บท 337: Refuge
He stood, stretching his back with a loud groan. As he pressed forward on his hips, his lumbar spine popped in several places, granting him some measure of relief from the stiffness born of another night spent sleeping on the ground. With a sigh, he kicked a bit of dirt over the last remnants of his campfire. The fire had burned out hours ago, but he wanted to ensure there were no hot embers remaining underneath the charred wood chips that remained in the little pit he'd dug in the grass.
Sighing, Genma Saotome brushed the leaves and dirt from his beige gi pants with his maimed left hand before picking up his tightly-rolled sleeping mat and buckling it to the top of his large camping backpack. He wished he'd thought of bringing a coat. Too long at Tendo's made me soft. I forgot how cold it gets in the mountains, he thought regretfully as he shouldered his brown pack with a grunt. He took a long draught from his canteen, ignoring the growling of his stomach. Hopefully there's a river nearby, and I can refill my water and catch something for breakfast. But for now, gotta get moving. It's got to be around here somewhere…
With another resolute sigh, Genma scanned his campsite with his eyes one final time, ensuring none of his belongings had been missed when he packed up. Time to get a move on, Saotome. He turned toward the summit, beginning to trudge forward.
He ached for the comforts of home. True, he had slept on the same bedroll for years in the guestroom of Soun Tendo's house, but at least there hadn't been rocks under it. There was a hot bath, a ready supply of sake, heating in the winter, and Kasumi's cooking. Gods, what he'd have given for a few of her gyoza just then. Beyond that, though, there were people. He missed his banter with Tendo over a game of shogi, and his debates with Nabiki over the news of the day. He missed his morning ritual of training with…
He shook his head, willing the memories to flee his mind through his ears as he walked. No amount of dwelling on the past ever seemed to help. It was all over now. He'd lost everything. His dojo, his friends, his wife, his son…
That was the part Genma had never understood. His relationship with Nodoka was broken the second he'd taken Ranma from her arms, and a part of him had always known it would be. He'd done what he felt he had to do to make the boy strong, and carry on the legacy of his martial art. Once Tendo's third child was born, also a girl, Genma knew it was incumbent on him to ensure that his child, if male, was in position to take on the responsibility of the next generation of Anything-Goes Martial Arts. It was imperative that Ranma was strong. That he was invincible.
Of all the springs Ranma could have fallen into at Jusenkyo…
Sure, being a panda half of his life was an annoyance, but it had its benefits. It could be used for intimidation and disguise. The great beast was inherently powerful. Sometimes, if he played his cards right, it even netted him a free meal. But even when Genma had spent days, sometimes as long as a week or two, in that form, it had never once crossed his mind to embrace it permanently. Never had he felt for a second that he would be better served by leaving his natural form behind for good.
While, true, he had never been faced with a condition such as the Full-Body Cat's Tongue, it almost wasn't the fact that his son was a girl that bothered him. It was that he stopped fighting it. He had given himself over to it entirely. A woman, with the edge of steel he had devoted the whole of his adult life to sharpening in his son, could have stood a chance as master. As his mangled left hand reminded him constantly, Akane was proof of it.
But instead, Ranma had chosen… weakness. He had thrown away nearly two decades of training and dedication to be a dress-up doll for some girls he'd just met, and run away from all of his responsibilities to do so. To top it off, not only did he seemingly feel no shame at his defeat at the hands of the Amazons, he flaunted it, on a stage, in front of thousands. He pranced around in short skirts and pigtails, and took pride in not only abandoning martial arts, but in becoming a cheerleader, of all things. It disgusted Genma to even think about.
In truth, Genma wondered how much of Ranma's transformation had come at the hands of the women at that bar he spent time in, and how much had been Akane's direct influence on him. After all, he'd met the bar's owner - the one Ranma called mother - and she had seemed anything but the demure, mincing type. She certainly didn't punch like it, he recalled, rubbing his jaw. It still hurt sometimes, when it was cold out or bad weather was coming.
But Genma had often wondered about Akane; she often seemed more boyish than girlish, and had always seemed to have a softer spot for Ranma's girl form. Perhaps it had been her desire to have a more effeminate girlfriend that had changed Ranma so. It was one of many reasons he had grown to hate Akane Tendo. Not only had she stolen his son - his legacy - from him, she had taken his dojo from him as well. To add insult to injury, she had also taken half of his hand - and with his wife's ancestral blade, no less! Had Soun Tendo decided to pair Ranma with either of his elder daughters that fateful day, perhaps Genma might still have a son, even if in name only.
Maybe it's time to just let him go, Genma thought with a sad sigh as he stepped over a fallen log. The boy I knew is gone, whatever the reason may be for it. There is nothing left of my son, and getting him back now would just paint me with his shame. But training Ranma had been his whole existence for so long; what would he do with himself, if not that?
Once Soun had turned his back on him in support of his youngest daughter, Genma knew nothing would be the same for him. Everyone in his life had turned on him for the crime of wanting good things for his only son, condemning him to nearly a year of living rough with nowhere to turn. Even now, his last hope dwindled as he searched the frigid mountainside for a place he'd been to only once before in his life. It was a long shot at best, but it was his only shot.
