Ranma and Me
(The Life and Times of Ranma's cousin, Ito Takahashi)
as told to Uncle Fester
Part 2 - Furinkan, The Early Years
[Furinkan, the final frontier. These are the memoirs of Ito
Takahashi. His three year mission: to graduate with passing grades,
to seek out new methods of 'making out', to boldly go where no man had
gone before (at least until the girls beat the crap out of him).]
*****
Furinkan Senior High School. What can I say about my old alma
mater that hasn't already been said. Ah, the bonfires, the Friday
night football games, the... What? Oh, all right, Furinkan was, and
still is, the worst high school in Japan. Okay, we didn't have
American Football and cheerleaders and stuff like that, but we had a
lot of martial arts clubs. Actually, ALL of our clubs were martial
arts clubs. There's the Martial Arts Baseball Club, the Martial Arts
Table Tennis Club, the Martial Arts Brass Band Club, the Martial Arts
Flower Arranging Club, the Martial Arts Social Welfare Activities Club
well, you get the idea.
Speaking of sports, the school sucked. I mean, when *I* got
there, the Fighting Pineapple Slugs hadn't won a game in 10 years.
Even our Martial Arts Martial Arts team sucked; we kept getting thrown
out of competitions. Furinkan Senior High had forfeited more games
over the previous ten years than all the other schools in Japan put
together. Our guys just couldn't seem to control themselves. Take
for example, the first baseball game my sophomore year. We had 14
players ejected before the introductions were complete. We've *never*
completed a season and never won an award of any kind; not even a
'Tried Hard' award. I understand scheduling became a bit of a
challenge as well. No one wanted to play our teams anymore. We wound
up with only the crazy Catholic schools on our schedule (St. Hebereke,
St. John Biles, St. Lucille Ball, St. Mary-with-the-cream-bun-and-jam,
St. This-Space-For-Hire).
But that was nothing compared to our non-sports teams. Our
Martial Arts Drama Club put on '7 Samurai' ten years in a row.
Unfortunately, they had to recast all the parts every year. There
were so few survivors of each performance.
We never could keep our Martial Arts Debate Team together long
enough to actually *go* to a debate tournament. They kept graduating
early with scholarships to Harvard Law School.
Anyway, I was getting comfortable hanging out with all these
losers; no pressure to be the best and all that. Outside the nerds,
there were few with IQ's high enough to threaten a good fever.
I understand there's an office at the Ministry of Education who's
sole job is to find kids from all over Japan who have martial arts
training and severe discipline problems and sent them to Furinkan
Senior High School. (Well, *that's* what *I* heard.)
Well, that's not totally true. We also got the 'brains' of
Japan. For some reason, Furinkan got a bunch of guys with four digit
IQ's. As a result, we had the biggest, baddest, and most out of
control Martial Arts Science Club in all Japan. You know how most
schools have three floors; one for each of the grades, upperclassmen
on the top, first year students on the bottom. Furinkan had three
floors as well, it's just we organized them differently. The second
year students got the top floor. The upperclassmen got the second
floor and the first year students got the basement. What about the
first floor? That housed the largest collection of nuclear and non-nuclear reactors, mass accelerators, and assorted gizmos in the
country. We had stuff there that would have made Oak Ridge green with
envy.
And the stuff those guys got into. Oy, you wouldn't believe.
Power armor, strange weapons, and weird chemical experiments made
everyone who wandered past move just a little bit faster. If you
didn't, you could wind up an unwilling part of someone's project.
There were people who perfected pulling objects out of other
dimensions. You know, like hammers, mallets, and such. There was the
'face-fault' lab, where guys hooked up people (usually first year
students) to various machines and experimented with their reactions.
Usually these experiments weren't fatal. Just in case, we always had
places to dispose of the bodies. (Word to the wise, NEVER eat
cafeteria food at Furinkan.)
We had one little four-eyed dweeb that used to dabble in time
travel. You know, sliding from one time coordinate to another. He
made it all sound so easy when he explained to us in his nasally
little ratty voice; not that we understood any of it anyway. Most of
us guys envied him because when he got bored in class he just reached
for his little pocket 'time travel' gizmo and, with the push of a
button, blinked out of existence. That was bad enough, but he would
always reappear just before lunch sporting a nice tan, sipping some
damn mixed drink and commenting how good someone named 'Kun-chan' was
(whatever *that* meant).
Anyway, things went along fairly smoothly until my second year
when a certain young sophomore girl arrived. I had to hand it to her,
Akane Tendo certainly knew how to draw a crowd. Cute? Sure, I guess,
you could call her cute. Nice bod, too. It's just her personality
was... well... dangerous. Imagine Bruce Lee... on drugs... in a
skirt... with an attitude. Like I said; dangerous. Every guy who
tried to 'hit on her' got a face full of knuckles for his trouble.
Not the kind of thing that normally attracts guys. However, in her
case, it seemed to work. Yeah, I mean, she had guys standing in line
to get punched in the mouth. Go figure. I guess it could all be
explained by the fact that Furinkan High had the only Martial Arts S&M
club in the country. (No, I'm *not* going to tell you what went on in
*there*. Just be happy knowing that Akane Tendo was the club's
'membership chairman'.)
I guess I could have avoided the whole situation except that her
older sister was in *my* class. Nabiki Tendo was, and still is, the
original 'ice queen'. And a financially dangerous one at that. She
led the school's junior achievement yakuza. Anything you wanted, she
could get; for a price. You wanted the answers to next week's test?
