Ghost Raised

Chapter 1: The Neko-ken Goes Wrong, Very Wrong.

Early in the morning, deep in the forests of Japan, close to where a fat fool was tying up a six year old boy, and covering him with fish sausages for the final time, a ghost girl was collecting ingredients of an herbal nature for an experiment.

'Physically' she had not changed over the many millennia that she had existed as a ghost. She still wore her Al-Revis school uniform, still had her purplish pink ribbons in her grey hair, and still held the same pink bear with a ribbon the same color as the ones in her hair around its throat. Her uniform consisted of an intricate blue, gold and white cape, a short white skirt with an inch thick band of blue an inch above the bottom, red collar, blue anklets framed by gold, blue, gold, and white loafers, and a gold and white blouse barely seen through the cape.

As she continued collecting ingredients in her mostly solid form, a loud scream sounded for a second before cutting off quite suddenly. A few minutes later, a young boy with his hair in a pigtail covered in fresh blood bounded into the clearing with the ghost on all fours. He looked around until he spotted the ghost and without warning lunged at the ghost.

the ghostly girl was so surprised that she didn't even think of dematerializing, and so was knocked down by the boy, who promptly curled up on her lap and fell asleep purring.

She shook her head, and feeling strangely maternal started to check the boy for injuries while her bear walked back to her from where it was thrown after the boy tackled her. His injury assessment puzzled her.

"A lot of what looks like cat scratches, but nowhere near enough to account for all the blood, and why is he acting like a cat?" she whispered to herself softly, careful not to wake the boy on her lap. "Where were the boy's parents to allow him to get into this situation? He seems a bit young to be this deep in the forest alone. I suppose I'll have to wait for him to wake."

As she settled down to wait for the mystery boy to wake, she started sorting through her bag of medicines that she keeps in case someone is injured near her. She picked up a bottle and frowned at the maker. The maker of that particular bottle was an old friend named Vayne who had died over ten thousand years in the past. Putting the bottle back in her bag she made a note to sort through her bag and remove any medicine too old to use and place the one's made by her friends on a shelf to remember them by. Digging through her bag again she found a bottle that she made five thousand years ago which she simply threw behind her. The bottle hit a tree and broke into a thousand pieces. The third time proved to be the charm as she pulled a heal jar that she made a few month ago out. By the label she could tell that it was not one of her experiments, but instead one that she made exactly the way Vayne had made the one she initially rejected. Setting the bottle aside she prepared to wait for the boy to awaken.

A few hours later the boy yawned and stretched, during which his left hand touched fabric. He realized something was wrong looked toward that direction, and saw a pretty girl nearly, from his point of view, three times his inconsiderable age. He blushed and pulled his hand back from her chest. "Sorry," he mumbled in an embarrassed voice as he got off of her lap. He then sat on the ground as the pain of his injuries caught up to him.

The girl smiled as she replied, "It was an accident, now you need to drink this before anything else." she then handed him the cure jar she had set aside for him.

He looked at the bottle suspiciously, and looked toward her. Upon seeing her smiling face he sighed and drank it. To his surprise his wounds instantly healed and the pain he was in ceased. "Wow, thanks lady, that felt great!" he exclaimed excitedly.

"You're welcome, now how did you get in covered in cat scratches, and blood?" she asked gently.

He flinched at the c-word before he responded, "Umm… pops was trying to teach me something called the Neko-ken, and I woke up here."

"That's odd, you were acting like a cat, complete with curling up on my lap and purring while sleeping." The ghost said speculatively. "Anyway, let's see if we can find your father shall we?"

She paused as she remembered the condition the boy was in when he arrived, and had a bad feeling in her ghostly gut. "on second thought why don't you stay here with my bear, and I'll check it out." She then stood up and started flouting off in the direction that the boy came from.

The boy was about to protest when he was shocked into silence by her flouting. By the time he regained his wits they were stolen again by the pink teddy bear climbing onto his lap.

The ghostly girl found the campsite in short order, and sadly shook her head at the scene in front of her. A man in a blood soaked Gi was laying next to a pit that had a shattered wooden cover. The man's throat looked like it had been torn out brutally by some sort of razor sharp claws. Inside the pit had the remains of dozens of cats, all brutally sliced to pieces.

She quickly and with great effort moved the man into the pit so that when she brought Ranma to the camp he wouldn't see the body. She would inform the police of what had transpired when she brings the boy to them. She saw the two packs and believed the smaller belonged to the boy. As a ghost she was unable to carry massive weights, and it was only through luck she managed to move the body, so she knew that he would have to reclaim his own stuff.

