A/N: If anyone's ever watched Love Hina, I got the idea for this story from the episode where Naru and Keitaro both leave on a trip to Kyoto. After they bump into each other, they both break their glasses and don't recognize each other because they can't really see. Anyway, they spend some time together and actually get along pretty well. Until they get their glasses fixed... Anyway, I started wondering how Ranma and Akane's relationship would've been different if they hadn't gotten off to such a bad start. Therefore I decided to give them a chance to meet all over again!

This is just the first chapter. I'm not sure how many more there will be, but don't worry, it shouldn't take me too long to get the next few chapters up because the whole thing's pretty much finished. Originally I had planned to post the whole thing together, but it was just too long and so I decided to break it up a little bit. Since this is the first chapter it's not all that exciting because it's mostly setting the scene, but don't worry, it'll get better in upcoming chapters. Anyway, enjoy, review and look forward to more!

* * * *

Akane sighed as she shut her suitcase. She picked up a white hat with a blue ribbon and straitened it on her head, pulling the rim down so that it hid her eyes while looking in the mirror. Smoothing the wrinkles out of her pale blue-checkered skirt she gave her reflection a weary smile. The knee length cotton skirt and white blouse were a bit of a new style for her, and she felt awkward in the unfamiliar clothes. However, she needed to change her normal clothes for something different so that she could get out of the town without being recognized. She turned away from the mirror and picked up a blue open sweater and draped it over her shoulders. Grabbing her suitcase she realized she was probably about as ready as she would ever be. She took a deep breath and opened her bedroom door, carefully peaking around the corner to make sure no one was there.

"That's strange," she thought. "I wonder where everyone is today? Oh well, I guess it's probably for the best that no one's here." With her bag in hand, she made her way out of the room. As she reached the stairs, she glanced a little regrettably at the room that Ranma shared with his father but continued down the stairs anyway, refusing to be deterred from her goal.

After making her way downstairs, she quietly slipped out of the house, closing the door behind her. Shortly after she had left, a curious Ranma poked his head out of the door to his room. "That's funny," he thought. "I could've sworn I heard the front door. But it doesn't seem like anyone's home now." He shrugged and decided he must just be nervous as he poked his head back into his room.

Akane had only gotten a few steps before realizing that she had forgotten to leave her note where someone could find it. She rushed back and opened the door to the house very quietly. She made her way back up the stairs to her room, refusing to look at Ranma's room again. A few seconds after Akane disappeared into her room, Ranma stepped out of his own room. He was wearing the blue pants from the school uniform he had never once worn, and a plain, white dress shirt that buttoned down the front. On his shoulder he carried his regular backpack, which appeared to be a little heavier than usual. He made his way down the stairs and for the door. Half way he but stopped and hurried into the kitchen to find some pen and paper. Meanwhile, Akane came down the stairs again and ran into the tea room. She placed a note on the table and ran out of the room again. However, as she rushed by, the note blew off the table and landed slightly hidden underneath it. This was unknown to Akane as she finally made her way out of the Tendo household.

A few seconds later, Ranma entered the tea room from the kitchen and placed a simple note on the table where Akane's had been moments before. In his hurry he failed to notice the other note on the floor. He made his way to the front door, but stopped realizing he had forgotten something again. He went back to his room and grabbed a blue hat similar to the green one that he would always wear with his Chinese suit. He found a mirror and looked at his reflection as he put the hat on, hiding his black pigtail inside of it. Catching a glimpse at his clothing he frowned. "I can't wait to get out of Nerima so I can go back to wearing my normal clothes," he thought. When he was finally finished, he made his way out of the room. He spared a look at Akane's room and faltered for a moment. After a few seconds he shook himself out of his thoughts and exited the Tendo household.

* * * *

Akane carefully pulled her hat down further over her face as she approached the ticket booth. "Yes, I'd like one ticket for Kyoto please?"