Genma's melancholy was interrupted by a rustling in the bushes, and the aging martial artist dropped to a silent crouch. As he watched, a smallish wild deer poked its head through the brush, and his heart soared. That'll feed me for a week, he thought as he slowly reached for a rock. He cocked his arm back and let the pebble fly, but the doe ducked her head at the last instant and the rock sailed harmlessly over its head. The sound startled it, and it turned to flee.
Dammit, Genma thought, rising to a standing position and taking off in a run after the doe. The young deer had a definitive advantage in agility over a nearly sixty-year-old man, and it was all Genma could do to keep it in sight as it bounded up the mountainside.
The deer reached a steep dropoff beyond the ridge, and Genma licked his lips at the thought of fresh venison. You can't run forever. You've got nowhere else to go. Now, be a good deer and come get in my belly, he thought as he snatched up another rock. Just as he launched it at the young doe, however, she disappeared down the ridge.
Shit! Get back here, you! He plodded tiredly after the deer, reaching the ridge and peering over it. As he did, his face cracked in a wide smile. The deer was nowhere to be seen, but at the base of the ridge, nestled into a little nook in the craggy mountainside, was a small beige building with a blue tile roof and a matching blue outer wall surrounding the grounds. He broke out into a loud laugh, resting his fists on his hips. "I found it," he cheered excitedly, beginning to scout a path down the rocky crevasse.
Some twenty minutes of scrambling down loose gravel on his calloused bare feet later, he reached the gate of the imposing structure. Grabbing the frayed yellow rope that dangled from the large iron bell outside, he swung the clapper twice to sound the bell, and its resonant clang echoed through the little valley. With every passing moment he stood outside the complex, his spirits rose further. It was the first hope he'd known in weeks.
After three minutes that felt like three months, the great bamboo gate swung open, though Genma saw no one standing in it; at least, not until he looked down. The elderly master was barely a meter tall at best, clad in a navy blue gi that was all but entirely obscured by his bushy grayish-blonde hair and beard that dragged on the gravel beneath his bare feet.
"Master Chingensai," Genma proclaimed, bowing low. "I have searched for your dojo for months. Thank the gods I've found you at last."
The diminutive warrior nodded, stroking his chin under his beard thoughtfully. He spoke in a weak, nasal voice as he regarded his guest. "Waaaaaait a minute! I know you. You're one of Happosai's boys, aren't ya?"
"Yes, Master Chingensai," Genma said, nodding without rising from his bow. "Genma Saotome."
The old man smiled, not that Genma could see it behind his shaggy beard and unkempt moustache. "Of course, of course. Well, come in out of the cold, already! Let's find you something to eat. I'm pretty sure I could hear your stomach growling from a few kilometers away."
Genma straightened his back with a grateful smile. "Thank you, sir!" He stepped through the gate, helping the aged man push the wooden gate closed. He followed Master Chingensai toward the largest of the three buildings in the complex, but had not quite made it to the door before he froze at the sound of a familiar voice.
"Genma, my boy, is that you?"
Genma turned, dropping to his hands and knees and lowering his forehead to the white gravel path. "Master! How I had hoped I'd find you here!"
The ancient man hopped down from his perch atop a large kirin statue, puffing on his corncob pipe as he regarded the man who had been his student. He disregarded the gravel dust that puffed up around him under his feet, rendering his deep maroon gi a dull gray. "What brings you all the way out here, Genma? You're an awfully long way from home!"
Happosai's disciple coughed gravel dust from his lungs, not lifting his head from the rocky ground. "Master, I don't have a home anymore. I don't know what to do. Everything's fallen apart. I came looking for you in the hopes I might train with you, and try to find some meaning in all of this."
"Well, get up out of the dirt, and talk to me. What's happened, my boy," Happosai asked, taking another long drag from his pipe.
Genma rose to his knees and then his feet, sighing as he brushed the dust from his beige gi pants. "Master, since you left… I lost my school. To Akane Tendo, of all people, using some dirty trick she picked up from the Amazons. But beyond that… I lost my… I lost Ranma. We never found a cure for the Cat's Tongue, and he… he gave up, Master. On his masculinity, on the art, on me, on everything, and now he spends his days singing. In dresses. For men. Tendo has turned on me, too, because I wouldn't coddle the boy. Nodoka knows all about it, too, and I'm sure she's looking for me…" He held up his left hand, showing his master the gnarly remnants of his missing ring and pinkie fingers. "... to finish what Akane started."
Happosai stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Well, you've certainly made a mess of things, haven't you, Genma?"
Genma sighed, pressing his forehead more firmly onto the white rocks on the ground. "Yes, Master. And every time I've tried to fix things, I've only made it worse. I need your wisdom."
"Hmmm. It's certainly a pickle, isn't it? Why not just go to China like you planned? See if you can find the Spring of Drowned Man, and use it to set things right. Take Ranma, and start over?" The old man tapped the ash from the barrel of his pipe, slipping it into the pocket of his gi pants.
"He…" Genma sighed. "He doesn't want it, Master. Not anymore. I tried to bring him - by force, even - and I couldn't. He wants nothing more to do with me. He wants to be a girl. He… enjoys it."
"Really, now?!" Happosai laughed, and there was a sinister amusement in its tone that made even Genma Saotome shudder.
"Now, this, I have to see for myself."
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