I don’t understand grownups.
I was comin’ home from school, runnin’ on the fence like always, when she caught up to me again. That crazy girl from the Nekohanten, attackin’ me, just like she does almost every day. I mean, jeez, what a macho tomboy! I really hate runnin’ away from a fight, but my dad says a real man doesn’t fight girls even if they are violent tomboys, and if there’s one thing I won’t do for anything, it’s get my dad mad at me if I can help it. So I did the only thing I could do. I jumped off over her head and ran. Grandpa Saotome says that’s the family secret technique, but Mom doesn’t think much of it.
She flipped a yoyo outta her sleeve as I was comin’ down and tried to snag me with it. Well, I hope I’m better’n that! I jerked her off the bike instead, and she whipped these mace things out and made like she was gonna smash my head in! Missed me, of course. Why does a klutz like her even try? So I beat it fast. Up the steps to the shrine, through the shrine grounds to the street back of the dojo, and over the wall. I think I saw her old witch of a granny show up, but I was movin’ too fast. That old lady really scares me; she looks at me like I’m somethin’ she wants to cook for dinner.
Anyway, when I went over the wall I landed on top of Grandpa and knocked him into the pond. He was sparrin’ with Dad and must have already gone in once ’cuz he was a panda. But Dad was a woman so he musta got him back. They both change when they get wet. Maybe if I did too that stupid girl wouldn’t keep chasin’ me. Usually when I get home me and Grandpa go two-on-one with Dad, but Mom and Grandma said it was time for dinner. Dad and Grandpa changed back to being men, and I told them what happened on the way home.That’s when the weird stuff started.
Dad and Mom looked at each other and started laughin’ and Mom said to Dad “Do you think you ought to have a talk with Mousse?”
Dad looked almost scared, wavin’ his hands and backin’ up till he almost fell in the pond again, and said “No way. No more iinazuke in this family!” And all the grownups started laughin’ harder than ever!
Jeez, what are they talkin’ about, iinazuke? What would I want to marry her for? If I ever do get married, it’ll be to a real girl like my cousin Aoi, who cooks almost as good as Aunt Kasumi and always acts gentle and pretty. No way I’m ever gonna marry a violent, uncute tomboy, let alone one whose cookin’ oughtta come with a hazmat warning!
But when I said so, the grownups really went off the deep end. Dad and Mom looked at each other funny and started huggin’ each other. Then Dad called Mom an uncute tomboy and Mom called Dad a dumb pervert, only they said it like they were kissin’ or somethin’. And Grandpa laughed so hard he did fall in the pond!
I tell ya, I just don’t understand grownups!
He defeated me again today.
I used the yoyo the way Father taught me, and caught him, but he got loose. Then I tried to use my bonbori as I learned from Mother, but he ran away.
I hate him. I cannot stop thinking about him.
I used to dream about marrying him when I grew up. He is so handsome, with his black hair and his blue eyes. I loved his grace when I watched him run on top of the fences. When we were eight a gang of bullies came around from the junior high, beating up the smaller children and stealing their lunch money. They tried to rob me. I fought back, of course – am I not a daughter of the Joketsuzoku, even though we live in this foreign place? But they were too many for me… and then they were running away, limping and bruised, and he was laughing and calling me slow and clumsy. I vowed to make him eat his words. I trained and trained, and no matter how well Father or Mother or even Great-Great-Grandmother said I did, the only praise I wanted to hear was his. I have never heard it. To him I am still clumsy, slow, blind, violent, not cute.
My family says that his father once defeated my mother in combat. By the law of my people, they were thus bound to marry. They did not, and honor requires that I redeem my mother’s omission. But I do not want to marry a man who is rude and insulting, merely because he is a better fighter. Father never insults Mother, he treats her like a queen, like a goddess. That is what the love of a man for a woman should be. That is what I want for myself. But… Ancestors forgive me, I wish I could have it with him. And so I train…
I am not beautiful like Mother, and I see poorly without my glasses. I am clumsy with her weapons, and slow with Father’s techniques. Yet, somehow, I have to learn. Because maybe, if I defeat him, I can stop wanting him.
When you have lived as long as I have, you learn patience. You learn to take the long view. You learn to think not only of immediate results, but of the next generation, and of all the generations to come.
When my great-granddaughter came home in tears because she had discovered the woman she had vowed to kill was also the man she was honor-bound to marry, I had to investigate the situation myself. A male able to defeat my Shampoo… that was a sight in itself. But Ranma…
Ranma was quite simply the most extraordinary male I have ever seen in all my long life. What I would not have given to bring such blood into my tribe! He has the potential to be greater than his sometime teacher, and that is saying a good deal. I knew Happousai when he was young and strong, and as fearsome as that old man can be, he is now only the withered shadow of what he was. But I also saw that with Ranma’s extraordinary strength, of both body and chi, came something I can only call destiny. The tie between him and Akane Tendou was already too strong to break easily, and only strengthened with each obstacle placed between them.
And Akane… had it not been for the accident of birth that made her Japanese, what a Joketsuzoku warrior she would have made! I can well believe that the soul of one of our legendary heroines occupies that body, for nothing else could burn with so fierce a fire.
When you have lived as long as I have, you learn patience. You learn to think of the next generation, and all the generations to come.
Shampoo has always thought it was her own weakness, or perhaps Ranma’s superior strength, that made her fail to win him. She has never suspected that I planned the whole thing, that it was I who mistaught her magic and sabotaged her plots, just as it was I who trained Ranma in his most powerful techniques.
My great-great-granddaughter has her father’s eyesight, but she also has his resourcefulness and determination – and like her mother, she will never yield herself to any but the strongest. By the time she is of an age to marry, there will be only one man she can desire. And for his part… what boy could fail to be attracted to a girl who is so much like his own mother?
This time, the strings are in my hands.
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
This was actually the first idea I ever had for a Ranma fanfic. I’d originally conceived it as a doujinshi, but since I can’t draw to save my life, it ended up as a fic. Originally it was only the boy’s story, but I wasn’t happy with it and decided to add the girl’s viewpoint, with Cologne’s to round it off. Ranma’s son, open as sunshine and sensitive as a brick, without a clue about his parents’ story, and Shampoo’s daughter, burdened with being the plain daughter of a beautiful mother.
According to a legend I read a long time ago, one of the things the Seven Lucky Gods do is bind destined lovers by tying their red strings together (actually, in the version I read, only men’s life-threads are red while women’s are white). However, when they get together to do this, they party. The sake (or soma, or nectar, or whatever it is gods get plastered on) flows freely, and the drunker the Seven get, the more tangled the strings get, and that’s why some people have screwed-up love lives. They must have been bombed out of their minds when they did this lot…