Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and all its characters are products of Rumiko Takahashi and Viz Video. This is a nonprofit work purely for the fan’s enjoyment.

Kitten Or Cat

Prologue

By Michael Fetter

It was madness, plain and simple. Years he had spent running from the inevitable. For a time, he was certain the fear had lost its way. He had led the chase through countryside and cross-continents, but the chase was always under way. That was what he had forgotten; there would always be the fear, hot on his trail.

The chase had finally led Ranma to a back alley, somewhere within the downtown business district of Tokyo. There were people out there looking for him, trying their best to help him escape again, but the chase, something Ranma knew he would always be looking over his shoulder for, was coming to an end.

Stumbling to the end of the alley, Ranma was finding it difficult to continue running. His mind was in a chaotic haze of thoughts, not all of which were his own. He gripped the side of a building to steady his failing legs. The slick surface, a mesh of slick substances that had gathered over the years, could give him no sure hold. Ranma fell to his knees and groaned in pain as they were scraped across the pavement. New holes were born in his tattered pants. They would be forgotten in a moment as more thoughts continued to punish his already fragile sanity.

"You okay, son?" An old and gentle voice broke through the traffic in Ranma’s mind and he scanned the area for this new purchase to reality to cling to. The late hour and lack of lighting made it difficult to make out the specifics of the alley. High walls of the buildings blocked out the moon’s rays, but a feint glow from a burning trash can soon revealed a body, shifting slightly beneath layers of rags, tucked away in a large cardboard box.

Ranma tried to respond to make the man talk again. He needed to hear something that wasn’t of his mind’s making. Every moment of silence was costing him more and more of his tenuous grip on reality. ". . . I . . .neeerrow . . . need . . . hellllrrowp . . ." It was the best he could do under the circumstances. Ranma’s stuttered and malformed speech had been getting progressively worse with every day. For some reason, it was always worse at night.

The old man seemed startled by Ranma’s scratched and fluctuating voice. The fact that Ranma had fallen to the ground and was now slumping around the ground on all fours like a lame dog was not helping much either. "You wasted, boy?" The man chuckled, holding up his bottle of brown liquid that Ranma guessed was a liquor of some sort. "Sounds like you need to sleep that off. You’re knocked out for the count, I think."

"Stuff it, Geezer." A man from further down the alley shuffled up to Ranma’s end of the alley and took a look at him. "Not like you could think with all that booze you keep gulletin’. This boy ain’t drunk though he sure do act like it. What’s your poison, kid? Knockin’ rocks or something?"

The new man, who Ranma could see, was maybe in his forties. He had a graying black beard of a few inches, tangling its way down his chest to match the stringy locks poking out from beneath a patchwork cap. Like Geezer, he was also dressed in layers of rags and was so dirty he could blend in with the alley if he closed his eyes. There was nothing threatening about this new man’s stance or manner and Ranma was in need of . . .

"Ranma!"

Ranma looked up to the sky as he heard his name called out from somewhere a bit further off. This was one of the people out looking for him, but Ranma couldn’t go to them, no matter how much they wanted to help.

"That you, kid? You Ranma?" Ranma turned back to the new man who gave him a grin that would give any dentist a heart attack. "Sounds like some youngin’s out lookin’ fer ya. Ya ain’t walkin’ out on some pretty girl now are ya? Can’t leave them till you gotten’ a taste, y’know. Youngins’s good eatin if you get me."

The vulgar manner this man was talking about one of Ranma’s friends was already frazzling his anger. The confused mass his mind had become was beginning to focus on this bit of contempt. It was also, unfortunately for this man, already focused on the transgressor.

"Maybe that be it, hey Geezer? What you say? I betcha this fellar was bangin’ around with that youngin and he split ‘fore she could get the chain ‘round his ankle." The vulgar man turned back to Ranma and continued to spout off all the condescending verbal imagery he could. It came to a high point when the man tried to get into some real specifics. "Probably got some other but’cha weren’t satisfied and decided to go fer a little head cuntin’. Found yerself a bit of ass with a little’n. Some cute weak girl who couldn’t run fast ‘nough o’somethin’ like that. Huh? I tell ya, Geezer, these kids now-a-days got a lot a balls and they like to flash around a bit too much. S’why he so stupid now. High as a kite, he is!"

The new man was too busy listening to himself speak that he hadn’t noticed Ranma’s shuffling had ceased. The confusion in his mind was gone. The chase was over. It had been a good try they would’ve told him, but ultimately futile. No one can escape for long.

Grace in body and focus in mind, Ranma found his senses heightened and attuned to his surroundings like never before. There was no drug on the market today that could give a man these kinds of results. A perfect flow of a martial artist’s form and ferociousness of a . . .

"C-c-c-cat!" Geezer was barely holding the bottle in his hand steady enough to prevent its contents from spilling onto the ground. A bony and shaking hand pointed in fear at the predatory stance Ranma had taken. Geezer had remained silent during the new man’s tirade so he wouldn’t be beaten again, but the look in Ranma’s eyes made him more afraid than anything the vulgar man could do.

