See the end for notes (read:  excuses.)


The Production of Joy

by Thomas Schmidt

     The roar filled the house,  shaking down photographs
and rocking the tables.  Akane and I were in her room,
studying.
     She was shocked by the sudden sound, but she didn't
shriek or scream or run.  She raised her eyes to meet mine,
and she shivered involuntarily.  When I reached out with a
reassuring touch, she grasped my hand desperately.  Usually,
she would have recoiled.  Usually, I would not have reached
out.  I realized I loved her in that moment, because she was
afraid.
     When I went out to fight, I was doing it not for honor
or selfish materialism or possessiveness or just to win, 
as always before. I defeated it for her.  And she loved 
me for it, which I suppose was a fair trade.



     We were married two years after that, while still in
high school.  To my sincere surprise, Akane loved being a
housewife.  Maybe it was because she helped out in the dojo
a couple of times a week, or because I was always home, but
I never sensed any resentment.  It was strange; I had
expected her to want to go to college, to accomplish
something.  Akane had always been a distinct individual.
But she seemed perfectly satisfied with cooking and
cleaning, in humble domesticity.  Of course, nobody else was
satisfied with her cooking, but that never deterred her.
     The early part of our marriage was the best.  Neither
one of us was a great conversationalist, but we discovered
that we really liked sex and that made up for it.  And
sometimes we would talk, about this and that, about the
meaning of life and who was going to win the baseball
championship.  It kind of made up for us missing out on
college.  She developed intellectually much faster than I
did, but I don't think she ever realized it.  I certainly
wasn't going to tell her.
     She seemed to have a real aversion to independence.
Once, when coming home from the grocery store, I overheard
the following conversation on the speakerphone.
     The phone rang and Akane answered it. "Hello?"
     "Hello, Miss."
     "Oh, that's Mrs."
     "Excuse me.  Mrs. Tendo?"
     "Why, yes."
     "Are you satisfied with your long distance service?"
     "Why, you'll have to wait till my husband gets home.  I
let Ranma handle all the little details of our lives."
     I think the reason for her submission, and this was
also the only reason that our marriage worked as well as it
did, was that Akane had at some distinct time in our past
decided that she could trust me. Totally, implicitly, use
whatever adverbs you like, she trusted me.  Sometimes her
anger and her pride got the better of her, but it was always
there.
     Yet I still hoped she didn't mean it.  I certainly
wasn't capable of dealing with the little details.  Whenever
I wasn't teaching, I was training, in ways which grew more
bizarre by the day.
     "Look," Akane said during one of my stranger
activities.  "It's not that I don't love you, because I do,
really.  Don't get all huffy like always.  I'm just
wondering, why do you feel like you have to do that?"
     "What do you mean, 'all huffy like always?'"
     She didn't take the bait.  "Come on, honey."
     "It's just training.  You know, ever higher, ever
faster, ever stronger, right?"
     "This is going a little too far, though, don't you
think?"
     I tried to remember what Pop had said.  "The true
martial artist can go too far only past the point of death."
     "That doesn't make any sense."
	I swung down from the bars and grabbed a towel, being careful to 
avoid letting it be touched by the acid.  "So ask the panda."



