Well, I've been sitting on this one for a while thinking that I should
finish a few more chapters before posting it but I havent been able to.
This is a story that takes place _before_ the rest of lost and forgotten.
I'm planning on covering all the stuff that I made reference to or skimmed
over in the early chapters of L and F.  The prologue of this is a revision
of the prologue to the main story of Lost and Forgotten but it fits into
the story and it's a good starting point so I left it in.

Any and all C&C is welcome, tell me what you think, ok?


The rest of Lost and Forgotten can be found at:
http://www.geocities.com/~azatlan/Special-Series/lost-and-forgotten.html

Go there and check it out if you haven't already :)

I want to thank Azatlan once again for putting it up on the web for anyone
that wanted to get the previous parts.

I also want to thank Octavian and the Reverend Jake for pre-reading this
chapter as well.

And now here it is, I'll add a few more notes down at the bottom as well.

-----

Lost and Forgotten
Book 0- Getting there is half the fun

By: Jeremy Thompson

Prologue: "Hey Jude."

	Ryoga Hibiki was lost.  This was nothing new to him, he was lost more
often then he preferred to be.  He looked around at the blowing snow around
him and the hard paved road beneath his feet and scratched his head.  He
couldn't recall ever being here before.  Wherever here was, that is.
	This thought sparked the phrase that he had had too many occasions to say
in his life, "WHERE ON EARTH AM I NOW?" he cried out, of course, there was
no one there to answer, there almost never was.
	He started to walk down the road, it would lead somewhere, and from there
he would get somewhere else.  He wasn't heading anywhere in particular at
the moment, Nerima, for all the happy times that it gave him, also supplied
many of the dark reminders of the things he didn't want to think about.  He
had left the Tendo Dojo two weeks ago and by now he was far away from
Nerima, far away from Japan even, although he didn't know that at the time.
	His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a vehicle behind him, he
stepped to the side of the road and looked back through the cold blowing
snow to see a pair of headlights speeding toward him.  He watched as the
lights began to twist from their course and as they neared him.  By the
time Ryoga could make out the car it had started to spin out of control.
It began to turn about in full circles, growing closer and closer to the
side of the road, the ditch, and Ryoga.
	As it neared him Ryoga leaped into the air, avoiding the car and severe
injury.  The car, and its driver, weren't so lucky, they avoided neither
the ditch, nor the telephone pole along the side of the road.
	The wind died down and Ryoga stared at the car's path through the snow
filled ditch and into the telephone pole.  Then the sound of the car's horn
reached him and brought him into action, he plowed through the snow and to
the car, the driver would need help, if they were alive at all that is.
	Ryoga got to the car and looked it over quickly, it wasn't going to be
driving anywhere soon from what he could tell.  He looked inside to see the
driver slumped over the wheel, his head pressing against the car's horn.
	Ryoga pried open the door with his umbrella and looked closer at the
driver, checking for any glaringly obvious injuries such as detached limbs
and large gashes.  The only thing that Ryoga could see was the blood over
the driver's face, he had a head wound of some sort, Ryoga knew those
always bleed more then they would seem to.  He pulled the man back from the
steering wheel to get a better look for any other injuries.  The car's
radio was still going, even though the engine seemed to have cut out, and
as Ryoga brought the driver to a position where he was sitting back in his
chair he could hear the radio playing a song in English, "Hey Jude, don't
make it bad, take a sad song, and make it better."
	Ryoga noticed two things at that time.  One, that the driver was somewhat
awake, he looked blearily at Ryoga and then closed his eyes and slumped
into his seat.  The second was that there was smoke coming from the car's
hood.  "That's a bad sign," Ryoga thought to himself, and he unhooked the
man's seatbelt and lifted him out of the seat, he grabbed the coat from the
passenger side and slipped it on the driver as well as he could and then
walked away from the car as quickly as he could manage.
	Ryoga looked back at the car only when he heard the rush of air as the
engine caught on fire, he saw the blaze consume the front of the car and
make its way to where, just a short time ago, the man he was carrying had
been.  He continued to walk along the road seeking shelter from the weather
and help for the person he held in his arms.  He found it in an old
abandoned house by the road.  He started a fire in the fireplace and then
looked over his patient.  The bleeding had stopped and dried blood was
crusted over the man's face.
	Ryoga took off one of his bandannas and soaked it in some water, careful
not to splash too much on himself in the process.  The water had been
warmed by his body heat, but ever since Jusenkyo he had been wary of any
contact with water at all.  He started to clean off the man's face and he
realized for the first time that he was wearing glasses, they had somehow
remained perfectly intact in the crash.  He took the glasses off and placed
them carefully to the side, noting only in passing their relatively thick
lenses.
	As he continued to clean he realized that this man was only perhaps a few
years older then he himself was.  There weren't any cuts on his face to
account for the blood so he cleaned farther up.  The wound was just below
the hairline in a large crescent just below his hairline, it was a few
inches long but seemed to be rather thin.  The wound had clotted over by
now but he decided to bandage and clean it just in case it reopened.  He
dabbed lightly at it and then got out the rudimentary first aid kit that he
kept in his pack.  Soon the head wound was cleaned and bandaged completely,
using a spare bandanna as the main component.  Ryoga checked his patient
for any other wounds and found just a few bruises over the rest of the
body, one particularly nasty one was across the chest in the shape of the
seatbelt's strap.
	Ryoga fed the fire and then went about feeding himself.  He looked out the
window and saw night falling upon the country-side.  The wind picked up
once more and the road grew harder to make out.  He watched for any passing
cars for a time and saw nothing at all.  After a few hours he stopped and
looked back over to his still sleeping patient.  Figuring that all was done
for the night he added some more wood to the fire and went to sleep.  He
was a light sleeper, and he would know the moment that his patient awakened.