The man behind the counter nodded and took her offered money and handed her a ticket. Akane thanked the man and turned away with one hand to the brim of her hat and her head downcast so no one would recognize her. The young man behind her in the brown hat stepped up to the counter.

"Ticket for Kyoto please," Ranma said to the man behind the counter.

* * * *

Akane looked at the seat number on her ticket as she made her way down the aisle. "42A," she murmured to herself looking for the seat. She found it and took her seat by the window. She sighed and looked out the window. "I guess there's no turning back now," she thought to herself. "It's only been a week since I graduated from High School. Hard to believe so much could change in such a short amount of time."

After the first failed marriage two years ago things had calmed down considerably. The first wedding had been a complete disaster, but it got Ranma and Akane thinking about their futures. A few days afterwards Akane was pleased to find that Ranma was making an effort to get rid of his other fiancées. However, his efforts had been futile. Still, Ranma had managed to make it clear to Shampoo, Ukyo and even Kodachi that their constant interferences were only serving to make him like them less. Needless to say they had stopped being so persistent after that and began to act like fairly normal girls.

Akane appreciated the fact that Ranma had tried so hard to resolve things, even if he was only partially successful. She also noticed that he was making an attempt to be nicer to her, and because of that she made her own effort to get along with him better. This wasn't to say that they didn't have their occasional arguments, but when they did they were notably less violent and spread farther apart. They came to the unspoken agreement that in the let up of chaos they would try to get to know each other better and see if there was any chance of the two of them ever getting married. In the two years that followed they had become a lot closer and even gone out on a few casual dates, although neither would admit that their outings were actually dates.

Akane smiled at the remembrance of it all. Things had been going slowly for them, but at least they had been traveling at their own pace and weren't being pushed together by their parents. It had taken a while, but after the first wedding Ranma and Akane were able to convince their parents to stop pressuring them to get married and throwing surprise weddings. They refused to listen to the arguments of the young couple until Akane pointed out that they needed to concentrate on graduating High School and that they were already behind in school due to their trip to China and numerous other incidents that had caused them to miss their classes. Soun Tendo, being proud of his daughters concern about her schooling, and Genma Saotome, hoping Ranma would follow Akane's wise example, not to mention being frightened of his wife's threats to let the children be, finally agreed with their children and promised to let the couple finish school and get to know each other better before getting married. In the years that followed Akane had settled into a relatively normal life.

Then two years later came the inevitable graduation. Akane and Ranma had figured that with their main excuse being gone they're parents would push them into getting married right away. What they had not expected was the surprise wedding that greeted them as soon as they got home from their last day of school. If the first wedding had been a disaster there was no word to describe their second wedding. Somehow, even though Akane and Ranma hadn't known about the wedding, everyone else in Nerima did. After Ranma and Akane had been dragged to their respective rooms and thrown into their respective clothes the shout of 'Baksui Tenketsu' was heard followed by a large explosion. Akane ran to her window to see Ryoga standing in the yard with a large hole in the fence behind him. She threw open the window and yelled down at the boy.

"Ryoga! What are you doing here?"

The lost boy looked up at the love of his life, well, at least one of the loves of his life. He looked as if he was about to say something, but at that moment a shout was heard from Ranma's window. "What do you want anyway, pig boy?"

"Ranma!" Ryoga shouted forgetting about Akane for a moment and looking at his old rival. "We had a deal! You promised you wouldn't marry Akane before I had a chance to talk to her! For breaking your word Ranma, prepare to die!"

"Hey, it's not like I actually want to get married to that stupid tomboy anyway," Ranma shouted back. "And how was I supposed to know they were going to throw us a wedding today?"

Akane frowned at the tomboy comment but let it pass considering she had more important things to worry about. Ranma hadn't called her that for quite some time. Then again, Ranma and Ryoga hadn't fought for quite some time either. The two seemed to have come to some kind of mutual agreement, about what she wasn't sure. Nonetheless they had been getting along a lot better lately and Akane could tell that even though neither of them would admit it they considered each other friends. She wondered what Ranma had done to make Ryoga so angry this time and she wondered more about what agreement they had and how it involved Ryoga speaking to her. She snapped out of her thoughts as Ryoga yelled at Ranma again.

