Two Tiger's Tale
by
[email protected] or [email protected]
or [email protected] or all of the above
*********************************************************
Please allow me to explain a few things. First off, few if any of the characters belong to me. They belong to Takahashi-kamisama and whoever else owns the rights to them.
I have been reading a lot of Ranma fic since I first saw a few episodes of the series that one of my friends had gotten while he was down south at college before returning home.(let's here it for run on sentences!!!!!)
It instantly become one of my favorite series. (note that I did not specify a genre (type of series for those who have never had a media course ;)) The animation, action and characters, as well as the premise (again withthe English media language) were so well done that I was hooked. I've been stuck on it ever since. Before this event, I had been trying to write a few other fanfics and ORF but since then I have been unable to add much to them. Though I had no intention of actually trying to write a Ranma fic (due mostly to the fact that I've seen very few of the episodes and none of the manga) I have been able to read enough fanfiction by a wide variety of authors concerning certain events, as well as a few transcribed manga (v.38- Saffron, and v.24?- Musk) that I was unable to stay away.
So here I am, writing a Ranma alternative universe/x-over fanfic. I'm not sure where this is going, or even who will show up. This story will be as much a surprise to me as it will be to you. The only thing I do know for sure is that it will feature the nekoken quite prominently as well as deal with an earlier meeting or three between Ranma and Akane.
I apologize in advance for the horrific spelling of any Japanese wordings. I will be taking them from others fanfics, as well as the grammar and other language mistakes. Please feel free to correct me.
Thoughts are in 'single quotes' Different languages are in *stars*(i.e. Chinese, English, and others)Signs (panda and otherwise) will be placed in alligator brackets
My deepest thanks go out to Lord Archive, Micheal Fetter, MadamHydra, and all the wonderful authors who have added such rich tapestry to the Ranmaverse. May they all live long and prosperous lives while continuing to regale us with their fascinating imaginations.
Oh yeah, in case you missed it. This IS an alt. reality fic so don't flame me if anyone is OOC. I tried to make everyone enough different that you can tell the differences, but not so different that you hate them or me. Some of the differences are just in how I see the characters from what I have seen of Ranma. (Take Kasumi. I don't believe she's the airhead she seems. There's a lot more to her than what she shows. I think that she's just so centered (not the bad kind, I mean the kind were everything is in balance within her) that it takes a great deal to affect her center and cause her to break through her mask. Anyone who doesn't think this should go back and watch the first show carefully. She is completely repulsed by the idea of marrying Ranma and eagerly conspires with Nabiki to throw Akane to the wolves, so to speak.)
********************************************************* Chapter 1
Ranma slowly crawled his way into consciousness. He struggled briefly with himself trying desperately to recall the last thing he could. All he remember was the fear, the terrible gnawing fear, that had filled him at the sound of the approaching hoard of evil monsters. He could remember nothing after feeling the raking claws of the first feline menace.
He tried to get up but found that he was being held tightly. He looked around and saw that he was being cradled in the arms of an old woman. She was making soothing sounds to him, as though she was afraid he might hurt himself, or someone else.
"Ah, good. You've woken." she said, carefully setting his small form down on a nearby cushion. "Have you come back to your senses?"
Confused, he answered. "H-hai, obasan."
"That's good to hear. You had us all worried. You and the young lady, there. Imagine, both of you acting like you were cats. Running around naked on all fours, licking yourselves and each other clean. It was really quite shocking."
Ranma looked where she was gazing and was surprised to see a young girl laying on a futon in the corner of the room. Looking closer, he could see that she had many of the same injuries he seemed to have suffered because of his father's training. She had shoulder length blueish-black hair that was clumped and matted with dirt.
He felt a tingle run along his spine as he studied the naked girl. It was almost as though he knew her on some deep level. Some part of him reached out and touched a part of her, causing her to start sharply as she woke.
