Subject: [FFML] [Ranma] [sorta prequel] [please C&C] Raising Ranma
From: "Duvae" <dewinduvae@yahoo.se>
Date: 4/17/2003, 11:20 PM
To:


			///////////////////////////
			Angel under cover presents
				Raising Ranma
					By Dewin Duvae
			///////////////////////////

So this is it, he thought tiredly. I thought I would have longer. Genma tied
the knot on his new white Hakama and turned to the door. "You can come in
Soun." Feet shuffled very quickly to get away, then stopped.

A very nervous Soun pushed the door aside and stepped in. He paused, steeled
himself, then asked "Why?"

Genma smiled sadly at him. "We can't run forever friend. Under the master,
there were things I did that I regretted badly." He snorted. "I've done
worse while I was training Ranma."

He looked at Soun apprehensively. "If you had a chance to get your wife back
you would have taken it wouldn't you? Don't you see? I had to do it. I had
to take the chance."

"I see."

Genma smiled. "Thank you." The two stood there silently for a bit then Genma
clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Shall we go? I want to get this over
with before everyone gets hungry. Don't want to ruin anyones appetite."

Soun nodded. "You always were considerate."

Together they made their way down the stairs and out to the yard.

All the kids were assembled. Souns three daughters, Ranma, his crossdressing
friend. Even Nodoka was there, also dressed in white.

He stopped in front of the crossdressing girl. "Congratulations Ukyou, your
fondest wish is going to come true. You won't see me ever again."

Ukyou snorted. "Dream on buster. You aren't worth the effort of killing. You
never were."

"How about you Ranma?" He turned to the boy. "Any last words?"

Genma stepped back at the intensity of emotion coming out of the boys eyes.
"What do you want pops? Sad? Happy?" Ranma shook his head. "It doesn't
matter. Either you do it or you don't, I won't deal with it further than
that."

"Husband!" Genma stiffend. "Don't draw it out. This is difficult enough as
it is."

He nodded weakly. "I guess. Shall we take our positions?" Genma stepped
inside the four sheets that had been hung up and sat down. He waited until
his wife stood beside him and had raised the family blade, then he took up
the knife and studied it.

"If there was one thing I regret," he looked up at his wife, "it would be
that I left without you Nodoka." Tears ran down her face but she kept the
blade up.

With a sigh he steadied himself and plunged the knife into his stomach. He
bit his lip at the pain, but twisted it about until he was sure everything
down there was beyond recognition. Then a sharp pain in his neck and
everything went dark.

		*	*	*	*

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 patted his atomach, no hole, no paunc. 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.

		*	*	*	*

Genma sat quietly by the table, forcing himself to eat slowly. He watched
Nodoka move from the dishes to ironing and then to the table to continue to
eat. All the while carrying baby Ranma. Gently cooing to him every once in a
while.

"Nodoka dear," he said as he reached for more rice. "We have something to
discuss."

Nodoka froze and stared back at him with panic shining in her eyes. Ranma
hadn't noticed, but then he hadn't paid attention to much of anything before
he started his training. At least not as far as Genma remembered.

"As you know my family has a longstanding tradition of being martial
artists." More like a tradition of thievery, he thought to himself but he
remembered having succeded with that lie before. "As martial artist it is
our responsibility to be the best martial artists we can be. We have to make
sacrifices above and beyond the ordinary. In short, I'm taking Ranma on a
training trip."

He was a bit puzzled about her responce however. He didn't remember her
hugging Ranma to herself, or a tear.

"It will be hard on the road. There will be no running water, smaller
rations and we will walk for what will seem like forever every day." He felt
like counting off more things, but stopped when a slipper out of nowhere
whapped him on the head.

"You won't take my son!"

He looked up in confusion only to have another shoe meet him in the face.
"mmf!"

"You won't take my son!"

The slipper was followed by a basket. Genma took the basket from her and
opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself and rolled away from the
table he knew would come next. Except that there was no table.

Confused, Genma looked back at his wife. Who was struggling with lifting a
table with one hand. The other being occupied by Ranma. "Nodoka, please
listen to me." He sat down and looked at her calmly.