"I've had enough of your excuses Ranma! Come down and face your punishment."

"I don't know why you're so upset, but if it's a fight you want you got it!"

Akane watched in disgust as Ranma jumped out the window in his tuxedo. Being less rash due to her wedding dress she ran out of her room and down the stairs to her back yard intent on breaking up the fight. She may not have been ready to get married but she wasn't about to let another one of her weddings get spoiled by a fight. When she reached the back yard Ranma and Ryoga had already started trading blows. She rushed across the yard and pushed herself between them, not an easy accomplishment in her large dress, and yelled at the two to stop fighting.

"Knock it off you too!" The anger was evident in her voice and they both halted their fighting reluctantly and turned their eyes to her. Despite the anger that was evident on her face, neither of the boys could deny that she looked beautiful in her wedding dress, even more so than usual. But that wasn't the time to think of such things.

"Oh my!" came a gasp from behind them. "Akane, its bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding."

Akane spun around and looked at her older sister. "Kasumi, Ranma saw me before the last wedding too, and I think the chances of us having a lucky wedding today crashed along with the wall over there," Akane said indicating the hole courtesy of Ryoga Hibiki.

"I'm sorry Akane," a downcast Ryoga muttered.

Akane sighed as she turned back to the boy and tried to calm herself down. "Now look, I don't know what this is about but I suggest you settle it in a non violent matter. The last thing I want to deal with today is a big fight!" Akane failed to realize that Ryoga's appearance was merely the calm before the storm. "Now am I making myself perfectly clear?"

"Yes Akane." The two boys muttered.

"Good, now Ranma, let's see what we can do about getting out of this predicament. I don't know about you but I don't care much for getting married, at least not today."

Relief seemed to appear in Ranma's eyes. They had become a little more accustomed to the idea of getting married but that moment was way too sudden. He nodded his head and they started to walk towards the dojo to find their parents, both hoping to avoid any further conflicts. It was at that moment that the rest of the outer wall exploded.

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur. Ranma and Akane never got to talk to their parents about calling off the impromptu wedding. It wasn't exactly necessary. The fathers had assumed that since issues with Ranma's fiancées and Akane's admirers had lightened up the prospective suitors had given up on their pursuits. They were wrong. Very wrong. Ranma and Akane's suitors had simply been being patient and forgoing their typical antics until the right moment presented itself, and if the second wedding wasn't the right moment, nothing was. Within no time the yard was ruined and the dojo was demolished. Not to mention the numerous attempts to end Ranma and Akane's lives. Somehow they managed to survive, although their prospective clothes were not so lucky.

In the week that followed things began to become as crazy as they had before the first wedding. Up until the second failed wedding, which the event was titled within a week, things had been relatively calm, so Akane and Ranma were both a little out of practice and unprepared for the situations and incidents that followed. Circumstances quickly began to take their toll. Plus there had been a few new revelations.

Akane was surprised when Ryoga finally managed to confess his feelings for her. However, she was even more surprised when Shampoo crashed through the newly repaired outer wall and smashed into Ryoga sending him into the koi pond. She was very upset once she was forced to realize the bitter truth that her pet pig was actually the man that she had considered one of her best friends. Even worse was when she realized that Ranma had known about it all along. She had listened to Ranma's excuses of promising not to reveal Ryoga's curse, but she still refused to speak to either Ranma or Ryoga after that day. Considering it was Akane though, the two were grateful that she was merely not speaking to them instead of sending them both on a worldwide tour courtesy of Akane Air. She had really made great progress with her anger issues over the years. Still, that didn't help her from secretly wanting to turn the little black pig into her next cooking experiment. She didn't even know what to think about Ranma's collaboration on the issue.

