First Choice


Ranma grumbled to himself as he packed up their camping gear. His father
was dragging him along to yet another 'famous training ground,' only
this time, he didn't seem to have the foggiest clue what made it so
great. He would only say that no-one trained there anymore, which must
mean that it was terribly dangerous. Ranma wondered whether it might not
actually mean that the training ground was merely inacessible, like that
one cave they had tried to reach. There had to be some reason that it
was no longer used, and since there were always idiots like his father
willing to do something no matter how dangerous it seemed, the idea that
its hazards were the reason it was no longer used seemed far-fetched to
Ranma.

Besides, it had been ten years, and Ranma was feeling anxious about the
imminent return to Japan. As he finished tightening the last tie on his
backpack and shouldered the burden, he wondered again whether his mother
was still alive, and what she would be like. He could no longer remember
her, and Genma would never speak of her, so there were no facts to fuel
his speculations, and his mind soon moved on to planning out how to
defeat his father this time. 

It had been some time since Genma had been a real threat to him. He had
been beating him in sparring regularly for a number of years by this
time. Nonetheless, he had to stay with the old man . . . after all, he
was his father, and for all the stupid things he had put Ranma through,
he still loved the old man. 

He followed his father, who was a thickly built man, only slightly
overweight, wearing a bandanna around his bald head, and glasses. They
both wore training gi, largely because Genma was too cheap to buy both
ordinary clothing and gi, though in this case they were in fact
heading towards training.

Genma looked upon his son as they walked side by side, now that they had
encountered a clear path, and he no longer needed to lead the way. His
son had grown strong, through all of the challenges that Genma had
thrown at him, and Genma felt a strong swelling of pride. He proceeded
to thoroughly mangle that sensation. It would not do, it absolutely
would not do to allow the boy to learn that he had already surpassed
Genma's expectations. Why, if he knew that, he might get cocky, he'd
start slacking off, and he'd listen to Genma even less. Better make sure
he wasn't getting a swelled head.

"Foolish boy!" Genma snarled, swatting the back of Ranma's head, "It
took you far too long to get packed this morning! Why, we didn't even
have time to spar before setting out," stated Genma, ignoring the fact
that he had basically been lazy, and not assisted his son, not feeling
like putting forth the extra effort needed to get the camp put away
quickly enough to allow a morning spar.

"You'd better impress me at this new training ground, Ranma! For it is
here that I will decide if you are yet man enough for us to return! You
must be the best!"

Ranma grumbled silently, not deigning to respond. His father was always
rambling on about how Ranma needed to be manly, and nothing Ranma ever
did seemed good enough for the old man. The slightest sign of
unwillingness or hesitation, though, and it was 'Oh, I'm so ashamed! My
son is acting girly! What are you boy? A girl? Or a man!?' Ranma had
long since grown sick of it, but he could not deny that he had become a
skilled martial artist through his father's teachings. He just couldn't
quite decide if it was because of his father's training, or in spite of
it.

Genma vacillated between a brooding silence, as he considered their
imminent return to Japan and his son's likely response to the news of
the boy's engagement, which given the boy's recent reactions to the
occasional downside of the training was likely to be painful for Genma,
and thinking about the boy himself and how proud he was of him, which
inevitably led to a short round of insults.

Ordinarily, Genma would have soon grown concerned at his boy's
uncharacteristic silence, his lack of response to Genma's insults, but
Genma was preoccupied. In fact, Ranma had been growing steadily more
taciturn for the last several months, not that Genma, ever perceptive
individual that he was not, ever noticed. The only insult that
consistently got a rise from Ranma was when Genma questioned his
manhood, calling him a girl. Had Genma been aware that this was because
Ranma had eked enough details out of Genma over the years to recognize
that his ever seeing his mother again depended upon his manhood, Genma
would have been startled at the boy's perceptiveness. As he was not
aware, he remained blithely confident that the boy had no particular
idea why it was so important that he be a man, and he further remained
blissfully unaware of Ranma's feelings on the subject.

Soon they stood together at the beginning of a downward slope that led
into a valley cloaked in dense white mists. As they continued down the
trail, the mists parted before them, and by the time they had reached
the bottom, the rising sun had burned off much of the mists. 

Ranma tried to stop for a moment to take in the view. One of the parts
of this trip that he had truly appreciated had been the sheer natural
beauty of some of the places they had visited. Unfortunately, though not
in the least bit unusually, Genma interrupted his attempt to enjoy
Nature's splendor.

"Come on, boy, don't stand around all day! Let's spar!" Genma looked out
over the vista of innumerable pools of various sizes, with freshly cut
and trimmed bamboo poles rising from them. As he leapt up to land
balanced easily upon one of the poles, he noted two things to himself.
First, that in spite of what the brochure said, this training ground
must remain in use, or there would not be freshly cut staves of bamboo
rising from each pool. Second, that this would be a good final training
ground, perfectly suited to the aerial nature of the Musabetso Kakuto
Ryuu that the Saotomes practiced. 

It would not, he could see, be like many of the places he had gone,
where Ranma had been put through hellish experiences that tempered him
as the forge tempers steel. Still, it would be a good site, in that it
would act something like a cooldown after a good spar, letting Ranma
down easy in terms of ceasing his heavy training schedule. Rather than
it simply stopping outright, they would enjoy this last training ground,
fine tuning their skills, as a way of allowing Ranma to ease into his
new life. After all, he would still be sparring with his son 
regularly . . . but the heavy training was over.