				***

	He awoke in the middle of the night when he heard his patient start to
move, he got up and kneeled down by the young man.  Soon the man slowly
opened his eyes and said in English, "What happened?"
	Ryoga replied in the same language saying, "You lost control and crashed
into a pole, I got you out of your car before it blew up."
	The man shook his head as if to shake the cobwebs out of it and looked
around, "Where am I?" he asked in a groggy voice.
	Ryoga winced at the familiar question and said, "Some building by the
road, I'm not sure where."
	The man nodded slowly, he seemed to wince slightly and he closed his eyes
in thought as if trying to access some piece of information that wasn't
quite within reach.  He looked up with an odd, almost scared expression in
his eyes and said, "Who... WHO am I?"
	Ryoga was startled by the question, it wasn't one that he was expecting at
all.  He questioned the young man and soon found that he had no memory of
who he was at all.  He seemed to remember basic things, history and trivia,
at least as far as Ryoga could tell.  But his basic identity, his name,
where he lived, his family, they were all blank spots.
	They searched his belongings but found no forms of identification
whatsoever.  Apparently the man had taken his wallet out of his pocket as
he drove.  The only thing that came up when Ryoga asked for the man's name
was, "I seem to remember someone saying �Hey Jude' that doesn't quite sound
right, but I guess it will do."
	So Ryoga and Jude, who hadn't decided on a last name talked through the
night, checking where Jude's memory was intact and where it was Swiss cheese.

				***


	They set out down the road in search of a town so they could get some
medical assistance for "Jude" and so Ryoga could perhaps get some
directions back to Tokyo, or even back to Japan.  Along the way they talked
as much as they good, Ryoga proved to be quite adept at basic English which
was useful since Jude had no knowledge of Japanese whatsoever.  After a
while the conversation turned to names, neither of them thought that just
"Jude" was much of a name.  They both seemed stumped, Ryoga had never had a
knack for naming things and Jude was too busy trying to remember his real
name to think of a new one.
	Finally Ryoga stopped them both and said, "Well, just pick something, if
you don't like it you can change it later, but hopefully you'll remember
before you use your name much."
	Jude sighed and started to run his fingers through his hair, he was
stopped by the bandages on his forehead so he put his arm down by his side
and sighed.  "I guess you're right Ryoga, how does Smith sound to you?"
	"Sounds okay to me, although English names always sound a bit wrong to me
anyway."
	"Well, I don't know, it's a common enough name, and it doesn't sound corny
or anything like that, seems to me that there was a character in a book
named �John Smith' who had a car accident too, something about a coma and
psychic powers or something" Jude stopped then and laughed ruefully, "It's
funny isn't it, I can remember a damned book I read better then I can
remember who I am or where the hell I live or anything.  Yeah, a real joke."
	Ryoga said something to change the subject and Jude accepted the change
easily, he didn't want to dwell on his memories, or lack thereof, for any
extended period of time.  They continued on their way, talking and perhaps
not paying as much attention to where they were going as they should.
	Soon they were lost.
	"Uh, Ryoga?" Jude asked as he stopped walking.
	"Yes Jude?" Ryoga asked as he turned to Jude.
	"Where did all the snow go?  And for that matter, where's the road?"
	Ryoga looked around to see that wherever they were now it wasn't the
snow-covered plains they had been on before.  Green grass was to the North,
East, and West of them and to the South lay a large forest.
	"I have no idea," Ryoga replied.
	"Oh," Jude said as he pondered the situation, "Okay, how about if we go
East?  I think we were heading that way before."
	"Sounds good to me," Ryoga replied.  He had found that, when he was really
lost, one direction was as good as any other anyway.
	And so the two set off once more on their Journey.  One of them was lost
to the world and the other was lost to his past. And neither of them
realized that they were heading West instead of East.