Ranma blushed as he realized that he was staring at a naked girl. He had not been around many girls in his life. He could remember only one whose name he remembered. And that had been years and years ago.
The girl sat up, staring at him as he studied her. With a startled eep, she dove onto the futon and covered herself with a nearby blanket. Searching around, she found a pillow and threw it at the naked boy who had been staring at her.
"What are you doing, you pervert???" she demanded, not really understanding the word. Her sister had explained that some boys would want to look at her when she was naked and that boys who did were perverts. Since the boy had been staring at her, and was naked, she assumed that he must be one of the perverts that Kasumi had been talking about. She peeked over the edge of the blanket and stared at the naked boy. 'Naked boy? Oh my' she thought to herself, 'So that's what that looks like.'
Ranma's confusion deepened. He turned to the old woman. "What's a pervert?" he asked her.
The old woman nearly dropped her tea cup. Pasting on a smile, she answered the boy. "Don't worry dear. If you have to ask that question, I don't think you have to worry about being one."
Facing the girl again, he noticed for the first time that she was staring at something in his lap. 'No', he corrected himself. 'She's staring at my. . . .' He blushed for some reason and covered himself with the pillow she had thrown at him. "What are you looking at?" he demanded, his voice cracking on the words.
"No-nothing." she stammered, her cheeks flaming. "Who are you?" she asked. "Where am I?"
"You're in my home, child. You and he came running here yesterday, as naked as the day you were born. Both of you were on all fours and acting like cats." she knew as soon as she sad the word that it was a mistake.
The boy and girl reacted in the same way, leaping to their feet and looking around in wide eyed terror.
"Where?" the boy asked, his voice filled with terror. The girl was shaking like a leaf and twisting the blanket in her fingers like that would save her from some evil monster.
The woman was confused for a moment. Then a possible explanation for their recent behavior came to her and she nodded to herself. 'If it's true, it would certainly explain all the missing cats in the neighborhood.'
Cautiously she approached the girl, sensing that she would be more receptive then the boy. "What is your name, little one?" she asked.
"Akane." the girl whispered, still looking around just in case.
"Well, Akane who has been training you in the martial arts?"
"My father." she replied. "But he's been different since Okaasan died."
The woman looked to the boy. "And what of you, young man? Is your father also training you?"
The boy nodded. "Yes. I'm Ranma, heir to the Musabetsu Kakutou Saotome- Ryuu."
The woman nodded, her fears confirmed. She felt sorry for the two young people before her. Their idiot fathers, in a bid to make them great martial artists, had trained them in the NekoKen. This was bound to make their lives much more difficult and confusing then they needed to be.
She sighed and began her explanation of their new technique. Several hours later, the two were sleeping quietly near the small space heater she had traded an American G.I. for nearly twenty years before. She considered hiding the children from their fathers, should they come searching for their errant heirs, but decided against it. She was old and tired.
Too tired to look after two rambunctious children. She looked at them as they lay curled near each other and smiled. Certain . . . side effects of the NekoKen were already beginning to show through.
She hoped with all her might that they would be able to withstand the coming troubles ahead of them. 'Luckily, they are still young. A little later, and there would have been even more problems for them.' she thought wistfully of her own children, long grown and with children of their own. Perhaps, when their fathers came for them, she would find a way to visit her grandchildren. It had been many years since she had last seen them.
Two days later, as the children once again slept near the heater and she was looking out a small window, she spotted a fat man wearing a dirty gi, glasses, and a white bandana looking around frantically. She listened and heard him calling for the boy. He was a little bloody and seemed to have suffered many recent injuries. Sighing again, for she did not wish to separate the two children who had became the best of friends, she went to her door and called out to the man.
********************************************************* Chapter 2
Akane grumbled as she walked into the house. Kuno-sempai had once again caused her to be late this morning with that idiodic idea of his. Angrily, she slammed her books onto a nearby table and threw her bag onto the floor beside it. She stomped into the changing room and took off her school dress, slipping into a gi. If she was lucky, her father would be in a decent frame of mind and would be able to help her train. She sighed as she recalled the last time her father had taken her on a training trip.
