
DISCLAIMER: The Bet is Metroanime's; Ranma and associated
concepts are Takahashi-sama's. Of course you knew that, but
some anal-retentive lawyer insists that I treat the whole
world like a pack of retarded monkeys and repeat this
idiotic and nonsensical disclaimer anyways, thereby wasting
my valuable time, as well as yours. Life's a bitch, ain't
it?

Xanthine the All-Knowing, Godling of Divination Magic,
belongs to Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Betcha didn't know
that.

--------------------
Ranma 1/2: Another Approach
By Jack Staik, Bookkeeper-At-Arms
--------------------

"Hey!" Toltiir shouted, "No loitering, punk! The Bet's over!
No new entries!"

Xanthine lifted a hand, allowing the eye imbedded therein to
gaze at the feline deity (since his head lacked eyes). <My
apologies, Elder.> the godling's gentle telepathic "voice"
said. <I was but practicing at my craft. Your pool aids in
that.>

"Hmmm... you're new around here. What's your baliwick?"

<Divination magic.> Xanthine answered.

"Ah, and looking at the strands to see how they fit, eh?"
Toltiir wondered how he could milk this one for some fun.
Usually new godlings were good for a laugh. "Well, how about
a lesson in meta-divination?"

<Meta-Divination?>

"Sure! Pick a goal you want the timeline to head towards,
and try to make it go toward that goal. Instead of using the
prediction to create the future, you use the future to
create the prediction."

<Interesting...> Xanthine gazed over the timeline with an
array of physical, psionic, mystical, and godly senses. <The
goal... allow these two to avoid fighting - or at least, not
as much. Avoid that nasty divorce, or the worse
reconciliation.>

Toltiir nodded. Ranma and Akane's divorces were nasty
enough, the result when they re-married after a divorce was
too gruesome to think about.

<And the change should be ... here.>

"Huh? You moved Ranma's bedroll six inches?"

<Observe..>

 * * * * * * * * * *

Ranma woke up in a surly mood. Sleeping on all those sharp
rocks was bad enough.  Awakening to discover that the
morning dew had triggered his curse (Acquired less than a
week ago) was worse.

"AAAAAGGGGHHH!!!" Ranma-chan exclaimed. "I *HATE* THIS! I
HATE THIS CURSE, I HATE TRAVELLING ALL THE TIME, I HATE THE
AMAZONS, I HATE JUSENKYO, AND I HATE YOU!!"

Ranma-chan then began her morning workout with a brisk
fifteen-minute panda-pounding.

The panda sitting nearby quailed before his son - er,
daughter - for a while before Ranma-chan stomped away from
him. He knew of old how tempermental his son could get. <A
lot like his mother,> Genma thought. Of course, this morning
was the worst it had ever been

Looking at the postcard he had written, he knew that if he
sent this, in all liklihood his son would have a good excuse
to remove his spleen. And would probably do it, too. (He
hadn't been able to beat the boy consistently since he was
twelve without cheating. The thought of going against the
boy when he was in a berserker rage was ... disturbing.)

Genma took out his pen and, with a dexterity quite
remarkable for a panda, wrote a bit more on the postcard...

 * * * * * * * * * *

"That's it? Ranma wakes up on the wrong side of the
bedroll?"

<Not quite. His frustrations had been building most of his
life, and the first week post-Jusenkyo was rather stressful.
He just vented what was already there. And alarmed his
father sufficiently that a change has been wrought. Observe
the card.>

" 'Tendo. Bringing Ranma home. Don't say anything, follow my
lead. Trust me. Genma.'" Toltiir though of this. "Genma's
got an idea?"

<Indeed. He has an able brain, but it seldom makes itself
heard over his stomach.>

"Or that wet noodle he uses in place of a spine." Toltiir
agreed.

 * * * * * * * * * *

"Kasumi! Nabiki! Akane! Come here! I have news!"

The three girls stumbled into the room. Soun briefly
wondered why Nabiki wore a formal kimono, but dismissed the
thought. As long as it wasn't those scandalous shorts she
liked so much.

"My old friend Genma Saotome is coming for a visit with his
son Ranma." He wanted to tell the girls of the engagement,
but Genma's note had been clear, Say Nothing. Genma's
schemes were usually effective, he recalled (at least when
it came to the virtues of young women. And his daughters
were young women).

