fanfic@andrew.cais.com
______________________________________________________________________
Here it is, the actual, no more beta Part 1. With comments et all
for it's near future r.a.a.s release. If you see something stupid
here, please tell me before I humiliate myself.
If you see yourself mentioned and don't want to be associated with
this work, please tell me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ranma 1/2: Reality Bites, Hard.
Part 1
By Bruce R. Brunk
brbrunk@agora.rdrop.com
This is the prologue, first Akane section (Chapter 1.) and first
Genma section (Chapter 2.) I'm always looking for any comments your
willing to make (this means you.) As comedies are harder to write
than dramas, (especially for a guy who's last fictional writing
attempt was when he was 10) and the subject matter (of my story, not
Ranma) isn't all that funny to begin with, don't expect multiple,
intentional chuckles. (Laughing at my writing is a whole other
subject.)
[* Insert standard "This is my first fanfic attempt don't flame" whine. *]
Hate this, don't flame me, I'll ignore it. If you would
like me to just go back to lurker mode, too late.
[* Insert standard legal jargon. *]
IE none of the characters are mine, they ultimately belong to Rumiko
Takahashi. She can sue me for everything I'm worth and come out with
less money than she started with. So on with the show.
Prologue
It is a Saturday morning at the Tendo household, in the kitchen,
after an unusually quite breakfast. Ranma, helping bring in the
dishes, stops, looks around and seeing that nobody else is around,
says, "Kasumi?"
"Yes, Ranma?"
"Well, I was wondering, just in case you get sick again, or have to
be out around dinner time, with your sister's cooking ability and all,
if you could teach me a couple different types of recipes. I'm afraid
that my skills stop at salads and vegatible stir-fry, Pop never having
enough money for meat and stuff like that."
Kasumi holds her hand up to her mouth and worriedly squeaks. "Oh my."
"What's wr.. Oh-oh."
The cause of Kasumi's outburst is clear. Akane, having just walked
in, had obviously overheard everything. Obviously because of the
blue aura surrounding her. Also because she had just pulled out
sledge hammer #37, her least favorite, which was why she kept it
hidden between the fridge and the cabinet.
"Ba, Ba, BAKA!!!!" yelled the short haired girl.
For some reason today, instead of an overhead smash, Akane brings
the head of the hammer up and away from Ranma and in her best Peter
Jacobsen impersonation swings the hammer down, around and up, making
clean contact with Ranma's chin as he turns around. This, of course,
sends him through the roof. However, instead of going cleanly through
it, his left shoulder hits a cross-beam, spinning him around so that
he flies out feet first.
With a hint of concern in her voice, Kasumi observes, "Akane, I've
never seen Ranma fly out of here like that. You don't think that
hurt do you?"
"He'll be fine." replies Akane, in a huff, turning to leave, "It
looks like he'll land at Dr Tofu's clinic." She adds, to herself.
**Why does he always have to insult my cooking!**
Dr. Tofu's clinic 5 minutes later.
Dr. Tofu sits at his desk, reading a book titled "12 Methods of
Drying Ginseng Root With Effects on the Shelf Life of Medicinal
Compounds." A thunderous racket, coming from his waiting room, jars
him from his concentration.
"Oh great! Who is it this time? I'd better have Genma get over
here tomorrow. I'll need it cleaned up before..."
All thoughts of fixing his office fades from his mind as he catches
his first glimpse of Ranma. Nothing unusual there. Landed on his
face, body somewhat perpendicular to the ground. Again normal. Right
hand, in the proper "Please spirits, this is gonna hurt" position.
Good. Left arm, hanging limp. Not good. Moving closer Tofu could
see that Ranma was pale, _very_ pale. Then he saw the blood.
Chapter 1
As late afternoon arrives at the dojo proper, Akane works on her
katas. As she finishes her last movement, her mind wanders.
"I hope I didn't hurt him too bad. That jerk is usually home
before this."
She shrugs and resumes her practice, not quite as crisply as before.
She does not hear the knocking at the front door of the house. Nor
sees the familiar figure with the unfamiliar look on his face, who
enters. She does, however, notice when her sister, Nabiki, walks in
and she also notices the puzzled look on Nabiki's face.
