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Ranma 1/2: The Fugitive
An Alternative Universe
By Jack Staik, Bookkeeper-At-Arms
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The Tendo girls watched in amazement as Saotome Genma poured hot water on the winged girl and the monster, changing them back into two athletic teenage boys.
As Soun and Kasumi trussed up the three young intruders, Akane and Nabiki turned to Genma, who was gulping down more sake. "You mind explaining this?"
Soun sat down on the dojo floor by his old friend. "Yes, Saotome. I believe that these events require some explanation."
Genma sighed. "Well, it was three months ago, in China, that I took my son Ranma to the legendary training grounds of Jusenkyo. I remember well my first sighting of that accursed valley, the pools of water with the bamboo pools sticking out.
"The exercise was so simple; two opponents cross the valley on the tops of the poles while attempting to dislodge each other. An exercise of balance and precision and skill.
"The Guide tried to warn us, but his Japanese was so bad ... Perhaps if we had known, we would not have trained there. I would not have fallen into the Spring of the Drowned Panda, and my son not fallen into the Spring of the Drowned Young Girl.
"We were in shock, I in the form of a panda, my son now a girl. The Guide poured hot water on us, and we changed back to our normal selves. But the Guide managed to explain that we were now cursed to change whenever cold water touched us.
"The Guide tried to explain about a cure, the Nannichuan, the Spring of the Drowned Man. I tried to follow his instructions, but his Japanese was so poor ... Instead, my son was washed in the Spring of the Drowned Falcon."
"And now you change form whenever you get wet?" Soun asked. "And since he was washed in two springs, he turns into this strange hybrid thing."
"Indeed. And I fear it cost him his sanity."
Kasumi smiled. "Well, it was just a misunderstanding. Now when he wakes up, we'll be able to explain things to him and -"
"NO!!" Genma said. "I mean - he-he's very dangerous. A powerful martial artist. And not sane!"
"He's also tied up." Nabiki said, her suspicious nature rising to the fore. "And you're little story doesn't explain everything - like those two."
"I know nothing about it." said Genma with utmost sincerity.
Nabiki pointed to her ear. "See this? This is a finely-tuned Bullshit Detector. And it's going off now. In fact, it's been going off almost from the moment you stepped in our home."
"Nabiki!" Soun exclaimed. "How can you speak like that to my oldest friend?!"
"Easy! He came to us *knowing* that a death squad was right behind him! If it weren't for Kasumi, someone could have been hurt ... or killed!" Nabiki turned to her older sister. "Oneechan - wake them up."
"ARE YOU INSANE?!" Genma got between Kasumi and the trussed-up prisoners. "You saw how violent they were - how irrational!"
"I saw them enter our house, apologize for the incidental damage, and act violently only toward you and to Daddy, who attacked one of their number." Nabiki replied. "This is not irrational behavior. As for violence, you were giving as good as you got. Kasumi?"
Genma folded his arms and stood, giving a Fatherly Scowl of Disapproval (pat. pend.). But since he wasn't *her* father, it meant little.
Kasumi uncorked the vial and waved it under Ranma's nose. Ranma grunted and opened his eyes, then began struggling against his bonds.
"What happened? Where am I? Where's Oyaji?"
"Your father? He's right ..." Kasumi turned to indicate Genma, but a quick look around the dojo showed only his complete absence. "Oh my. Where did he go?"
Ranma snorted. "Oh gee, Saotome Genma disappears like a craven coward. What a surprise. How can a man that fat be so gutless?"
"I sense some hostility here." Nabiki deadpanned.
"Wrong. You sense a *LOT* of hostility here!"
"Well, you could tell us why you broke into our house and attempted to murder a guest under our roof." Akane accused.
Ranma blushed. "Gomen nasai. I - shouldn't have allowed our quest to blind us. I'll gladly repair the damage."
"Well, that's nice." Kasumi said, smiling.
"Still doesn't explain why they're tearing around the country trying to kill that panda." Akane said.
