Disclaimer: I do not own either Ranma or Inuyasha. Rumiko Takahashi has that honour. I'm just borrowing them for a little while.

Ranma let out a sigh of relief as he spied Shampoo fly past the entrance to the alley he had ducked into without stopping. As soon as he had heard the tinkling of the bike bell he had made a break for it. Call him paranoid but he didn't want to chance running into the Amazon girl.

Though this time the paranoia he had developed had paid off.

He waited a few moments more before making his way towards the entrance of the alley, looking in the direction he'd seen her going to make sure she wasn't still on the street. Not seeing her around, he darted out of the alley and quickly made his way home.

Jumping onto the closest fence, he glanced around, keeping an eye out for any of his fiancée's or rivals. He let out another sigh as his mind drifted to the situation he found himself in. He wanted out but couldn't think of a way to extricate himself from the issues that were surrounding him.

He oftentimes wondered how he managed to get himself into the situations he did.

Granted the whole fiancées thing wasn't entirely his fault.

His father was to blame for two of them. At least they had managed to get the mess with Kaori resolved relatively quickly but then after Ukyo had showed up, he had to wonder how many times his father had given away his hand in exchange for filling his belly. He growled to himself as he thought about it. Essentially selling your only son's hand for some okonomiyaki or some rice and fish! What kind of father was he anyway!

For all Ranma knew, Genma had given him away to half the families in Japan by now.

But apparently none of that meant much to Genma. Even though he had done this and essentially voided the agreement he had made with Soun Tendo he still expected Ranma to marry Akane. And since the whole mess with the other fiancees had started, they were pushing it even harder.

And anything Ranma said fell on deaf ears.

Didn't they realise that he didn't want any of this. He didn't want to get married, not this young anyway.

He jumped off the end of the fence, carrying on across the street as he realised that he was going to have to get serious about the whole mess. The problem was he didn't want to hurt any of them. Or should he say, he didn't want them to hurt him. Again. He remembered how vicious the girls could get, the whole mess when Happosai had made everyone believe his mother had come for him springing into his mind. For some reason they thought that attacking him was going to help.

Dealing with them was going to be difficult. If he said the wrong thing, as he so often did, it would only make things worse for him in the end.

Ukyo was going to be the hardest for him. He didn't want to hurt her. He still thought of her as a friend as he had when they had been children but her insistence that she was his fiancée and she was the one he was going to marry was putting a strain on that friendship. He was finding it harder and harder to be around her. For her part though, she saw her claim as true. His father had promised him to her in exchange for her father's cart and he had reneged. She saw herself reclaiming what had been promised to her.

Kodachi wasn't really an issue, he thought to himself. Nothing was tying him to her apart from her own delusional little fantasies. He hadn't been promised to her nor had an engagement happened through any other means. Didn't mean he wasn't wary of her though. He shuddered as he remembered being stuck on the roof all night after being hit with that paralysis gas.

Shampoo was going to be a problem. Not only did the Amazon girl have their laws running through her head she also had her great-grandmother backing her up with her incessant 'son-in-law' every time she saw him. He didn't understand their laws. Why would anyone want to marry someone they knew could defeat them in combat? He reasoned that it was probably from when their tribe was first formed, wanting the men in the tribe to be able to prove they could provide for their families but from what he had seen, both from Shampoo and Cologne, it was the women that were the warriors, not the men.

It didn't make any sense to him.

He stopped as he saw the Tendo dojo, his mind flicking to Akane. Of all his fiancée's she was the most like him. Sure they fought all the time and he could probably count the amount of times they had had a conversation that hadn't turned violent but in his mind, he reasoned that was because they both had such fiery personalities.

He couldn't stop another sigh as he thought about Akane. Of all his fiancee's she was the one that he could actually see himself with. When he thought about getting married lately, it was Akane he saw in his mind but he doubted it would happen. Of all four girls, she was the only one that never fought for him.

With all the others fighting over him like he was a prize to be won, she stood back and let them fight. Either she felt secure enough in the thought that she and Ranma would be married, not feeling the need to fight with the others or she just didn't care.

He didn't know which one he would prefer.

While he had enjoyed the thought that he had all these girls fighting over him to begin with – be honest, what sixteen-year-old boy wouldn't enjoy beautiful girls fighting over him – now it was tiresome and he wanted to be left alone.

"Ranma-kun, is everything okay?" He turned, seeing Kasumi walking down the street, a full bag in her hand. She had most likely just come back from the market with ingredients for that evening's dinner.

"Hello Kasumi-san," he gave her a small smile as she stopped next to him in front of the Tendo dojo gate. "Nothing's wrong, just thinking, I guess."

"Nothing too serious, I hope," she gave him a smile before walking through the gate leaving it open for him to follow. He shook his head, closing the gate behind him as they both entered the house. He dropped his bag as he removed his shoes, seeing Kasumi slipping her feet into the slippers she normally wore around the house. He never bothered with those like the rest of them did. He preferred to go barefoot where he could.