"Whatcha blabbering ‘bout, you damned old man! Kid’s just some nutcase!" He smirked at the Neko-Ranma and drew back his foot. "Ain’t but one way to deal with nuts . . ."

Neko-Ranma dodged the vulgar man’s kick to one side and brought his imaginary claws to bear on the man’s chest. There was only a few seconds to scream as Neko-Ranma bore down onto the man with all his strength, easily clawing into the ribcage and tearing apart the organs inside.

More people screamed down the alley as they witnessed a young man, acting like an animal, rip apart a grown man with a sickening snap coming from what used to be the spine that held a body together.

Neko-Ranma stopped his punishment to the bad man, no longer hearing the hated sounds that had been issuing from his lips. The screams caught his attention and Neko-Ranma craned his neck to listen and observe his surroundings for any more such threats. The cries died out soon enough and the only ones left in the alley were an old man covered in rags and sleeping in a cardboard box, Neko-Ranma, and the mutilated halves of a bad man.

The old man in the box had strangely not uttered a sound like the others. Neko-Ranma wondered if this man were a friend of some sort since he felt no threatening aura from this man. Taking a tentative step towards Geezer, Neko-Ranma took a better look at the greasy old man. The rags were ugly like the man’s teeth. His hair was thin near white where it wasn’t covered with oil and dirt. There was also a strange smell that Neko-Ranma decided he did not like at all. Some of the smell was coming from a fallen bottle at the man’s side, but the really bad smell was coming from the man himself where a trail of yellowish liquid was running between his legs.

Neko-Ranma snorted in disgust and shook his head quickly as if it would remove the smell.

"Ranma!" The sound was distant to the point he almost couldn’t make it out, but the familiar sound is what truly caught Neko-Ranma’s attention. It was the sound his mate made when she was in distress. Without giving the old man or the dead one a second glance, Neko-Ranma sprinted out of the alley on all fours in the direction of the familiar sound. Though this new territory was strange compared to what he was used to, he wasn’t worried about threats, not when his mate was in distress.

Elsewhere in the city . . .

"RANMA!" Akane called out once again for the umpteenth time. Her voice was becoming horse as her throat became more and more sore. She wasn’t worried anymore. Ranma had been gone for almost eight hours after the Neko-ken started to take over. No, she wasn’t worried anymore; Akane was scared out of her mind.

With the Neko-ken in control in the middle of Tokyo there was no telling what might become of Ranma. She had gotten everyone she could together to search for him. Thanks to the Amazons tracking ability, they had been able to follow Ranma to downtown Tokyo, but with the darkening skies and cold chill of the night, most of the searching people had given up and returned home. They tried to tell her it was impossible to find anything at night and so opted to wait until morning to start again.

Damn you, Ranma, Akane cursed her fiancee, why did you have to run away? We could’ve helped you. She actually knew why Ranma had run away and it wasn’t entirely his fault, but details like pounding the insane boy with a mallet and the score of men, and some women, he had left severely injured in the hospitable just didn’t work their way into Akane’s mind when she was upset.

A yellow cab with black checkered detailing on the doors pulled up to the wandering girl as she began to make her way out of another possible alleyway Ranma may have hidden in. The passenger door opened and a young woman with a short business-like haircut and slightly rumpled, tailored woman’s suit stepped up to her. Nabiki came toe to toe with her sister and grabbed her by the elbow to guide a crying Akane to the open door. "C’mon little sister. There is nothing more you can do tonight."

"But Ranma . . ." Akane tried to protest and pull away from her older sister. "We have to find-"

"We will find him, Akane." Nabiki assured her sister and tightened the grip on Akane’s elbow. "Tomorrow." Guiding her little sister to the cab, Nabiki helped her into her seat, noticing how Akane shivered and her lips looked slightly blue. "Right now, a warm bed is calling you. Ranma can take care of himself for one night and then you can look for him again in the morning, okay?"

Akane nodded. It wasn’t often that her sister showed any genuine concern. Usually it only happened under the gravest of circumstances or in lost causes. Akane was afraid of which one had caused Nabiki’s current moment of concern.

As Nabiki closed the door for Akane, she took a final nervous look around the quiet city. "Ranma Saotome," she muttered under her breath, "I hope you die out here."

Nabiki got back in the cab and it puttered off down the street, heading back to the Tendou dojo.

Down the street, a young man on all fours scampered down the sidewalk, bounding over the obstacles in his way. Ranma came to a halt outside the alley Akane had just been searching. Sniffing the ground, he could make out her scent and could note its recent warmth. He looked frantically about the alley and the adjoining street, but could find no other trace of her. He was lost and alone in a strange place. Neko-Ranma mewled his pain and loneliness to the sky above him. There was no response to come that night.

* * *

Ja ne.