Chapter 1- Ryoga's curses

	It wasn't long before they both realized that they were nowhere near where
they had been the night before.  Ryoga, who was used to this happening by
now, was unfazed by it.  Jude, on the other hand, was not used to being so
lost as to cover vast distances in a short amount of time, was quite shaken.
	"This," he said, "Is not normal... At least, I don't think so, I mean, I
don't remember this happening before, which means nothing, but I've got the
feeling that this shouldn't happen."  He brought his hand up to his head to
massage his forehead but stopped once he felt the bandages upon his brow.
He dropped his hand and looked to Ryoga for an explanation.
	Ryoga looked around at his surroundings once more, they were in what
seemed to be a warm forest of some sort, definitely far away from the
snow-covered plains they had been in only a short while ago.
	"Well, uh, you see," he paused to collect his thoughts and then blurted
out, "I kind of, err, getlosteasilysinceIhaveabadsenseofdirection."
	Due to the speed at which this last part was said and Ryoga's accent Jude
understood very little of it, "What was that?" he asked, "Something about
direction?"
	Ryoga looked to the person that was traveling with him, Jude looked even
more confused then he had been just a few moments ago.  He decided to get
it out in the open and said, "I've got little to no sense of direction, I
get lost, very lost, very easily."
	Jude crinkled his brow in thought and then said, "Bummer.  That has to suck."
	"What?" Ryoga asked, his knowledge of American slang was somewhat lacking,
"What do you mean by that?"
	Jude blinked, then thought over what he had just said, "Oh, I mean, that
has to be a bad thing, getting lost like that that is."
	Ryoga nodded, "So that's what �bummer' and �that has to suck' means?"
	"Basically," Jude replied, "So, tell me, how long have you had this
problem with your sense of direction?"
	Ryoga then began to tell Jude of various occurrences of getting lost, this
lead into a good portion of Ryoga's life story as well.
	Jude listened intently, soaking up the story of a person who had a past
and adding a few questions here and there.  Ryoga, who had been used to
traveling alone, found that having someone to talk to made the trip seem
less desolate and depressing as well.
	He lost himself in the flow of words, detailing his trials and
tribulations up until following Ranma into china.  He stopped there and
looked somewhat nervous.
	"So what happened when you followed this guy Ranma to China?" Jude asked.
	Ryoga looked back to Jude and wondered if he should go on, could he reveal
his curse to someone like that?  Before he could speak Jude said, "It must
have been pretty bad if you're thinking about it so much, if you don't want
to tell me it's ok, it's all up to you really."
	Ryoga paused a moment more to collect his thoughts and then said, "After
following Ranma all over China, I finally got close to him, I stopped on a
cliff overlooking a valley filled with hundreds of pools of water."  He
then went on to relate how he got knocked into one of the pools at Jusenkyo
by a girl and a panda and how when he crawled out of the pool he was a
small black piglet.
	Understandably enough this was met with a loud "WHAT?" from Jude.
	Ryoga turned back to Jude and said, "What's what?"
	"What is saying, �This is a lot to believe could you please explain' along
with �Are you telling the truth or lying through your teeth?'" Jude replied.
	Ryoga re-told his story and Jude saw that he was telling the truth, or at
least, thought he was telling the truth.  "You turn into a pig?" he asked.
	Ryoga sighed and then said, "Yes, I do."
	"Weird," Jude replied, "Could you show me?  I mean, if you're right all we
need to do is stop and find some water, then heat some up, splash you with
the cold stuff, then pour the hot stuff back on you to fix things right?"
	Ryoga reluctantly agreed and they set off in search of a body of water.
Soon they found a wide river and started a fire by the banks.  As soon as
