This is an idea I had late last night.  Here, I'm just trying it out to
see if it would actually work.  Anybody's opinion is welcome on this
one.
	

	Thoughts of Nerima still weighed heavily on Ranma's mind as he walked
his way across the desert.  This desert was a plain of dry rock and
dust, with deep ruts and channels cut from endless rains a few months
back.  The erosion revealed colorful strata of rock and soil under the
normally drab browns and tans of the desert floor, as well on its
hillsides and mountains.  Right now, he actually found himself MISSING
Akane, mallet and all.
	And still the man in black fled across the desert, and Ranma Saotome
followed him.  He couldn't remember the first time he had met the man in
black, it seemed ages ago, back when Nerima was still a world of light
and love and knowledge, and (three ever constant and bothersome
fiancees)  But that was before the world had moved on.  It was that very
day when Ranma had left the ruins of his home and left his own world
behind, that he first met and fought the man called Roland of Gilead. 
At the end of that day, for the first and only time in his life, Ranma
was on one knee, defeated.  
	"I cry your pardon, gunslinger."
	He had to force himself to get the second part out
	"I have forgotten the face of my father."    
	
(BASED HEAVILY ON "THE DARK TOWER" BY STEPHEN KING)
-- 
Chris DiNote, aka Dino
SMD Publications Inc.,
....and from the introduction to The Grace of Great Things:   
     "Creativity is dangerous.  We cannot open ourselves to 
      new insight without endangering the security of our 
      prior assumptions.  We cannot propose new ideas without 
      risking disapproval and rejection.  Creative 
      achievement is the boldest initiative of mind, an 
      adventure that takes its hero simultaneously to the rim 
      of knowledge and the limits of propriety.  Its pleasure 
      is not the comfort of the safe harbor, but the thrill 
      of the reaching sail."

"All other writers be sure to be taking lessons...
Start talkin' trash and I come with my Smith and Wesson" 
(by "Sublime";  sorta)