=========================
Ranma Gets Tough
Part 1
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by TeW
Status: Draft
Last Update: 2001-09-18
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"Come on boy, time to train!"

Ranma sat up. "Gahh. Okay pop, meet you downstairs."

"You sure will boy." Genma said, then threw him through the window and into the pond.

Ranma got up and stood in the pond in his female form of course. He sputtered for a second before remembering his resolution. One dose of humiliation and pond-dunking coming up.

Ranma had been holding back in his sparing with his father for months. Now he took advantage of his female form's increased speed to dodge his fathers attacks without fighting back.

"Hey pop, you're pretty pathetic this morning. Old age getting to you? Or maybe you're just getting too fat. Maybe we need to go on a training trip again, all this soft living and coddling is ruining your skills."

His father just growled and tried harder to hit her. Actually this was good practice. His father was good. It was tough to just dodge, without even blocking.

After about ten minutes his father slowed down a bit, unable to keep up the furious pace he'd set in his attempt to hit Ranma. That change in tempo was all that Ranma needed. He let his father back him toward the pond, dodging at a lower speed than he had been, then quickly stepped out of the way of a kick and stuck out his foot, neatly tripping his father into the pond.

"Nice warm up pop. I'll find Ryoga or someone to spar with later."

As he walked into the house to change he noticed both Nabiki and Akane giving him odd looks. Well, let them wonder why he was acting different, it'd give them something to do besides call him a pervert or try to extort money from him.

* * *

"Hey pop, let's skip the food stealing training. It's not really helping me anymore, and it makes it hard to work on my manners." Ranma said as Kasumi brought out breakfast.

"I'll say when we stop, boy."

"I'm not joking around pop, don't try it." Ranma warned him.

Kasumi handed him a bowl of soup and another of rice. He started sipping the soup, slowly, keeping an eye out for any tricks. Sure enough, his father went for his rice bowl. He ignored it. When he put down the soup. He calmly handed his bowl to Kasumi.

"May I have some more, mine seems to have disappeared." He turned to his father.

"I warned you pop. This is your last chance to stop."

Genma grinned at him. "Make me boy."

"I thought our sparing session this morning showed you that I can if I want to." Ranma said, and saw his father's eyes widen slightly.

He ate some of the rice that Kasumi gave him and had a pickle before going back to his soup. As soon as he started sipping his father made his move, chopsticks flashing forward and bringing back...nothing but a pair of broken chopsticks.

Ranma blocked three more attempts. It seemed fair, his father steals his food, and he humiliates his father. Ranma got a little angry at the last try. By then even his father should have figured out that it was useless. He taped a pressure point on his fathers wrist that would incapacitate his hand for a few minutes with painful muscle spasms.

* * *

When Genma started grasping his hand and complaining about a cramp, Nabiki decided she'd had enough. It wasn't Genma's complaining that drove her away, it was Ranma's smirk. She didn't know how, but she knew he'd given his father that cramp.

Something was up with him, something she didn't understand and it made her very nervous.

On her walk to school she began to realize that Ranma wasn't acting like a 'nice guy' anymore. She shivered a little. An awful lot of her money-making activities involved Ranma somehow, and several of them assumed Ranma would be too nice to fight back. She'd gone so far as to swear her family to secrecy on her black-belt in Kempo. A first dan hardly qualified her as a fighter around here, but she didn't want any chance that Ranma would start to think of her as one.

Okay, she didn't know what was going on, but she *did* know that she couldn't depend on Ranma's usual sloppy niceness. That meant some of her activities had to be shut down until she had more information. It changed the way he was going to be acting in fights too. 

Nabiki hurried to school, her mind half on betting odds and half on the feeling of dread that this new situation was giving her.

* * *

Ranma was almost disappointed. So far his first day of his new approach to honor and treating others differently had been nothing more than beating on his father when he deserved it. Maybe everyone could sense his new approach to things and was already treating him differently. That would be nice.

Of course, even thinking something like that is like putting a giant 'Kick Me' sign on your back.

"Arian! So good to see you. What you doing under tire of bike?"

Ranma picked the bike off his face and got painfully to his feet, still holding the bike. Shampoo sat an the bike's seat, not reacting to being held several feet off the ground.

"Shampoo," Ranma said in low growl. "I've told you *not*..."

