By Paks

Prologue – Before the beginning

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Disclaimer

1) The characters and story of Ranma 1/2 and Musashi #9 belong to their respective creators, and are used here without permission or license.

2) No claims to the above copyright are made by the author of this work.

3) This work is for non-commercial use ONLY, and is produced for the enjoyment of fans only.

4) This work is the expression of the author and the depiction of the Ranma ½ and Musashi #9 characters herein are in no way represented to be a part of Ranma ½ and Musashi #9 as depicted by the original author and copyright holder(s).

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The sun was rising on yet another day. Ranma, a young Japanese boy just six years old, shivered beneath a threadbare blanket staring into the fire. A fat balding man guzzled something from a bottle, probably liquor, and consumed copious amounts of food.

“You need to eat boy” the bald man managed to growl between mouthfuls “the next technique will require all of your strength.”

Ranma simply shivered beneath his blanket, he gazed longingly at the food that the fat man consumed. That fat men was his father, a father who would likely add to his bruises when he tried to take the food. His father was still much better than him at the art, an art that he was here, in the middle of nowhere, to learn.

“I see that I have a little girl today” Genma spat at Ranma “but it doesn’t matter, when you learn the ultimate technique you will be unstoppable.” With that Genma finished the last mouthful of his meal. Walking over to the boy he picked him up by the collar and began dragging him into the nearby woods.

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Elsewhere, the ground shuddered as a regular pounding could be heard coming from behind a giant boulder lying against a cliff face. If one looked closely cracks could be seen forming in the boulder, as small chips of stone and dirt fell from its surface. However, while the pounding sound and the shaking earth was odd, the most unusual part of this scenario was the fact that the boulder was covered in paper seals. The seals were written in Kanji and seemed to be for both containing and warding off evil.

Finally a louder than usual thump could be heard and the pounding stopped. Everything in the area remained quiet and still until a loud rumbling began. The small cracks in the boulder grew wider and wider until it just fell to pieces revealing a dark cave.

Emerging from the cave was an elderly gentleman, a gentleman who could be anyone’s grandfather except for the fact that he was far too ancient looking to be simply anyone’s grandfather. Perhaps someone’s great great great grandfather?

Squinting at the light of the morning sun, Happosai returned to the cave and re-emerged carrying a small duffle sack. After a long heartfelt sigh he began grumbling about worthless ungrateful students and annoying assignments.

Deciding to follow the contingency plans he had been making just in case he got himself into such a predicament, he began the slow trek back to civilization – or at least a hot shower and a nice warm bed.

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To Ranma it seemed as if his father had been dragging him through the woods forever. However, this was not the case, Genma simply wanted to make sure his training spot was well hidden. He also wanted to make sure that the suddenly growing sound of cats yowling and hissing could no the heard by the boy from the campsite.

Finally they emerged into a clearing that had a large wooden trap door in the middle of it. The hissing and yowling of cats was almost deafening. In fact it sounded like they were all trying to kill each other. So Genma dumped the boy next to a rather large pile of food, and loudly rapped against the door. This only managed to quiet the racket for an instant before it returned at an even louder volume.

Grabbing a shivering Ranma in one hand and a long string of raw sausages in another, Genma slowly began to wind the string of sausage around Ranma. After smearing the sausage with tuna paste, he stepped back to survey his handy work. Ranma simply stared back at the fat man with his haunted blue eyes.

Deeming his work satisfactory, Genma quickly opened the trap door on the pit and shoved Ranma in. The noise coming from the pit quieted down until you could suddenly hear the growls and crunches of wild animals feeding. Soon the screams of a young boy joined them.

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Arriving at a small cottage in the middle of the woods Happosai opened the door and removed his shoes. His duffle bag soon followed. Yelling that he was home he wearily trudged into the kitchen and began fixing himself a meal.

An old lady soon joined him appearing so quietly it seemed she has some sort of martial arts training. She looked at the old man who was so focused on preparing his food it seemed that he had not eaten in some time.

“Happy, it has been a while” she smiled kindly at the old man “how have you been?”

“Been better” came the muffled reply as the carefully prepared food was shoveled into the mouth at a quickly.

“How has the assignment been going?”

That stopped the old man shoveling food into his mouth like a starving teenager, “the mission is not going well, I have lost track of the two targets.”

“How?”

“They locked me in a cave for the last three months. My cover is not blown, but they could be anywhere by now.”

“I understand. I will have them located. Take a break and a shower – you are messing up my kitchen.”

“As soon as they are located I will move to secondary surveillance and distraction methods.”

The old woman nodded as she moved out of the room. It was amazing Happy had kept those two occupied as long as he had. Luckily he had managed to stop them from getting into too much trouble. Those two had the potential to ruin everything. Damn Nodoka for getting involved with that insufferable man.

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A splintering sound sounded around the clearing as a small boy burst through a wooden trap door on the ground. Seeing that Ranma finally seemed to have learnt the ultimate technique, Genma started doing a happy dance. This dance quickly turned into the fat martial artist running for his life as his son pursued him. What was most disturbing was that his son was running on all fours like some kind of wild animal.

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Happosai sat on the porch of the cottage in a wooden rocking chair enjoying his short break. Beside him sat the old woman, slightly larger in stature than the ancient man beside her, but content with her lot in life nonetheless.

As the couple enjoyed the sunset and their tranquil surroundings they were disturbed by a cat’s meowing. A young boy with bright blue eyes and covered in blood and a tattered gi emerged from the surrounding woodland. Meowing piteously he slowly crawled up to them on all fours.

“Blue, don’t move” whispered Happosai to his companion “this is a flawed nekoken technique”

“You are the expert on martial arts in this organization Happy, how do we deal with the situation?” Blue looked on, the urge to go to the poor broken child and comfort him was eating at her conscience.

“Allow him to approach and calm him enough to sleep.”

The boy continued to approach the couple slowly, moving slowly out of caution rather than his obvious injuries. The boy approached a still Happosai and sniffed his hand, he briefly rubbed his head against the it before continuing on to Blue. After sniffing Blue’s hand he climbed into her lap and promptly fell asleep.

Looking down at the boy in concern, Blue spoke softly “It looks like we have another one.”

“You would take this boy for Ultimate Blue?”

“Why not? His circumstance are not so different to that of Musashi” Blue looked at Happosai with a strange gleam in her eye “and you will be the one to train him."

Happosai looked at the sleeping child in his bosses lap and gulped. His thoughts were something along the lines of ‘at least I don’t have to worry about those two fools for any longer, this kid is going to be enough of a handful”.

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