"It's not just for me!" Ranma said. "The gods know he's done enough to me to warrant death. But Ryoga and Ucchan - not to mention Kaori and Ryu and Shampoo and all the others - all of it together, it just can't be ignored."
"Well, you could explain it."
"it's a long story..."
Ranma told most of the story, with Ryoga and Ukyo filling in bits as necessary.
<FLASHBACK>
<Time: eleven weeks earlier>
<Place: Jusenkyo Valley>
In their never-ending quest for new challenges to their skills (and Genma's never-ending quest to avoid paying the price for his actions), Ranma and Genma had arrived in the Valley of Jusenkyo.
The Saotomes gazed over the mist-shrouded pools with the bamboo poles sticking out, the eerie unbroken quiet ...
"What a pit," Ranma commented.
"Welcome!" a friendly voice cried out. Approaching the pair was the source of the cry, an overweight man wearing the "People's Uniform" of the Mao era. "Honorable customer, welcome to legendary place of training, Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo."
Genma ignored him. "Are you ready, Ranma?"
Ranma blinked. "Yeah, but this place isn't as intimidating as I thought it would be."
The Guide, seeing their intention, waved his arms in panic. "Honorable Customer, you are crazy! This place so dangerous that people stopped using it for training! Jusenkyo has more than one hundred springs, and each spring has its own tragic legend associated with it."
Genma, heeding the Guide as much as he ever heeded anyone, said "All right, follow me, Ranma."
In a single impressive leap (even to the Guide, who had seen the nearby Amazons at their training), Genma leapt to the top of one of the narrow poles. Ranma, in an equally impressive leap, landed atop another pole.
"Honorable Customer, stop what you are doing!" the Guide cried. "I have not finished telling you all of the danger involved!"
Genma gazed at his son, both their bodies in crane position. "I am not going to show any mercy towards you."
<Since when did you before?> Ranma thought. Aloud, he said, "Heh-heh. Go ahead."
The pair leapt into the air, meeting in midair and exchanging blows, then falling away from each other to land atop nearby poles, only to leap again to the fray.
<Impressive.> the guide thought. "Honorable Customer, you be very sorry if you fall in one of the pools."
Ranma thrust a foot out, penetrating Genma's defenses, slamming his father away. Ranma alit atop a pole while Genma arced gracefully into one of the pools of water.
<SPLASH!>
"Yatta!" Ranma cried.
Ranma waited atop the pole, waiting for his father to surface. And waited. And waited.
"Hey Oyaji!" Ranma cried, a slight feeling of worry crossing his mind. "What's wrong? Had enough?" Ranma looked down into the pool, trying to see where his father had disappeared to.
The water erupted, a huge black-and-white shape leapt out of the pool and alit on one of the poles.
Ranma gazed with some alarm at the ludicrous shape of the panda who wore the remnants of his father's gi, standing atop a narrow pole in crane stance.
Ranma pointed to the panda, shouting at the Guide, "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?"
The Guide shouted back, "That particular pool is called Spring of Drowned Giant Panda. There is very tragic story about a panda bear drown two thousand years ago. Ever since then, anyone who fall in there will come back transformed as panda!"
<Nobody warned me about THAT!> Ranma thought. Aloud he replied "NANI!?"
Genma, however, had only one thought ... getting his licks in. That young pup wouldn't show *him* up! As Ranma was talking to the Guide, Genma leapt to the attack and kicked him in the abdomen.
Ranma felt the paw slam into his gut, the feeling of weightlessness as he sailed through the air, the shock of being immersed in water ... then something new. Something *alien*.
Ranma's head popped up, gasping.
The Guide shook his head sorrowfully. "Ahhh, you fall into Spring of Drowned Young Girl. Very tragic story that fifteen hundred years ago, a young lady drown there. Ever since then, anyone who fall in there will come back transformed as a young girl!"
Ranma heard the Guide's words, then looked down at his ... at *her* body. She pulled open the top of her gi, revealing ... breasts.
