No Need for Ranma!
A Ranma � / Tenchi Muyo / Sailor Moon Alternate History
By Ammadeau
Roy.Fokker@UNSpacy.org
http://members.tripod.com/~Ammadeau/fanfiction.htm

You can find the proceeding chapters either at the above web
page or the Tenchi Muyo archive: www.netmanor.com/gensao/
Special thanks to Gensao for posting it there.

This chapter, at least to me, is very different from the ones
before it.  What I most want to know is doing a chapter like
this a good idea, or should this just be summarized? I'm also
stalled on writing part b to this so any input, questions,
comments, c&c, you can give are needed.

	Ryoga was wandering once again through unfamiliar 
streets, though for him everything was unfamiliar.  That was his 
problem, he could never tell once place from another, even if he�d 
been there a hundred times.  He could never remember what 
anything looked like.  What was the color of his house?  How 
many rooms?  Was his room upstairs or down?  He just couldn�t 
recall no matter how hard he tried.  People and some things stuck 
in his mind.  He had recognized Ranma right off, even though it 
had been years since he�d seen him last.  His parents� faces were 
clear as crystal, even though he only saw them once every few 
months since he was eight. Never could he remember anything that 
could help him find his way, or even figure out where he was.

Chapter 7a: The Pig and the Tiger

	�The lost boy� some people had called him, like it was 
some kind of joke.  They�d all laugh and point at him in the 
schoolyard, saying how he had gotten lost in a closet or spent an 
hour looking for the exit to the bathroom.  He showed them 
though.
	Ryoga had started learning martial arts when he was very 
young, from his father, but he had never really been serious about 
it.  By the time that he wanted to teach the kids in school a lesson, 
he was having a hard time finding his father for even a few minutes 
before one of them would wander off.  Ryoga got a few tips that 
way, but what he needed was a regular sparring partner to bring up 
his skills.
	Luck was with him when he wandered into a dojo owned 
by the husband of his father�s sister, Mr. Kai, who was the master 
of All Weather Martial Arts.  Since this Art was only meant to be 
passed down to immediate family, Uncle Kai refused to teach 
Ryoga any of its special techniques, but was happy to help the boy 
in perfecting Ryoga�s Art.  Which was more important is Uncle 
Kai provided young Ryoga with a sparring partner, Kai�s daughter 
Azumi, who he was training as the heir to the All Weather school.
	Most girls Azumi�s age were short and cute, still filled out 
with baby-fat.  Azumi was not.  She was tall; taller than Ryoga 
who was the tallest boy he knew at his age.  He body was lean, but 
with muscle that must have taken years to build up.  She had 
inherited the trademark Hibiki fangs and unruly black hair from her 
mother, but in most other ways she resembled her father.  She 
wasn�t very pretty and no one would honestly say she would 
become a great beauty.  She also had a tendency to laugh quite a 
bit, usually at someone else�s misfortune.  Her way of laughed 
would have sounded more appropriate on a hyena than a human.
	Ryoga found her to be open and friendly, treating him like 
they had known each other all of their lives rather than having just 
met.  She also found that she had inherited an immense strength 
from both her father and mother.  In her Ryoga had found what he 
was looking for: a sparring partner, and perhaps something even 
more important, a friend.
	Ryoga found out early into their sparring sessions that his 
cousin was a good martial artist.  It shouldn�t have been that big a 
surprise; she had been training since birth while he had only been 
able to train occasionally and usually without anyone else�s help.  
Still, it was a bruise on his ego that a girl of all things could be a 
better fighter than him.  It drove him to improve his skills.  It also 
helped that Azumi frequently taunted him about her superiority in 
combat.  It worked.  After only a year of occasionally matches, 
sometimes as often as once a week, Ryoga had become her equal.
	Due to his �lack of direction� curse, Ryoga didn�t get the 
chance to spar with Azumi regularly.  Strangely enough though, 
once he had dedicated himself to improving his martial arts he was 
able to find the Kai dojo a lot more often than he should have been 
able to.  And when he couldn�t find the dojo, he had the luck of 
running into other martial artists that were willing to help him 
train, even if it was only to relieve boredom.