It had been less then two years before. He claimed that he had heard of a legendary training ground in China from a good friend of his. Together, they had booked passage on a freighter heading to Hong Kong, and from there hired a boat to smuggle them ashore. Once on the mainland, they had spent nearly three weeks traveling inland.
They had to cross a mountain range to get to the training grounds. Once there, she had been surprised to see that the grounds consisted of different length bamboo poles sticking out of a hundred different pools. There had been a guide standing there, trying to explain to them about something, but Akane had only managed to make out a few words due to his thick accent. Her father had nodded to her and leapt to the top of one of the poles. Shrugging, Akane dropped her pack and leapt onto another.
The fight was short and messy. Though her father was easily more skilled than her, she had known that since her mother's death, he was overly emotionally, given to extremes in all emotions as well as instant and total changes in directions. He could literally be crying a river one second and be as happy as clam the next.
Stumbling on the pole, she faked an injury. Predictably, her father began crying about his baby girl and leapt to help her. With a smirk that would make Nabiki proud, she leapt aside at the last possible second and slashed at the pole, slicing nearly two feet off the top. Her father, unready for the sudden absence of his injured daughter and the new height of the pole, sailed over the pole and fell into the pool below with a large splash.
"Yatta!!" she cried out, happy to have won a match against her father. What happened next surprised her.
The pool's surface rippled and boiled. A few seconds passed. Finally the small waves ceased and all was quiet. Akane began to worry. Her father had been under for a long time. She was about to leap down next to the pool when a large figure leapt out of the pool and landed on a pole next to her. She stared in surprise at the figure before her.
So surprised was she that she didn't realize that the figure was trying to gesture to her to move until it was too late. A body slammed into her back, sending her tumbling towards a pool. The body, a fat bald man in a dirty gi, fell like a brick into the pool below the pole she was standing on. She watched in shock as he fell into the pool with a splash. She looked down and saw that she was going to land in a pool in a few seconds. Idly, she wondered what she would become.
Before she reached the surface of the water, she looked in the direction the man had come and saw a familiar figure standing on a pole, one leg still raised in a side-thrust kick. She felt a sense of kinship with that figure for as she hit the water, she saw a large panda come flying out of the pool and knock him towards another one. Before the water closed over her, a name popped into her head. A name she had not thought of in a long time. 'Ranma' she thought before she blacked out. ********************************************************* Akane shook her head as she continued her kata. Thinking about Ranma always brought up feelings she wasn't prepared to deal with. She had first met him nine years before when her father had tried to teach her the nekoken. She paused her movements to trace a set of small scars that adorned her forearm. Her back and arms were crisscrossed with similar scars. She wondered again where her father had gotten the idiodic idea from. Dismissing it, she resumed her kata, flowing across the floor of the family dojo in an intricate, if simple kata.
Her kata came to an end and she bowed to the shrine set up in one corner of the room. She heard a noise behind her and turned to see her father. He was wearing his customary brown gi tied with a black belt. Her own yellow gi and red belt were much repaired from damage sustained during training.
"Well done, Akane. You are indeed a worthy heir of the Musabetsu Kakutou Tendo-Ryu. Shall we spar before dinner? Kasumi is attempting an Italian dish called spaghetti and meatballs."
Akane frowned. "Is that the one with ramen noodles and tomato sauce?" she asked. She remembered the name from her cooking class.
Tendo Soun smiled. He was so proud of his daughters. "I believe so. Usually they use beef, but considering how expensive it is, Kasumi decided to try it first with tofu and chicken."