He yanked the bike forward, leaving Shampoo sitting on air. She 'eeped' and managed to land on her feet.

"..to land on me. Do *not*..."

Ranma ripped the front tire off the bike.

"...do it again!"

The two pieces of bike hit the ground. He glared at Shampoo once before turning around and marching away.

* * *

Akane barely got out of Ranma's way as he stormed away from the wreckage that had been Shampoo's bike. Shampoo just stood there, looking at her bike as if she couldn't believe what had happened. Not that Akane blamed her.

"Ah...I think he's having a bad day." Akane said lamely, then ran off to catch up with him.

What was *with* him today? First the way he'd treated his father, and now this. It was like he was coldly angry at everyone who wasn't nice to him. The thought of an angry Ranma was...exciting?

 She thought, shaking her head to clear it.

She caught up to Ranma and took a glance at his face. He was calming down, but looked about ready to go off again at the slightest thing. If he was in his girl form, I'd wonder if it was that time of the month.

As if her thought had caused it, Ranma was suddenly in girl form. She'd been hit by the old woman who often washed her sidewalk in the morning. 

 Akane thought.

* * *

Ranma turned to the old woman who had gotten him *again*. He wanted nothing more than to pound her into the ground, but she *was* just an old lady. He wasn't going to just put up with it, but didn't want to hurt her either."

"Grandmother, you should be more careful about people using the sidewalk when you're washing." He, actually she at the moment, said gently.

The woman looked at him with an amused glint in her eye. "What's it to you sonny?"

So she realized what she was doing, that changed things a bit.  Ranma pulled the pail of water out of her hand and dumped it over her head, carefully placing it on top of her now-soaking hair like it was a hat.

"I would *really* like it if you would be more careful in the future." Ranma tried to keep his voice gentle, but only partially succeeded.

He didn't stick around to see her reaction. He was going to be late to school at this rate. This time he grabbed Akane's arm as he walked by. She didn't look like she would move on her own anytime soon.

* * *

Ranma cracked his knuckles before they stepped though the gate. Kuno was likely to be here, and he was looking forward to beating the snot out of him.

"Akane Tendo! Pig Tailed Girl! Come to me my loves."

Crap, he forgot he was a girl right now. Well, he had to deal with Kuno's obsession with his girl form eventually, might as well start now.

"Go away Kuno, I'm not interested in you in any way."

"Oh that the evil Saotome had corrupted you so!" Kuno ranted, heading toward them with open arms.

Ranma was going to beat him into the ground, but noticed that they were running out of time. A really good job of pounding Kuno would take too long. Instead she decided to set a date for pounding him later.

She stepped forward and quickly struck him in the elbows, shoulders ankles, and knees in such a way that he wouldn't be able to move his arms or legs for a few minutes. Kuno would also be in considerable pain, but that was just a fortunate side effect.

He grabbed to boy's collar as he fell, holding him off the ground.

"This is getting stupid Kuno. We will finish this once and for all. You, me, and Ranma will meet here, at lunch. Got it?"

"Oh, my love, that you would wish a rendezvous with me..."

Ranma slapped him across the face and repeated the  message. A few more slaps and Kuno finally understood.

"Come *on*, Ranma! We're going to have to hurry!" Akane called from the door." Ranma dropped Kuno and ran to the door. Kuno groaned as he fell flat on his face. 

A few minutes later, Nabiki came out and dragged him to the nurses office. For a fee, of course.

* * *

Kuno sat on the bed in the nurses station. He was nearly recovered from the beating he had received that morning. The pig-tailed girl was certainly skilled. It was refreshing to fight against a woman with whom he did not need to hold back.

There was something different about her this morning. Her actions seemed more considered and controlled than her usual casual violence. Something was happening, and he wanted to know what it was. How else could he help his pig-tailed goddess in her fight against the evil Saotome?

Unfortunately his usual source of information had been most unhelpful. He had even heard Nabiki Tendo mutter something he had never heard from her before. 'I don't have anything to sell you.' Most odd. 

He would just have to wait until lunch. Then he would at last see the pig tailed girl and the evil Saotome together. That might provide a chance to break his control over her. He would have to be alert for such an opportunity.

* * *

Ranma's increased sensitivity on how people treated him made morning classes interesting. The math teacher treated him with considerable respect and assumed he knew what he was doing until he messed up. Even then he just gently corrected him, with no obvious malice.

