If it were that easy Ranma wouldn't be so eager to run away

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Two years later: A few weeks after Ranma turned eighteen.

“Ranma! Ranma! Get down from there you idiot! Ryoga is going to kill himself!”

Ranma Saotome, who had been sunning himself on the roof of the Tendo dojo blinked his eyes as he sat up and looked down at Akane, his fiancee, in an arranged marriage sort of way, who was frantically waving a piece of paper in the air. He parsed her words in his head. Ryoga, kill himself? No way, the jerk would never do that. Would he? Sure, Ryoga had been looking pretty depressed the last time he’d attacked a couple of weeks ago, but depressed enough to kill himself?

“Give me that!” Ranma demanded as he hopped off the roof and fell fifteen feet to land in front of Akane. His legs easily soaked up the impact. He might as well have stepped off a curb for all the effect dropping that distance had on him. For his efforts he got the paper, and a fist on top of his head that flattened him against the ground with a huge lump on his head.

“What was that for you uncute tomboy!” Ranma demanded as he glared at the angry face of Akane, but his anger faded as he spotted the tears staining her cheeks.

“That was for not telling me Ryoga was P-chan. Now go and find that perverted bastard before he kills himself. So I can kill him myself!”

Ranma fought the urge to cup his hands in a protective manner over his groin as he stood up. He’d had nightmares that started like this, Akane discovering the little pet pig she shared her bed with on occasion was actually Ryoga’s cursed form. He knew he should have told Akane the truth long ago, but that would have met revealing Ryoga’s ultimate vulnerability and a real man just didn’t do that to another guy, even if that guy tried to kill him on a regular basis. Besides, it was his fault Ryoga was cursed to turn into a baby piglet. It was Ranma who had kicked him into the spring by accident while chasing after his idiot father, after all.

Still, how had Akane found out? Ryoga kept an eye on Akane’s feet, in case she was overwhelmed by the urge to kick him in the berries and smoothed out the much wrinkled paper in his hand.

“Akane. I’m P-chan. I’m so sorry.”

Ranma slapped his forehead in frustration. Well, that explained how she’d found out. Why couldn’t pig-boy give him a heads up before dropping the bomb on Akane?

Ranma continued to read.

“I should have come clean that first day, but I just couldn’t. You were my one single bright spot in my life. No matter how dark it got, I always held out seeing you again as a reason to keep going.”

Damn, how many pages did Ryoga throw away before he got this version? Ranma wondered. Truth be told he was a bit envious. He’d been trying to find the words to tell Akane how he felt about her for what seemed like forever, and had never managed. How do you tell the girl you’re supposed to marry that you consider them your best friend in the world, but don’t feel like that about them? That what you wanted more than anything else in the world was to see the world. To travel and learn and become the greatest martial artist who ever lived.

Ranma went back to the letter.

“This is goodby. I’ve decided that the only way I can move on, is to leave this world. I hope you have a good life. I hope you will forgive me.”

“P.S.” Ranma is a jerk. You can do way better.”

Ranma stared blankly at the last line. No, not the P.S. part, the part about leaving this world. No way. The stupid, stupid, stupid, “Baka!” Ranma yelled at the top of his lungs. Despite all the ambushes and insults thrown his way by Ryoga he had never been so mad at the forever lost boy.

Ranma turned to Akane with a frantic look on his face. “Do you have any idea where he was going to do this. Did he drop a hint?” Ranma prayed that this was some stupid scheme to make Akane forgive him and that the idiot was waiting for Ranma to come and stop him. But in his heart he knew there was no way. Ryoga wasn’t that smart. And if he didn’t intend to leave this world he would never have revealed the truth of his curse to Akane.

“Ukyou was saying she saw him going into the Cat Cafe, the other day. Maybe…” Akane drew a deep breath and clenched her fists before continuing. “Shampoo knows something. Or her Great-grandmother?”

Akane blinked to get the dust of Ranma’s departure out of her eyes. By the time she did Ranma was long gone. “Please,” she said, clasping her hands together. “Please stop him, Ranma.”

