[FFML] Quantum Destinies Side Story - Test Anxiety

[Jurai Knight]

*** Earth +4.614, +4.502

“You will have two hours to complete your final exam for this subject,
class,” said Takami-sensei, the portly science teacher, sweating as he
usually did during the summer months despite the air conditioning blasting
the room. “I trust that all of you studied well for it. This section of
material is commonly on most college entrance exams, so it would do you all
well to know it now.”

Ranma sat, sweating slightly, in his seat. Behind him, he heard Akane
setting out her pencils and scratch paper. Oh, man, the pigtailed boy
thought gloomily. He didn’t get a chance to study any of this stuff. He
hated science class. It always made him feel dumb.

Seated at her desk, Akane watched without amusement as her fiancé fretted
in front of her while the test papers were being handed out. That dummy,
she thought with a frown. He had two whole weeks to study this material,
and he wasted it picking on poor Ryoga and flirting with Shampoo. It’ll
serve him right to totally flunk this exam. Honestly, you’d think he’d
learn by now.

“Your test paper, Saotome-san,” said the teacher mildly, laying it face
down on Ranma’s desk. “I truly hope you’re able to do better with this one
than the last one you did. Otherwise, you’re looking at summer school to
make it up.”

“Uh, yessir,” answered Ranma, staring at the plain white sheet of paper in
front of him as if it was an imminent death sentence.

Ohmanohman, he thought with mild panic. Only a miracle was going to save
his neck now.


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Test Anxiety
A Quantum Destinies Side-Story
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic
By S. Thesken aka Jurai Knight (qd_author at hotmail.com)

Ranma 1/2 and its characters are owned by Rumiko Takahashi. This story is
inspired by her works and the stories from some of my fellow fanfic
authors. Among these are D.B. Sommer's "Shampoo 1/2", Jim Bader's "A Very
Scary Thought -aka- Nabiki 1/2", and John Biles' Elseworlds series. All C&C
is welcome.

The list of worlds occurring in this story:
Earth +4.614, +4.502 – The world of Ranma 1/2 (Ranma 1/2 cluster)

Other chapters of this story may be found at this website, or you can email
the author for them:

http://www.fanfiction.net/u/3764932/


This story takes place after Chapter Thirty-Two of Quantum Destinies. It
looks in on the results of QD Ranma’s brief visit to his Ranma 1/2 analog’s
life.


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“You may begin, class,” said Takami-sensei, before he seated himself at his
desk at the front of the class and began reading.

Ranma flipped over the paper, expecting the worst. Science class was his
first class for the day, and he had been dreading his finals ever since he
woke up. He had honestly tried to study for them, but with Ryoga or some
other wacko attacking him every time he turned around it was rather hard to
get in much quality study time in his life.

He read the first question: “What is the Photoelectric Effect?”

Huh? Did we cover that? The sweat on Ranma’s brow got a little bit heavier.
He covered his face with his left hand and tried hard to concentrate. His
right hand dropped to the paper, holding his pencil.

He stared at the question again through splayed fingers, sweat beading upon
his brow. Then, something strange happened. The answer to the question
seemed to suddenly just appear in his mind. Quickly, he scribbled it down
and then stared at it.

Then he quickly blinked several times.

The first problem must have been easier than I thought, he mused a bit
smugly. Heh. Well, that was easy. Normally, it took him a long time to
figure out the answer to a single question, especially those involving math
or science. This time it took less than five seconds.

A miracle had indeed happened.

Ranma read the next question: “What exactly is an Electronvolt as opposed
to a Volt? What is its value in Joules?”

What? How the heck should I know that?

Suddenly, he heard his own voice in his head, reciting the answer as if
reading it from a book, “An Electronvolt is a unit of energy equal to the
amount of energy one electron acquires by accelerating (from rest) through
a potential difference of one volt. It is usually used as a measure of
particle energies, although it is not an International System unit. The
International System unit for energy is the Joule. One Electronvolt equals
1.602 x 10^-19 joules.”

Heh. Guess I must’ve learned this stuff better than I thought by
whatchamacallit... sleep learning.

He proudly decided that he would have to sleep more in class. He scribbled
down the answer to the second problem with a grin on his face and moved on
to the next one.

His hand began scribbling down answers almost as fast as he could read the
questions. He glanced back and saw that Akane was still working her way
through the third problem. Her face was set in deep thought as she slowly
wrote down her answer. He looked down at his own paper and saw that he was
on question number six already.