No problem, just be prepared to cough up about 8,000 yen for your trouble.
We only had one serious run-in, Nabiki and I. It started when I
expressed interest in one of her 'friends'; Yuka. Don't get me wrong,
I usually go for the 'intellectual' type but Yuka had the kind of bod
guys really went wild for; tight little ass, nice tits, pretty face
and a personality that practically screamed: Take me now! Take me
here!". You know the type. Anyway, I gave in to my weakness and
mentioned to Nabiki that I was going to take a chance on Yuka and she
just stared at me like I was crazy or something. Then she started
laughing. I could take the 'look' but the laughing hurt my male macho
pride. So, I did something I should have known better than to try; I
bet Nabiki I could get to second base with Yuka before the week was
out. By this time, Nabiki was practically rolling on the floor
laughing. That only pissed me off more and I upped the bet to 20,000
yen. I should have known I was in trouble, though, because she
stopped laughing and not only took the bet, but gave me real favorable
odds as well.
To make a long story short, in addition to losing the bet, I got
my ass kicked all over Yuka's house when I tried my best 'moves' on
her the next weekend. It turned out that she was the 'muscle' Nabiki
used whenever someone was late on a payment. More humiliating, she
had, let's say, a heightened interest in the female gender. Of
course, I also found out she and Nabiki had been lovers for three
years. That *really* pissed me off.
I got even with Nabiki about two weeks later when I stole one of
the time traveler kid's homing devices and slipped it into Nabiki's
school uniform pocket just before she departed for the little girls
room. Sure enough, the time traveler kid returned right on schedule.
You ever see two people trying to get out of a skirt at the same time.
After much wrestling, gyrating, and cursing, the geek ripped her skit
clean off to reveal her pink bikini thong underwear. The last thing I
remember before Yuka beat the crap out of me again was Nabiki's
shapely little bare ass wiggling down the hall as she ran for cover.
Yeah, it was worth it.
Anyway, my happy life at Furinkan changed about 6 weeks into my
second year. One morning, as we 'smarter' guys were hanging out on
the roof waiting for the usual Akane Tendo-love sick jocks-Tatewaki
Kuno circus to occur (not to mention, spying on 'Speedie' Seki making
it with a first year chickiepoo over by the clock tower), I thought I
spotted someone that looked familiar perched on the wall by the main
gate. I mean, the same face, the same hair, the same pig-tail,
everything. I just thought: "Couldn't be."
After the usual 'jocks-getting-the-crap-beat-out-of-them' floor
show, the stranger announced himself as 'Ranma Saotome'. I almost
fell off the roof. The little shit was back and hanging out with Miss
Congeniality.
I'd heard that he and his pop had split the country to avoid Aunt
Nodoka, so his return as a Furinkan student was more than a surprise.
After all, Aunt Nodoka lived just a few miles down the road. (OK,
maybe not so much a surprise. He was crazy, a martial artist, and a
discipline problem; perfect for Furinkan.) I was *really* surprised
when, just as it started to rain, an oversized panda rushed through
the main gate and whisked Ranma inside. Now, the arrival of Ranma was
strange enough. But the sight of a seven foot panda running loose was
unusual, even for Nerima. This, I had to check out.
*****
[Excerpts from the taped interview.]
Ito: That thing on?
Uncle Fester: Huh? Oh, yeah. Sure.
Ito: Now, where were we? Oh, yeah, Yuka.
UF: What about Yuka?
Ito: The funny part is we've been married for 10 years now.
UF: [Incredulous] Married?!? But you said...
Ito: Yeah, I know. But during one of our fights (remember, I'm a
martial artist too) I got her in a clinch and she got a feel of the
old 'love package'. At first, I thought she was going to just rip me
genderless, but at the last minute she kinda got interested.
UF: Interested?
Ito: Yeah, like it was the first time she ever... you know.
UF: An this had an effect? I thought you said she was 'into females'
or something.
Ito: Well, yes and no. See, she only knew Nabiki and her friends
going through Junior High and... well... you know how things go.
Anyway, she kinda liked what I had to offer, if you know what I mean,
and she decided being 'bi' wasn't so bad after all. Actually, she
found it to be an advantage...
UF: Let's change the subject.
Ito: Really took to 'doing it' too.
UF: Ito!
Ito: I remember one time, when Nabiki came over...
UF: ITO!!!!
Ito: What? Oh, sorry. Just reminiscing.
UF: We'll talk about that when the tape runs out.
Ito: Huh? Oh, sure... sure. [has glassy look with little smile]
UF: So, were you a member of any clubs at Furinkan?
Ito: Of course. Everyone had to join a club, it was a school rule. I
started the Manga Reading Club because of Aunt Rumiko's success and
all. Kinda neat reading something when you know the author.
UF: I thought you said all the clubs were Martial Arts related. Manga
reading doesn't sound too martial artsy to me.
Ito: Sure it is. Ever try reading one of Aunt Rumiko's books while
jump kicking someone?
UF: Not that I can recall.
Ito: It's a tough trick to learn. Still, it's worth it in my current
occupation.
UF: Which is?
Ito: I'm an English teacher at Furinkan Senior High School. Still got
a lot of kempo-wackos there, you know. Gotta keep the little creeps
in line.
UF: You're full of surprises, Ito.
Ito: You know, that's what Nabiki once said. Did I ever tell you of
this neat trick she can do with her.... <TAPE RAN OUT HERE>
..... (to be continued.)