"Sister," says Nabiki, "Dr Tofu would like to speak with you."
"He does? Is Ranma with him?"
"Yes, he does, and no he isn't." Nabiki shifts her footing. "Sister,
I think something bad has happened. Dr. Tofu showed up in surgical
pants and asked Father to get Mr. Saotome. While Father was out he
_talked_ to Kasumi. Then he walked into the kitchen with her, coming
out as Father and Mr. Saotome walked in." Nabiki pauses, shifts her
footing again and resumes, " You know what has me worried the most,
little sister? The whole time he was with Kasumi, nothing happened.
He was as calm as if he was with you or me. His glasses didn't even
fog up."
"N-No." Akane stutters.
"Yes." Nabiki returns, "Anyway, Dr. Tofu is in the Saotome's room
with Mr. Saotome, and he asked if you would wait outside the door
for them.
"Hai." somehow makes it past her lips as she starts to numbly walk
out of the dojo. Entering the house she shuffles through the now
empty living/dining room and up the stairs. As she neared the top,
she sees her father standing across from the Saotome's door. As she
moves to join him their eyes meet. Unsure of the time that had past,
an instant? a hour? and finding nothing to say, she lowers her eyes
and turns towards the door not seeing that her father has just done
the same.
Her thoughts are chaotic at best, "I hope he isn't..." "He can't
be.." "He's always been OK before..." Then from some dark place deep
with her, someplace she wished didn't exist, but did, comes the
thought, **Well, what do I care, it's not like I like the guy or
anything.** One second later she is struck by what _she_ had just
_thought_, it feels like one of Shampoo's Bonboris' in the gut.
Overcome by by shame and revulsion for her own thoughts, combined
with her worry for Ranma, causes Akane's mind to loose all focus. She
stands across the doorway with her father, staring at the door, not a
single conscious thought entering her mind. She and her father stand
there. She is alone in her misery, but at least not alone.
At some point Dr. Tofu walks out of the door and and starts to talk
with her father. None of this registers with Akane. She just stares
past Genma, his face pale, sitting there, unmoving. After another
meaningless period of time her father walks into his friends room,
shutting the door behind him.
Eventually the fact that Dr. Tofu is gently shaking her and calling
her name penetrates the fog of her mind.
"Hai." she mumbles.
"Are you all right Akane?"
She realizes that she has been dreading this encounter. She feels
trapped. Her eyes start to water. She doesn't want to know, but she
can't go on not knowing.
"Hai."
"Lets go to your room so you can sit down."
Akane feels herself being lead back to her room and his gentle
guidance leading her to sit on her bed.
Akane looks at Dr. Tofu as he sits on one of her chairs. Staring
down, he seems lost in thought. The focus of his eyes shifts as though
he has come to some conclusion he turns his attention back to her.
"Akane, are you sure your all right?"
Akane attempts to show some strength, trying to straighten up, she
can not quite make eye contact with the Doctor and only weakly
responding to him before slowly falling back into her slouch.
"Hai, sensei."
"Kasumi said that you were the one who sent Ranma through the
ceiling this morning."
"I'm sorry, I.." her words stall momentarily, "Is he .."
"He's hurt very bad.."
The weight falling from her shoulders might well have been her
ears, for all she hears of what follows. He was still alive. She
doesn't stop to analyze where her exaltation comes from, she just
revels in it until she realizes Dr. Tofu is shaking her again.
"Akane, were you listening to me?"
Akane looks up at Dr. Tofu, her eyes pleading for conformation.
"Ranma's alive."
Looking troubled and sounding more clinical than she has heard him
in a long time he answers, "Yes, but he's badly hurt. He apparently
hit a ceiling cross-beam with his left shoulder on his way out. I
found this hanging from an l-brace on the beam."
She sees the white scrap of silk being held up by the doctor. It
matches the shirt Ranma was wearing that morning.
"It was enough to shatter his collar bone, a fragment of which
damaged the main artery going to his arm. He needed a major blood
transfusion."