"Well if Kasumi is making it, it's going to be great." Akane replied, getting into a tight stance. Her father took his place in a much more relaxed manner and they bowed to the shrine and to each other. With a kia, Akane launched her attack and the training began. *********************************************************
Please allow me to explain a few things. First off, few if any of the characters belong to me. They belong to Takahashi-kamisama and whoever else owns the rights to them.
I have been reading a lot of Ranma fic since I first saw a few episodes of the series that one of my friends had gotten while he was down south at college before returning home.(let's here it for run on sentences!!!!!)
It instantly become one of my favorite series. (note that I did not specify a genre (type of series for those who have never had a media course ;)) The animation, action and characters, as well as the premise (again withthe English media language) were so well done that I was hooked. I've been stuck on it ever since. Before this event, I had been trying to write a few other fanfics and ORF but since then I have been unable to add much to them. Though I had no intention of actually trying to write a Ranma fic (due mostly to the fact that I've seen very few of the episodes and none of the manga) I have been able to read enough fanfiction by a wide variety of authors concerning certain events, as well as a few transcribed manga (v.38- Saffron, and v.24?- Musk) that I was unable to stay away.
So here I am, writing a Ranma alternative universe/x-over fanfic. I'm not sure where this is going, or even who will show up. This story will be as much a surprise to me as it will be to you. The only thing I do know for sure is that it will feature the nekoken quite prominently as well as deal with an earlier meeting or three between Ranma and Akane.
I apologize in advance for the horrific spelling of any Japanese wordings. I will be taking them from others fanfics, as well as the grammar and other language mistakes. Please feel free to correct me.
Thoughts are in 'single quotes' Different languages are in *stars*(i.e. Chinese, English, and others)Signs (panda and otherwise) will be placed in alligator brackets
My deepest thanks go out to Lord Archive, Micheal Fetter, MadamHydra, and all the wonderful authors who have added such rich tapestry to the Ranmaverse. May they all live long and prosperous lives while continuing to regale us with their fascinating imaginations.
Oh yeah, in case you missed it. This IS an alt. reality fic so don't flame me if anyone is OOC. I tried to make everyone enough different that you can tell the differences, but not so different that you hate them or me. Some of the differences are just in how I see the characters from what I have seen of Ranma. (Take Kasumi. I don't believe she's the airhead she seems. There's a lot more to her than what she shows. I think that she's just so centered (not the bad kind, I mean the kind were everything is in balance within her) that it takes a great deal to affect her center and cause her to break through her mask. Anyone who doesn't think this should go back and watch the first show carefully. She is completely repulsed by the idea of marrying Ranma and eagerly conspires with Nabiki to throw Akane to the wolves, so to speak.)
********************************************************* Chapter 1
Ranma slowly crawled his way into consciousness. He struggled briefly with himself trying desperately to recall the last thing he could. All he remember was the fear, the terrible gnawing fear, that had filled him at the sound of the approaching hoard of evil monsters. He could remember nothing after feeling the raking claws of the first feline menace.
He tried to get up but found that he was being held tightly. He looked around and saw that he was being cradled in the arms of an old woman. She was making soothing sounds to him, as though she was afraid he might hurt himself, or someone else.
"Ah, good. You've woken." she said, carefully setting his small form down on a nearby cushion. "Have you come back to your senses?"
Confused, he answered. "H-hai, obasan."
"That's good to hear. You had us all worried. You and the young lady, there. Imagine, both of you acting like you were cats. Running around naked on all fours, licking yourselves and each other clean. It was really quite shocking."
Ranma looked where she was gazing and was surprised to see a young girl laying on a futon in the corner of the room. Looking closer, he could see that she had many of the same injuries he seemed to have suffered because of his father's training. She had shoulder length blueish-black hair that was clumped and matted with dirt.
He felt a tingle run along his spine as he studied the naked girl. It was almost as though he knew her on some deep level. Some part of him reached out and touched a part of her, causing her to start sharply as she woke.
Ranma blushed as he realized that he was staring at a naked girl. He had not been around many girls in his life. He could remember only one whose name he remembered. And that had been years and years ago.