The Guide nodded. "See, you turned into girl!"
The scream shook Genma out of his self-congratulatory smugness. His son had ... *changed*!
As he leapt down, he noticed his own condition. Pandas can't scream, but the bellow was clear enough to the Guide.
"No worry, honored customers. I fix." The Guide went to his nearby shack and fetched the kettle he had put on as soon as he had seen people approaching. Somehow, the damned pools seemed to *drag* people in. Soon, the Guide was pouring hot water over the hysterical victims, changing them back to their human selves.
As the newly-restored men gasped in relief, gingerly feeling themselves. The Guide prepared to drop the next bombshell.
"Alas, honored customers, you are now cursed. Now, when you get wet with cold water, you now change. But you change back with hot water."
(Perhaps it wasn't kind to tell them like this, but it was kinder than letting them find out themselves.)
"But - but -" Genma sputtered. "Isn't there a real cure?"
"Oh yes, honored customer. The Spring of Drowned Man." He gestured vaguely toward the pools. "But there problem -"
"Yes!" Genma cried, picking up Ranma and hurling him toward what he thought was the pool the Guide gestured to.
Genma prepared to leap in, when suddenly a *shape* leapt out of the pool. Genma gazed open-mouthed at the huge reddish wings, the long claws, the inhuman eyes...
"What happened? I thought that was the Drowned Man Pool!" Genma cried.
"No, that was Spring of Drowned Hunting Falcon."
"Then WHERE IS THE DROWNED MAN POOL!?!" Genma screamed.
"I not know! Springs move!"
Ranma had landed besides her father and the Guide. "The brochure didn't mention this!" Genma protested.
"Yes it does!" the Guide protested back. "All tourist brochures contain warning!"
"Where?" Genma protested, waving a tourist brochure.
"Page one - oversize type - big red letters."
"So what? I can't read Chinese!"
Ranma snatched the brochure from Genma and looked at it. In Japanese was "Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo" and "Warning" and "Avoid at all costs".
Then Ranma saw the title: "Dangerous and Forbidden Training Grounds of China".
"YOU KNEW?!?" Ranma roared. "You knew this place was dangerous - and you hauled us both here anyway?!?"
"The Path of the True Martial Artist is fraught with peril." Genma said in his Wise-Old-Sensei voice.
"TEME BAKAYAROU!!" she cried. "I've listened to you long enough! Selling me left and right - framing me for your petty thefts - stealing my food all the time - dragging me across half the damn world - the nekoken - ENOUGH!!"
"What are you, some weak girl?!? After all I've sacrificed for you, for you to start whining about a minor inconvenience -"
"SHI-NE!!" Ranma cried, talons slashing. Genma flinched back, hi gi ripped by his transformed son's claws. He felt a sting ... glancing down, he saw the thin trails of blood where the tips had scored him.
The Guide's words echoed in his mind; <"Pool of Drowned Hunting Falcon" ... "Drowned *HUNTING* Falcon" ...>
He saw in those golden eyes the look of a predator, a predator who has located his prey...
He recalled that he hadn't really been able to beat Ranma in a fair fight for several years...
Genma broke for the woods.
With a cry of rage, Ranma flapped her wings and took to the air, sailing into the sky as if she had done it all her life.
In pursuit of her prey.
Hibiki Ryoga stumbled through the woods. He *knew* that Ranma was around here. He'd followed him all the way from Japan!
(Actually, 'followed' was not the appropriate word, but he was actively seeking Ranma's trail. And over the past four years, he had blundered across it more than once.)
"Soon, Saotome, I shall have my revenge!" Ryoga snarled.
Ryoga felt his sandal come loose, and bent down to tie it back up.
As he bent over, a large ... *familiar* ... man ran out of the woods. "Out of my way!" he cried, slamming Ryoga out of his path.
As Ryoga fell off the cliff, he wondered at the good luck that put those nice pools of water there for him to land in ...