This was still definitely a higher level workout than the sparring would
be back home in Japan, for the air was thinner here high in the
mountains, and that water should be extremely cold. Losing focus here
would definitely result in a jarring awakening. 

Ranma dropped his pack and leapt easily to a pole across from his
father, and moments later the two were clashing steadily in the air.
Their sparring lasted for some time, as they bounced back and forth
across the expanse of poles, and they were near to their starting point
when Ranma finally tired of the insults Genma continually threw, and
blasting through his father's defenses, sent Genma plummeting into the
icy depths of one of the pools.

Ranma dropped easily to a pole a few pools away, waiting for his father
to emerge. When Genma did not emerge immediately, Ranma called out to
him. "Ano, Oyaji, are we done already?"

The pool frothed suddenly, and a massive shape barreled forth from it,
springing to land back atop the pole. Ranma gaped at the black and white
panda balanced precariously on the thin bamboo pole. He was frozen in
surprise and had only time to notice that the panda was strangely enough
wearing glasses and the tattered remnants of a training gi when it
attacked him.

Genma leapt from the pool and tried to focus on his son. He felt 
strange, slightly off-balance, and his sight was fuzzy . . . he assumed
it was from the water still dripping from his eyebrows, and the fact
that his glasses were askew. 

He was about to adjust them when he realized that Ranma had still not
moved, much less taken advantage of the opening. What was this?! He had
taught the boy to take every advantage in a fight, not sit there
gawking! He leapt to the attack, intent on teaching the foolish boy a
lesson, and to his great anger, Ranma hardly managed to even attempt to
block and was sent flying into another pool for his folly.

Genma growfed angrily, then paused, startled. Growfed? He what? He held
up his hand, and looked at it. Not a hand . . . fur, claws . . . he
looked down at himself, caught his reflection in the pool, and fell from
his pole in shock. He managed to catch it on the way down, and push
himself off so that he sailed over the pool that Ranma fell into and
onto solid ground. 

He spun to face where his son had gone in, mind frantic with horror. His
worst fears were confirmed when what rose from the pool was a dainty
redhead wearing Ranma's gi, and the shriek she gave off when she opened
her gi and looked down would have confirmed her femininity even had her
form not done so.

"Oyaaajiii!" she growled, launching herself at him, the intent to main
and possibly dismember clear in her still startlingly blue eyes. Genma
turned to flee when they were both brought up short by a quietly spoken,
"Stop," that somehow seemed to come from every direction at once. In the
air before Genma an apparition appeared that frightened him terribly.

Powerfully built, clearly male, the man's features were indistinct due
to the writhing aura of blue flames that tore the air about him in eerie
silence. Genma did not need to see him, to feel that this man's aura
rivaled that of the dreaded Master whose name he did not even dare to
think, and even worse . . . this man had wings! Was this some divine
kami of retribution come to visit judgement upon him? Genma immediately
launched into the only attack in his repertoire that was usable against
beings of this power level . . . the Saotome Special Technique - Crouch
of the White Tiger!

He fell to his knees before the man, bowing and scraping, kowtowing
before the kami. The Lord Fey looked down with disgust on the panda,
but nonetheless poured hot water upon him, a stream of steaming water
that appeared from his outstretched hand to trickle over the man's head.
After all, Genma couldn't offer his son to save his skin if he couldn't
speak.

Fey awaited the inevitable, maintaining a stern look, while Ranma simply
watched in disgust and mild curiosity. Her disgust was for Genma, and
his simpering, while her curiousity was for her father's return to
humanity. Could her own curse be so easily cured by this man? She
growled low in her throat when she heard her father offering her up to
appease the strange man. She knew well what he was about, he had done
much the same when they encountered martial artists who held grudges
against him for one reason or another and she knew he intended to come
for her. She couldn't help her feelings of revulsion, however, when she
heard him offering not his son . . . but his daughter, and extolling her
virtues, her beauty . . . her compliance?! The bastard!

"I accept, Saotome Genma!" the man said, in a voice that seemed to
reach into their very bones and rattle them. He held out a scroll, and a
golden quill pen. Genma signed hurriedly. "Now leave," the man growled,
and Genma shot Ranma an apologetic glance before racing away.

Ranma set herself in a defensive stance. She could feel the power
rolling off the man, but she was damned if she was going to allow some
damned man to buy her. Who knew what he wanted to do, but whatever it
was, she wasn't having any of it. She was beyond tired of being the
scapegoat for Genma's schemes, and this last one . . . well, it just
went too far! How could she see her mother now? What would she think?

---

In a village in a valley not far distant from the training grounds of
Jusenkyou, Kho Lon stood beside her great-granddaughter, as Xian Pu
watched and awaited her next turn in the tournament. Xian Pu was well on
her way to winning the tournament, which would be quite a feat. It was
quite unusual for any girl to win the tournament in the first year of
her participation, and most of those who had accomplished the feat had
gone on to become Elders themselves. Xian Pu was determined to make her
great-grandmother proud of her, and to take the tournament prize. She
would prove to them all that she was the best fighter of her generation.

Kho Lon looked up, startled, when she felt a flare of powerful ki in the
Jusenkyou valley. She concentrated on it for a moment, and judged it to
be approximately equal to her own. She glanced around, noting that a few
of the other elders had also felt it. She wanted to go and see what it
was, but she couldn't leave her great-granddaughter without support . . .
besides, she had a lot riding on the outcome of this tournament,
herself. She would investigate tomorrow . . . or perhaps, she might not
need to. The Jusenkyou Guide might bring whoever it was to the village.