"Oh great, freeloaders." Nabiki groaned.

"Oh great, some pervert boy in my house. He peeps me once, I
remove it!" Akane growled.

"Oh it will be nice to have visitors! I'll have to get the
guest room ready!" Kasumi exclaimed. Nice girls enjoy having
guests over.

"They just got back from a tour of China" Soun explained,
"where they studied ancient martial arts mysteries."

"Ooh, China!" Nabiki exclaimed. Foreign travel equals cash.

"Hmph!" Akane commented.

"What kind of boy is this Ranma anyhow?" Nabiki asked
casually.

"I wouldn't know - I never met him."

 * * * * * * * * * *

"Hmmm... interesting. Already one source of hostility is
defused."

<Yes. Now observe the rest of the plot unfold.>

 * * * * * * * * * *

"Um, Daddy? Are these your friends?"

Soun looked at the panda and the struggling red-haired girl.
"I don't think so."

"Oh right." Nabiki commented. "A panda kidnaps a girl; and
comes straight here. Happens all the time."

The girl works away from the panda and turns to the Tendos.
"I'm Ranma Saotome. Sorry about this."

"A pleasure, young Saotome!" Soun said, ready to follow his
old friend's lead. "And where is your father, lad?"

"Uh, Daddy?" Nabiki commented, poking an obvious clue. "This
is not a 'lad'. This is a girl."

Soun looked puzzled. "But I'm certain that Genma told me he
had a son." Perhaps this is why he wanted Soun to keep
silent? Or did he have something else in mind?

Nabiki gripped a breast. "Does this look like a son to you?"

"Will yoiu please stop doing that?" she asked.

"Nabiki!" Akane exclaimed, shocked. "She's a guest! You
shouldn't be so rude!" Akane, relieved that she didn't have
to watch out for some degenerate boy, held out her hand.
"I'm Akane. You want to be friends?"

Ranma smiled slowly. "Alright."

<WHAP!> a sign came down on hier head.

[Not now, boy! First things first!] the sign read. It
flipped over, the other side reading. [We need a kettle of
hot water, please.]

Wondering how the panda wrote so quickly and legibly, Kasumi
went for the hot water.

 * * * * * * * * * *

"So instead of - ahem - Akane's discovery, it's out in the
open. How dull. But no sparring?"

<The next portion in the dining room is familiar enough -
except that Akane hasn't had the dual embarassment of being
beaten and being seen naked by a boy.>

<Previously, the two older Tendo girls saw Ranma as an
unwanted fiance, a burden to disrupt their lives, which
clouded their perceptions.>

<Nabiki, seeing clearly, witnesses that Ranma and Genma's
conditions is proof that her rationalist materialistic view
of the world is seriously flawed. She begins examing many
things she had dismissed as superstition; astrology,
numerology, and so forth. This will eventually lead her to
True Magick, and her training as a White Sorceress.>

<Kasumi, not fettered by the concept of Ranma as a fiance,
sees a young boy victimized by an idiotic father. She will
be more outgoing toward him, not just generically nice as
she was in the original timeline. This, too, has far-
reaching consequences.>

<Now, observe...>

 * * * * * * * * * *

"Wow," Nabiki said.

The once-again male Ranma sat sullenly. Pop was going to pay
for this.

"Now as to the purpose of our visit." Genma began, sounding
important.

"Long ago, Tendo and myself decided that we would unite our
two schools of Anything-Goes Martial Arts." Soun was about
to interrupt, but Genma raised a hand to silence him. "To
that end, Ranma and I are here.

"Ranma, you will challenge Soun's heir. The victor will
become sensei to the loser, and teach all they know. Then,
in the fullness of time, the two will duel to see who will
become Master of the school."

"Um, Genma.." Soun asked, "may I speak to you for a moment?"

 * * * * * * * * * *

"HEY!! This makes sense! Who is that wearing the Genma
suit??"

 * * * * * * * * * *

"Saotome!" Soun hissed, "What happened to the plan?? To
marry our children??"

Genma sighed. "After Jusenkyo, Ranma became more
tempermental, harder to control. A forced marriage would be
too much, perhaps enough to chase him away. Acting as a
sensei may help him regain the balance he lost.