The Guide had had a busy day. First those two Japanese tourists fell in (especially that boy who was now a winged girl - he wasn't aware that curses blended like that). That gave him an idea of the current position of several pools (as well as certain pools that were in fixed positions relative to the Drowned Young Girl Spring).
Then the panda-man was chased away by the angry winged-girl-boy. He stumbled back several hours later, in panda form, falling on a small piglet.
While the Guide boiled water for the extra-fresh pork (a local delicacy), he showed the panda-man how to use the special magic signs they kept for some Jusenkyo victims.
A busy day, but at least there would be a good meal out of it.
The little pig awoke with a headache and a desire to hurt a panda. As the Guide talked to the panda about the special way pork was cooked locally, the piglet began to sweat visibly (a good trick for an animal without sweat glands).
"Now, Honored Customer," said the Guide, "we have good food!" And he tossed the piglet in the water.
The pot erupted with a naked yelling Japanese boy, scaring the Guide and the panda.
"YOU BASTARD! YOU TRIED TO EAT ME!" he bellowed.
[Don't hurt me! I'm just a cute l'il panda!] read the sign the panda held up.
The boy froze momentarily as he read the sign. Genma, meanwhile, his nerves already shot, overreacted and used the moment to swat the boy through the wall of the shack.
"(Oh no, my house!)" the Guide called out in Chinese.
Ryoga started to wonder if that panda was just a panda (not too swift on the uptake, is he?), just as he landed in the pool of water.
The Guide went over the current positions of the known pools in his head. Oddly enough, he knew which pool the piglet-boy would land in; the Spring of the Drowned Sun-Bear.
<SPLASH!>
With a base "BWEE!", the great bear/pig monster climbed out of the pool. Genma, knowing that discretion is the better part of cowardice (er - valor), decided to be very discreet while his opponent was still distracted with his new transformation and headed away at best speed.
<END FLASHBACK>
"When I returned to the Guide's shack," Ranma continued, "he had managed to calm Ryoga down and change him back. He wanted both Genma and the Panda, and we explained that they were the same person. We actually managed to talk about a lot of things, like the ... incident that had ended our friendship and had caused him to hunt me down for four years - that was Oyaji's fault, too. Just like him getting two curses, like me getting two curses, like Ucchan ... just another life destroyed by that bastard."
"She doesn't look too destroyed." said Nabiki, looking at the girl.
"Well, my life was ruined by that jackass Genma, too." she snarled. "Ranma and I were engaged by our parents when we were six -"
"WHAT?!?" Soun roared, the image of a giant demon-head erupting from him.
The three teens nodded understandingly. "Let me guess," Ryoga said in a smartass tone, "Genma promised that Ranma would marry your daughter, and in return, you gave Genma a dowry, which he ran off with."
Soun's demon-head faded. "The dojo. I gave him the deed."
The three girls turned to their father. "WHAT?!?"
"You were going to marry us to someone without telling us?" Akane raged.
"Are you nuts??" Nabiki accused.
"I'm not sure that's proper," chided Kasumi.
"Feh," Ukyo commented. "Stand in line, girls."
"Oyaji had quite a racket." Ranma explained. "I didn't even learn about it until after Jusenkyo. He and I would go to some dojo, and I'd beat their champion. Then Genma would talk the sensei into believing that he wanted to settle down. They would engage the sensei's daughter to me, Genma would get the dowry, and then we'd run off. Ucchan was the first I know of. There were lots."
"But we arranged this before any of you were even born! Almost twenty-five years ago!" Soun wailed.
"Correction noted." Ranma said. "He conned you *first*." He shook his head in wonder. "The bastard had sold me before I was even born."
"Why you -" Akane advanced on the bound boy. "If you think I'd marry you -"
"You ain't forcing me to hold up that arrangement!" Ranma snapped. "I'll only marry the girl I *ask* to marry me! If you got a problem with that, take it up with Genma!"
"<Ahem!>" Nabiki said. "We're getting distracted. Ucchan - is that it? - was talking."