Something in the way he answered her troubles Akane.
"He will be OK though, right?"
"Honestly, I don't know." Tofu pauses, "I'm going to take Mr.
Saotome to the hospital now and I felt I should check up on you before
I did."
Akane sees Dr. Tofu get up and walk out of her door and she follows,
finding her father holding Mr Saotome's backpack, Mr. Saotome, and her
sisters waiting in the hall.
"Good, Akane, you're here. I want you and Kasumi to accompany us to
the hospital, Nabiki, you will watch the house while we are gone."
She follows behind the others, out towards Dr. Tofu's car. Before
she leaves the house Nabiki entangles her arm.
"Hey, what's wrong with Ranma?"
"He broke his shoulder."
"Is that it?"
Disengaging her arm from her sister's, Akane, wandering what Dr.
Tofu wouldn't tell her, starts to silently cry. Managing to to regain
enough composer to say, "No." She runs to catch up with the others.
Chapter 2
Genma Saotome, torch bearer of the Saotome School of Unrestricted
Martial Arts. Proud vanquisher of foes too numerous to mention. A
man who had survived more years on the road, with only what he could
carry on his back, than in an actual home. A man who, for the second
time in his life, felt beaten, broken and helpless. The second most
important thing in his life had been hurt, again. There was no one to
fight, no technique learned over the years of his travels that could
help his son. The sum of what he could do was to sit calmly and
dignifiedly in Dr. Tofu's car until they got to the hospital, and then
sit there to wait to hear news on the boy's condition.
He was, in fact, sitting calmly and dignifiedly. Which worried those
people around him, considering that his normal posture when traveling
would be referred to as lounging.
His mind was not calm. Thoughts of, **He, He..., He could be...,
and He could have...** bombarded him left and right, until, **NO! I
will not continue to think like that!**
Deciding that he couldn't dwell on the present and wouldn't
speculate on the future, he sent his mind to the only other place it
could go, the past.
The road, he had been addicted to it. He never seemed to get away
from it either. Trips and training with his parents, getting chased
out of town after town with Tendo and Master Happousai. Even after
sealing up the Master, he and Tendo had still traveled on.
All things must end, and Tendo went back and married his wife.
Taking over her families home and reopening the old dojo, which had
been used a storage shed for the last couple of generations.
Genma had continued his travels for two more years, with ever more
frequent visits to the Tendo's, ever more frequent visits to get to
see a certain family friend of Tendo's in-laws. Nodoka. He had never
thought of her as a "pretty young thing" but her beauty and grace had
touched something in the young road warrior. Tendo had seen the
relationship building between the two and must have worked hard to get
Nodoka's father to agree to the betrothal.
Some time after the marriage, when no one else was around, Genma had
asked his friend, "Did you ever get to the lying, cheating and
occasionally petty theft?"
Tendo had a smile on his face when he replied, "You know what, I think
all that just sort of slipped my mind. You don't think I should go
tell your father-in-law, do you?"
How they had laughed at that.
Those early years where the best of his life, not that Nodoka hadn't
had a few surprises up her sleeve for him, she did, but he could only
recall two of them.
The first was the blade. He could still recall that first day she
had brought out her bokken and asked if she could spar with him. He
had been slightly amused by the prospect and had agreed. Slight
amusement became slight injury as he had quickly learned how good she
was. Still, this new side of Nodoka had only served to strengthen
their bonds as these matches continued on.
The second was worse. Nodoka refused to go on the road. Unless she
was visiting someone like the Tendo's, she wanted to stay home, and she
wanted her husband to stay with her. Still, at the time, he hadn't
really cared. He was happy enough just being with her.
Then Ranma was born. He had worried about the responsibility at
first, but every time he looked at his son the doubts disappeared.
Ranma's first birthday had signaled one other new thing in his
marriage, Nodoka had allowed him to take the boy and go visit his
parents. Almost as a forewarning of what was to come, he had made his
first mistake raising Ranma on the way back. He had paid for that
mistake fairly recently, but Ranma and Akane had triumphed over them
and now the menace was gone.
