Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 18:16:01 -0700
From: John Morales <belgarath@sprintmail.com>

Please send any feedback to belgarath@sprintmail.com and check out
my page at http://home.sprintmail.com/~belgarath for my other fics.

Slightly sooner said than done.  :)  Sorry for the delay...

All comments strictly my opinion, and offered in good spirit; I
hope they prove helpful rather than annoying.

Special Delivery

by John Morales

{To begin with, I like this "correspondence" format.  It's the
next best thing to hearing a story told by a storyteller, in the
listening-to-the-spoken-word sense.  We don't get much exposure
to this any more, and in some ways I think that's a sad thing.
It's especially appropriate here because of the plot of the
story, of course.  Applause.}

I can understand why you feel cheated, you missed so much.  So I'll
write down as much as I can remember, as you asked, but I still wish
you could hear it from him.  Of course, that will never happen.  You

{Yeep.  When I read "never happen", my first thought was "Ranma's
dead?  Aiyaa!"  Unless that's the effect you're going for, you
might want to change it to "is very unlikely to happen" or
something like that, and reference Ranma's reticence.}

will have to excuse me, it has been years since some of these things
happened, and I'm sure I'll mess up some of the details.  

The first time I met him was just over six years ago.  I was at
the cemetary, trying to get some advice from Okaasan.  She had only
been dead a few months at that point, and I was not yet very
comfortable with all my new responsibilities.  

{Definite understatement; very Kasumi.  She'd be 13 or thereabouts,
yes?  You might want to say that to nail it down for readers who
don't do such arithmetic instinctively.}

So there I sat talking to her, upset with all the new things I
had to do, and even more upset that I was not doing them very well. 
My cooking seemed to be okay, but the kitchen didn't quite sparkle
the way it did after she had used it.  I didn't know how to get
Otousan out of his depression, he seemed to have withdrawn from the
world completely.  My imoutosan weren't so bad.  After talking to
Nabiki, I distracted her pretty well with the family checkbook.  She
was in fact better at it than I was, but in retrospect, I think I
could have found a better way to distract her.  Akane was not
depressed so much as angry, and had devoted herself to her Art in a
whole new way, one I did not think was entirely healthy, but I did
not know how to deal with her anger either.  

{Nice snapshot of Kasumi's view of the initial conditions.}

Okaasan had no answers for me, or maybe she thought I had to find
them on my own.  I thought I had just been talking normally to her,
but I guess I was too upset for that because the next thing I know,
this young boy is wiping a tear from my cheek. 

{How brash; very Ranma.  :) }

I think the way I look at Ranma is still today shaped a bit by the
sight of that serious boy I first laid eyes on in the cemetary.  He
looked like a normal school boy in some ways.  He was wearing a
school uniform of shorts and a nice shirt - one of the last times he
would wear one I found out later.  There were differences though. 

one, I ... differences, though.

Where other ten-year-old boys might have had a scraped knee, Ranma
had bruises and cuts all over.  Where others were probably doing
homework or playing in fields, he had been taking a shortcut through
a cemetary and stopped to help someone in need.

{Again, character sketched nicely in only a few sentences.}

"You okay, lady?"  

I wiped some more tears while I answered.  "Yes, just a little sad,
and please call me Kasumi.  Thank you.."  I stood up and

{Either too many .'s or not enough.  :)  This is common through the
rest of the text, so I won't mention it again.}

straightened out my own school skirt while I looked at him
expectantly.  

"I really miss my mom," he told me.  "Well, I guess I miss having a
mom.  It's been so long, sometimes I have to get out the picture from
Oyaji's wallet to remember what she looks like."  

{Considering Genma's lack of sentimentality, and the fact that
Ranma had no idea what his mother looked like when he finally met
her in the manga, this seems unlikely.  Not a big deal, though;
this may be another difference from the original Ranmaverse.}

He didn't talk about his father much, but what little I did hear
seemed mixed.  Ranma was proud of what his father taught him, but did
not seem very proud of his father.  