     Our first real crisis wasn't long after, and like a lot
of our problems, it was because of our friends.  Kodachi had
returned from her second year at university failing and
pregnant, and she wouldn't tell anyone who the father was.
I was the immediate suspect, of course.
     "Frankly, Ranma, it's because I don't know who else it
could be," Akane said when I challenged her.  "How many
people do you know that would sleep with Kodachi?  Or that
she would sleep with, for that matter?"
     "What, are you saying I'd do that?"
     "I think that's the matter under consideration here,
yes."
     "I can see what you think of me."
     "So says the guy who had four fiancees."
     I think she was just upset because she wasn't pregnant
yet, and it certainly wasn't for lack of trying.  She never
said anything about it, but Akane clearly wanted children,
preferably lots of children.  She would gush over the little
ones in the classes we taught, and she seemed as depressed
as Kasumi at her sister's miscarriage.
     Whatever the reason, she didn't speak to me for days
afterward.  It was the first time in months I had received
more than a bit of exercise for my perceived misdeeds, and
it was not at all fun.
     Finally she ran into Tatewaki when he was stumbling
around the town in a drunken stupor.  She led him back to
the dojo and gave him something to eat, along with some tea
to sober him up.  I was shooed out of the room, and she
never told me what he said, but as soon as he was out the
door she fell into my arms in tears.  She never accused me
of fooling around again, not even when it was appropriate.
     It became much more difficult to impress her after
that.  I felt like a child dancing in the surf, yelling to
his mother to watch his play.  Her attention was always
somewhere else.
     That was the first year I entered a major public
martial arts tournament, and therefore it was the first year
I won.  But Akane never wanted to come to the fights, and
she never congratulated me on my victories.  It really hurt
me.  If she didn't care, it didn't seem worth doing.
     It was Nabiki who helped me understand the problem.
"Look, Ranma, everybody who knows you knows you're the best
there is.  What do you want her to say?  Everything's
redundant.  You - " she poked a finger in my chest - "are
too good for your own good."  Nabiki mellowed out a lot
after she got out of Furinkan.  "Besides, she's jealous."
     "Of me?"
     "Yeah, sure.  And of Kodachi, and me, I think.  See,
everybody else is out there doing things, living their
lives.  Important things are happening to them.  But she's
just sitting there doing the laundry, you know?"
     "I thought that was what she wanted."
     "So did she."
     It wasn't boredom, exactly.  It was apathy.  I didn't
think she resented my successes, no matter what Nabiki said,
because if we were nothing else we were still a team.  She
just didn't care about them.
 I didn't know how to deal with it.



     Mom and Pop visited a week later, and Mom cared.  She
practically gushed.  "Oh, Ranma, that is so wonderful.  Just
think, my little boy, a world champion.  What a manly man
you are."
     I've been continually surprised by how you can live
just a few miles from someone but still see them only every
once in a while.  I guess Mom wanted to give us our privacy
or something, because they only stopped by once a month or
so, and usually only for an evening.  Mom handled the
cooking, which was a godsend, and Pop handled the idle
chatting and sake drinking.
     This trip lasted for a week, during which I received a
great deal of parental advice.
     "Ranma, let me tell you a story.  'A young man sets
himself to topple Fuji-Sama, or, moreover, to drink all the
sky's rain in an afternoon, and, in his middle age, works to
leave his own tangible legacy.'  Do you know what that
means, boy?"
     "I'm, uh, not certain."
     "Tell me, what is the center of your life, boy?"
     "Martial arts?"
     "Good lad."
     Mom was less opaque, but about as helpful.  "Are you
supporting your wife, as all men should, my son?"  She
wasn't holding her katana, but we both knew it was there.
     "Of course, Mom."
     She smiled ruthlessly.  "Very good."
     Akane got on well with my mother, and I couldn't blame
her for the way she felt about Pop.  The tension came from
the way she acted around him.  Now that the dojo was ours,
she felt free to express her distaste as she never had when
her father was in the house.  She engaged in conversation
with him as politeness demanded, and never more.  She tried
to prevent me from spending time with him, too, calling me
away whenever we seemed to be getting too close.
     It was kind of annoying, but Akane was almost
apologetic after they left and she seemed to have forgotten
entirely about Kodachi.  Things were better after that.
Indeed, the next several months were deceptively easy, as
the dojo's classes began to fill to bursting on a regular
basis and we were finally able to put some money in the
bank.
     New Year's came and went.  Our extended family met at
Kasumi and Tofu's place, mostly because Soun didn't want to
have to travel.  I was struck by how good an idea the
arranged marriage had really been, and how it had merged our
families in a way that neither my father nor hers had
expected.  It no longer made sense for the Saotome and Tendo
clans to gather separately.