The urge to travel didn't hit him until Ranma was old enough to walk.
Then the memories of his past started their relentless drive. He need
to go over that next hill, see what was in that next valley again.
This time with _his_ son at his side. He wanted to give to Ranma some
of the experiences he had lived. Something that had meaning to him,
that was theirs to share.
Nodoka would have none of that. They went over it again and again.
It wasn't until the contract had come up that she had relented. He
would never forgive himself for letting Ranma play around him that
day, or at least not stopping him from touching that thing.
Nodoka wanted her son back a man, a man among men even. That was
fine. To make her happy he swore, to himself, to do better than that.
He would make Ranma _the_ man among men. He would make her son such a
figure that she would thank him for training him. Then he could say,
"I did it for that look in your eyes."
Unfortunately Genma soon fell back on his old ways. The road wasn't
all that he remembered, actually he had glossed over most of it. All
in all, however, those first ten years went well. Of course there were
a few minor mishaps, ala the Cat Fist, but didn't that work out for the
best in the end?
**At times I think I died when Ranma came out of that pool.**
Genma would barely admit to himself that he wasn't the same man
anymore. His desire to travel crushed. The person he loved most in
the world had become his biggest nightmare. The horror on his son's
face, as he realized what happened, had hurt him more deeply than any
blow ever had.
Unable to go home, he had gone to the only place he could think of,
Tendo's home and Tendo. He had no more confidence in himself. His
only hope was the man whom shared his early life, the only partner he
had ever had, outside of Nodoka. The man responsible for him meeting
and being with Nodoka.
He was certain that Tendo could tell what sort of shape he was in.
Tendo tried not to show it, but at times it showed. Tendo didn't have
confidence in his abilities anymore, so when the 'Dojo Destroyer' came
around, instead of the two of them taking him on, Tendo dropped it in
to Akane and Ranma's laps.
**Whatever happens, Ranma must never learn about what has happened to
me.**
Better that his son thinks he has gone soft and lazy, than the sad,
broken-down truth of his spirit. The panda is his escape these days.
He feels incapable of meeting anyone's expectation and finds a
sembalence of peace as a panda. People expect nothing from a panda,
except maybe to see it eat or play with a tire, that he can do.
Time hardly seems to move, for him, at all anymore. The few months
that he has stayed with the Tendo's seems more like five or six years.
**When is that boy going to finish his sophomore year?**
Genma is snapped back to reality, the events of the last hour
replayed through his mind. He realizes Ranma may never finish the
tenth grade.
Tendo had come outside, were Genma had been trying to shut out the
world. His son would call it, "Taking a nap." When Tendo had said
Dr. Tofu needed to see him, Genma had expected only to be told when to
come to work next. It wasn't all that unusual. Genma thought Tofu
did it just to see Kasumi. He knew different as soon as he saw the
doctor. He looked like he had just come out of the operating room,
brow wrinkled and his eyes looked very tired.
"What is it Doctor?" Genma had asked, not really wanting to know.
"I need to speak with you privately. Can we go up to your room?"
Genma had led the way up, but the doctor had managed to get ahead of
him and opened the door himself. He had gestured for Genma to enter
and for Tendo to stay out. Then he walked in, shutting the door
behind him.
"Sit." said the doctor. It had sounded more like an order than a
request.
Genma did, getting more nervous as the doctor looked around uneasily.
"Mr. Saotome..."
Genma definitely didn't like that.
"This isn't going to be easy for either of us, but I want you to
keeping mind that Ranma is alive, and with all the training you have
given him a complete recovery is still possible."
Genma, growled, his voice full of anger and anguish, "What do you mean 'A
complete recovery is still possible?' What has happened to my son!"
"Ranma crashed through my ceiling this morning. When I had gotten
to him an injury to his left collar bone and shoulder had caused
severe bleeding, too severe in fact, his heart had stopped beating."
"St-stopped beating?" Genma croaked. "Are you saying he's dead?"