When he finally made it back he made sure that they didn�t 
call him the �lost boy� anymore.  He became a schoolyard legend 
sort of, iron-fist Hibiki, the boy that no one in their right mind 
messed with.  People were too afraid of him to be his friend now, 
but that didn�t matter since he had been an outcast before anyway.  
At least they stopped teasing him.
	And then Ranma had come to Ryoga�s school and took 
everything away from him.  Teased him, took his rightful lunches, 
too fast for Ryoga to hit, even started making fun of how slow 
Ryoga was.  Unlike his matches with Azumi, no matter how much 
Ryoga pushed himself to improve, Ranma was always better, 
always faster, more skilled.  And worst of all, he did it all with a 
smile, without anger of any kind, like it was some sort of game.  
He even lead him by the hand to school so Ryoga wouldn�t get 
lost.
�Did he have any idea how humiliating that was for me?� 
Ryoga thought, �The toughest kid in the school having to be lead 
by the hand like a baby?�
The whispers began again.  Not to his face, no one else but 
Ranma would ever risk it, but he heard them just the same.  He was 
no longer the iron-fist, toughest kid in school, he was the poor little 
lost boy who had to be lead by hand to school.  He threw 
everything he had into his fights with Ranma, using every ounce of 
strength and skill, but he could never beat him.  The whispers only 
grew louder.
One day Ryoga had had enough. He went out in search of a 
technique with which he could defeat his hated rival.  He wound up 
in a remote temple somehow were an elderly monk showed how to 
make cloth as strong as steel.  It was certainly good to get some use 
out of the bandannas that his mother had insisted that he always 
wear.
After he came back from weeks worth of wandering and 
some special training under his belt, he challenged Ranma to an all 
or nothing fight to the finish in the lot behind his house.  Then he 
would show them all and silence those whispers for good.
	It was such a simple thing for him to get lost.  Go left 
instead of right, one mistake and all of his carefully remembered 
steps would only take him further away from where he wanted to 
go.  It only was made worse by being distracted by something, like 
mentally preparing himself for a fight, meant that it would take 
him that much longer to notice his mistake, and that much further 
away from where he wanted to be.
	By the time Ryoga had found his way back to the empty lot 
behind his house, Ranma was gone.  So Ryoga somehow made it 
to school, planning on confronting Ranma there for running out on 
their fight.  Had four days been really too much to ask for a duel 
that would decide their rivalry once and for all?  Ryoga didn�t 
think so, he would have waited weeks if need be.
So it should be understood the Ryoga wasn�t in the right 
frame of mind when he approached the school on that day.  He 
could see all of the other students taking in his dusty clothes and 
whispering among themselves that he�d been lost again.  Worse, 
some even whispered that he�d purposely gotten lost to avoid the 
fight that he had talked so much about.  That he was afraid, afraid 
of Ranma.  He�d show them, show them that he wasn�t afraid of 
anyone.  He caught sight of a familiar pigtail and shouted, "Ranma, 
prepare to die!"

	Akane had never really liked the rain.  Even the light drops 
that were falling now were enough to activate her curse.  The 
shower had come out of nowhere, starting faster than she could 
retrieve her umbrella from her bag.  The morning weather report 
certainly hadn�t mentioned it.  While there were several benefits to 
her tiger form, it wasn�t the way she had wanted to walk home 
from school.  For one thing, she had to leave her school bag 
behind, no longer having hands to carry it with.
	There were few people on the street that overcast day, 
which was a good thing for Akane; fewer faces of horror to stare 
back at her, fewer screams of fear.  Most people simply ran or were 
frozen in place by the sight of a large tiger prowling down the 
street.  Occasionally, some foolishly brave person would try to 
confront her, usually with a lot of bravado but little martial arts 
training.  Even if she were a real tiger they�d be no more than 
annoyance.  To Akane, whose martial arts training translated over 
to her new four-footed form, they weren�t even worth her notice.  
She found out that she could do claw swipes that could shred 
things from the air pressure alone, just like Ranma in cat-fist mode.
	Despite how hard she tried, Akane couldn�t stop the 
memories from coming.  It had been raining in just the same way 
on that day when she had first met a certain pig-tailed boy.  Akane 
had been five at the time and had been sitting in the dojo, thinking.  