Takami-sensei coughed gently up front, and the young martial artist glanced
at him in surprise. The instructor slowly shook his head at him. Ranma
quickly put his attention back onto his own paper and gleefully continued
scribbling down answers. Solutions suddenly appeared within his mind for
every question, like he was now an encyclopedia of scientific knowledge.

It was a heady experience, like mastering the Amaguriken technique had been
a while back. Maybe the universe had decided to pay him back a little for
all the problems he had to deal with. At least he shouldn’t have to worry
about summer school now.

Before he realized it, he was done with the entire exam and had been able
to answer every problem. His test paper was filled with untidy scribbling.
Not only had he answered them, he answered them all so fast. The one final
exam he had been dreading all morning turned out to be frighteningly easy.
He knew that he had never done so well on a test in his life.

Oddly, after completing the last question, the reservoir of knowledge
seemed to utterly drain away as if it had never existed. He wondered if the
stress he had been feeling over the test had conjured up some kind of ghost
to help him, but it didn’t really matter to him anymore. He was just happy
to have finished the exam and could finally put it behind him.

When he was the first student to turn in his paper, almost an hour early,
Takami-sensei had looked up at him with a bemused gaze. Ranma went back to
his seat, and the teacher began grading his exam. Some of his classmates,
like Hiroshi, eyed him with curiosity. Ukyo looked up from her seat in the
back and smiled at him with a wondering look on her face. He simply
shrugged his shoulders and sat down.

As the teacher continued looking over Ranma’s exam, the initial bemused
look on his face first changed to surprise and then transformed to a state
of utter shock as he went down the list of answers written on the boy’s
paper. Ranma didn’t notice this, since he currently had his head down on
his desk, apparently asleep. The instructor kept looking over at the young
martial artist, an increasingly querying look on his face.

Had he finally gotten through to the boy? Compared to his last exam, it was
like night and day. He couldn’t possibly have cheated off someone else,
since he was the first one done. What was going on?

Akane grumbled softly behind Ranma at a particularly tough problem for her.
She hadn’t even noticed him turn in his test paper so quickly.

Argh! I studied for hours for this exam! Come on, Akane. What’s the answer?
You can do this. She finally scribbled down another answer and then looked
up at the clock to see how much time she had left. Only thirty minutes
left. I can finish this. That’ll show Ranma what a dummy he is for
neglecting his schoolwork like he does. You’d think he expects the answers
to just appear out of thin air for him.

When class was finally over, Takami-sensei gave Ranma back his exam with
tears welling up in his eyes and dribbling down his cheeks. The pigtailed
boy was utterly bewildered, and the rest of the class was even more
surprised. He stared stupidly at the grade on the front page of his exam, a
perfect score. Standing next to him, Akane gave a small gasp of surprise
when she saw it.

“Thank you, Saotome-san,” Takami-sensei said solemnly. “If I can get a
result like this out of someone like you, then I must truly be doing
something right as a teacher. I finally got through to you.” He beamed with
an almost beatific joy.

Hiroshi and Daisuke suddenly crowded around him.

“Wow, Ranma! You learn some new martial arts studying method?” asked
Hiroshi. “I thought you told me this morning that you weren’t ready for
this final.”

“Yeah, Ranma,” said Daisuke. “You’ve never done that well on an exam
before. What’s your secret?”

“I-I don’t know,” mumbled the pigtailed boy, staring at the paper in shock,
as if seeing it for the first time. The rest of the students in the class
crowded around to see the evidence. The young martial artist had indeed
gotten a perfect score.

“Ranchan, that’s wonderful!” shouted Ukyo, hugging him. I just knew that he
could do well in school, if he just put some of that legendary Saotome
stubbornness into his studies, she mused happily.

A small smile of triumph appeared on the pigtailed boy’s face as it sank in
how well he had done. This meant no summer school!

Behind them, Akane clenched one hand into a fist, her frustration with the
test compounded with her confusion at her fiancé’s unexpected success. But,
he hadn’t studied for it, she mused in bewilderment, not like she had. How
did he manage to do that?

Noticing Ukyo was still clinging to the pigtailed boy, that image sent her
over the edge. She loudly snarled out “RANMA!”

The pigtailed boy turned around, saw his fiancée in a full fury over
something and decided that discretion was probably the better part of
valor. He quickly wriggled free of Ukyo’s firm grasp and ran out the door,
the youngest Tendo in hot pursuit.

The fading sounds of “...so uncute...” trailed behind them.

Behind them, Ukyo shrugged, musing that she had better save Ranma from
Akane. After grabbing her battle spatula, she took off after them.


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This was a little idea that came to me years ago and demanded to be
written. I couldn’t really fit it into the main storyline, so I’ve done it
as a side story after polishing it up a bit.
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