Nerima of Konoha

[Nekomata-sensei]

This idea inspired me for a variant of itself...

Saotome Genma is a ninja of the hidden village of Sand. His jounin sensei was Happosai, who is a retired traveling ninja (similar to how Tsunade was before she became Hokage), and his team mates were Baki and Tendo Soun. While Soun settled down and started raising a family after he became a chuunin, and Baki made jounin and started working for the Kazekage, Genma was unable to even make chuunin, because while he had amazing combat skills, and good tactics, he was seen as unreliable due to his greed and gluttony, and his tendency to make irresponsible long term descisions for quick short term gain, and went into the Sand equivalent of ANBU.

Genma married Haruno Nodoka, who was from the Haruno clan of the will of Fire main temple, who guard a cherry tree forest and have in them special cherry blossom spirits that give them something like a second personality and extra mental fortitude if they work together right, and tends to cause them to have weird outbreaks of agression when they are typically very polite and reserved people, and the women to have pink hair and green eyes, and smell slightly of cherry blossoms, and the men to smell slightly of trees and have dark brown hair and green eyes. Nodoka is an aunt to Sakura. Genma's marrige to Nodoka was mostly political, Genma's combat skills were infamous, as well as his inability to progress properly through the ranks, and it was believed a marrige might be able to force him to settle down a little and a wife might make him more responsible, Nodoka would be an excellent canditate due to the demeanor that runs in the Haruno clan due to their cherry blossom spirits, and this was during a period when Leaf and Sand were making treaties and trying to cement their alliance.

Nodoka had been meant to be married to the Yondaime, by arranged marrige, but he fell in love with another woman and got the engagement between their families dropped down to the next generation. Naruto is the 4th's son by that marrige, later on, although it was kept mostly a secret and very few knew the 4th's name, as he kept it secret to protect his family from his enemies, as both Rock and Cloud wanted him and his family dead, not many knew of the marrige, or that Naruto is the 4th's son, not even Naruto knows his parents, only the 3rd, the sennin, the Konoha village council (it's the reason they didn't vote to kill Naruto as the Kyuubi vessel) and a few higher ups in the clans that had positions on the council at the time of Naruto's birth, including Uchiha Itachi, as well as Hakate Kakashi, and Kino Rin, the 4th's surviving students, Rin was the nurse maid and person who raised Naruto when he was a baby, since the 4th's wife had died in childbirth due to all the doctors being out treating people with injuries from the Kyuubi, Rin was killed protecting Naruto when he was 2 from maddened villagers, from then on an ANBU unit lead by Kakashi protected Naruto in secret while Naruto stayed at the orphanage and later at his apartment. Since the engagement between Nodoka and the 4th was dropped, Nodoka's family were eager to set up another engagement for Nodoka, even to someone like Genma, so that she could have a child at about the same time as the 4th and their children could marry to insure the pact between the clans.

Genma had allready promised an engagment between a child of his and a child of Hinata's father, after defeating him in combat with a style Genma was developing inspired by the Jyuuken, the Umi-Sen-Ken, it's attacks aren't as devastating as the 4th's rasengan or the Jyuuken, but still do potentially leathal internal damage in a style similar to a more brute force version of the Jyuuken, with large chakra bursts pushed into a foes body in a way that makes them travel the coils and damage internal organs like the Jyuuken, but covers a large area and uses more chakra than the Jyuuken because the user can't see the coils, the Umi-Sen-Ken used a lot of advanced stealth, speed, and taijutsu skills, including some advanced genjutsu, and Genma's highly trained speed and martial arts skills allowed him to overcome Hinata's father's Jyuuken. This engagement was arranged as a way to prevent Hinata's father from losing honor, and help insure the future stregth of the Hyuuga clan by integrating Genma's strong physical abilities and large chakra and aspects of the Umi-Sen-Ken into the Hyuuga bloodline and Jyuuken. Genma has forgotten of this engagement for the most part, although he'd remember if reminded, but the Hyuuga remember it very well, and it is a sore point for Hinata's father's pride that he was defeated by Genma Saotome, no matter how legendary Genma's skills are.

Genma is a master of the wind blade style, a form of wind manpulation and swordsmanship that takes most decades to learn even the basics of, which is incredibly powerful, such a master, in fact, that he developed the Yama-Sen-Ken, a style which includes the wind blades not just used like a sword, but launched as ranged attacks as well, something nobody else could ever acheive before him.