The dojo was where she always went when she needed to think.  At 
her age there hadn�t been much call for it before, but for every day 
the past week she had spent some time there, thinking.
	It had been one week ago when their whole family had 
visited her mother in the hospital.
"Why is mommy here?" she asked her father.  Father had 
said that mother was sick.  This was something that Akane had 
understood, since mom had been sick before.  This wasn�t even the 
first time that she had been in the hospital.
Akane had never been sick, not in her whole life.  She had 
asked her sister Nabiki what it was like to be sick, but she hadn�t 
known because she hadn�t ever been sick either.  She had asked her 
eldest sister Kasumi, who was sure to know since Kasumi knew 
almost as much about things as mom.  Kasumi had tried to explain 
it to Akane, but it was much too complicated for the youngest 
Tendo to understand.  It became one of those �you�ll understand 
when you�re older� things.  There seemed to be more and more of 
those every day.
On the way back from the hospital, Akane had asked her 
father "When is mommy coming home?"
"In a while," her father had said to her.  When she had 
asked him the next day, he had said the same thing but looked as if 
he was getting sick too.
Akane had asked her sister Kasumi "Is daddy getting sick?  
Will he have to go to the hospital too?"  Kasumi told her that father 
wasn�t sick and he wouldn�t be going to the hospital.
Akane asked her "When is mommy coming home?"  
Kasumi answered with the same thing that daddy had said.
The next morning daddy didn�t come down for breakfast.  
Akane wondered where he was.  It wasn�t because of the food.  
Kasumi�s miso soup wasn�t as good as mom�s, but it was still 
tasty.  Akane liked her sister�s miso, though she liked her mom�s 
better.  
"Where�s daddy?" Akane had asked her sister Kasumi.  
Nabiki also looked to her big sister for the answer.  Kasumi told 
him that he was at the hospital.
"Is he sick?" Akane had asked.  Kasumi had told them no 
and suddenly bolted out of the room.  Akane and Nabiki had 
looked at each other in surprise.  Neither of them had ever seen 
their older sister act like that before.
Their next door neighbor Mrs. Kenji came from the kitchen 
where she had helped Kasumi make breakfast.  Akane hadn�t been 
surprised to see her.  Whenever mom and dad had to go out, she 
would come over to watch them, sometimes with her husband.  
They were even older than Akane�s dad, with white wisps of hair 
and sagging shoulders.  Akane liked Mrs. Kenji; she read Akane 
stories from big books with no pictures and gave her sweets when 
she was good.  Akane tried her best to be good when Mrs. Kenji 
was around.
Akane decided to try the same question on Mrs. Kenji.  "Is 
my daddy sick?" 
"Why would you ask a thing like that?" she had replied.  
"Kasumi said that he was in the hospital," Nabiki had 
added.  Akane knew that Nabiki liked to know things too; that he 
wanted to know as much as mom someday.  Mrs. Kenji had simply 
nodded to what Nabiki had said.
"Kasumi said he wasn�t sick," Akane said, "but why is he at 
the hospital if he isn�t sick?"
"Is it to visit mom?" Nabiki added before Mrs. Kenji could 
say anything.
Then Mrs. Kenji had started to look a bit sick, like dad had 
when Akane had asked him about mom yesterday.  Neither of them 
looked like mom.  When they had visited her in the hospital mom 
hadn�t looked sick.  She looked tired, like she hadn�t been sleeping 
much.  Akane had told her mom to try and get more sleep when 
they had visited.  Mom had promised that she would.  Akane knew 
that she would too; mom always kept her promises.
Akane and Nabiki were a little surprised when Mrs. Kenji 
hugged them real close and said, "No, your father isn�t sick 
darlings, and he�ll be home real soon."
She just held them for a few more moments.  When she let 
them go, she said, "Why don�t you two be big girls and take the 
dishes into the kitchen while I talk with your sister."
Akane and Nabiki started collecting the dishes right away.  
Akane was surprised that her sister hadn�t tried to talk Akane into 
doing all of them herself, as she had the habit of doing whenever 
work was involved.  It could be that she only wanted the lessen the 
number of dishes that Akane could break.
