This story is a fanfiction based on the work of Rumiko Takahashi.
No offense intended.

David Johnston, rgorman@telusplanet.net

Errors have been correct, and more stuff has been added.  


YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY...  Part One


"That LYING WORTHLESS BAG OF OFFAL!"

I looked at my brother.  "Must be talking about you."

"I think you fit the description far more closely"

We were still squabbling about it as we walked in, which was probably
the wrong way to approach Mother while she was in that kind of rage....
Mother's kind of an impressive figure if I say so myself.  She may be
fifty, but she looks about thirty, tall, white hair with a black
stripe running through it.  Usually her eyes are black, unless they 
happen to be glowing blue with a buildup of chi energy such as at
that moment.

We cautiously got back to our feet.  The chi blast wasn't all that
powerful by Mother's standards, but it was definitely enough to get our
attention.  "Mother?  Do you want us to get someone for you?" I
cautiously asked.

"You could say that.  Some years ago, some odious men came here and...
offended me and the other women of this island grievously.  We captured
two of them with some difficulty.  One of them was a hideous old man
with the most repellent habits, but still a true Master, the founder of
the 'Anything Goes' school of martial arts.  The other was his student
in both martial arts and disrespect for women, a contemptible weak man."

"You want us to get those guys?", my brother asked.

"The elder escaped and we never heard from him again.  Rumor has it his
own students turned on him.  But the student we captured was released
before then on the condition that should he ever father a daughter he
would agree to place her destiny in my hands, in order that I might
protect her from his master's myriad perversions, and from his own
twisted ideas about the worth of women."

My brother and I looked at each other.  This again.  Mom was a little
nuts when it came to the daughter she'd never been able to have, and
would do just about anything to have a girl with a lot of potential to
train.

"You...want us to take a little baby away from it's parents?" I asked
uneasily.

"I have Genma Saotome's signed and notarized word of honor that you
would have the right to do so if it came to that.  Worthless piece of
trash that it is, since the conniving villain successfully deceived me
and betrayed his 'honor'.  I kept something of an eye on Genma, but his
only child was a boy named Ranma...or so I thought.  And then I
discover, THIS!"

She slapped a magazine down on the floor in front of us, "Rhythmic
Gymnastic Annual."  On it's cover was a competition ring that had
apparently been totally demolished, leaving just 3 posts standing, and
in front a referee was raising the hand of a girl with braided
hair.

My brother looked at it and commented, "Surprisingly large 
you-knows for a champion gymnast...," then winced at Mother's glare.

"This is 'Ranma Saotome' of Furinkan High in Nerima, Saotome's 'son'.
It seems fairly obvious that Saotome falsified his child's birth records
and had her pose as a boy in order to escape me.  He is every bit as 
clever, unscrupulous and cowardly as I remember, but surprisingly he
either trained the girl in the art, or she has unbelievable natural
aptitude or both."

"Mother," my brother spoke up again.  "Couldn't Ranma be a boy disguised
as a girl?  After all _some_ people are pretty good at that."  He
shot a glance at me.

I gritted my teeth and pointed down at the magazine, quickly kicking my
brother while they were both looking at it.  It's an experiment in
aversion therapy.  If he feels pain every time he talks about it, maybe
one day he'll stop.  Mother pretended not to notice our byplay as I
answered, "No, moron, not in a leotard."

He clenched his fist a little, visually promising me a little payback
later, and asked Mother, "So what do you want to do about this so many
years later?  We could go pound this Genma Saotome guy."

"No, she doesn't seem to have turned out badly despite her dolt of a
father.  I want you to find her in Nerima, and bring her to me.  Then we
will offer her a choice of fiancees.  Saotome's promise will be equally
fulfilled if he gives me a daughter-in-law."

We both looked back down at the magazine.  She was awfully cute.  This
might not be so bad...

_______________________________________________________________________
"That's the last one," Kentaro complained.  "Looking in the phone book
for Saotomes was a really stupid idea."  Like me, he was dressed in
a suit and a trenchcoat, but to tell the truth, he filled out his
suit a lot better.  I'm...small.  I looked like a little kid playing 
master spy.  He looked like a slick Yakuza thug.  

"No, NOT looking in the phone book would have been really stupid," I
corrected.  "I didn't expect to find Saotome that way.  From what we 
have on him, he's lived almost all of life either in the outdoors or 
in short-term accomodation, often as a guest in other people's homes.  
I don't think he's ever paid a phone bill in his life, but if he 
started now, we'd be fools to overlook such an easy way to find him."  
Sometimes I try to teach Kentaro how to think.  That's because Mother 
won't let me get a chimp for a pet.  

"I don't want to spend forever at this.  I'm starting to look forward
to finding out about my fiancee."

