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

Chapter One

By Michael Fetter

Tendo dojo, the past.

"Aaahhhh!!!"

You’d think that you would eventually get over something like nightmares. Ranma had wished it was true ever since . . .

It had started about two weeks ago. The nightmares would come like ghosts of the past, reminding him of some of the more terrible training methods his father had used earlier in his life. At first, the dreams were just the regular, run-of-the-mill nightmares that left you once you woke up. For Ranma, this meant having visions of cats standing around him as he cowered beneath the dream covers of his dream bed. They weren’t even attacking him or taking any steps closer, just holding their ground and mewling, almost if they were chanting his demise in a secret cat language.

Lately, however, the dreams had become more disturbing and graphic. It was harder and harder for Ranma to wake up each time they came. The real problem was that the latest dreams were not fleeing his waking conscious like the others. Ranma had vivid memories of each nightmare, and they played themselves across his mind’s eye most of the day.

Ranma’s heart was pounding as it did every morning now. The sheets of his cot were tangled about his writhing body and taken in a death grip by his hands. After the first week of nightmares, the Tendou’s had taken away his pillow to be sure he didn’t choke when his jaw clenched down on something in fear. His thick mop of black hair was plastered to his face thanks to a heavy sheen of sweat that developed over the course of each night.

Shakily, he sat up on his cot and tried to begin the morning mantra Dr. Toufuu had taught him. His hands trembled as they came together, palms flat, in front of his face. After several minutes, Ranma only held his hands up to his face to hide the tears of frustration. Why was this happening to him? Hadn’t he suffered enough in his lifetime?

"Didn’t work again?"

Ranma looked up to see Akane kneeling on her bed and watching him with obvious concern. He nodded and tried to wipe away the tears from his eyes. He was raised to be a ‘man amongst men’, and men didn’t cry, especially over some dream. But it’s getting so hard, Ranma thought to himself.

"Ranma, come over here and lie down." Akane patted the spot next to her on the bed. The first time she had tried to comfort him, Ranma had refused, too embarrassed as it was to be sleeping in her room.

That was something else the Tendou’s had decided was necessary. Ranma had thought it was an attempt by Soun to get him and Akane closer, but after the third night in her room and the nightmares only getting worse, he had been grateful. The dreams were leaving him near senseless in the morning and on occasion they were enough to trigger the Neko-ken. Akane, being the only one able to calm Neko-Ranma down, had been elected to watch over Ranma.

Settling himself onto Akane’s bed, Ranma laid his head on the pillow facing away from her. She had been truly frightened the first time she got him to lie down; it had been in his eyes she said. There was a look of absolute terror on Ranma’s face when he woke up most mornings. As the day went on, his body relaxed somewhat, but there would always be that terrible fear in his eyes.

Akane sidled up next to him and twined her fingers into Ranma’s trembling fist. She tried once again to comfort him with a low soothing voice and reminding him he was safe with her.

A nervous knock at the door marked Kasumi’s entrance to Akane’s room. Aside from Akane, Kasumi was the second safest person around Neko-Ranma. Her voice was cheery and bright as it was the first day Ranma had arrived at the Tendou home, but he could hear the slightest amount of trepidation in her words as she called them down to breakfast.

Things were really bad if Kasumi was becoming frightened of him.

School, the common enemy of all teenagers, was still in its prime for turning a nice sunny day into a dreary and mind-numbing afternoon. Miss Hinako was in peek condition as she segued her English class into another discussion of her favorite flavor lollipop. At least this particular vonacular had occurred often enough that most of the students could memorize their lines.

Ranma, however, had not caught on to this blindingly obvious trend and found himself more often than not, slumped across his desk, giving the wood grain a very close inspection behind closed eyes. It wasn’t that he didn’t try to pay attention to class. With the nightmares of his sleep, Ranma had put extra effort into staying awake. The harder he tried, though, the quicker he became bored.

So it was an irate little Miss Hinako that stalked up to Ranma’s desk and stomped her foot on the ground, giving the bad student dilenquent her little evil eye. "Mr. Saotome!" It just didn’t cut it to be gentle when it came to Ranma, so teachers yelled. "You’re being a naughty boy!"

Ranma twitched and made a sound like he was gasping for breath, but remained slumped over on his desk, head hidden in his arms.