She quickly headed back to where she left the boy, and as she got close enough to him to be in sight started actually walking, or at least performing a reasonable facsimile of such. As soon as she arrived she saw the boy holding her bear, and trying his damnedest not to cry. With her expression soft she enveloped him in a hug and said gently, "it's ok to cry if you're sad."

"Poppa said real men don't cry," he replied with a sniffle.

"I don't know why, one of the strongest men I ever knew cried when necessary, and he was much older than you. You shouldn't be afraid to show your emotions. The man I knew laughed, cried, and got depressed just like everyone else, but in the end he had friends who helped him through the problems," she said softly but audibly to him.

He looked at her while digesting her words, and without warning turned in her arms, dropped the bear, enveloped her in a hug, and started crying. She could almost feel the dam within him burst as she held the crying boy. As her protective instincts flared once again she thought, After he settles down we should get to his camp and collect his stuff so that we can get to town and report the death of that man and see whether we can find this boy's parents.

Twenty minutes later the boy's sobs calmed down, and the girl asked, "What's your name?"

"Ranma Saotome," the boy replied softly.

"Well Ranma, My name is Pamela Ibis, and we should retrieve you stuff from your camp, and get you to town, so you can rest. I'm afraid that we will have to walk since I don't own a vehicle," Pamela said gently.

"What about pops?" Ranma asked, fearful of losing the one constant he still had.

"When we get to town we can drop by the police station, and fill in a missing persons report and let them find him for you, k? What did he look like and do you know his name?" Pamela asked with a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with the fact that her knees were sunk halfway into the ground.

"His name was Genma, and he wore clothes like mine, a cloth on his head, and glasses," the pigtailed boy responded.

Her sinking feeling confirmed Pamela kept her voice as light as possible, while she spoke to the boy in her arms, "Well we should hurry and collect your stuff from your camp, so we can head to the police station and ask them to find your father."

The small boy nodded and broke the hug he was in. they both stood up, and without a word, Pamela led the way to his camp, Ranma following behind still carrying her bear.

Upon arriving at the camp and telling Ranma to collect his stuff, the ghost girl was surprised to find him packing the larger pack with the tent, most of the cooking equipment, and some manuals. As Ranma packed her eye caught sight of a bloodstained book on the ground, and as she moved over to it she saw that the title of the book was Neko-ken. Since Ranma was still packing, and she remembered him saying he was being trained in it, she started to read it. As she read the book a ghostly battle aura surrounded her. As she finished with the warnings on the last page she decided that Genma's death was too quick, but she calmed down quickly as she realized that there was nothing she could do about this now.

She noticed Ranma standing nearby with a heavy pack on his back. He was only showing a slight effort keeping it on his back. "You can leave some of that behind for later if you want," Pamela said.

How such a young boy could give such a 'are you kidding' look was beyond the grey haired ghost's understanding, but he also responded verbally, "Pops would kill me if I lost this stuff."

Pamela sighed, and said, "Fine, if you are ready we'll head to town."

At seeing his nod they started walking out the forest together, although he was a bit weirded out at times at the fact that some of the branches that should have caught on her cape didn't.

Eight hours later, which ironically was due to Pamela being slower than Ranma, Pamela was 'sitting' on a bench in the police station. She had already given her report, and the officers were currently asking Ranma some questions.

"Miss Ibis?" The police chief said, as he exited from the room in which Ranma was being questioned.

"Yes? How is Ranma?" she replied questioningly.

"He's fine, but his records don't seem to indicate who his mother is, and with how his father treated him whenever he asked he believes that she is dead. Thanks to your information about his father, we now consider him an orphan, and will be soon transferred to an orphanage. The only good thing in this mess is we can say case closed to hundreds of petty crimes," the chief replied sadly.

"What if I adopt him myself? I have become fond of him during the time we spent together today, and I can provide him with a good home, and he needn't go to an orphanage to wait for the slight chance someone might choose to adopt," Pamela asked quickly.

"Possible, but let's check your file first," the chief said as he moved to his desk and started typing on his computer. Pamela moved over with him, still acting like she was walking, and so she heard him mumble, "Income OK, place of residence OK, no criminal record, family friend of the emperor good for you, and finally age… what the hell? That can't be right." The chief moved to the filing cabinet nearby to look through the hard copy records. After much searching he found the record labeled 'Ibis Pamela'. He found the file with an attached faded photograph showing the girl standing by his desk. The file was signed by the previous chief who retired twenty years ago. Shaking his head he said to Pamela, "You seem to meet all of the requirements, but are you sure you wish to adopt such a young boy Miss Ibis?"

"Yes, I already seem to have a slight rapport with him, and I think I could be a good mother to him," she replied with conviction.