"No, I am not saying that!" said the flustered doctor. "Right now
your son is recovering from surgery at the hospital." The doctor
paused, seemingly to collect himself. "Honestly though, he was when I
found him. Using the Fish-Swimming-Up-Stream technique, some pressure
points, standard CPR, along with the blood from him and Nabiki, I was
able to revive him and keep him alive until the ambulance arrived."
Though Genma had thought it impossible that anything else could
shock him, that did. Ranma, they had found out, was the only type 'B'
among the six of them. Nabiki was the only type 'O.' He and Tendo
were type 'A,' while Kasumi and Akane were type 'AB.' They all kept 2
pints of blood at the doctors office, "just in case." Genma thought
that if the doctor had needed Nabiki's also... That would be four
pints, and didn't the human body only have five pints to begin with?
The doctor continued, "I don't know exactly how long he went without
blood flow to the brain, but I don't think that it's likely that any
brain damage has occured."
Once again Genma flinched.
"A bigger problem I see, stems from the original shoulder injury.
First we needed to insert 2 pins into Ranma's collar bone. He'll have
to remain in traction for quite a while. It is possible that he may
loose some mobility in that arm. Unfortunately, it looks like one
piece of bone may have done some damage to the main nerve cluster for
the arm as well damaging the primary artery. I'm afraid that that
damage may be permanent. We won't know until more until Ranma regains
consciousness.
Another failure to add to his list. How he had failed, he didn't
know. It didn't matter, his son, brain damage, paralysis.
"Can I see him?" asked Genma, pleadingly.
"I'll take you myself, just let me take care of a few things first."
The doctor had then gotten up and walked out.
Genma had seen the doctor talking to Tendo, he had thought about
joining them, but his legs wouldn't move. He also seen Akane staring
at him looking dumb-struck. He had never seen the girl so look
tramatized before. He would have wondered why, if he hadn't been such
a wreck.
The conversation between Tendo and the doctor had ended and Tendo had
come in and sat down in front of him.
"How are you doing, Saotome?" Tendo asked.
"My son died Tendo."
"WHAT!?!" cried a confused Tendo.
"He is alive now. He could have brain damage. He could be
paralyzed." He agonized out-loud, barely able to hold control of his
emotions.
Tendo, looking confused, scanned the room. Finding Genma's backpack,
he turned and said, "Well lets get you packed. From what your telling
me, we're going to be at the hospital for awhile."
The sudden jerk of driving over a speed bump brought Genma back to
the present. They had reached the hospital. Genma looked up at the
building, wondering which room his son was in, and how he was doing.
_____________________________________________________________________
authors spam.. err.. comments.
Ok, first off, some of you may have noticed that Dr. Tofu screwed up
big time in his conversation with Genma. You know that, I know that,
heck, even Tofu knew it during his talk with Akane. Tofu will be
hearing about this in the next chapter.
Thanks:
God, for giving me the life and talent I have.
Carl Macek, for hacking together Robotech, for without it, I'd still
have a credit rating. :(
Rumiko Takahashi, for hours of fun and laughter. Also for providing
the Ranma world, which I'm trashing up here.
Animego and Viz, for getting me Ms. Takahashi's works to me in a form I can
understand and legally own. (Hey Toshi! push the subs out faster, PLEASE!)
White Wolf, for starting the fanfic ML, where I began to spam this out.
Hitomi_Ichinohei, for providing the example and inspiration the take
the plunge.
and in classic, Last-But-Certainly-Not-Least form, tons o' thanks to:
Windlily, for, let us say, removing the by-products from the meat. I owe
you big time.
What's Next?
------------
Chapter 3. (this is/will be more "normal" than the first two)
Nabiki, making money+.
Shampoo vs. Kodachi
Mousse, being Mousse.
Kuno, being Kuno
Tofu gets chewed out.
___________________________________________ _______________________________
| Bruce R. (just call me Ryoga) Brunk | All those animals. |
| Lake Oswego, Oregon | People eating Akane's cooking |
| Senior Systems Engineer, FEI America, Inc.| and liking it.... Something |
| brbrunk@agora.rdrop.com | weird is going on here! |
| brbrunk@industrial.com | - Saotome Ranma |
|___________________________________________|_______________________________|