Some of the students laughed, quieting quickly when Hinako turned to look at them. She did not find anything funny about this. Ranma had been falling asleep during most of his classes and when she tried to convince him not to, he still drifted off a half hour later. If Miss Hinako knew any of those bad words the other teachers had used, she would be cursing the pigtailed boy a red streak. She settled for threatening him with detention and getting his energy sapped.

Akane was watching with some apprehension. No one else had noticed anything strange about Ranma’s behavior, but after sleeping in the same room with the martial artist for the past couple of weeks and seeing the early signs, she knew something was about to happen. Maybe she could get to him before things got out of hand. "Hinako-sensei, maybe I can-"

"You can go to detention with Saotome-san, Tendou-san, if you two think this little game is fooling anyone." From her pocket, Miss Hinako pulled out a five yen coin and held it up over her head.

"But Hinako-sensei!" Akane was cut off as the dimunitive teacher called out her energy sapping attack and dropped her to the floor, weak and immobile. All she could do was watch in fear as Ranma slowly began to stir. Please let this be a normal Ranma, she prayed.

A few seconds later, a fully grown, busting at the seams, Miss Hinako was sent flying through the door from her classroom and into the hallway. The teacher was not a very strong martial artist and it did not take much physical damage to knock the woman out. Smacking into a door to a classroom would have sent her into unconsciousness, but Neko-Ranma had knocked her through it, which hurt, and caused her to hit the metal lockers.

Neko-Ranma stalked out of the classroom, with a predatory gleam in his eyes. The slow moving scratching post was not much fun since she was such a little challenge. So he decided to play with her a little bit first.

Inside the classroom, students were fixed to their seats, the color missing from their faces. Very few of Furinkan’s students had ever seen the Neko-ken, but they knew from stories that Ranma would attack anyone he considered a threat. After the insane martial artist walked out of the classroom on all fours, some of the nearby students went to Akane’s side. It was obvious Ranma was upset at Miss Hinako for hurting his fiancee.

Yuka was the first to reach her. She picked Akane up and leaned her against one of the desks. "Akane! Snap out of it! Ranma’s gone insane!"

Akane blinked and tried to push her self up. She felt like a puppet with its strings cut. The damned vampire was really starting to get on her nerves. "Help . . . Help me up Yuka. I . . need to . . stop him."

Yuka nodded and tried to lift her friend, but Akane weighed quite a lot. Draping the bigger girl’s arm over her shoulders, she tried again without much success.

From out in the hall, sounds of clanging metal and flesh impacting the ground could be heard with sickening crunches. They could hear Ranma’s growl and hisses, but not a sound was coming from the teacher. Students hearts started beating a little faster as the fight continued and they worried that Neko-Ranma had killed Miss Hinako and was just batting her around like a cat would. Everyone suddenly shrieked in terror as Hinako’s upper body was knocked through the wall beside the classroom.

There were scratch marks up and down her body, which were easy to see since Neko-Ranma had shredded most of Miss Hinako’s dress. She was not a pretty sight. Clumps of hair were missing from her scalp and blood was flowing freely from the many wounds along the woman’s arms, back, and face. They knew her front must be just as badly damaged but could not see it with her slumped over the hole in the wall.

The broken doorway to the classroom creaked once again as Neko-Ranma stepped through. The whole class had to look away before they got sick as they watched the insane martial artist step casually through the wreckage, dripping with Hinako’s blood.

Finding his mate, Neko-Ranma frolicked over to Akane’s side where she lay on the ground. Too exhausted to move, Akane could only watch as Neko-Ranma curled up on her lap and started cleaning himself just as a cat would.

The groaning teacher finally got their attention as she slipped out of the whole and onto the floor with a wet thud.

Downtown Tokyo, the present.

Sounds of clanging garbage lids broke the silence of her alleyway. Neko-Ranma-chan woke up and lazily looked about the area. Nothing in the strange place seemed to be of any threat. It was only dirty and smelly. She wanted to go find her mate, but the hours of searching last night made her lost and hungry.

There was a short shriek, female by the sound of it, and Neko-Ranma turned her head about again. At the opposite end of the alley she could see three men pinning a young woman in sweat suit against a wall. Two of them were quite large, wearing jeans and biker leathers they looked more like fat rats than men.