The combination of the Yama-Sen-Ken and the Umi-Sen-Ken and Happosai's legendary taijutsu teachings make Genma one of the most feared assasins possessed by Sand.

When Nodoka became pregnant, Genma initially wanted his child to have the 'honor' of being the next Shukaku vessel, but he was turned down by the Kazekage because of Nodoka's importance to the alliance with leaf, and Genma hadn't known that Nodoka would have to die for the sealing method, so he gave that up, but when he found out the Kazekage was planning on sealind a demon into his own son with one of the Kazekage's multiple wives, Genma decided to seek out a demon that he could seal into his own child when they were born.

While not confident enough to go after a bijuu, Genma was able to capture a raijuu, a cat demon made of lightning native to lightning country that were known for occasionally going on rampages that caused quite a bit of damage. What Genma didn't understand was that raijuu are actually rather freindly and docile unless provoked, and only attack if attacked, and from then on will hunt their attacker by smell and looks. Chiyo still humored Genma by agreeing to seal the raijuu into his child when born, since the raijuu are about 1/3rd the stregth of Shukaku, the weakest of the bijuu, and still usefull for creating jinchuuriki.

Genma's child was born while Genma was out on a mission, Saotome Ranko the girl, with the Haruno clan bloodline, chiyo sealed the raijuu into her. Upon Genma's return, he was quite upset to discover he'd gotten a daughter when he wanted a son, and even more that the raijuu he'd captured had been wasted on a daughter, as Genma is quite sexist. After Chiyo beats him up for being a sexist pig, she decides to punish Genma in a creative way by using the Raijuu's power to create a special medical jutsu based gender changing seal, and change Genma's daughter into a son, one even capable of siring children as a man, and having a different body, brain structure, and hormones as a boy than as a girl, although the memories would be shared between forms through the cherry blossom spirit, and the seal would remain stable, until becoming unstable when a certain large amount of Raijuu chakra was called upon, enough that it overloaded the gender seal, but not until the start of puberty. It is an indirect and cruel revenge that his child probably didn't deserve, but Chiyo saw it as a sort of out for the child later to return to her true form and payment for setting up the child not to be neglected by her father growing up, as well as a prank and revenge on Genma for being a jerk and an idiot.

Nodoka is called away to the temple most of the time, so the newly dubbed Ranma doesn't see her often, and Genma takes any chance he gets to put Ranma through harsh training, but modifying what Happosai's methods were to his own, because Genma hated Happosai's training, although Genma's are in many ways just as bad if not worse. Ranma is trained to be a ninja from the day he could walk, but thanks to some limited influence from his mother, and later teachers at the ninja academy, as well as making some friends in hidden sand, Ranma remained a rather pleasant and polite fellow most of the time, except when his cherry blossom spirit got provoked enough and didn't like someone, or both his cherry blossom spirit and his raijuu demon didn't like someone. Ranma's powers due to the entities inside him are the ability to access incredible amounts of chakra, about as much as ten boss summons, one day a year on the cherry blossom festival, by performing a special song and dance (Sakura can do this too, but as it is a one day a year power, it doesn't mean much as far as general ninja abilities go and not much is made of it), the ability to shunt secrets and emotions into the cherry spirit temporarily to do things like withstand torture, or break out of powerful mental jutsu such as Yamanaka possesion jutsu or the Mangekyo Sharingan Tsukiyomi, or perform great feats of intelligence and quick thinking as if Ranma had two minds thinking together and brainstorming and correcting each other's mistakes. The powers from the Raijuu include slight feline transformations when highly emotional (basically the same times when Naruto would go Kyuubi), a talent for lightning control, ability to fly when fully transformed (basically like Naruto's one tailed transformation except Ranma is covered with lightning in the shape of a raijuu and there is no extending limbs, but lighting shot from the tail or mouth and large lighting claws on occasion, and ability to generage clouds and fog to hide in), a regeneration like Naruto's, and ability to call on the raijuu's chakra when the raijuu is willing, and it is an animal that is easy enough to convince in battle, if it is awake and not pissed at Ranma for any reason. A raijuu doesn't have nearly as much chakra as any of the bijuu, so this means Ranma doesn't have quite so incredible a chakra source as Naruto or Garra, even if the raijuu is easier to work with.