The girl sat up, staring at him as he studied her. With a startled eep, she dove onto the futon and covered herself with a nearby blanket. Searching around, she found a pillow and threw it at the naked boy who had been staring at her.
"What are you doing, you pervert???" she demanded, not really understanding the word. Her sister had explained that some boys would want to look at her when she was naked and that boys who did were perverts. Since the boy had been staring at her, and was naked, she assumed that he must be one of the perverts that Kasumi had been talking about. She peeked over the edge of the blanket and stared at the naked boy. 'Naked boy? Oh my' she thought to herself, 'So that's what that looks like.'
Ranma's confusion deepened. He turned to the old woman. "What's a pervert?" he asked her.
The old woman nearly dropped her tea cup. Pasting on a smile, she answered the boy. "Don't worry dear. If you have to ask that question, I don't think you have to worry about being one."
Facing the girl again, he noticed for the first time that she was staring at something in his lap. 'No', he corrected himself. 'She's staring at my. . . .' He blushed for some reason and covered himself with the pillow she had thrown at him. "What are you looking at?" he demanded, his voice cracking on the words.
"No-nothing." she stammered, her cheeks flaming. "Who are you?" she asked. "Where am I?"
"You're in my home, child. You and he came running here yesterday, as naked as the day you were born. Both of you were on all fours and acting like cats." she knew as soon as she sad the word that it was a mistake.
The boy and girl reacted in the same way, leaping to their feet and looking around in wide eyed terror.
"Where?" the boy asked, his voice filled with terror. The girl was shaking like a leaf and twisting the blanket in her fingers like that would save her from some evil monster.
The woman was confused for a moment. Then a possible explanation for their recent behavior came to her and she nodded to herself. 'If it's true, it would certainly explain all the missing cats in the neighborhood.'
Cautiously she approached the girl, sensing that she would be more receptive then the boy. "What is your name, little one?" she asked.
"Akane." the girl whispered, still looking around just in case.
"Well, Akane who has been training you in the martial arts?"
"My father." she replied. "But he's been different since Okaasan died."
The woman looked to the boy. "And what of you, young man? Is your father also training you?"
The boy nodded. "Yes. I'm Ranma, heir to the Musabetsu Kakutou Saotome- Ryuu."
The woman nodded, her fears confirmed. She felt sorry for the two young people before her. Their idiot fathers, in a bid to make them great martial artists, had trained them in the NekoKen. This was bound to make their lives much more difficult and confusing then they needed to be.
She sighed and began her explanation of their new technique. Several hours later, the two were sleeping quietly near the small space heater she had traded an American G.I. for nearly twenty years before. She considered hiding the children from their fathers, should they come searching for their errant heirs, but decided against it. She was old and tired.
Too tired to look after two rambunctious children. She looked at them as they lay curled near each other and smiled. Certain . . . side effects of the NekoKen were already beginning to show through.
She hoped with all her might that they would be able to withstand the coming troubles ahead of them. 'Luckily, they are still young. A little later, and there would have been even more problems for them.' she thought wistfully of her own children, long grown and with children of their own. Perhaps, when their fathers came for them, she would find a way to visit her grandchildren. It had been many years since she had last seen them.
Two days later, as the children once again slept near the heater and she was looking out a small window, she spotted a fat man wearing a dirty gi, glasses, and a white bandana looking around frantically. She listened and heard him calling for the boy. He was a little bloody and seemed to have suffered many recent injuries. Sighing again, for she did not wish to separate the two children who had became the best of friends, she went to her door and called out to the man.
********************************************************* Chapter 2
Akane grumbled as she walked into the house. Kuno-sempai had once again caused her to be late this morning with that idiodic idea of his. Angrily, she slammed her books onto a nearby table and threw her bag onto the floor beside it. She stomped into the changing room and took off her school dress, slipping into a gi. If she was lucky, her father would be in a decent frame of mind and would be able to help her train. She sighed as she recalled the last time her father had taken her on a training trip.