He followed Kasumi through the house, seeing his father and Tendo playing their usual game of shogi. What was unusual was that his father was actually in his true form rather than the panda form he appeared to prefer. Ranma rolled his eyes at the thought of his old man hiding out as a panda. So much for the honour of a martial artist he was always going on about.

He settled himself down at the table, pulling his books out of his bag, dreading the thought of his homework. He had never had to worry about it before – other than the short time he had been in junior high – so had never had the incessant battle with homework that others had. Of course, he had it now. It had been Kasumi that had scared him into doing his homework when he had first started at Furinkan High School by threatening that if he didn't get all of it done before he settled into his after school work out, she would leave the cooking of his meals to Akane. The thought made him shudder. She had also ensured that he wouldn't be disturbed by his father by issuing the same threat.

"You're home late, boy." His father grumbled from where he was eyeing the shogi board in front of him.

"Had stuff to do." He mumbled back, resting his head on his hand as he attempted to work through the calculations in front of him. He hated math.

"Having trouble, Ranma-kun?" He let out a sigh as he heard Nabiki behind him.

"I'm fine, Nabiki-san," he responded, checking his answers so far in the back of the textbook. He was pleased to find that he had only missed one of them so far. Maths had never really been his strong suit, not having needed it before. "Besides, I don't think I could afford your fees."

She let out a chuckle at his words, shrugging before walking off to her room to do her own homework.

Ranma rolled his eyes as he heard the shouts coming from the dojo, knowing that she would be taking out whatever anger she had on defenseless blocks. He had no idea why she did that. It wasn't as though it did anything other than waste bricks. He shook his head as he finished his homework, packing his books back in his bag.

He spent the rest of the afternoon in the dojo, working through his katas steadfastly ignoring Akane as she glared at him. He knew that he was better than she was and she knew it too. Not that she would ever admit it. She had spent her life secluded in Nerima, having to teach herself after her mother's death while he had spent the majority of his life on the road, training with his father, pushing themselves further and harder. True the training hadn't really been ideal but it had made him as strong as he was so he could appreciate it.

He had offered to help her improve her technique and timings, genuinely worried about her welfare. With her hair-trigger temper she could get into a lot of trouble and if she challenged the wrong person even the tiniest misstep could be fatal.

But she, as per usual Akane, had jumped to the conclusion that he was rubbing it in that he was better than her, jumping down his throat and not letting him explain his reasons. Since that incident he hadn't bothered. She constantly bugged him to spar with her, getting angry when he did nothing but dodge her attacks. Strong she may be but he didn't hit girls.

It wasn't too much later that they were all sitting down for dinner, Akane glaring at Ranma as he tucked into his meal.

"So why were you so late back, boy?" His father asked as Kasumi refilled his rice bowl. It was the only time he wasn't shovelling food into his mouth.

"Does it have anything to do with Shampoo asking after you?" Nabiki asked, a sly grin on her face. Ranma coughed as everyone turned to look at him.

"You were with Shampoo?" Akane growled and Ranma rolled his eyes.

"If by 'with' you mean hiding from, yeah." He mumbled back, finishing his bowl of rice and placing it down in front of him.

"I just bet you were."

"Excuse me!" He turned to face the angry girl beside him. He had no idea what she was so angry about seeing as he hadn't actually done anything wrong. Typical Akane though, she never waited for an explanation. "What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Only that you're never in a hurry to get away from her," she shot back, "or any of the others for that matter." The last part was nothing more than a mumble but Ranma caught her words. Clearly she only saw what she wanted to, not what was really happening in front of her.

"If this is what I have to come home to, what do you expect?" He muttered, rolling his eyes.

That was the last thing he uttered before Akane's mallet was rushing at him, striking him with more force than usual, causing him to fly out into the rain that had just begun to fall.

~I~R~I~R~I~R~I~R~I~R~I~R~I~R~I~R~

"Damn rain," a young man, appearing to be in his mid-twenties but in reality much older grumbled as the rain tapered off and he shook his head lightly, several drops of water spraying out in every direction.

He stopped, pulling his long black hair over his shoulder, wringing it out as best he could, before allowing it to fall down his back in the low ponytail he usually wore. He sighed, knowing he'd have to dry it out properly once he got home.

Turning to look at the canal, he leaned on the fence, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Though he hated being caught out in it, he loved the scents that rose after the rain. He frowned as he caught a scent he wasn't expecting.

The scent of blood.

His eyes snapping open, he looked down towards the bank of the canal in the direction the scent had come from.

Clearing the fence with ease, he sniffed the air again, following the scent and stopping short when he caught sight of a young girl, unconscious on the bank. There was a small cut on her forehead but he couldn't determine whether that was why she was unconscious.

Approaching the girl, he stopped once again, drawing in a breath as her scent became more clear to him.

"It can't be," he murmured, kneeling down next to her, lifting her gently. She wasn't familiar to him but the scent of her was. Whoever she was, he couldn't leave her here, soaking wet and unconscious.

He gently lifted her, taking care not to jostle her head too much before bending his powerful legs and leaping higher than any human could ever hope back towards the shrine he called home.