{"Dear, about what Kasumi-chan says in this letter... we have some
things to discuss."  "Growf?"  [Uh-oh.] }

"Thank you, Ranma.  I had a nice afternoon."  It was amazingly true.
Okaasan's illness and death had aged me, and all my old friends now
seemed immature somehow.  Ranma was more than two years younger than
me, and immature in some very specific ways, such as his table
manners, but between his serious nature and a childhood I would not
wish on anyone, he was my equal in many ways.  He certainly listened
and understood me in a way no one else did.  I truely wished it

truly

didn't have to end.  

{Another nice character sketch I can easily see Kasumi writing.}

"Not at all, in fact I'd like it," I smiled.  

"Not at all; in fact, I'd like it," I smiled.

"We can write to each other," I suggested hopefully.  

"Huh?" came the only response.  

"You can write, can't you?  You know, on paper?"  Maybe I had
assumed too much?  

{heh.  Cute scene.}

That seemed to put him over the edge.  "Ahh..  Sure Kasumi.  Write

Sure, Kasumi.

me.  He eventually came to enjoy it saying he tended to get tongue-

it, saying

tied in person, but writing gave him a chance to say things right.  I

It was funny, I wrote, even when I did not have an address for him,

funny;

and saved the letters until I did.  Then again, even when I had an
address for him, often my letters would just miss him and get
returned.  I'd save those too, and resend them when he sent me a new
address.  As a result, while I received his mail pretty regularly,
once or twice a week I got at least a postcard, he tended to get my

regularly -- once ... postcard -- he

mail in in large bundles.  

mail in large

It was nice to always have someone to confide in, even if it was not
in person.  I had someone I could talk to about my doubts, worries,
hopes, everything.  Not that I didn't have anyone else to talk to,
in fact Nabiki heard enough about my penpal over the next few years

to; in fact,

that she took to calling him my 'mailman.'  When I had to speak to
someone, it was usually her.  If nothing else, we had to talk enough
to keep the house running, but she had her own friends and
activities, so when I had something important to 'talk' about, I
usually wrote it down.  

She was wrong, I had noticed some boys.  I was a girl just a week
short of my seventeenth bithday, I could not help but notice boys. 
Once again though, most of the boys my own age seemed so young.  I
always figured I would eventually fall for someone more mature, like
Ono-sensei who was just starting at the clinic back then.  I actually
had a brief crush on him for a while.  I had noticed boys, I just
didn't have time for such things.  

{Poor Kasumi.  Very plausible.}

This thought brought me back to the moment, and I walked back into
the livingroom to see Ramna outside looking at the dojo.  He seemed

living room

to know I was there, and quickly turned to come back in.  

"You can workout in the dojo if you like, Ranma," I offered.  

work out

"Yeah, well..  Like I said, Oyaji don't like things that distract

>from the Art, like holidays or birthdays," Ranma paused before

mumbling "or people."  He chuckled, but without any humor.  "You
should have seen the fight we had about all my trips to the library."

{Also very plausible.  Poor Ranma...}

About seven months ago, Ranma warned me that I may start getting his

that I might start

letters more slowly.  Not that he was going to be writing less, but
it looked like they were leaving for China.  He was concerned that

they were going to leave {or maybe} they were preparing to leave

this was just the start of a long series of travels in China or even

this would be just

elsewhere.  

They never settled anywhere for any length of time, so I could not
send him any letters, though I continued to write them.  He could not
read Chinese or speak any of the dialects, and as a result, could not
even make use of the libabraries they ran across.  Ojisan claimed to

libraries

read enough to get by, but Ranma thought he was bluffing - how right
he was.  Ranma was alone in a way he had not been in a quite some

in quite

time, and my hands were tied.  

I came down a bit later as Nabiki announced we had company.  As I

{suggest} later when Nabiki

{or even} later when I heard Nabiki announce

came down the stairs, I saw a large panda take a small girl dressed
in chinese clothing from over his shoulder and place her on the floor
in front of him.  The girls eyes found me and seemed to carry a deep
regret.  

"Kasumi?"  