"Also, who says anything happened to the plan? The closeness
of the sensei-student relationship, combined with teenage
hormones, should do the job for us, allowing them to think
it was their own idea!"

Soun liked the notion. "Buit what if Akane wins the duel?"

"Nothing changes. Except that I give my idiot son a
pummeling for losing to a girl!" Genma smiled.


Meanwhile,...

"So," Ranma asked, "who's the heir to the school?"

Akane stood up. "I am. Akane Tendo, heir to the Tendo School
of Anything-Goes."

Ranma sized her up. Hmmm, maybe... "So, you want to wait for
the Old Men and go through with this, or just surrender
now?"

"WHAT!?!?" Akane exclaimed. "Surrender?? You never even saw
me fight!"

"Don't have to. I know you can't take me." The air of utter
certainty the - the *boy* - exuded as he said that fed the
growing fire in Akane.

"Why - because I'm a *girl*?!?" she snarled.

"Damn straight!" he said. Foolishly, he pushed the point
home. "A very girly girl, too. If you were some tomboy,
maybe, but you're way to feminine to be a *real* martial
artist!"

"AAAARRRRGH!!" she snarled. The dining room table found its
way to her hands and arced toward that smug face -

- only to be shattered by a flurry of lightning-fast blows.

Akane barely had time to register the loss of her weapon
before a leg hit the back of her knees and the sash of her
gi was relocated.

Kasumi and Nabiki watched, awestruck, as Ranma disarmed
Akane, knocked her down, then tied her wrists and ankles
together before she hit the ground.

Soun and Genma ran back to the dining room to find the table
in splinters and Akane hogtied on the floor.

 * * * * * * * * * *

"Wait a minute! Ranma doesn't hit girls!"

<He didn't strike her - not even once.>

"Oh Yeah. Right. But Akane usually hits him with no
problem."

<In the original timeline, Ranma was reacting to a social
situation involving concepts almost as alien to him as I
would be - marriage and females. The unfamiliarity of the
situation disoriented him. This time, he's dealing not with
a fiancee, but a challenger and potentially his first pupil.
This is now a martial arts situation, with which he is
wholly familiar. Thus he is at his best.>

 * * * * * * * * * *

"She's slow, her defense is lousy, her reflexes could be
beaten by a dead slug, and her temper makes all these
problems worse." Ranma critiqued.

"No fair! I wasn't ready!" Akane protested.

"You attack someone when you're not ready?" Ranma replied
scornfully. "It's a wonder you're not dead."

"Well, Tendo?" Genma asked.

Soun nodded. "Akane, as of now, Ranma will be your sensei.
You are to treat him with respect, and listen to his
instruction."

Akane fumed. She was beaten - by a *boy*! It was probably
some plot to try to take advantage of her. As soon as she
proved it, he would be gone!

"Hei, otosan." she said.

<For now> she thought.

 * * * * * * * * * *

Toltiir rolled on the ground, shaking with laughter. "Ranma
teaching Akane?!?! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!"

Xanthine nodded, a consciously-copied human gesture. <Yes.
Akane is a stubborn and prideful person, and Ranma is ...
less than empathetic. Also, his training techniques, while
less savage than his father's, are nonetheless brutal and
humiliating.>

"And since Akane always takes everything personally - either
interpreting it sexually or as deliberate insult -"

<Indeed. Their early relationship is ... tumultuous.>

 * * * * * * * * * *

Akane was awakened by a splash of water to the face.

"AAAAAAGGGGHH!! WHAT DID YOU DO *THAT* FOR?!?"

"Wake up, lazybones! Dawn was almost two minutes ago!" Ranma
barked.

"DAWN?!? BAKA!!"

"C'mon! You've got training to do!"

"Training??" Akane yelled. "At this hour?? I haven't even
had a decent night's sleep!"

Ranma grabbed the edges of the mattress and yanked up,
spilling Akane onto the floor.

"No wonder you sleep like a log." he commented. "Nice, soft
bed. This will have to go!" And he hurled the mattress out
the window.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Akane demanded.

"You shouldn't dull your edge like that. You sleep too
deeply, allowing anyone to sneak up on you."

"RANMA NO BAKA!!" she cried and started swinging at him.

Not that it did any good. He dodged and sidestepped every
blow, guiding her to the window.