Ranma is also occasionally victim of raijuu possession, this doesn't include neccesarily large amounts of the raijuu chakra, just the feline transformation, it usually happens when Ranma hides emotionally in the cherry spirit for some reason, such as a very painfull injury that needs to be regenerated, or simply Ranma starting to day-dream too much or occasionally in Ranma's sleep if the raijuu is awake at the time. This is something of a joke to the people of Sand, especially in comparison to Garra, as the raijuu is very friendly and will only attack if attacked, so it only attacks Genma, and tries to get pet and cuddled and fed by everone else, and does silly cat things the rest of the time.

Ranma spends most of his time either at the academy, or out traveling around with Genma who is basically half retired, going to various places around the shinobi continents to train for long stretches of time, or going to the Fire Temple with his mother on very rare occasions, usually once a year for the cherry blossom festival, because of the cherry blossom festival, Ranma does know Sakura, and they both get along, although they don't know each other very well as they are usually busy with their shinto spiritual work with their religious relatives doing rituals and preparing for and cleaning up after the festival and doing the dance, and then using up the chakra from the dance to re-charge all the seal arrays in the Fire temple complex and returning the remaining chakra to the cherry trees.

When Ranma was still too young for the sand ninja academy, he went to a weapons master/smith who lives just outside Konoha and makes most of the weapons for Leaf and Sand, Tenten's father. At the time, Ranma believed Tenten to be another boy, because she dresses just like Ranma does but typically in white or gray shirts, where Ranma prefers red or gold shirts, often with dragon or tree emblems, and Tenten obviously wasn't very developed at that age. Ranma and Tenten were best friends while they trained under Tenten's father to learn tons of weapons and incredible accuracy techniques and basic sealing and weapons smithing and maintainance. They spent tons of time running around playing. They even ran accross Tsunade (starting Tenten's idolization of Tsunade) who Ranma lost to at a ton of simple gambling games, because of which Tsunade can get weapons for free from Tenten's shop, and Shizune knows that there is one person in the world worse at gambling than Tsunade, Saotome Ranma, the world's worst gambler, but at least he's not addicted to it. Interstingly, what followed Tsunade's defeats of Ranma was a long string of terrible luck for Tsunade and Shizune that left them in a great amount of debt, and only encouraged Tsunade's gambling habbits furthur. Tenten's father arranged a marrige between Ranma and Tenten as a deal to teach Ranma his secret techniques, Genma had forgotten about the Hyuuga deal, and didn't know about the Uzumaki deal, so he agreed to the engagment. Tenten wasn't told later because Tenten's father lost contact with Genma who was very hard to contact due to being constantly traveling and never checking his mail, and though there was a possiblity that Genma had been killed on a mission or that Ranma might have died in a training accident due to Genma's harsh training, so he was worried about upsetting Tenten by bringing up her long lost best friend who might be dead and is supposed to be engaged to her, and doesn't plan on bringing it up unless Ranma comes back or she starts showing romantic intrest in some guy, and he has to break them up if Ranma is still alive, at which point he'd probably find out by seeking out Nodoka at the Fire Temple.

Uchiha Fugaku, Sasuke's father, also heard news of Nodoka's firstborn daughter, Ranko, almost as soon as she was born, and got her engaged to Sasuke through the Haruno clan head, since he knew the Haruno were the only ones capable of escaping the Tsukiyomi without possessing the Mangekyo Sharingan, and neither of Sakura's parents were ninja, while Genma was a powerful ninja, so Ranko would be a superior choice to Sakura, especially as Sakura was clan heiress and they'd probably be finding a boy to marry into the family and keep the family's name to marry Sakura. The Konoha Council approved this arragement, as did the Kazekage, as it didn't conflict with the Hyuuga arragement since Ranko was a girl, as was Hinata, when they were finally born. The council was a bit confused by the appearance of Ranma later, and dissapearance of Ranko, but took it as some sort of weird typo thing, and switched the Hyuuga engagement back to primary pushing the Uchiha arragement to secondary. Neither Genma nor Nodoka heard anything of this, as they weren't considered important enough to be involved.