"Fine, I'll get the paperwork, and tell the boy what happened to his father and what will happen to him." The man moved quickly and smoothly to another set of cabinets, and with a few minutes of searching dug out a set of forms which he immediately set on a nearby table that was put in for the express purpose of giving people a place to fill out forms. He then walked out the door leaving a female police officer to look after the civilian while she did the paperwork. The officer looked on with a sense of approval at the woman filling out the forms.

A good twenty minutes later, as Pamela was finishing up the last form, the chief came back with the boy, who upon seeing Pamela rushed over and gave her a tearful hug.

"I'm sorry about your father," she said, while thankful she left herself mostly solid for him. The chief saw that the paperwork was finished picked it up and moved to his desk. As he started entering the data for the new adoptee he found some inconsistencies, such as the massive debt that obviously could not be the fault of such a young boy. Since much of the debt was for sake he was easily and with a clear continence able to move the debt markers from the boy's file to the fathers. He also made note to contact some of the names connected to the file to let them know that Ranma Saotome was no longer around. After he finished the computer work he called a judge to finalize the adoption, and soon a fat jovial man in a judge's robe came out of the building next door. He moved quickly to the chief's side and picked up the papers. He switched to his game face upon touching the papers and with a look of utmost scrutiny looked them over, and looked at the boy that was now sleeping on the ghost's lap. Recognizing both who she was and what she was the judge thought for a bit. Seeing no reason to actually decline the adoption since she had, through her friendship with the emperors family, a legal identity despite her being, dead he signed his approval.

The chief noticed the approval, and turned toward the ghostly girl holding the very living boy on her lap. "Will you be requiring a ride Miss Ibis? We can have some officers carry him and his pack for you," he asked politely.

"Yes please, I live on the other side of town, and I don't have the ability to carry even him alone out to the parking lot, much less him and his pack," she replied.

The chief nodded and spoke on an intercom. Shortly thereafter two officers came to help Pamela move Ranma and his pack to a waiting squad car. The number soon increased to three as it was soon discovered that Ranma's pack took two officers to move without over straining themselves. The three officers and Pamela Moved to the squad car and after a quick trek through the darkening streets stopped in front of a large house. The house looked like a fusion of multiple styles a modern western style, traditional Japanese, and a style that only one known person can currently recognize a style similar to the campus of the alchemy school Al-Revis. Upon entering the house the officers set he pack by the door, and laid the boy on a soft brown sofa.

Pamela turned toward the officers after they finished moving the boy and pack and asked, "Would you like some tea?"

One of them was about to answer when the radio on their hips came to life, "To all officers four eleven in progress on the corner of…"

"Sorry Miss, but duty calls," one of the three police officers said as they dashed for their shoes. After quickly tying them on they ran out the door leaving the new family alone in the house.

Pamela watched them leave, before turning toward her new son with a smile, which quickly faded as she noticed him shivering. Since he was asleep she flouted through a wall and into a cupboard, and grabbed a blanket. Coming back with the blanket in the same manner she quickly tucked him in. her bear, which he had stubbornly refused to let go of in his sleep was also covered.

She was about to grab a book on alchemy and her notebook to start on some theoretical research projects, and to create a lesson plan to pass her skills on, when her eye caught a shelf unit filled with alchemy supplies, research products, and a few samples of her work in alchemy.

"I suppose I should sort that out tomorrow after he wakes up, to remove any dangerous materials until he is responsible enough to work with them," she said to herself softly before retrieving the books that she wanted.

She settled down, reclining like a normal person in a chair. She knew she would have to explain what she was later to her new family, but she figured that could wait until later. As she waited for Ranma to wake up she worked through the books, taking notes in the notebook. She was making new experimental synthesis recipes, and her current record of success? Twenty percent.

As eight am the next morning rolled around the gray haired ghost noticed that Ranma was stirring. She decided to start a large breakfast for him because he apparently hadn't eaten much the day previous she made a lot more than she thought he would need. Her cooking, while never approaching the level of professional chef was called fairly decent by her guests as long as she followed the recipe directly. The fact that she got guests, sometimes unexpected was the reason why she keeps her fridge fully stocked. The breakfast she started cooking is not the traditional Japanese breakfast. The breakfast would not look out of place in a western setting. It consisted of pancakes, sausage, and eggs. As she set the table with the cooked breakfast she heard a loud crash from the living room.

Moving quickly to that room she arrived in time to see a fragile ceramic container of liquid fall on the young boy that had tripped on the television cord and fell against the shelf of alchemy supplies. That might not have been bad, but that particular container was of a water sample that she had acquired a thousand years ago in China and always meant to research how it acquired the special properties. The thin ceramic shattered easily splashing him with the contents.

Pamela could only say two words, "uh oh…"

Chapter end

AN: My first cliff hanger aren't I evil? And can you guess what that water was?