     I think it was the beginning of Spring when our lives
were next changed.
     We were just sitting down to dinner when we received
word that Kodachi was giving birth. Akane answered the
phone.  "Kodachi's having her baby," she told me, "and it's
not going well, and she's asking for you."
     She bent over to grab her purse.  "What - " I asked.
     "We're going, right?
     As soon as she said it, I could.  "Yes, we're going;"
and I stood.
     Kodachi looked hideous.  Her face was bloated, and
perspiration had melted her eyeshadow into dark rivers of
blackness.  Every few minutes her body would contort in
spasmic pain; only a small sigh signaled the advent.  She
looked oddly helpless in her billowy green hospital gown, so
different from her usual vestments.
     "Oh, it's nothing," she said when we were alone.
"Though the painkillers here are surprisingly weak."
     There was a reason that I was there.  "Ranma-Sama, I
want to let you know that I am truly sorry that I betrayed
you.  I tried to save myself for you, I really did."
     "You didn't have to."
     "And look, now you're here, and it's too late.  I am
ugly and fat, and I am going to die."
     "You're not going to die."  But she was.  The doctors
had made that clear.  She had ruptured in all the wrong
places, and whether she would survive long enough for a
cesarean was questionable.
     I never did understand Kodachi, and she surprised me
then.  Her face suddenly grew vicious.  "You never loved
me," she accused, her voice laden with deadly undertones.
     And then she looked at me, like she wanted something,
like she was going to die if she didn't get it.  I knew what
she wanted me to say.  I knew what it would have meant to
the dying woman.  Yet I couldn't do it.  I absolutely could
not bring myself to do it.
     In the years since I have spent long nights pondering
that weakness, and I have decided that the only real reason
was revulsion.  I could have said it to Ukyou, or Shampoo.
Kodachi simply was not the same thing.
     I hope that someday I get over it.
     "No, I didn't," I said.
     She surprised me again, steadying her gaze on the pasty
white ceiling.  Her breath came in short, labored gasps, and
she blinked steadily.  Her body trembled with exertion.  A
droplet trickled down her face to wet the bosom of her gown,
and I could not tell if she was crying.
     I left without saying I was sorry.



     Kodachi never saw her baby, but Tatewaki and the
Principal told us that she had requested its name be Hatsue.
Tatewaki told us a great many things in the weeks after his
sister's death.  I suppose we were as close to friends as he
had.
     Hatsue had been premature and was still in the
hospital.  This was not a bad thing; I don't think Kuno
would have been particularly good with a baby at that point.
He couldn't return to his schooling, though, trying to
balance the child on one hand  and Kodachi's funeral on the
other.  He spent a lot of his free time working out with me
in the dojo.  His antagonism seemed to have faded with time,
or perhaps to have been cast out by circumstance.
     In any case, he needed a place to escape from his
memories. I was glad I could provide one, and glad that he
let me.  He almost never spoke to me, though.  That was
reserved for Akane.
     I'm sure Kuno still had feelings for her, but he had
the graciousness not to express them in front of me, and she
never complained about his behavior in private.  For
Tatewaki, she was an outlet for hope and fear and shame.
She played a sympathetic role I would not have expected of
her, showing a patience I had not credited her with.  Once
more, Akane seemed to be growing up faster than me.
     Sometimes she would recount his statements to me, at
night under the covers.  There was a schoolgirl's charm to
her secret revelations that belied the maturity she showed
the world.  "He is so innocent," she murmured, running her
fingers over my chest.  "Do you know what he told me he was
most afraid of?  More than anything?"
     "That his brain cell would erode and he'd be left with
     nothing?"
     "Ranma!" she exclaimed, thumping me soundly.  "It's
     rude to give me trouble when
I'm still glowing with an orgasm."
     I nearly choked trying to keep from laughing.  "Where'd
you hear that?"
     "On TV," she said, almost shyly.  "Anyway, you're
wrong.  He's afraid he's going to be punished for his impure
thoughts about you."
     "Punished by who?"
     "Who knows?  God, his ancestors, whatever."
     "This was when he thought I was a girl, right?"
     "Yes."  She dragged the syllable out, unwinding it like
a piece of string.
     "I'd say he's got more important things to worry
about."
     "That's just the thing.  That's why he's innocent, I
mean.  He said that was his worst fear, and he meant it."
     "Poor guy."
     "Yeah.  Exactly."