Akane was clumsy; she had been for all of her life, 
stumbling over her feet, tripping on stuff, and things like that.  
She�d even broken dishes before so she was real careful with the 
ones she had.  That�s why she took up martial arts so she could 
learn how to move graceful like her dad.  It was one of the reasons 
anyway.
Because they were curious, Akane and Nabiki sat around 
the table waiting for Mrs. Kenji to come back.  When she did after 
a little while, Akane asked, "Where�s Kasumi?" 
"She�s in her room."
"Why?"
"She isn�t feeling well, so she needed to rest a while."
"She�s sick?"
"Yes."
"Is she going to the hospital?"
"No."
"When�s daddy coming back?"
"Soon."
"When is mommy coming back?"
Mrs. Kenji didn�t answer.  For a while she simply sat there, 
not doing anything at all.  When she finally spoke, it was almost a 
whisper.  "I don�t know."
Akane and Nabiki turned to look at each other in confusion.  
First the answers had been "Soon", then "In a while", now it was "I 
don�t know."
That was when Akane went into the dojo to think.  She 
normally went there to practice martial arts.  Sometimes she would 
practice and think at the same time, but at the moment she didn�t 
feel up to it.
Mrs. Kenji knew a lot; more than Kasumi did, but Akane 
didn�t think that she knew more than mom.  Still, this was the first 
time she had said that she didn�t know something.  Maybe the 
people at the hospital didn�t tell her when Akane�s mother was 
coming home.  Why didn�t she ask?  Maybe she forgot.  Then why 
didn�t she say that she forgot?  Akane didn�t know.
Dad came home a few hours later.  Akane didn�t see him 
come home because she was still in the dojo thinking.  Nabiki had 
told her about it later.  That he spoke to Mrs. Kenji for a little while 
and went straight to his room.
It was Mrs. Kenji that came to the dojo and told Akane that 
it was time for dinner.  Akane hadn�t even noticed how long has 
passed.  She had spent the whole time sitting in one place and 
thinking.  By that time she still hadn�t come up with anything.
She met Nabiki on the way to the dinner table.  That was 
when Akane learned that dad was in his room and also Kasumi was 
out of hers now, saying that she felt better.  Akane and Nabiki sat 
down at the table while Mrs. Kenji and Kasumi put the finishing 
touches on dinner.
Mr. Kenji had joined them at the dinner table.  He was a 
short, balding man who rarely spoke and always wore a slight 
smile on his face.  Akane knew that he left early in the morning to 
go to work and didn�t come home until dinnertime.  She knew that 
he was working during that time, but had no idea what he did and 
neither did Nabiki.  The sisters had made a game of trying to guess 
what he did during the day.  Neither thought to ask him, and 
besides it would ruin the game.
	So they all sat around the dinner table in silence, waiting 
for dinner to be served.  Akane didn�t try to ask Mr. Kenji any 
questions; if Mrs. Kenji didn�t know, she reasoned, then he 
wouldn�t know either.
	Dinner was very good, though not as good as something 
Akane�s mom had made.  Mrs. Kenji told Akane that her father 
wasn�t sick, that he was only resting, before Akane could ask.
"Like mom?" Akane had asked since she still remembered 
how tired her mother looked in the hospital.  Akane wondered if 
she had said the wrong thing since both Mrs. Kenji and Kasumi 
looked like they were going to cry and Mr. Kenji wasn�t smiling 
anymore.
"No dear, not like your mother," Mrs. Kenji finally 
answered.
	Father wasn�t there for breakfast the next day and Mrs. 
Kenji had come back in the morning to make it.  Kasumi wasn�t 
there either.  Mrs. Kenji told Akane and Nabiki that dad and 
Kasumi had stayed up late last night and needed to rest in today.  
Mrs. Kenji would bring them both their breakfasts later.
	Mr. Kenji came by to bring Nabiki to school.  Nabiki was a 
whole year older than Akane and so had to go to school while 
Akane, as the youngest, didn�t.  At first Akane was happy that she 
didn�t have to go to school after hearing Nabiki talk about it.  It 
sounded like a lot of work and no fun.  But there was only so much 
she could do around the house and so long that she could practice 
before she would become bored with it.  She started to resent her 
sisters who got to go someplace else every day, even if it was only 
for a little while.  It was usually Mrs. Kenji or father that walked 
Nabiki and Kasumi to school, but Nabiki was hurried along before 
her or Akane could ask why.  Mrs. Kenji told Akane that Kasumi 
wouldn�t be going to school that day.
