[FFML] [fanfic][Ranma] And yet again I...

And yet again I... - Prologue

"Wish for a wish to give me bliss."

It had been a quiet neighbourhood. During night people slept and during the day people whent to work. The everyday humdrum permeated the streets so thoroughly that flies took routine flights to exercise their wings.

Not so anymore however. A baby-boom had recently hit, making every night a cacaphony of crying as all the babies joined in the chorus.

In one of these houses the man of the house graciously stepped out of bed, in no correlation to the sole of his wife's foot, and made his way to the family choire-member. The man was a calm man, usually, and quite fair in life and judgement but this night he was, quite naturally, at the end of his rope.

Wich is why, when he picked up his son and found absolutely nothing the matter with him, he roared in anger. "AAAARRRGHH!! What Gods have I angered? What have I done to deserve this? I wish I could just skip past his childhood and--"

Suddenly the boy stopped crying.

The man blinked as if puzzling something out. "Wha-?" He hugged his son to him. "Who wa-?" He bent down to feel the wood, never broken, new to the touch. In fact... "Did I real-?" A chuckle burst out, almost rousing the boy to a new fit. From out of nowhere, came a song he remmembered singing by the camp-fire most nights when times got rough.

"The fire 's in the sky and the wind is drawing nigh

so come little child eat a little dim-sum,

the Icelady's far away.

When I lit the fire to protect my night

the monsters were held at bay.

The bat's flying high,

the phoenix' in the sky

and the dragon's here to stay.

So come little child eat a little dim-sum,

the hunger will be kept at bay.

so come little child eat a little dim-sum,

eat while it's..."

He laid the boy in the cradle and let a tear fall from his eye. "...hot..." He sighed and closed the door behind him. "..today."

The man leapt up the stairs and burst into the bedroom. "HONEY I'VE Come ba-eumm..." The bloodshot eyes of his redhaired wife met his, communicating perfectly what her thoughts were on his outburst.

The crickets outside noisily went about their business.

"urr, I'll just happily, jump around outside then shall I?"

Obviously trying to match the baby choire, the crickets rose to a crescendo such as had never been heard before.

"okay then." He quickly opened the door and jumped to the safety of the corridor. Laughing quietly to himself, he headed for the kitchen. "I can't believe I'm back! From now on," he said opening the fridge, "things are going to be different."

Soup was plucked out together with meatbread, soybread, currybread, tandoori chicken, a big bowl of rice followed by roughly the whole inside of the freezer.

"No cat techniques or Jusenkyo."

A bowl was quickly filled with some potatoes, fish and tomatoes.

"No Hell-mount cave, no tortourus ninjas and none of those hundred or so curses we stumbled across."

He took out a bowl and some chopsticks and stopped as he lowered them to the 'saladbowl'.

"Well, maybe Jusenkyo. The furr was quite comfortable afterall. Besides," he leaned back against the counter, "the boy needed to be taken down a notch. Being a girl was perfect."

He held his chopsticks to his mouth thoughfully. "If I bring Nodoka along, she can cook and she won't kill me if something goes wrong. Well, not after she and the boy have calmed down anyway."

A thought occured to him and he looked again in the fridge and freezer. In shock, he dropped his chopsticks. "We're poorer than churchmice. I thought her family provided for us the first couple of years?"

The chopsticks were carefully placed on the counter. "I didn't leave until Ranma was five or so when they stopped giving money to 'a househould with THAT man in it'." He snorted. "I was doing her a favour. That way she still had money and the boy and I had somewhere to go if things got too sticky."

Piece by piece, the food went back into fridge and freezer as appropriate. "I'll say I made some food in advance and go tommorrow, unless I'm wrong about the timeschedule."

He spent an hour or so writing notes and then walked back to bed and to his beatiful, in his mind, fifteen year younger wife.