"I'm sorry," I replied, and added a line I will wish I could take
back until they lay me to rest, "do I know you?" 

{Ouch.  Good thing Kasumi doesn't bang her head on the wall.}

The girl's head and shoulders slumped, and I am pretty sure I heard
her whisper "Chikuso!"  Then she seemed to draw herself back up as

"Chikusho!" {or "Chikushou!", depending on romanization}

she clenched her fists.  She reached into her pack and came out with
a thermos, then grabbed my hand and pulled me outside.  

{I'd believe a kettle from the kitchen before a Thermos from the
pack; Thermos bottles are pretty fragile, and the Ranmaverse is just
full of sudden kettles.  :)  Up to you... but I think it'd be
symbolic to involve Kasumi in the hot-water process.}

She dropped her hand to open the thermos, then holding it up said "I

then, holding it up, said

hope you're right."  

In the mean time, I had finally found my own voice.  "Ranma, what

meantime

happened?"  

Finally he bowed.  "Kasumi, I am very sorry for failing as your
friend.  I have.. missed you and your letters.  I know you can't..
well, do what my.. well, our parents want.  I do hope that you'll
give me another chance as a friend though.  I'll let you know where

friend, though

we're staying around here, and if you want..  you can write to me
then."  

I was too shocked to speak, and I think Ranma took that as his
answer.  I was quiet as we walked back over the roof, and when he
picked me up for the brief trip to the ground.  I stayed silent as he
argued with his father.  

"Oyaji, I ain't in the mood," he said, quietly but firmly.  "I'm
leaving, you coming or not?"  

{suggest} "I'm leaving.  You coming, or not?"

Things have obviously changed a great deal during the brief few
months we've been engaged.  Ranma still insists that I go to med
school, though now he says it is to help him after his training
sessoins.  

sessions.

He and Akane are training each other in the differences between
their two styles, and though Ranma and I will marry, it has been
decided that Akane will teach at the dojo.  They fight a lot, but
mostly I think Akane is just having some confidence trouble working
with someone who has trained so much more than she has.  She is
getting much better though, and is much less stressed than she used

better, though, 

to be.  Ranma has apparently also been helping with some boy trouble
she was having at school.  

{Yeah, I'll bet.  :)  Hope his engagement to Kasumi keeps Akane
from falling for Ranma; despite their many detractors, Akane and
Ranma really do have a lot in common, and strong reasons to be
attracted to each other.}

Ranma has been doing much better since your visit last weekend. 
When we heard about the promise Ojisan had made to you, we were all
very concerned, of course.  I was very glad things worked out after
you met your son.  He feels much more confident knowing he will be
seeing more of you, though I still wish he could tell you these
things himself.  

{Back to the beginning: "never" is a long time, ne?}

Me?  Well, I'm just happy to have my best friend back, to be able to
have dinner with him, tell him about my day, hear about his, watch
the stars, and even to be able to hold his hand.  I'm just happy
things worked out as they did.  It could have happened very
differently, you know?

{heh.  Cute ending sentence.}

***End***

Some terms and notations:

-kun (added to a name) - Term of endearment, often used with
younger males

{I would say a term of familiarity rather than endearment, but up
to you.}

Ojisan - Uncle

{... or unrelated man older than the speaker, which has caused
confusion...}

In closing: it's a bit unusual to see an alternate-Ranma story
that ENDS with the meeting at the Tendo Dojo, but I like this
one.  Ranma's different in a plausible way: he's considerably
more civilized and less conflicted, thanks to Kasumi's long-
distance influence.  Kasumi's different too, being prevented
from withdrawing quite so far by having a friend to talk to
and worry about.

It's also a pleasant change to see a Ranma+Kasumi story that
has Ranma+Kasumi before Akane rather than instead of Akane,
after Akane, or even along with Akane.  :)  Applause.

All in all, a nice story, well-presented.

Thanks for writing and sharing!


Vince Seifert    Network Analyst     seifertv@csus.edu
http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/  updated 1998Jun04
CSUS hired me to build their network, not to speak for the university.