     Everyone was at the funeral.  Tatewaki stayed by the
grave for hours after the service finished.  It was
understandable.  He had been closer to Kodachi than anyone.
     "Isn't it sad?" Akane said, watching him.  "Kodachi's
daughter will never know her mother."
     "Say, did they ever find out who the father was?"
Ryouga, behaving somewhat civilly for once.
     "No, unfortunately," Mom told him.  "I suppose poor
Tatewaki and his father will have to take care of her
without either of the parents."
     "Too bad," Ryouga said.  Then he wandered off.
     "I don't know," I said.  "I grew up without a mother,
and I turned out okay."
     "Says who?" Akane and Ukyou chorused.
     Outwardly, I tried to look peeved, but on the inside I
was smiling.  Even at gatherings of sorrow, my women stayed
consistent.



     During the night after the funeral, Akane said what we
both knew she was going to say.  "I'm worried about that
baby."
     "Un."
     "You know Tatewaki isn't going to be a good parent."
     "Probably not."
     "And he's got to get on with his own life, too.  The
last thing he needs is to stay here in Nerima."
     "What are you trying to say?"
     "Ranma, darling.  Do you think maybe we could offer to
take care of her for a while?"
     "What do you mean?"
     "You know what I mean.  She could live here.  It would
be just like having our own little baby."
     "You want to adopt her."
     "No.  Well, maybe.  I don't know.  I think it'd be
better for her.  It doesn't have to be forever."  That last
was a lie.
     "I don't know."
     "Well, why not?  Do you want to have children someday?"
     "I guess, emphasis on the someday.  I don't know if
we're ready to be parents now.  You know, we're pretty
young."
     "It's us or Kuno.  Think about her."
     "Yeah, but Akane, plus, she's a Kuno.  You know that's
not the most reliable genetic mix."
     "She's a baby!  Now you're just being unfair."
     "I'm just trying to say, what'll we do if she turns out
like Kodachi?  Messed up in the head."
     "That's crazy.  Come on, honey.  You won't believe how
beautiful she is."
     "You've seen her?"
     "We went down to the hospital.  Look, Tatewaki says it
would be okay with him."
     "So you brought this up with him before asking me?"
     "No.  It was his idea.  Sort of, anyway.  Come on.
     Please."
     I couldn't force myself to say yes to Kodachi, but
     Akane gave me the opposite
 problem.  "All right.  Okay.  We can think about it."
          She squealed and jumped up and hugged me tightly,
all in one grand motion.  "I love you," she whispered into
my ear.



     Nabiki and I were alone in the dojo, discussing
finances, as was her wont.  "My problem is that I've got all
these expenses," she said.  "You know, school costs and
everything.  But all you guys have to pay for is what,
cinder blocks and utilities?  I would have said you have a
prime investment situation."
     "But?"
     "The kid," she said, as if it was the most obvious
thing in the world.  To her, it probably was.  "Tendo
Hatsue."
     "Kuno Hatsue," I corrected quickly.
     "She's going to be a big drain, even if she is healthy.
You know, infants always are.  You'll need to pay for food,
toys, furniture, all that stuff."
     "Kuno's giving us a stipend."
     "Even so.  You've already got a pretty thick and
diversified portfolio, from the last couple of years.  I
would keep what you've got liquid liquid, for now."  Nabiki
pushed the folder into my hands and leaned back in her
chair.  "So where's Akane?"
     "Out looking at wallpaper.  You know, just what you're
talking about."
     "Didn't you want to go with her?"
     I shook my head.  "Naw.  She's a lot more excited about
this than I am, I'll tell you."
     "Apparently."
     I stood.  "Listen, I'm going to get a glass of water.
Want anything?"
     "No thanks."  When I sat back down, Nabiki leaned
forward so she was right in my face.  "The truth is, Ranma,
I always want something.  Right now, I want to know how
you're feeling."
     "The truth?"
     "Have you ever lied to me and gotten away with it?"
     I sipped my water and stretched and tried to think of
what to say.  "I guess I feel like I'm being forced into
this."
     "The baby."
     "I wish we weren't going to adopt it."
     "Akane's not making you do it."
     "Yes, she is."