"Who says she'll choose you?  I'm the better looking one."

"You're the prettier one.  A girl like that is going to want a 
real man, and I'm the heir."  

"We'll just have to see about that."

Kentaro surprised me by having an idea, "So, let's go to Mrs. Saotome 
and ask her where her husband is."  Not that it was a good idea, but
one is sufficiently impressed by the dancing bear that it seems petty
to demand that it dance well. 

"That wouldn't be a good idea, Kentaro.  The file says that they
haven't been in communication so she may not know, and if she does
she's likely to alert our targets before we can get to them."

"You come up with some kind of story.  You're good at sneaky,
underhanded schemes and I don't want to spend forever at this."  

"Why thank you elder brother.  One sneaky underhanded scheme 
coming right up."  I pulled my notepad out of the pocket of 
my coat and consulted it, found the address of Kodachi Kuno, 
and said, "It's pretty close."  I read out the address to our 
driver.  OK, I admit it, I don't really put the effort into my 
sneaky underhanded schemes to fool the "heir to the school" 
anymore.  It's too easy to bother trying.

Kodachi Kuno was really beautiful with raven hair and a perfect little
mouth.  She had a rare aristocratic bearing and grace, as well as 
exquisite manners.  And she blushed and stammered, "No...not yet." 
in the cutest way when my brother asked for Mrs. Saotome. When 
we asked her about Ranma Saotome, she invited us right in for tea.  
Her own "special blend" as she put it.  She rather reminded me of 
Mother.  Bearing that in mind, I naturally made sure to use my 
Martial Arts Dump The Tea While My Hostess Blinks technique.  

She was an excellent hostess, and gave us an exciting blow-by-blow 
rundown of a martial gymnastics match in which she was barely 
defeated by a totally unscrupulous obsessive girl who lived to enslave
men with her arcane arts, who had assaulted Kodachi before the match 
and should have been disqualified for making physical contact had not 
her second sneakily been distracting the referee with specious 
complaints.  Apparently this girl was the goddess of evil and even 
dared to call herself "Ranma Saotome".  Why this was so evil of her, 
was never made clear to me.  I was of course suitably shocked and 
eventually brought the conversation to where she could be found.  
Fortunately Kentaro kept his mouth shut, and we took our leave.  
We left the car behind and walked so as to get an opportunity 
to case the area before approaching.  

Of course his silence should have tipped me that something was wrong 
with Ken-Chan.  Apparently, he was brooding while we walked to the 
Tendo Dojo.  As we were nearing the Tendo Dojo, my brother suddenly 
clasped me to him in an unprecedented demonstration of affection, 
declaring as he did so,  "Never will I allow my beloved brother to 
suffer at the hands of such a monster! This engagement must be ended!  
I will kill her to save you!"  Note that the moment that he decided 
the engagement was bad, I was automatically the one who was engaged.  
My brother's memory can be so convenient.  

"Thanks so much, big brother, but I think you should calm down 
and think this over a little.  For one thing, your sudden concern
for my well-being suggests that you have gone out of your mind and 
are probably under the influence of psychoactive chemicals."  
I took a look up at my brother's face, noticing his expression of 
unreasoning rage, and dilated pupils.  "Of course I could be totally 
wrong here..."

"Out of my way!", he snarled, shoving me aside and lunging for the
Dojo.  Naturally I tripped him face first into the concrete.  Oh
how I wish my brother would act like a human being and be stunned by
that sort of thing.  Instead of course, he got up, snarled something
incoherent about pounding my face to keep me safe, and attacked.
Perhaps I should mention at this point that I have rarely beaten
my brother.  I'm pretty skilled, and I'm a bit faster than he is, but 
the truth is, he knows more moves, and he has 25 kilos of solid muscle 
for a weight advantage.  Also, I tend to avoid pain when I can, while 
he has built up his pain threshold to pretty absurd levels by getting 
people to pound him with staves.  I can do a little bit with pressure
points if I take him by surprise, but pressure points require either
surprise or an opponent of inferior skill to be used effectively.  

So I hit him with a couple of dozen blows, mostly avoiding his 
return blows, but failing to get a decent pressure point strike 
in.  Even a glancing return shot was enough to knock me off my
feet though.  I rolled back up and tried to go for a special attack,
the "tornado kick", hoping he was enough out of his head that he'd
let me do it.  Bad move.  He just reached up, grabbed my leg, slammed
me into the concrete, and since unlike my brother I am a human being,
naturally that was it for me this fight.  