So Ranma tried to respond in kind by paying attention and trying to answer questions correctly. This in turn seemed to make the teacher very happy, and he called on Ranma more frequently, giving him chances to get it right. It figured that the teacher in his least favorite class would be one that treated him decently.

History was very different. The teacher seemed indifferent to the students, snapping questions at them and then correcting them in a withering, condescending manner. Ranma fought back as best he could, and once was able to use some of the history of martial arts he'd learned to answer a question and then proceeded to snap a follow up question to the teacher. When the question stumped the teacher Ranma answered it for him in the same withering tones the teacher had used. The teacher responded with a glare, and hit him with a lot of questions after that.

All in all, history was much like a formalized sparing session. He'd have to study the material harder to have more chances to fight back though.

The English teacher mostly seemed exasperated with him. Ranma spoke the language fairly well, having picked up a bit on his travels with his father, but he was hopeless on the written language. He spent most of the class trying to figure out how he should treat the teacher. Act exasperated back? Was he exasperated? Actually he was. The teacher spent more time wondering why he was having trouble than trying to fix it. The period ended before he had a chance to really decide what to do.

It was odd that he'd always thought the classes were all the same. The differences in the way the teachers acted made them completely different.

Lunch seemed to role around more quickly than normal. He gave his bento to Akane, went to the bathroom for some hot and cold water, and headed for his meeting with Kuno.

* * *

"What's wrong with you?"

Hiro glared briefly at the young American teacher who the school had brought in to teach English. The man was likable in his own way, but he never knew when to mind his own business. Still, in this one case he might be able to help, the American's were  used to disrespectful students.

"One of my students stumped me with a question in class." Hiro said after a moment.

"So? Just look it up and answer it tomorrow. You can't know everything." The American said.

"Unfortunately the student knew the answer. It was even relevant to the topic we were discussing."

"Hmm...that's not so good. Was it a fluke, or do you have a student who really knows something about it?"

"Oh, he knows all right."

"Well then, why not have him teach it to the class? It will give you a break, give him some useful experience, and show him how hard it is to be a sensei all at the same time."

"That's..." Hiro was about to say 'ridiculous', but why not? Show that Saotome brat that teaching isn't as easy as it seems. And if someone complained, he could just point out that the boy was supposed to inherit a dojo. Learning to teach was important.

"That's an interesting idea. I'll give it some thought. Thanks Jim."

"No problem."

* * *

Kuno was waiting for him by the gate. He'd gone to the trouble of putting on his Kendo garb, but was not holding his bokan.

"Yo, Kuno!"

"Saotome. Where is the lovely pig-tailed one?"

"She's here Kuno."

Kuno looked around him frantically. "I do not see her. Do not attempt to trick me."

"I'm not. As a matter of fact I'm even going to try to keep you from tricking yourself."

"What mean you?"

"Sit, Kuno. First I've got a story to tell you."

Ranma gave him a short version of how the curses worked, leaving off what his curse was. He told him about his father, Shampoo, Mousse, and Pantyhose. He did not, of course, mention Ryoga.

"I would doubt your story on principles as well as on common sense. Yet I have seen the panda that talks with signs, and once saw the lovely Chinese girl turn into a cat. It seems right somehow that you too are so cursed. So what matter of beast are you cursed with? Perhaps you are indeed a cur as I have so often said?" Kuno said the last with a smile.

"I wish. No I fell into the spring of drowned girl."

"You, you turn into a woman?" Kuno said, his grin growing.

"Yes, damn it. I'd rather turn into almost anything else."

"So why have you told me this?" Kuno asked.

"Remember when I said the pig-tailed girl was here?"

"Yes, what of...no."

"Yeah, I'm afraid so. The pig-tailed girl is my cursed form. Pretty much everyone at school has figured it out by now, but you were too umm...impressed...with the way she looks to notice that stuff, so I thought I'd lay it out for ya."

"No." Kuno said weakly.

"Yuppers. I brought some water. You want to try it for yourself?"

Kuno just stared at him. Ranma shrugged and forced the cup of water into his hand.

"Go ahead, splash me. The face works best, though enough water almost anywhere will do it."

Kuno stared at him a moment longer, then looked down at the cup. Finally he splashed him in the face with a convulsive motion of his arm. Ranma, of course, changed into his cursed form.