It had been less then two years before. He claimed that he had heard of a legendary training ground in China from a good friend of his. Together, they had booked passage on a freighter heading to Hong Kong, and from there hired a boat to smuggle them ashore. Once on the mainland, they had spent nearly three weeks traveling inland.
They had to cross a mountain range to get to the training grounds. Once there, she had been surprised to see that the grounds consisted of different length bamboo poles sticking out of a hundred different pools. There had been a guide standing there, trying to explain to them about something, but Akane had only managed to make out a few words due to his thick accent. Her father had nodded to her and leapt to the top of one of the poles. Shrugging, Akane dropped her pack and leapt onto another.
The fight was short and messy. Though her father was easily more skilled than her, she had known that since her mother's death, he was overly emotionally, given to extremes in all emotions as well as instant and total changes in directions. He could literally be crying a river one second and be as happy as clam the next.
Stumbling on the pole, she faked an injury. Predictably, her father began crying about his baby girl and leapt to help her. With a smirk that would make Nabiki proud, she leapt aside at the last possible second and slashed at the pole, slicing nearly two feet off the top. Her father, unready for the sudden absence of his injured daughter and the new height of the pole, sailed over the pole and fell into the pool below with a large splash.
"Yatta!!" she cried out, happy to have won a match against her father. What happened next surprised her.
The pool's surface rippled and boiled. A few seconds passed. Finally the small waves ceased and all was quiet. Akane began to worry. Her father had been under for a long time. She was about to leap down next to the pool when a large figure leapt out of the pool and landed on a pole next to her. She stared in surprise at the figure before her.
So surprised was she that she didn't realize that the figure was trying to gesture to her to move until it was too late. A body slammed into her back, sending her tumbling towards a pool. The body, a fat bald man in a dirty gi, fell like a brick into the pool below the pole she was standing on. She watched in shock as he fell into the pool with a splash. She looked down and saw that she was going to land in a pool in a few seconds. Idly, she wondered what she would become.
Before she reached the surface of the water, she looked in the direction the man had come and saw a familiar figure standing on a pole, one leg still raised in a side-thrust kick. She felt a sense of kinship with that figure for as she hit the water, she saw a large panda come flying out of the pool and knock him towards another one. Before the water closed over her, a name popped into her head. A name she had not thought of in a long time. 'Ranma' she thought before she blacked out. ********************************************************* Akane shook her head as she continued her kata. Thinking about Ranma always brought up feelings she wasn't prepared to deal with. She had first met him nine years before when her father had tried to teach her the nekoken. She paused her movements to trace a set of small scars that adorned her forearm. Her back and arms were crisscrossed with similar scars. She wondered again where her father had gotten the idiodic idea from. Dismissing it, she resumed her kata, flowing across the floor of the family dojo in an intricate, if simple kata.
Her kata came to an end and she bowed to the shrine set up in one corner of the room. She heard a noise behind her and turned to see her father. He was wearing his customary brown gi tied with a black belt. Her own yellow gi and red belt were much repaired from damage sustained during training.
"Well done, Akane. You are indeed a worthy heir of the Musabetsu Kakutou Tendo-Ryu. Shall we spar before dinner? Kasumi is attempting an Italian dish called spaghetti and meatballs."
Akane frowned. "Is that the one with ramen noodles and tomato sauce?" she asked. She remembered the name from her cooking class.
Tendo Soun smiled. He was so proud of his daughters. "I believe so. Usually they use beef, but considering how expensive it is, Kasumi decided to try it first with tofu and chicken."
"Well if Kasumi is making it, it's going to be great." Akane replied, getting into a tight stance. Her father took his place in a much more relaxed manner and they bowed to the shrine and to each other. With a kia, Akane launched her attack and the training began. *********************************************************