Since only ONE person has admitted to actually getting
to the end of the last attempt (which I can understand
since I tend to ignore badly formatted works myself),
I've decided to try it again (I hope the formatting
problem is fixed now).
Also, I don't want to offend everybody who gave
advice on the .doc/.txt-matter, but the first one
arrived about two hours AFTER I had posted the
.txt vesion one (which in turn was posted about half
an hour after the first one). Thank you any way.
Here we go again:
FIRST FANFIC ALERT! (still)
I suppose I can't avoid asking for C & C. This has not been pre-read,
spell-checked or fact-checked, but includes some very minor changes.
Finally, a few words on the fic:
This has been lurking at the back of my head for a long time. It
should probably be considered a prologue/character introduction for
a longer series, but I have no clear idea of where to go from here.
Actually, now that I have it in a "tangible" form, so to say, I've
got some ideas (of the kind that anybody who reads it would get), but
more on this after the story. If anyone wants to take over they are
welcome to do so, but please tell me before you do. Also, it began as
an Evangelion crossover (of the "the Children gets stranded in the
past"-variety) but that element was so contrived that I dropped it.
This story takes place several years after the end of the manga -
Lin Lin and Ran Ran are sixteen and has been relocated to Nerima
(and Furinkan) while most of the main cast are away at various
universities and colleges. It also includes several new characters
(mainly prevously unheard of cousins and younger siblings)
to make sure that the twins schooldays are as eventful as Ranma's.
Crossovers are also a possibility, if it ever progresses beyond the
prologue.
Is anybody still reading this?
Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 etc. does not belong to me, but to Rumiko
Takahashi and others whom I can't quite remember at the moment. I
merely use them for what might be a blatant copyright infringement
or possibly is acceptable under the fair use doctrine. Since most
new characters can trace their origin back to the copyright above,
I probably can't claim any rights to them either.
I'm sorry about the footnotes (below), but they didn't quite fit
into the main text.
Night Thoughts
A Ranma 1/2 fan fiction by Hans Holm
Lin Lin was pondering the injustice of it all. Ever since she and
Ran Ran had been relocated, not entirely unwilling, to Japan she
had developed a habit of making lists and so she was mentally a list
of all the injustice she was subjected to. The current number one
was the fact that, since Mousse was home from university, she had to
sleep in Ran Ran's room. Even if he was getting an degree that would
greatly benefit the village if he should return(1), she couldn't see
why he had to get his old room back for the week instead of sleeping
in a cage like he used to do when it was Lin Lin and Ran Ran who did
the visiting. Even if he wasn't cursed any longer.
(1) It was generally considered a win-win situation. The village
would benefit either from Mousse returning and using his knowledge
for the good of the village (even if noone was quite sure of
what he was studying) or from Mousse deciding to not to return.
The second, which was normally number one, was that Ran Ran had
developed a number of bad habits since they moved to Japan. The
current leader of these were snoring. Ran Ran's snoring was so loud
that they reverberated throughout the Nekohanten, and led Lin Lin to
the conclusion that Ran Ran was snoring willfully to annoy her and keep
her from sleeping. It was also quite obvious that she only snored
this loudly when Lin Lin was either a) sharing a room with her, or
b) having a test first thing in the morning. Another of Ran Ran's
newly acquired bad habits was that of not having to wear glasses.
Lin Lin, on the other hand, had to and now had to deal with people's
assumption that she was Mousse's little sister and also subjected to
almost daily insinuations of sado-masochistic tendencies(2). Other
bad habits that Ran Ran had developed included cutting her hair
(Lin Lin still had the "official Chinese Amazon girl"- hairstyle),
making friends with the popular kids at school, going to a lot of
parties and clubs and, Lin Lin suspected, behaving in a way unbecoming
of a Chinese Amazon. Even if she herself wasn't strictly following all
Amazon rules anymore, or rather wouldn't if she got he chance and
wasn't busy with training, school, homework and waitressing, she felt
that the defeated-by-outsider-male rule was the really main point of
the whole moving to Japan deal. Which brought her to number three
on the list:
boys.
(2) For some reason these tended to peak every time Tarou showed
up in the neighborhood
When Shampoo was sixteen, Nerima was swarming with eligible martial
artists. The current crop of Nerman boys couldn't punch their way out
of an extra-strength garbage bag (and most of them probably couldn't
out-think it either). The martial artists, and even the non-martial
artists, of "the Ranma era", that Lin Lin was familiar with was
rapidly becoming ineligible. Ranma had been pretty much inseparable
from Akane for years, even if Shampoo hadn't, in theory, given up yet.