they had some heated up Ryoga said, "Are you sure you want to see?"
	Jude nodded, then said, "But, only if you want to, I do want to see this
with my own eyes, but if you don't want to then we can just skip it."
	Ryoga stopped and thought, if he didn't find some bit of civilization to
drop Jude off so he could get some help then his curse would be
demonstrated sooner or later.  Perhaps doing it like this would lessen the
shock the next time it rained.  He nodded to Jude and said, "Yes, I want
to," and with that he dumped a pot of cold water over himself.
	Jude boggled at the sight before his eyes, where a person had been sitting
there was now nothing but a pile of clothes.  He watched as the clothes
shifted and wiggled, soon a little black pig crawled out of the neck of
Ryoga's shirt.  Jude noted in passing that somehow Ryoga's bandana had
moved from his head to his neck.
	"Ryoga?" he asked.
	The pig nodded and bwee'ed in what might have been an affirmative way.
	"Wow."
	P-Chan nodded his head toward the kettle of hot water and bwee'ed again.
	"You want to be turned back now?" Jude asked.  His porcine partner nodded
again.
	"Okay," Jude said, "Here goes."  He poured the hot water over P-Chan and
soon a naked Ryoga was grabbing his clothes and slipping them on.
	Jude blinked and looked from the pot of hot water to Ryoga and back again.
 He scratched his head, careful of the bandage, and blinked again.
	"That," he said, "Is much worse then your sense of direction."
	"Bummer?" the newly clothed Ryoga asked.
	"Bummer," Jude replied.
	Ryoga looked up at the fading light of the sky and said, "Well, we may as
well camp here for the night, we won't get much farther before nightfall
and this is probably the best spot we'll find."
	Jude nodded and they began to set up camp for the night.  After camp was
set up Jude started questioning once more, "So, what happened after you
crawled out of the pool?"
	Ryoga gathered his thoughts and then said, "Well, I didn't really crawl
out of the pool, you see, I was pulled out of it by a panda."
	"A panda?  Wait, wasn't it a girl chasing a panda that knocked you into
the spring in the first place?" Jude asked.
	Ryoga nodded and explained how he was almost cooked by the panda and the
Jusenkyo guide.  After that he continued through his tale of wandering
through China and returning to Japan and finally finding Ranma Saotome.
After detailing his first few encounters Jude stopped him and said, "So
Ranma and his father were the girl and the panda?"
	"Yes, they were," Ryoga replied.
	"Well, it's somewhat fitting that they're cursed as well isn't it?  I
mean, if they had a hand in your curse it's somewhat balanced by them being
cursed in return, wouldn't you think?" Jude paused and then said, "Although
it does seem that Ranma got the best of the bargain in the curse
department, I mean, he's still human and all, just a girl right?"
	"And he calls his curse a curse, that's nothing compared to what I've gone
through, do you know how many times I've almost been cooked?!" Ryoga
exclaimed.
	Jude calmed down his traveling companion and then said, "So what happened
next?"
	Ryoga took a deep breath and continued his story.  Jude found himself
drawn into the story and asking questions along the way.  As the moon
slowly rose above them the tale grew to an end and they decided to call it
a night.
	Ryoga went to sleep glad to have been able to tell someone what he had
gone through.  Jude lay awake for a while, his mind whirling with thoughts
about martial arts, curses, and many other things.

---

There it was, chapter 2 of this, chapter 12 of lost and forgotten, and
chapter 2 of Ghost in the Eva are all in the "I'm thinking about writing
them stage"  I'm also working on a L and F and Tenchi Muyo Xover that
occurs some time between book 0 and book 1 of Lost and forgotten called "No
need for directions" it's mainly a short little piece really.

That's all I can think of to say at the moment so I'll let you get busy
giving me some C&C ok? :)

Later

Jeremy



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