I didn't stay out long of course.  I may not have my brother's 
resilience, but I do know how to take some damage.  I took out a 
mirror to check the cosmetic damage...well I WAS going to see my
fiance after all!  Don't look me that way, mirrors have a lot of
uses!  Fine, be that way.  It didn't look too bad yet and I called
our rental car on my cell phone and headed to the Tendo household.  
Nice house by the way.  Airy, well maintained, it almost exuded 
peace and tranquility.  Well, except that apparently my brother 
had opened the door by kicking it in...
_____________________________________________________________________

The door exploded inward, sending small fragments of wood spraying 
at everyone at the table, except that Kasumi happened to be seated
out of the cone of debris.  She calmly began picking wood out of 
the serving dish, while everyone else got to their feet.  Nabiki of 
course just took a few steps back and leaned against a wall to 
observe the action.  Everyone else took a ready stance versus the
ominous figure which strode in and demanded, "Where is Ranma Saotome?!"

"Hey, P-Chan.  He's stealing your act."  The pig squealed indignantly
at Ranma's jibe.  "I'm Ranma Saotome.  What's it to you?"

"No you aren't!  I must save Kouchi from Ranma!" Ranma blocked a punch
and a kick from the incoherent intruder.  "Now where is-!"  Ranma, 
having lost patience, punched him in the mouth, sending him flying
back against the wall.  He showed no inclination to get up.   Ranma
looked down at him, disgusted and commented, "That was..."  
"Anticlimactic?" supplied Nabiki.  "I was gonna say 'easy'", Ranma
corrected.  

"You had to stop and think of 'easy'?"

Ranma decided to ignore her.  "Considering what he did to the door, 
I wouldn't have expected him to get knocked out by my first punch."

"He wasn't."  The new speaker at the remains of the door was a pretty
person, whose innocently feminine features contrasted oddly with her 
disheveled, slightly oversized masculine clothing.  She brushed her 
mid length hair out of her blue eyes and continued, "My brother 
doesn't snore when he's actually been knocked out.  I'm afraid he 
fell asleep in the middle of the fight."  She smiled and her face 
suddenly took on a sly quality,  "Some people just can't hold their 
herbal tea."

"Why was he after Ranma?" Akane asked.

"I'm afraid that we just had tea with a Ms. Kuno, and the combination
of the tea and her conversation drove my brother's habitual idiocy
into outright paranoia and mania."  She bowed.  "You have my family's
sincere apologies."  Her face was once again the model of blue-eyed
innocence.

"That sounds familiar," Nabiki dryly commented.  "Who's going to pay 
for the door?"

"I'll be back to settle all accounts."  She knelt over her brother, 
fingers poking and prodding.  Suddenly he sat bolt upright, eyes open 
but blank.  "Sleepwalker Point," she explained to those watching."

"Who are you, anyway?"  Ranma asked.  

As she led her somnambulating charge out, she paused and looked back 
at him, "My name is Kouchi Yamazaki, and apparently I'm the fiance 
of Ranma Saotome."  She continued out through the door and toward
a limousine which was pulling up in front.  

Nobody said anything else for quite a while.  Then things got loud.  
______________________________________________________________________

Hey look, it showed up!  

Say something helpful.

I know, incidentally, that switching from first person to third
is a little odd.  But it should be obvious why I did it.  
______________________________________________________________________

She wasn't there.  Genma was, but Ranma Saotome wasn't.  Staying with
a friend?  Locked in her room for discipline?  Kodachi had
talked about how her happiness was being frustrated by Ranma, and by
some kind of arranged engagement.  Assuming the boy was one of the 
Tendos, then perhaps Ranma had been engaged by her father to marry
him, and Kodachi's pathological hatred was caused by the desire to
marry the Tendo boy.  But was Ranma happy in this engagement?  I hoped
not.  Because it was almost certain that my mother's agreement 
superceded any later arrangement, having been made before Genma was
even married.  Genma probably wouldn't run now that he'd seen me.  
Fear of my mother would send virtually anyone running.  But
nobody was ever afraid of me, and Kentaro's exercise in buffoonery
would presumably have evaporated any fear he might inspire.  

I left Ken to sleep it off and headed back to the Tendo household.
For all my rationalisation, my loose lips might have set the prey
afoot, and I wouldn't want to give them too much of a head start.  
The truth was, I'd told them just to see the looks on their faces,
and to get my claim in before Kentaro could stake one.  
That meant that my foolishness carried it's own punishment.  It would
be a cold and uncomfortable night if I was lucky.  If I wasn't, I'd
have to explain to Kentaro and maybe Mother how I'd lost them.  

I had to be careful, martial artists are often light sleepers.  But
before I spent the night here, I wanted to be sure that Genma Saotome, 
at least, was still here.  I quietly hopped onto a ledge that ran
conveniently under a bank of second story windows.  Tendo Senior...
oblivious daughter...hmm.  The daughter with the sense of humour.  
While everyone else was reacting with shock and anger, she'd just 
grinned at me.  She looked really sad in her sleep...also cute.  
Still, tonight I was a peeping tom with a mission, so I moved on.  
Daughter who like she wanted to hit me...sleeps with her window 
open.  What was she sleeping with: a... little pig?  