Nodoka turned around and Genma cringed as she had somehow managed to lift
the table over her head and was ready to strike. "Nodoka, please."

She dropped the table to the side and sat down, still holding Ranma. "Okay
Genma. Tell me why I should hand over my one and only son to you. I'm sure
it won't take long."

Genma sighed, he knew the speach by heart. Every second week or so he had
dreamt of being back home like this and every one of those dreams always
ended with him giving the speach and Nodoka letting go. If only she knew how
much he missed her.

He looked down at Ranma and started: "Our son must be the heir to the
Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts." He paused, looking up at her,
trying to hide the anachronistic sense of longing he had in his heart.

"Nodoka you have raised him well. But I must train him properly. So you must
uhm, make sacrifices for the sake of Ranmas future. If you truly love your
son." He bowed low for emphasis. "Then you must allow me to train him as I
see fit. Be patient and you will see the wisdom of this course."

She held their son firmly. "For the sake of Ranmas future..."

"Yes," he said leaving the script firmly. "It is for the sake of Ranma that
we do this. Now wife, don't be afraid of this. I have the papers ready here,
all that is needed is your signature." He pulled some papers out of the
backpack he'd left by the door. "There you go. Just sign on the dotted line
please."

Nodoka looked shocked. "You arn't going to involve Ranma?"

"We are doing this for his future. That is enough involvement. But if you
have any foubts. Remember that it is for Ranmas future." He looked at her
expectantly then blinked. A quick look around showed only one backpack. "I
think I forgot something. Wait here." With that he left for the second
floor.

He rushed to their room, wincing at the futon still being laid out. "She
must not have found it," he muttered to himself. In the bottom of the closet
where they stored the rolled up futon was an empty backpack where the kanji
for 'I love you' and 'please come downstairs' were sloopily written on a
little card attached to it's side.

When Genma came back down a minute or so later, he brought a fully packed
backpack, card still attached, and an extra sleeping bag. "Nodoka!" He
yelled out happily. "Didn't you see the backpack I, uhm, bought you?"

No answer came back. "Nodoka?" His voice quivered. There was one scenario he
hadn't wanted to think about that suddenly flooded his brain. He leapt down
the stairs several steps at a time. "NODOKA!"

No sign of her. Not even a hint of a kimono sticking out from wherever she
could be hiding. In that moment the truth hit him and in spite of thinking
himself a strong man, he felt his knees give way and he sunk to the ground.

"Nodoka." A black hole of despair washed in from nowhere and started eating
up his insides. "how could you?" He let his eyes wander over the furniture
inn the house. The kitchen where she worked furiously to cook food that was
to die for. The door to the extra room they used as a dojo, the one he'd had
to fix after she had sent him flying the first time she'd been lucky in
sparring with him. The table, where she woul-

The table had two pieces of papper on it. One neatly folded and the other a
simple document with two signatures. With heavy and slow movements, he made
his way over there and unfolded the neat one.

"Dear Genma." It was written in a very meticoullus style, just like Nodoka
herself. "I am sorry to leave you as I am now doing. But I cannot let go of
my son at this time. Please do not worry about the training trip. I have
found your book about advanced training methods and I promise that I will
teach our son everything that you wished him to learn. I will be following
your plotted path for dojos as I have also taken your map and your "dojo's
and other modern relics" guide. Yours truly Nodoka."

Genma stared off into space for a brief time. A thought was nagging at him,
something that wouldn't let go and still, wouldn't make itself clear.

"I have to stop her. She is making a mistake. The Neko-ken wasn't the only
bad one in there. It was just the only one were the warning was on a
different page and I only marked the bad ones. She's going to teach him the
worst of the lot."

Backpack in hand, he ran out the door and down the hill. Wich was very
unfortunate, because a little further up the hill stood Nodoka with their
child in her arms.

"Come on Ranma. This time things will be different."

----------------------------------------------------------
Authors Notes:
Well, here it is again.
Different title.

Some parts added, some rewritten.

I rewrote all of it actually and then I took a look at the old version. I
mixed them up where it seemed best and came up with this. I hope you like
it.






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