"So you see, this is just my cursed form. Pop once said I kinda look like my mom when I'm like this, so this is probably what my sister would have looked like if I'd had one."

Ranma dumped the cut of warm water he had brought over his head. 

"Anyway, I thought it was time I told you. Sorry about those times I used my girl form to trick you. I ain't doing that kinda stuff any more."

Ranma decided Kuno was too out of it to respond and walked away with a shrug. He just had time to eat before he had to get back to class.

When Ranma checked at the end of the lunch period, Kuno was gone.

* * *

Ranma and Akane were walking home slowly. Akane was walking slowly because she was deep in thought. Ranma seemed content to pace her.

Akane was thinking about how Ranma had been acting different all day. She hadn't decided if she liked the change or not. She was also worrying about what had *caused* the change. Thinking about that reminded her of the way he'd been spending a lot of time with Kasumi recently. Maybe Kasumi had been talking to him. If anyone could convince Ranma to mend his ways it was Kasumi. 

Kasumi was also the one who had stolen Dr. Tofu away from her. She was older, cuter, a wonderful cook, and a genuinely nice person. If Ranma was starting to like Kasumi...

Akane gritted her teeth. She would have to make sure Ranma didn't spend so much time with her. And it was time that Kasumi and Dr. Tofu got together. If she was going to take Tofu away from her, then she was going to *do* it. Not this strange half-relationship the two seemed to have.

She'd have to talk to Tofu or Kasumi. Since talking to the doctor about Kasumi was hopeless, not to mention dangerous, she would start with Kasumi.

Relieved that she had figured out something to do about the situation, she grabbed Ranma's hand and pulled him into a faster pace for home.

* * * *

"Hey, Kasumi! You want me to help with the dishes?" 

"Why thank you Ranma, that's very kind of you."

Ranma started helping Kasumi clear the table. The fathers went to the porch for an after-dinner smoke while Nabiki headed upstairs. Akane sat watching Ranma and Kasumi talking and smiling. She growled a little, she would *not* let her sister take Ranma too. Now what to do about it...

"Kasumi, why don't I help Ranma with the dishes." Akane said.

"No, that's all right Akane, I can..."

"No." Akane said firmly. "I insist. Why don't you take the rest of the evening off and go visit Dr. Tofu? It's one of the nights he's open later, and should be closing soon."

"Oh! Well, if you wouldn't mind?" Kasumi said.

Akane took the dishes Kasumi was carrying. "Go. If you don't hurry he might go out for dinner or something before you have a chance to say hello."

"Oh my, yes you're right. I'd better change. Excuse me." Kasumi rushed off, her eyes bright and hands fluttering a bit in excitement.

"Hey Akane?"

"What is it Ranma."

"You're washing." He said with a grin.

Akane smiled back and followed him into the kitchen. She was pleased  at how well her spur of the moment plan had worked. Now she had to keep it up until there was no longer a chance that Kasumi would steal Ranma, say just after Kasumi and Tofu had their first child.

* * * *

Ranma laid back on his futon, staring at the ceiling. It was late, and he should be asleep, but the events of the day kept dancing around in his head. It had been...different. That wasn't a bad thing, but it wasn't entirely good either. He still hadn't had any kind of a showdown with Akane or Nabiki, and Ukyou hadn't been in school so he hadn't even seen her. Still, he'd made a good start on his father, Shampoo, and Kuno. 

He'd also gotten back at that evil water woman. He felt a *little* bad about dumping water on her head, but only a very little bit. His reaction had been driven by barely controlled anger, but the result seemed more than a little appropriate.

Overall, not a bad start. The school thing was kind of weird though. Still, if he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. That meant treating teachers the same way they treated him too.

He's spent a lot of time with his history book that evening, but he realized pretty quick that reading that was only a 'defensive' measure. The teacher would certainly know everything in the assigned books. If he wanted to stump the teacher, he'd have to go to the library and find out more than was in the text.

He'd spent a little time with his English textbook too. He'd found that he learned the words better when he did the drills in the book. The same drills that the American teacher hated so much. 

He'd also done all his homework for the day. Perhaps the first time he'd completely finished his homework in weeks. He doubted he keep that up in all his classes, but for now he wanted to be prepared. 

He signed lightly and rolled onto his stomach. This wasn't getting him anywhere. He'd have to deal with things as they came. For now, it was time to sleep.

* * *

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