me fill in my memory.  Not to mention give me a ride home, considering
I had no idea where my car was at the time.  The fact that I had as little
idea where I was at the time I also beat down into that same dark corner as
the question of how I could speak Japanese.
   I asked Dr. Tofu if he had a phone I could use, but before he could
answer, there was a knock at the door.  "Who could that be?" he mused as he
walked over to the door.  When he opened it, I had only enough time to
notice a pretty young woman standing at the door before Ranma grabbed me by
the arm and began dragging me toward the exit.
   "We gotta get out of here!"
   "Why, what's going on?!"  I was, as I would often be in the small town of
Nerima, confused.
   "Good afternoon, Sis," the black-haired girl said, also making her way to
the exit, a certain eagerness in her eyes as she looked outside, "I'm sorry,
but we're in a bit of a hurry..."
   "Oh, sorry to hear that, Akane.  I'll see you at home then," Kasumi said
in a quiet tone.
   "G-G-Good afternoon, Ka-Kasumi. Hehhehheh." Dr. Tofu sputtered as we
pushed past them into the street outside.  Ranma and Akane breathed a sigh
of relief.
   "Oh, no!  Where's Ryoga?"  Akane seemed worried.
   "Don't worry about him, he probably just got lost on the way out."
   "I don't mean to cut in, but could somebody please tell me what the hell
is going on here?!"
   "See for yourself."  Ranma pointed her thumb at the building.  I thought
I was imagining things at first, but as I watched, it became apparent that
Dr. Tofu was, in fact, dancing with a skeleton.  The only response I could
come up with was to gape, open-mouthed at the sight.  It seemed appropriate.
   "Does this sort of thing happen often?"
   "All the time," Ranma sighed.  "Welcome to Nerima."


Author's Notes
--------------

   The Good ol' Disclaimer: All Ranma 1/2 characters and settings were
created by Rumiko Takahashi and are used without permission.  I only wish I
could come up with stuff like that.  All similarities to actual persons,
living or dead is either an accident or me inadvertantly writing myself into
the story again.  Sorry, it happens.  It's a fanfic, it's supposed to be
fun, people!  Don't take it too seriously.

   This is my first attempt at a fanfic, and is still in the draft stage.
I've got a lot less time on my hands than I had originally thought, but I'll
try to get these chapters out in a timely manner.  I know how annoying it is
waiting for a fic to be released.  Since this is my first fic, with much of
it in the planning stages, I would greatly appreciate any feedback.

   Send comments, criticism, suggestions, and/or the meaning of life to
hibb@nexdes.net

   Special thanks to my prereader/correspondent Dragoth, he's actually been
quite helpful...

[Dragoth's Note: If you're lazy, just click "reply" and I'll forward it, no
problem.]