When Shampoo visited she generally gave Cologne a report on her lack
of progress, while telling Lin Lin and Ran Ran what jerks the guys she
actually dated turned out to be. Mousse, who had given up on Shampoo
and was pointedly attending another university, denied having a
girlfriend, but according to Nabiki and Kuno(3), there was a girl
who dragged him to parties and movies, got him to pay for those movies
(and dinner) and, rumour said, had been known to wake up in the same
bed. Ryoga was married to Akari and the "okyonomaki-guy" was still a
girl. The list went on and on. If Lin Lin had known that the current
crop of eligible martial artists in Nerima had been virtually
non-existent, she would have stayed in the village even if this meant
the perpetual risk of losing to someone from the Musk dynasty and daily
exposure to Feng Feng. Feng Feng had been OK when they were kids,
but since puberty he had been increasingly trying, much like a
second-rate Mousse without the latter's good points (like martial
arts skill and chasing someone other than Lin Lin).
(3) Or, as they were now generally referred to Nabikiandkuno.
The so-called Superglue-incident might have had something
to do with this.
Feng Feng was at that very moment sneaking off the ship on which
he had stowed away in order to get to Japan. Or at least he tried to.
Unfortunately, at that moment a beautiful girl passed by and
Feng Feng's nature yet again got the better of him, only to get him
hammered into the ground. To Feng Feng this was only a temporary, if
frequently occurring setback, and as he climbed out of the
Feng Feng-shaped hole he reflected on his good luck. Barely off the
ship and already the girls were throwing themselves over him. It was
obviously a good omen, and somewhere in this city were Lin Lin . . .
and Ran Ran . . . and Shampoo . . . and lots of other girls who were
not necessarily better at martial arts than he was. Well they would
have been if he had stowed away on a ship bound for Tokyo and not
Manila, but he didn't know that and one of four isn't that bad(4).
(4) And he's bound to make his way to Tokyo eventually.
The previously mentioned girl was also unaware of her actual location
at the moment, but this wasn't that unusual. Ryosei Hibiki was
actually somewhat grateful for the opportunity to work off her stress
and worries on the pervert who tried to glomp her (she could have
done without the glomp though), but it had wasted precious seconds
and if she didn't catch up with her brother soon he was sure to get
lost and then they would never get to cousin Ryoga's wedding on time.
It should go without saying that Ryosei's brother, Ryoma Hibiki, was
nowhere near Manila. He was currently just outside Sapporo (but he
thought he was on Okinawa) hiding from a number of people. These
included his sister - he hated having to dress up(5) and wasn't very
keen on going to weddings in the first place, the person who had caused
this aversion to weddings in the first place as she would I either
misinterpret it or find it encouraging and people who was upset that
he never showed up for their duels (on time or at all).
(5) It inevitably meant wandering around in a tuxedo for weeks and
then having to get a new one for the next occasion.
The second person mentioned in the previous paragraph, was currently
sleeping happily. After years of badgering, whining and puppy-dog
eyes her family, and more importantly her cousin, had given in.
Tomorrow she was going to Tokyo and, as long as she didn't neglect
her schoolwork, help her cousin's assistent/not-boyfriend-honestly
take care of her restaurant. With a little luck her cousin would be
able to take some time off her studies to train her and most
importantly: since Ryomas cousin apparently used to hang around a
lot it was surely only a matter of time before Ryoma himself
turned up. Fortune was indeed smiling on Haruka Kuonji.
Half a world away, in London, another person were almost as happy
as Haruka. Most people would have been terrified at the thought of
moving to the Tokyo Kuno Mansion(6), but Shunnichiro Gilbert
Sullivan Kuno was not most people(7). He was actually looking forward
to living with what Kunologists refer to as the sane part of the Kuno
family and especially living without permanent light opera and the
trappings of the English judicial system(8). He was especially looking
forward to getting rid of the wig which had caused him nothing but
ridicule and extensive practical experience in street-fighting (he
didn't care much for either). Even though it was quite likely that
the Tokyo Kunos would spend most of their time elsewhere, he had
prepared himself thoroughly. His head had already been shaved for
years, so his hair wouldn't interfere with the wig, and once he
started to seriously plan this he had taken every opportunity to eat
what Grandaunt Agatha, a great admirer of classical English murder
mysteries and poison murderers in general, offered and believed he had
built up the requisite immunities. It would be good to move somewhere
where the Kuno name was respected(9).
(6) There are Kuno Mansion wherever Kunos live, hence the prefix.
(7) He frequently wished he was.