     The rain drizzled down in fat, slow dollops, striking
the hard fabric of our umbrella in an irregular rhythm.  I
stayed dry; my curse made me careful.  Akane was soaked
despite the proffered protection, her hurried steps always
landing in front of mine.
     I could feel her shivering beside me when we took our
seats in the hospital waiting room, and she gladly accepted
my jacket.  "He'll be here before too long," she said as she
shrugged it on.  "I hope he'll be."
     Kuno was not apologetic about his tardiness, not that
he was ever apologetic.  He was clothed as I had never seen
him before, in a white dress shirt and a pair of blue jeans.
"Akane," he greeted her, inclining his head slightly.
"Ranma.  I would speak with you."  I nodded and followed him
into the adjoining hall.
     "You will care for the girl as if she is your own," he
began.
     "Of course."
     "You will defend her, at the cost of your own life."
     I hesitated, momentarily.  "Yes."
     He smiled slightly.  "You have shown yourself to be a
capable warrior, Tendo, almost my equal.  I believe you will
do this thing that you have said."
     Kuno was a blowhard, but he was right.  If I said it, I
meant it.
     He continued after he saw that I had digested his
words.  "The girl should have been delivered to Akane by
now."
     "Wait a minute.  Don't we have to sign papers and
stuff?"
     "The Kuno has not yet lost its influence entirely," he
explained.  "The papers have been dealt with."
     I gestured toward the doorway.  "Well, can I go see
her?"
     "One more thing, Tendo."
     "What?"
     "The girl will be known as Tendo Hatsue.  But remember,
she is a Kuno.  She belongs to our clan."
     "I never challenged that."
     "Well for you that you did not."
     Akane was holding a small bundle of blankets when I
returned, and there was a light in her eyes that I had not
seen for some time.  "Ranma, look.  She is so perfect."
     I gazed for the first time upon the girl who was to
become my daughter, and my heart melted. Her lips were the
tiniest, prettiest things I had ever seen, her forehead was
smoother than silk.  She had hair, already, thin black hair
like cobwebs.  I could hardly believe she was three weeks
old, she was so small.  Her chocolate eyes gazed up,
questioning; I ran my finger over her brow, feeling its
exquisite softness.
     Akane gingerly placed Hatsue in my arms, and I decided
things were going to work out, and I was sorry for what I
had said to Nabiki.

End Part 1


Ranma 1/2 is the property of Rumiko Takahashi, Viz Communications, 
and a bunch of other people who are not me.

Notes:   

This fic was heavily influenced by Tim Sandlin's GroVont trilogy, 
consisting of _Skipped Parts,_ _Sorrow Floats_, and _Social 
Blunders._  I highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in 
serious fiction.

Many thanks go to my brother Matthew, Gary Kleppe, 
Freemage, David Johnston, and Anand Raoh for providing pre-reading 
services.  

This is a first person fic from Ranma's perspective, and after the 
recent discussion I feel the need to say some things about that.  
Ranma may seem more intelligent than he should be.  There are 
reasons for this.  First, I believe that Ranma is more perceptive 
than he appears.  Second, his narration takes place decades after the 
events described.

Finally, Akane seems very out of character in this fic.  I am aware 
of this; I believe that sufficient reason for her actions will be 
provided in later parts.  If, after I write them and you read them, 
you still think she's OOC, consider it an alternate universe. :)

Like everyone else, I love getting C&C.  Just to let you know.  


Thomas Schmidt
Tschmidt@trader.com