"It's Ukyo, and thanks, honey. I'd almost forgotten. As I was saying, Genma had engaged Ranma to me, but then he ran out without me. And with the dowry, too - the okonomiyaki yattai that was our family's livelihood. My family was so shamed that my father couldn't admit he had a daughter, and I was forced to live as a boy from that time forward.
"My father made me swear to hunt down Genma and Ranma and exact vengeance for the family's shame. I trained in the Okonomiyaki Kakuto Kuonji-ryu constantly, training by the sea ..." Her face darkened. "After ten years, we heard that the Saotomes were near. I went to battle them - only to find Genma fighting for his life from a winged girl and a troll."
"HEY!" Ryoga said.
"Gomen, Ryoga-kun." she apologized. "I jumped in, and slammed Genma aground a bit. But he got away."
"Saotome Secret Technique." Ranma chuckled grimly.
"I talked with Ranma and Ryoga, and discovered their curses. We compared notes, and Ranma told me about the other 'fiancees' he'd run into in China and Japan. I realized that Ranma was a victim, too. So I joined the quest." Ukyo snarled. "Together, we'll make Genma pay."
"Well, I'm sure Genma has a perfectly good explanation." Soun said firmly. "And we'll ask him when we find him."
"And get back the deed to the dojo!" Nabiki said.
Akane had calmed down a bit, and was beginning to feel some sympathy for these people. Cursed, sold, used, disgraced ... "Is there anything Saotome Genma hasn't done?" she asked half-joking.
"Lessee..." Ranma said, thinking, "... petty theft, fraud, slavery, torture ... nope. I'm pretty sure he's covered everything."
"Torture?" Kasumi asked.
"When I was a kid." Ranma replied. "Don't ask - it would upset you."
Kasumi heard the pain in his voice, underneath the rage. <Poor boy, he's suffered so much...>
"At least he hasn't gotten a girl in trouble." Nabiki said sarcastically.
A rumble went through the dojo, making everyone pause. One wall imploded, sending dust and wood chips through the room. Through the hole walked a purple-haired girl in a skin-tight Chinese pantsuit.
"Shampoo!" Ranma cried.
"Hi, Ranma! What you do here? Where Genma?"
"We had him, but he got away."
Akane scowled. All these people rampaging through her house were annoying her, first these three, now a gaijin. "Who the hells are you?!?"
"I Shampoo. Where Genma?"
Soun put on his Stern-But-Kindly-Sensei face. "And why do you want my old friend?"
"Daddy!" Nabiki hissed. <You don't even know if she's hostile or not, and you just blabbed that he's a friend ->
"Genma is husband! Shampoo must take back to village!"
The Tendos all facefaulted. "HUSBAND?!?" Soun cried.
"After what Genma do, he must marry Shampoo! Village law demand it! Any outsider who do that to maiden must marry her!"
Nabiki shrugged. "Okay, add 'getting a girl in trouble' to the list."
Soun smirked. "Genma, you old dog! She can't be a day over seventeen!"
"Shampoo is sixteen." she confirmed. "Old enough to marry. Would have married when it happened, but no one ever do that to Shampoo before, was stunned - confused. He leave while Shampoo still flat on back, before Shampoo could stop him."
Nabiki was stunned herself. "How could that old coot manage *that*? With *her*?? It's inconceivable - er, bad choice of words there."
"And when Shampoo catch up, Genma injure Shampoo so much that it weeks before Shampoo could walk again."
Kasumi hugged the Amazon girl. "Oh you poor dear! To be treated like that ... how awful!"
Akane looked at the bound threesome on the floor - now seeing them as heroes seeking to stop a perverted monster from defiling young girls. She started to untie the captives. "Gomen nasai, Ranma-san. If we'd known the whole story -"
Ukyo saw what everyone was thinking (being swifter on the uptake than Ranma and Ryoga), and spoke up. "Um, I think you should hear the whole story first."
* * * * * * * * *
To Be Continued
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