(8) His father, Judge Kuno, suffers from severa anglophilia focusing
on the late 19th century, unfettered by such factors as reality. He
reputedly communicates to the music of Arthur Sullivan, his favourites
being Trial by Jury and H.M.S. Pinafore. The dubious logic of sending
him to Britain was formulated by the Gravediggers in Hamlet and had
resulted in Shunnichiro G S Kuno.
(9) It should be noted that Shunnichiro's knowledge of Nerima was
largely filtered through his cousins' perception of reality.
Back in Japan, Kazuya Sanzenin was already out of bed or maybe he
was still up. Some would say that this was because he had seen
something fascinating in the bathroom mirror and he either couldn't
tear himself away or had to make sure it was still there, but this
wasn't quite true. The truth was that since his brother generally
hogged the bathroom every morning, Kazuya had to resort to this in
order to achieve his full potential appearance-wise. Besides this was
going to be the day when he finally got Ran Ran to admit her true
feelings. Surely, the daily refusals and beatings was just her playing
hard to get. After all he was the best-looking and most skilled martial
artist in Nerima, if not the world, wasn't he? His fanclub always told
him so and there was no reason for them to lie to HIM, right?
The president of said fanclub, Chigusa Gosunkugi, was sleeping soundly
(even if you wouldn't know when you saw her awake) and dreamed of
the day when Kazuya-sama woke up to reality.
A few blocks away, the male Kazumi Ono (not to be confused with
his cousin's wife), was falling asleep again as his cousin's children
stopped crying. Just before he fell asleep he silently swore that if
they, or anybody else, made him late on his first day at his new school,
he would punish them as soon as they were able to, in theory, defend
themselves.
Elsewhere, Tsukumo was already up and practising. Even if he took after
his mother's side of the family, he lived in constant fear of waking
up one morning looking like his father(10),
and tried to avoid this by sleeping as little as possible. Besides if
he as going to track down the Hibikis he first had to sneak away
from his mother, who was at best embarrassingly and at worst
homicidally overprotective.(11)
(10) The Dojo Destroyer. Yes I'm really scraping the barrel for
people who's relatives can show up
(11) One of the reasons for this was that her second cousin, who was
also married to a martial artist, had let him take their son on a
training trip and then hadn't seen either of them for ten years.
Just of the coast of Japan, Tandoori was finally beginning to question
the wisdom of "infiltrating" human society with the help of the spring
of drowned Akane (it had seemed so easy when Kiima did it) as a sudden
rain turned her into an insufficiently buoyant and distincly wingless
human. The rest of the Phoenix Tribe had frequently predicted that her
curiosity would get her killed(12) and for a few seconds she started to
believe it too. Then she found out (the hard way) that the water was
only a few feet deep and she could easily wade to the beach. Thanking
whatever gods she could think of that the weather had been good while
she was over the open sea, she then collapsed as days of flying took
their toll.
(12) Usually the prophecy was along the lines of "If you ever go
through my stuff again I will kill you".
All over East Asia, mysterious warlords and minor princes were reaching
for the latest edition of The Guide to Martial Artist Brides and Where
to Find Them. Just like the last edition, a few years back, it was
designed so that if opened at random the Nerima pages came up. . .
END (for now)
This is deliberately vague, as detailed descriptions of the characters
would have broken whatever flow there is (I tried). I have some ideas,
available on request.
I've somehow gotten the impression that Kazumi is a name that both men
and Women can have. I'm not sure why.
I don't know the Dojo Destroyer's last (or first) name and consequently
Tsukumo is familynameless (for now).
Somebody has claimed that the Phoenix Tribe characters' names come from
Indian dishes, hence Tandoori.
As for continuing this, there's a glaring lack of an obvious "main
couple" a la Ranma and Akane.
It should be obvious that Kazumi And Lin Lin will run into each other,
hard, making both late for school. Whether this counts as a defeat by
an outsider is up to whoever wants to continue this.
Finally, as only one person has admitted to getting this far last time:
I am currently writing my Master's thesis on Copyright and fan fiction
(mainly whether it is possible to deal with it in a way that makes
everybody happy - protecting the original authors' rights while
allowing fan fiction authors to write and distribute (e.g. on the FFML)
without the risk of being sued). As it is bad manners to assume that
everybody else shares your own views, I thought that it might be useful
to find out about other fan fiction authors'/readers' views on the
matter. So ask yourself: Do I really want Slacker's views (I won't tell
you what they are) on this matter to be the ones that are spread to
"the general public"? (No offence meant to Slacker.)
If you're interested e-mail me (hansholm@bredband.net), and I'll
send you the questions that I have managed to compose. I don't need
to tell you to reply to this PRIVATELY, do I.
Thank you.