The third, a small weasly man in similar garb, was holding lookout at the entrance to the alley.

One of the large men finally put a big hand over the screaming woman’s mouth and held a pocketknife to her throat. He growled something into her ear that Neko-Ranma couldn’t quite make out. The other man seemed to respond positively to it and started fondling their prey.

Silently, Neko-Ranma picked her way carefully through the line of broken glass and filth. She was close enough now to see the tears running down the woman’s cheek as the man behind her started to probe with his fingers.

Taking a last look about the area, Neko-Ranma made certain of her prey’s position and of any danger spots in the area. At the first sound of ripping fabric, Neko-Ranma was off. She landed on the first man’s head, leaping quickly to the next. She never suspected the man’s neck would break so easily, or maybe she was used to real fighters that could take the punishment.

Whatever it was, the second man barely flinched as ki claws dug into his shoulder, too shocked to respond properly. Tendon and muscle connecting the knife arm to the rest of his body were instantly severed, a clear view of the white bone shone through the mess of blood.

The woman in his grasp shrieked as the hand over her mouth was finally removed. Her arms went up to her chest protectively while she jumped over the down man in front of her and watched Neko-Ranma tear into the second.

Blood poured from the various wounds, spraying across the walls, ground, and her enraged savior. Savior was hardly the word for this young girl that suddenly jumped to the third man. Her stomach churned as she watched his intestines spill onto the floor with a wet smack.

"Ahh! Holy shit!" The man cried, falling to his knees and scraping the ground for his lost innards. "Get’em back in! Get’em back in me please!"

Neko-Ranma stalked around the weasly little man pleading for his life. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the grimace of pain was a universal language. She reveled in his agony, toying with the bloody pieces he was trying to hold in his arms. The man’s pleas for mercy and desire to live slowly wound down as blood loss and trauma helped him drop into unconsciousness.

The other two men were either dead or dying. Neko-Ranma wasn’t exactly sure which since they sometimes twitched spasmodically. Satisfied with her work, Neko-Ranma sat on her haunches and began to clean herself of the blood. There were thick coatings of the salty red liquid over her arms and face. The taste, while somewhat interesting at first, did not sit well with her.

Haggard breathing accompanied the woman’s trembling body. She found it difficult to move, her body gone numb and cold. All around her were the contents of her stomach, mingling with the streams of blood running down the street. There was no color in her face as she watched the redhead begin to lick at the blood on her hands. The girl hacked after a little while, smacking her lips at the taste of blood.

The woman wanted to start screaming again as the redhead finally noticed her and walked over. Fear had gripped her heart and squeezed as the insane girl came within reach of the woman. She only shook violently as a bloody hand pawed at her shoulder.

Neko-Ranma hissed. She didn’t know why the woman was just sitting on the ground shaking, but her face was turning paler and a smell, like the one she found on the old man last night, was beginning to contaminate the area.

The shaking stopped and the woman’s arms fell loosely to her sides. Her eyes drained of fear and every other emotion as they settled upon the ground, dull and lifeless.

Neko-Ranma tried nuzzling the still woman and received no response. She wanted the woman to feed her and give her a nice place to sun bathe but no such reward seemed to be coming. This was nothing like her mate, who would treat her after being rescued. She tried nudging the woman again, but stopped when she felt the cooling flesh and a scent of death all animals understood.

Blinking, Neko-Ranma couldn’t understand what had happened. The woman was fine, no injuries anywhere, and she still died, sitting in this dirty alley.

Down the alley, something else was stirring to life. It was a small man covered in filth and grinning madly. He had a too large nose that looked ridiculous on his small face. His teeth, what was left, were yellow and jagged like he chewed on rusty nails for food. He crept down the alley cautiously, smiling the whole time at Neko-Ranma as he moved closer to the woman.

Uncertain of what to do, Neko-Ranma watched the man put his arms beneath that of the woman’s and begin dragging her back down the alley. Neko-Ranma looked back at the other corpses and figured the man would be back for them as well. Frowning at the smell, she left the area to find someone else to give her food.

Tokyou police department.

It was terrible. After losing Ranma yesterday somewhere in the city, Akane could feel an awful foreboding over the whole situation. Things had been getting really bad and if Ranma wasn’t found soon, things may just get worse.

