The young man turned over on his futon, sleeping restlessly.
Something about the dream he was having was obviously bothering him,
though, apparently, not for much longer.
  He woke up with a start, but not due to any apparant external
cause.  He sat up on his futon, having no trouble blinking away what
sleep was in his eyes.  And he looked upon a room he had never seen
before in his life.
  His eyes searched the room, looking for any clue as to where he
was.  It was a large room, but quite bare, which was unusual, since
the first impression the young man got was that he was in some kind
of suburban house.  Obviously, the room was used for storage, or
guests.
  The room's size was cut down considerably by the large panda
sleeping near him.  The young man stared at it incredulously for a
while, before something in his peripheral vision caught his eye.
  It was a note.  It wasn't addressed to anyone in particular.  It
was attached to a small cassette recorder, and had a simple command
on it: PLAY ME.
  The pigtailed young man shrugged.  Until he had better ideas, he
might as well go along.  He examined the cassette recorder closely,
located the play button, and pressed it.
  There was a whirr as the tape began to play.  "Yo," it began, in a
voice that was vaguely familiar to the young man.  "You might be
wondering where you are, and that sorta stuff, right?" it continued.
The young man nodded, as if answering.
  "Well," said the tape recorder, "this is gonna take some
explaining.  So let's start at the beginning, okay?"
  /That sounded reasonable/, he thought.  There was a pause before
the tape continued.  And like it said, it started with the basics.
  "Your name," it said, "is Ranma Saotome.  And every time you go to
sleep, you lose your memory."
  /Lose my memory?/ thought Ranma.  This was a revelation.  But then,
so was everything in this case.
  "You got in a scrape with this old letch named Happosai.  Somehow,
he's gotten real powerful this time, and no one knows how.  He would
have totalled the dojo if you hadn't had taken the brunt of the blast
from his attack."
  /Attack?  I...  hang on, what am I supposed to be?/ he thought.
/Some kind of fighter I suppose..../
  "He's challenged you this Sunday.  You got the choice of where the
fight gets held, so you chose the Furinkan school grounds.  You're
trying to work out what's giving him the advantage this time, and you
only got a few days to do this.  And you gotta win, cos the stake's
are really high.  They're...  well, it's better that you find that
out yourself."
  /Oh.  I wish I could remember what this Happosai character's like./
  "By the way, you can't tell anyone about your amnesia problem.  At
the moment, only your local doctor, Dr Tofu, knows about this.
Everyone else is counting on you to take on the letch, cos no one
else can.  If anyone else knew about your problem, at best, they
might try and use it to their advantage.  At worst, they might do
things that'll interfere with the upcoming fight, and you can't let
that happen.  Just try and stay cool, ok, and keep away from most
people.  Especially Nabiki and the old crone."
  /Old crone?  And who's Nabiki?  Why don't I like the sound of
this...?/
  "Right, pops aughta be waking up any moment now for morning
practice, so you'll haveta listen to the rest of this later.  Don't
worry 'bout him hearing this; the old fart could sleep through World
War III and not notice anything.  If you have problems, see Dr Tofu.
You shouldn't have any trouble swinging a visit with him since the
concussion you got from the old pervert.  Look out for trouble, okay?
Good luck."
  There was a thunk from the tape as whoever had recorded it pressed
the stop button.  Ranma followed suit.  It seemed a lot to grasp at
the moment, but he was sure he could handle it.  He hoped.
  He placed the tape recorder on top of the chest of drawers, with
the note face down.  No need for anyone else to see that.  He was a
little nervous about the large amount of detail that wasn't included
in that recording; but at least it gave him a start.
  He wondered what the tape had meant about "trouble".
  "Nihao, airen!"
  A large purple blur managed to simultaneously smash through the
closed door as well as send Ranma to the ground.  The blur quickly
resolved itself into a rather friendly girl of around his age, with a
mass of long purple hair.  Perhaps she was a little too friendly.
  Ranma wondered who this was.  Girlfriend perhaps?  She seemed cute
enough.  "Uh, hi?" he said tentatively.
  Neither of them got any further when someone poked their head
through the new addition to the architecture (namely, the hole).
This someone was another teenage girl with short blue-black hair.
"Ranma," she started angrily, "people are trying to sleep...."  The
girl stopped as she saw who Ranma was with.  The girl scowled, then
disappeared.
  "Hah, violent girl get hint and leave.  Shampoo all alone with
airen, now...."  Somehow, Ranma didn't particularly like the sound of
this.
  Fortunately, he was rescued by what he assumed, by her attitude, to
be his sister.  The short-haired girl returned with a large bucket of
water which she threw over both of them.  She then left again in
disgust.
  Ranma suddenly felt a lot better.  This was probably due to the
fact that the large weight on top of him had disappeared, to be
replaced by a much smaller weight.  He blinked away a few drops of
water, and focused on the small white cat on top of him.
  It meowed.
  Nothing happened.
  "Nice kitty," said Ranma, cheerfully, and more importantly to those
who knew him, without fear.  And then, he stopped.  And looked down
at himself.
  At herself.

  A feminine scream rocked the household.  But no one in particular
paid much attention.




                       THE SHINNOSUKE SYNDROME

                 A Ranma 1/2 / Clean Slate Crossover

                        Not Quite Coming Soon

                             Terence Fergusson
                          -- Student of Advanced Murphodynamics
                          -- Stranded in an Anime-free College