She hadn't gotten a chance to talk to Ranma before she left, partly because she still didn't know what to think about the situation with Ryoga and didn't really trust herself to avoid saying something to Ranma that she would regret. Plus, she had been plenty busy trying to get Kuno to leave her alone as well as trying to keep the other girls from killing her. Ranma had the reverse problems, trying to stay alive with his rivals trying to kill him, and his fiancée's fighting for his attention. Neither of them really had the time to sit down and talk, even if they had been on comfortable terms.

Those were some of the reasons that she decided to leave. She needed to clear her mind and distance herself from everyone so that she didn't do anything rash in her current state of mind. She also had some thinking to do. In the chaos of the wedding and the week that followed Akane hadn't had much time to think about the fact that she and Ranma had almost been married. She realized that she needed to make a decision about what she was going to do soon, because their parents would certainly pressure them into getting married again very soon. Therefore, she wasn't going to return until she was absolutely sure about what to do.

Now that Akane found herself alone and in quiet surroundings, she had the opportunity to consider everything that happened recently. She frowned as she realized she had been crying. Not wanting anyone to see her in such disarray, she got up and made her way to the restroom to wash up. As she stood up she crashed into a young man trying to find his seat and fell to the ground. The man apologized quite sincerely and helped her to her feet. Akane, still concerned about her appearance kept the brim of her hat down obscuring her face as she murmured a flustered apology as well and rushed past the man.

Ranma watched the girl as she ran to the back of the train and wondered if she was okay. She had seemed a little upset. Figuring there was nothing he could really do about it he shrugged and looked at his ticket again. "42B," he said looking around. He frowned as he found his seat. It was the same aisle the girl had just exited from. "Figures," he thought. "An almost completely empty train and I still manage to get stuck sitting next to someone." He had hoped to be alone on the train trip, but of course he had no such luck. After the week he'd had all he wanted was some peace and quiet. He hoped Akane would be all right by herself. He felt a little guilty for leaving her to face everyone on her own. Still, she was most certainly mad at him for the whole situation with Ryoga. Plus he figured it would probably be a relief for her that he was gone seeing as their parents couldn't exactly force them to get married if he wasn't around. At least he hoped not. He panicked for a moment trying to figure out if there was any way their parents could arrange for them to be married if he wasn't present. Finally convincing himself it wasn't possible he relaxed. After all, that was the whole reason he was taking the trip. He wanted to go away for a little while and clear his head. After things had settled down and he had a better idea of what to do about the situation with Akane he would go back.

Ranma stretched and yawned. He hadn't gotten much sleep since the wedding, and the constant fights had taken their toll on him. He decided that moment was a pretty good time to get some rest. Pushing his hat down over his eyes to keep out the light he drifted off to sleep.

Akane, feeling confident that she had fixed herself up, decided to return to her seat. As she approached it she frowned realizing that the seat next to hers was now occupied. It was just her luck to get stuck next to the only other occupant in the train car. She sighed and tried to slip past the man without waking him up. If she had to sit next to someone she'd prefer that person to be asleep. The last thing she needed at that moment was some guy trying to hit on her.

The conductor called out that the train would be leaving momentarily and in a few minutes the train lurched forward and started on its way. Akane looked out the window. "Goodbye Ranma," she whispered. "I'll be back soon," she murmured as the motion of the train lulled her to sleep with her head pressed against the glass.

Ranma woke up when he heard his name and looked around, but there was no one in the train car except for the woman who was sleeping in the chair next to him. "Must have been a dream," he thought as he went back to sleep.

* * * *

Kasumi arrived home about a half hour after Ranma and Akane's departure. She was relived to find no one home to ask her about her whereabouts. It wasn't as if she was doing anything wrong, but she still felt guilty about seeing Dr. Tofu. She had always told herself she'd wait until Akane and Nabiki were married before she started seeing anyone. However, it was beginning to look as if Ranma and Akane would never get married, and Nabiki was too consumed with her money and too busy going to college which she had started attending the previous year to take any real interest in guys. Pretty soon Kasumi figured she'd be too old to find a good husband and start her own family. She simply couldn't wait any longer. Still, she was glad no one was home to have missed her. She preferred not to tell anyone about her relationship with Dr. Tofu immediately.