Intending to continue her search, Akane woke up early the next morning to start scouring the city as soon as possible. Shampoo and Ukyou should be just as ready to help out again. Shampoo’s skills in tracking had come in really handy yesterday and she was hoping they would serve just as well today.

On the off chance that someone had spotted the pigtailed martial artist, Akane left the news on while she prepared some simple breakfast. She had almost dropped the bowl of burnt miso soup when a tale of carnage was reported by an on-scene investigator. A man had been ripped in half the night Ranma ran away and the survivor, one of the bums, had described the insane martial artist to a t. Police would now be after the delusional boy and they would need to know everything about him.

So that was how Akane and Nabiki had found themselves in the Tokyo police station.

"Please, you must believe me that Ranma isn’t a bad person!" Akane pleaded with the head investigator. He was a fairly ordinary man, short black hair with a receding hair line, a little over weight from sitting behind a desk for so many years, and a cheap charcoal suit to sort of complete the stereotype Detective Tanaka was after.

"I’m sorry miss, but we can’t ignore what happened last night. Our witness tells us that the victim was ripped in two. Insane or not, Saotome Ranma is a dangerous person and we will treat him accordingly. If it is possible to take him down without killing him, we will gladly take that option, but as lethal as he is I don’t see much chance of that happening." Tanaka rubbed his temples to relieve some of the headache he was getting. He always hated it when the killer’s girlfriend would come in to try to make him believe that it wasn’t like the man to murder another in cold blood.

"But it’s not Ranma’s fault!" Akane complained again. "It’s his father that made him this way. Ranma is arrogant, but he is also very honorable and compassionate. If it wasn’t for the Neko-ken, this would never have happened!"

"Excuse me?" The detective blinked. "Neko-ken?"

Of course! Akane was sure that she had found a way to save Ranma now. If she could explain the horrible training of the Neko-ken, the police may try to catch the boy without harming him. "Ranma’s father, Genma, took Ranma away when he was only six years old to train him in the martial arts. One of the first dangerous training methods he used was the Neko-ken. Basically, he wrapped Ranma up in fish sausage and tossed a helpless, small boy into a pit of starving cats. It didn’t stop with just one time either! Genma repeated the process a dozen other times, switching the foods he covered Ranma in. That’s why he acts like a cat. Can’t you see? It’s all his father’s fault!"

Tanaka leaned back in his chair to consider the matter. This was the first time he had ever heard such an unbelievable tale to cover up for a boyfriend. It was all to crazy and simple that he found himself almost believing the young lady. "If this is true, I’m going to need to speak with this Genma then. Perhaps he can help us deal with your boyfriend."

Akane smiled and nodded to the detective’s request. Ranma would soon be caught and given the help he needed. She was sure of it. Almost with relief, Akane stood up and left the small room, eager to continue her search.

Watching her sister go, Nabiki stayed behind, seated in another chair across Tanaka’s desk. He regarded her for a moment, expecting her to leave happy as well, but Nabiki had a cold look in her eyes. She spoke slowly with a steel edge you would have to be deaf not to hear. "My sister is very naïve on Ranma’s condition, detective."

"How so?" Tanaka asked.

Growling a bit, Nabiki explained. "You probably aren’t aware of the other people Ranma has hurt already. This situation didn’t start with a bum in some alley. Go to Nerima ward and ask around at the high school, and you’ll know just how far it has gone."

Nodding, Tanaka stood up and shook her hand. "I’ll do that."

"Good." Nabiki stopped at the door, still closed, and watched her departing sister closing the front door behind her. "And detective, I can tell you now that you won’t find a peaceful resolution to any of this. There is no cure for the Neko-ken and there is no way to calm Ranma down. My advice to you, detective, is to shoot him on sight until his body has stopped twitching." Nabiki bowed sharply and closed the door quickly behind her.

Tanaka sat back down at his desk and picked up a file he had been reading before the Tendou sisters had arrived. He had already been made aware of the situation in Nerima and he knew the stakes Tendou Nabiki had in this affair. Reviewing the file one more time, he agreed. Saotome Ranma was now the number one most wanted in Japan.

End Chapter One

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Ja ne.