Akane had to believe that Ranma would do it. She just had to. The gender shifting boy was a huge jerk. But, even if she didn't feel about him the way he felt about her, she trusted him. He was her best friend. The one who would never turn his back on a friend in need.

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Cologne, an elder of the Chinese Amazon's, was sitting on a bench outside her restaurant smoking a pipe as long as her arm when the female version of Ranma landed in front of her. She was slightly winded, and her face had a small sheen of sweat from running a mile in under two minutes, hopping over roofs and fences in a straight line from where she had started to here. Oh, yes, and through a sprinkler, which was why Ranma was currently a four-foot ten inch red-head with, to quote Black Adder’s father, huge tracts of land.

Two years ago Ranma would have demanded hot water to change back, but somehow in those two years what gender she, or he, was just didn’t seem that important. Even the hormonal shift she experienced was now familiar and no longer made her want to scrub her brain with soap to remove the ideas that popped into it.

Cologne didn’t even look at Ranma, she merely held out a small piece of paper with a map drawn on it. “I’d tell you not to do anything idiotic, Ranma. But I know that would be futile,” she said, to empty air, because Ranma was already gone.

Cologne sighed. “I hope this doesn’t turn out the way I expect it to,” she said to herself. She consoled herself that if it did, she’d at least be able to tell the other elders truthfully that Ranma Saotome was no longer of this world. Allowing her Grand-daughter to return to the tribe with her heart broken, but honor intact. She felt a bit of guilt, but only a bit. It was the best solution she could come up with. One that would allow all of those extraordinary young people to break out of the moral and ethical trap Ranma’s father had landed them in and to get on with their lives.

In her rush to get to the location Cologne had given her Ranma didn’t even notice that Cologne had, for the first time ever, not referred to her as Son-in-Law.

**************************************************

Unlike Ryoga, who could get lost on a one-way street, Ranma was not directionally challenged. So, even though Ryoga had set out for his destination days before, to go by the date on the letter he had left Akane, Ranma arrived at the location mere minutes after the lost boy did. She rushed into the spooky looking cave, ignoring the signs that promised dire consequences to anyone who did what she was doing, and ran down a surprisingly well lit path and past the small gift shop selling “Siege Perilous” souvenirs.

A handful of seconds later Ranma ran into a huge glowing cave to see the boy he was looking for, a huge backpack on his back, standing in front of a large glowing portal looking thingy.

“Glowing portal. That is never a good thing,” Ranma muttered to herself..

For the last four hours the only thing Ranma had focused all her energy and thoughts on was getting to Ryoga before he killed himself in whatever manner he had chosen to do so. So she missed taking note of all the clues in front of her. Like the fact that suicides don’t usually carry all their worldly goods into the next life with them. Or, the small stand filled with brochures touting the desirable qualities of the many worlds that could be found on the other side of the Siege Perilous, which was guaranteed to send you to the world that was a perfect match for you, or your money back. Or, the huge wad of bills that Ryoga was handing to the attendant standing beside a lever sticking out of the wall that was as big as he was.

Ranma’s entire focus was on keeping Ryoga from ending it all. “No! Stop you idiot!” she screamed as she latched onto Ryoga’s oversized backpack and yanked backward. It was questionable whether the lost-boy even noticed Ranma’s less than hundred pound weight. His backpack alone weighed several times that. But he did hear her voice, which caused him to spin in place. This had the effect of causing Ranma to pass through the glowing disk of energy that had just sprung into life.

“Ranma? Are you there? Where are you?” Ryoga called out, looking for the source of the voice that had distracted him just as he was about to walk through the portal into the perfect world for him.

“Huh. Must have been my imagination,” Ryoga muttered when no sign of Ranma could be found. He shrugged his shoulders and turned to look at the attendant, who had a shocked look on his face and a big-sweat-drop on the back of his head. “Well. throw the lever. I paid what you asked. I’m ready to go.”

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