Akane yelled and unleashed a haymaker at his head. Ranma
grabbed her forearm, spun, and hurled her out the window,
hitting the koi pond dead center.

Ranma nimbly hopped from the upper-story window to the
ground and went over to the stunned and soaking-wet Akane.

"If you can't take a little discomfort and inconvenience for
the Art, then stop pretending to be a martial artist. Go
back to tea parties and cooking."

Akane snarled at him, then... "GAAAAHHHHH!!!"


The screams and yelling woke up Nabiki, who swore someone
was going to pay. She glanced out the window, and saw Akane
and Ranma fighting.

Or rather, Akane was fighting and Ranma was making a
complete fool out of her. She yelled and screamed and used
Very Bad Language to describe Ranma, his personal habits,
his ancestors, and his probable destination in the
afterlife, as well as her willingness to send him there.

Ranma, meanwhile, danced and jumped and flipped,
ocassionally and casually tapping her at various places
which even Nabiki recognized as vulnerable spots. All the
while, he criticized her performance and made various sexist
comments about her "pretending to be a martial artist".

Nabiki saw two things. One - Ranma was very very good. Akane
had been the best around, and his moves proved that he could
injure - or kill - her without significant effort. And Two -
Ranma was a smartass.

A very dangerous smartass could be useful.

It didn't hurt he had a killer butt, too.

 * * * * * * * * * *

Toltiir loved it. Watching Akane being tossed around like a
rag doll by Ranma was quite enjoyable. "What happened to 'no
hitting girls'?"

The eye in Xanthine's palm blinked. <He has not harmed her,
even once. He *does* take his duties as a sensei very
seriously, however. Notice that he has never struck her more
than hard enough for her to feel it, or perhaps to leave a
bruise. He will never seriously fight a woman unless it's a
matter of life or death, but he will do what is necessary to
train her.>

"Meanwhile, this Akane is *getting* what all the other
Akane's are *giving*!"

<Indeed. As her temper comes under control, she will see
Ranma's training for what it is - an attempt to bring out
all her potential as a martial artist. From that grows
respect, and from that will grow love.>

< Before that, though, she attempts to 'expose' him as a
pervert several times, always failing. Ranma misinterprets
these as attempts to flirt with him, but his own idealism
prevents him from taking advantage of a student. She also
embarasses herself publically more than once.>

<Ukyo and Shampoo will see her as a minor obstacle, not as a
serious threat. Akane will be jealous, but even with her
greater skill, will fail to abuse him, as he won't accept
from a student what he would accept from his fiancee.>

<Eventually they will marry, freely and of their own will.
They will never learn of the agreement between Soun and
Genma, nor would it matter if they did.>

"Not much change."Toltiir mused.

<On the contrary, a significant change.> Xanthine
commented.<What had been a relationship conceived in
sourness and discord, with bitterness and scars that harmed
not only their happiness and that of their children and
grandchildren, will become a supportive and loving
relationship, from which only happiness will grow.>

Toltiir looked ahead. A happy marriage, no divorces, happy
children, happy grandchildren...wait a minute... "BWA-HA-HA-
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!"

Xanthine looked up, curiously. <What is so amusing, Elder?>

"Look ahead a bit, about eighty years."

<Very well, but... oh my.>

"Oh my indeed, little godling." Toltiir smirked, "In the
original timeline, the Scarlet Jihad was destroyed in 2080
by Interpol Lieutenant Tenma Saotome - great-grandson of
Ranma and Akane. But with your altering, their offspring
grew up in a happy home without the turmoil that affected
their children and their children.

"So, instead of seeking justice with a fanatic bent that led
to a police career, Tenma became a Shinto priest. Thus the
Scarlet Jihad's attempt to kill off 99 percent of humanity
succeeded!"

<Oh my,> Xanthine repeated.

"Now, instead of a growing and prosperous world making its
first tenative steps to the stars, you have a ruined post-
apocalyptic wasteland where mutated former humans fight for
food and water! Smooth, boy! Real smooth!"

<Perhaps I should look at things in a broader perspective
next time>

Toltiir looked shocked. "Oh my, d'ya think?"

 * * * * * * * * * *

Next time: School! Balance Training! Kuno! Tofu! And Nabiki
sells pictures of Ranma's butt! (And no more godly
interludes)