However, that didn't help her from wondering where everyone was. Deciding they all must have gone out for a while and would return shortly she went to the kitchen and started preparing dinner, humming a little tune as she worked. After she had been cooking for a few minutes she heard the front door and Nabiki's voice as she called out that she was home. "Welcome back, Nabiki," Kasumi said.

Nabiki had just gotten home to visit her family a week ago having completed her first year of college. She'd rushed back to be around for the wedding, even though she had known perfectly well that the odds of the wedding being successful weren't very good.

Nabiki made her way into the kitchen to see her sister. "No one else home?" she asked.

"No, they're all gone."

"Oh, okay then." Nabiki couldn't have cared less. No one ever asked her where she had been. They just always assumed she was out collecting her money. In fact, that was exactly what she had been doing. She had been at the Kuno's mansion collecting money from them for the damages they had caused at the most recent wedding disaster. Granted the money she requested was five times the amount they actually needed to pay for the damages. She smiled. "Kuno baby sure is loaded," she thought too herself. "And handsome too. Too bad he's such an idiot." She sighed. What was a girl like herself to do though?

As she made her way out of the kitchen, being the perceptive girl she was, she noticed the note on the table. She picked it up and began to read as Soun Tendo and Genma Saotome arrived home. Kasumi went out to welcome them meeting them half way in the tea room.

"Welcome home," she smiled pleasantly.

"Ah, Kasumi dear, where's Ranma and Akane?"
"Well, I'm not quite sure, they weren't here when I retu-ah when I last checked. Maybe they went out to visit their little friends or something?"

Soun and Genma frowned. "Well, I hope they get back soon, we just made all the arrangements for another wedding, the priest should be here any minute."

"I suggest you call him and tell him not to come."

Everyone turned to the source of the comment. Nabiki.

"Why do you say that Nabiki?"

Nabiki handed the note to her father who read it out loud.

To the Tendos and my parents,

Yo. By now you've probably noticed I'm not here. I went away for a little while. I needed to be alone. I'll be back before too long, after I've had a chance to clear my head.

Ranma

Silence filled the room for several seconds. Finally Soun Tendo burst into tears. "WAAAH! My poor baby girl is going to be left at the altar!"

"Oh my!" said Kasumi. "I wonder how Akane will take this!"

"It's not like she hasn't had worse weddings," Nabiki said dryly, trying to lighten the mood in her own unique way.

Genma began to get angry and shook his fist in the air. "My ungrateful son! How dare he run of like this!"

"Well, what can we do, Saotome? We can't very well hold the wedding without the groom." Pause. "Can we?" The two began to think of a way that they could carry out the wedding without Ranma's presence.

Nabiki merely sighed. It would be unlike her to show much expression. She looked around starting to wonder just where Akane was after all. Kasumi's question had been quite valid. She had no idea how Akane was going to take Ranma's disappearance. Suddenly she spotted another letter on the ground and picked it up. As she started to read she gasped.

"What is it?" everyone asked.

Nabiki read the second letter aloud.

Dear family, Mr. Saotome and Ranma,

I'm very sorry to have left like this without a word but I thought it was for the best. I needed some time to think about the recent events and decide what I am going to do. I don't know when I'll return. Please don't try and find me, I can take care of myself and I will be fine.

Sincerely, Akane

Silence. "WAAAAHHH! My little girl has run away from home and her fiancé isn't here to go and look for her!"

"There, there father, it'll be alright."

"I guess this means there isn't going to be a wedding today after all, eh Tendo?"
Nabiki rolled her eyes. Ever the practical one she made her way to the phone and called their usual priest to inform him the wedding would be canceled. Again.

* * * *

End of Chapter 1

A/N: Yes, that's all for now. Look forward to the next chapter soon! If you review it might come out faster!