So much for martial artists being the light sleepers.  She  was 
still sound asleep.  But the pig suddenly woke up as if it had a 
sixth sense and started squealing when it saw my silhouette.  I 
should get one of those pigs for the Hall.  To heck with electronic 
security systems.  

Violent Daughter sat bolt upright, shouted, "Stop picking on P-Chan, 
Ranma!" and threw a dumbbell at me.  I stepped to the side but lost 
my balance because I was so startled at such a brutal and immediate 
attack.  I fell into the bushes underneath her window and rolled 
up close to the house.  I had a fiancee who snuck into her prospective
sister-in-law's room to attack her pet pig?  And it was so cute too...
Go figure.  Maybe she wanted to eat him.  Maybe it was a magic intruder 
detecting pig worth a fortune on the black market.  Maybe I was missing 
something.  

I finally found Genma, who appeared to be bunking with the boy.  
That...didn't make sense.  I was still thinking about it when I heard
the quiet impact of two bare feet touching down behind me.  I 
immediately jumped down of course, but he was on me before I could 
start running.  Ever been suddenly grabbed in the moonlight by a guy
who weighs almost twice what you do, and has fangs?  Actually it's 
a rather unnerving experience.  Fortunately I don't scream when 
startled.  Unfortunately, I can't say anything when I'm terrified.
I might as well be hit on my Silencer Point.  So when he snarled, 
"What were you doing spying on Akane?", all I could do is gasp for 
breath.  

Pain shot through my forearms as his grip tightened.  It felt as if
he was about to crush my bones, and there was no doubt in my mind
that this guy had the strength to do it.  He continued, "Trying to
eliminate the competition?  Answer me, girl!"  I hate it when people
call me that.  I REALLY hate it.  It's bad enough being small and 
"pretty" without being taunted about it.  So I kicked him solidly 
in the crotch.  When his only reaction was to cross his eyes a little 
and grunt, I knew I was in real trouble.  Class this one with my 
brother in the nonhuman category.  Still, his grip had weakened
a little, so I could slip free leaving just my suit jacket behind.  

He lunged after me, but he still didn't seem to consider me  
dangerous.  Maybe I'm not, by his standard, but if he 
was going to be that cocky, it was easy enough to fake him out,
side step and let him go into the pond.  I jumped to the wall in the
back and a chill ran down my spine as I looked back and saw that
he'd disappeared.  Fangs, inhuman strength and staying power, the
ability to dematerialise...  I had planned to stay overnight in a 
tree to keep watch, but I figured I'd catch up with Ranma at her 
school.  Genma obviously wasn't running, but right now, I was.  
I took a mental note:  Find out which one Akane was and stay away
from her.  I hoped she wasn't Smart Daughter.  Maybe she was 
Clueless Daughter.  She struck me as the type to inspire mindless
devotion without even noticing how weird her follower was. 
_______________________________________________________________________
"Hey, get a load of that guy." Kentaro said.  "What's that on his
back?  A poleaxe?  This must be a very permissive school." 
He handed me the binoculars.  I looked through them and answered, 
"That's a girl."

"Gedoudahere!  There's no...you know."  My brother has a "thing" 
about breasts.  He also can't say the word.  "What?" I asked
innocently.  

"No...um...obvious...things."

"Seems pretty obvious to me."

"But he-she doesn't have any..."

"Girls uniform?  Makeup?"  I love bugging my brother.  "Hey, here's
Smart Daughter.  You know, she's cute but she could use a better 
hair style and that uniform does nothing for her."  He looked at me.  
"What?" I asked in irritation.  He shook his head and said, "Gimme 
back the binocs."  

He looked through them again, and said, "Here comes Violent Daughter 
and Sucker Punch Guy.  Looks like they're running late.  
Hey, what a team!  They just clocked that kendo guy for getting in 
their way.  They must train together a lot to work with that kind of 
coordination.  Hey, little brother, maybe we should challenge them 
to a double duel." 

"We're working.  No time for fun.  Also no sign of Ranma Saotome.
What, is she skipping school?  Are we engaged to a delinquent?"

"It looks like this is a bust.  So what, do we just drop by the
Tendo Dojo tonight, and show 'em our copy of Saotome's pact with
our mother and ask 'em to lead us to Ranma?"

"Let's talk to Kendo Guy first.  Maybe he can tell us where she is."
And so we approached Tatewaki Kuno, in order that he might clarify
our confusion...
_____________________________________________________________________