	While Mrs. Kenji gave dad and Kasumi their breakfast, 
Akane went into the dojo, to think.  She had offered to help deliver 
breakfast, but Mrs. Kenji told her that they shouldn�t be disturbed.  
Akane insisted that she could be as quiet as a mouse, but Mrs. 
Kenji still wouldn�t let her help.
	Why did dad and Kasumi have to stay in their rooms?  Mrs. 
Kenji had said that they weren�t sick, that they were tired instead.  
Mom looked tired, but everyone said that she was sick.  Dad and 
Kasumi had both looked sick the last time Akane had seen them, 
but Mrs. Kenji had said that they were tired.  Akane held her head 
in her hands as she had sometimes seen her father do when she or 
Nabiki had given him too much trouble.  This was all a bit too 
much for a five-year-old to deal with.
	It was just Akane and Mrs. Kenji for lunch.  "Is daddy and 
Kasumi still sleeping?" Akane had asked.  Mrs. Kenji nodded and 
told her that they were real tired and that they might sleep through 
dinner too.
	"What would you like to do today dear?" Mrs. Kenji had 
asked Akane.
"Practice martial arts," Akane replied immediately.
"Are you sure you wouldn�t like to do something else?  
Like have a tea party for your stuffed animals?"
Akane shook her head no.  Kasumi played with the dolls 
she had, having parties and making them dresses, with help from 
mom.  Nabiki had a lot of stuffed animals; they lined a shelf in her 
room.  Sometimes Nabiki said they were her servants, sometimes 
her army, and sometimes her spies.  Akane didn�t really like going 
into her sister�s room because of them.  Having all those eyes 
watching her all the time made her feel uneasy.  Akane only really 
had one stuffed animal; a little black pig that she called P-chan.  
Her mother had been the one to pick the name.  She had had it a 
real long time, even since he was two, and little P-chan had begun 
to show signs of wear.  One of the eyes was loose and some of the 
stuffing had come out, though mom had sewed up the rip. P-chan 
had been mostly neglected lately, since Akane felt that a martial 
artist didn�t have time for things like playing with stuffed animals.  
After all, she had never seen her daddy play with them and he was 
the best martial artist she knew.
	Akane led Mrs. Kenji to the dojo by hand, impatient to 
begin.  She hadn�t really been practicing ever since mom had to go 
to the hospital.  She knew that it was a bad thing to neglect her 
training.  Daddy might get mad and mom might be disappointed in 
her.  Her mother didn�t know any martial arts at all, but she�d been 
in and out of the dojo ever since she was a little girl like Akane.  
Mom had told Akane once that the dojo had been in their family 
for hundreds of years, even before grandma and grandpa had been 
born.  It was inconceivable for little Akane that something could be 
older than her grandparents.
	Mom loved the dojo and had always wanted to be a martial 
artist practicing in it, but unfortunately she had absolutely no skill 
in it.  She didn�t like violence, but even the non-violent forms 
eluded her, despite her natural grace.
"That�s okay mommy," Akane had told her, "I�ll be a 
martial artist for both of us."
Her mother had smiled and replied, "Of course you will my 
Akane-chan.  You�ll be the best martial artist in the world."
"Even better than daddy?" which to Akane was nearly 
inconceivable, her father was the best.
Her mother smiled again and said, "Yes, even better than 
your father, if you practice hard enough."
"I will mommy."
	And Akane realized that she had been letting her mother 
down when she had stopped practicing.  She had promised to train 
every day, promised to be the best in the world, but for the past 
couple of days she had only come to the dojo to think and not 
practice.  Thinking hadn�t helped her out so far, so it was time to 
train.
	Akane set up a dummy in the middle of the dojo to practice 
her punches and kicks on.  Mrs. Kenji sat down near the doors to 
watch.  Akane like martial arts very much; in was her favorite 
thing to do in the world.  It was much better than having tea with a 
stupid doll or playing with some dumb stuffed animals.


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