But it doesn't end there, Ranma is also engaged to marry one of Soun Tendo's daughters, after some drinking in a bar between Soun and Genma when Nodoka was declared pregnant, to join their styles under Happosai, which Baki opted out of, Akane a rookie genin who doesn't get along with Ranma to comical proportions with their dislike of each other and arguments being well known throughout Sand, who likes using fire jutsu and poisoned weapons and poisoning people, and has poor chakra control, but great natural stregth, Nabiki, who is a chuunin stealth and genjutsu and speed specialist, and skiled at negotiations and a jounin, and Kasumi who can use water techniques and is skilled at finding underground oasis with specialized ninjutsu that insure the survival of Sand, and spends most of her time at home since their mother died, taking care of her retired father and sisters. Akane is older than Ranma by one year, Nabiki by three years, and Kasumi by 5 years. Akane and Ranma don't know of the engagement, mostly because Genma doesn't want Ranma being distracted from his training by romance and Soun is afraid to tell Akane, who has tried to kill Ranma on more than one occassion, putting them in the same room is like trying to mix fire and oil, and guarenteed to cause Akane to try to challenge Ranma, attack him when he refuses to fight, Ranma to insult her, and Akane to go bonkers and try to kill him, while Ranma runs away, usually followed by Akane trying to poison Ranma and Ranma getting cured by Chiyo or the head of the medic nin team, Kasumi's boyfriend, Tofu.

Ranma is one of the few chidren in the village not afraid of Garra, mostly because Genma and Nodoka think too highly of Ranma's ninja abilities and don't see Garra as a threat to Ranma, and have not taught Ranma to fear Garra, or even told him much about him, other than Genma wishing Ranma having gotten Garra's demon, and Ranma didn't meet Garra throuout most of his childhood because Ranma was either out of the village or going to the academy, while Garra was privately taught by Baki, who avoids Genma and Soun now that he is finally out from Happosai's thum, as he thinks they are both embarrasments to ninja despite their power, which he believes is mostly a result of Happosai's harsh training.

Happosai is a friend of Jiraiya's, exchanging information and sending him reviews of and his ideas for the Icha Icha series, but they mostly avoid one another because they constantly get caught if they try to work in the same area due to their differing styles of peeping and also Happosai liking to create ruckuses, whereas Jiraiya likes things peacefull. Happosai is only afraid of two people, Chiyo and Tsunade, and they are the only people who can usually get him to behave, at least for a little while. Happosai is a legendary martial artist and wind master, considered to be in the same class as the Nidaime with his water specialty in his wind specialty, but more powerful offensively due to wind being the best attacking element, and to be a martial artist in the same class as the man now dead who taught Gai, and the 4th, as far as speed, power, and skill, but much more harsh than Gai's sensei.

Ranma was the star of the Sand ninja academy, despite missing a lot due to being out training with Genma, he is top of the class, even above Temari who is in the same class as him, but nearly a year older than him. He excells in all three of the ninja basic areas, genjutsu, taijutsu, and ninjutsu, and has great speed and stamina, and the best weapons skills in Sand, as well as very powerful lightning, ninjutsu, and some ninjutsu of all the other elements, including doton: Shinjuu zanshuu, earth clone, and earth wall, katon: mythical fire flower, kazeton: great breakthrough, and suiton: mist hiding technique and water clone. Ranma is also one of the best trackers in Sand, due to his senses being slightly superhuman due to the raijuu sealed in him.

Ranma was placed on the team under Baki instead of Kankuro, with Kankuro getting apprenticed to Chiyo instead, and is thus instead of Kankuro part of the team involved in the invasion. Soon after joining the team, Ranma and Garra piss each other off and Garra nearly kills Ranma, forcing regeneration from Ranma, enough that Ranma is disabled while the raijuu is in control and it is just trying to regenerate, scared of Garra, due to sensing a bijuu, and the cherry blossom spirit also slightly scared, so Ranma mostly avoids pissing off Garra after that, although he isn't as scared as most would be, because he knows he could avoid Garra if he needed to, although he doesn't know if he could actually defeat Garra, as he's never made it past the armor of sand, just the sheild of sand, and he's one of very few to get that far. But also, Garra's attack destabalized the gender seal as plannned, unveiling Ranko, and causing Ranma no end of problems, with the discovery that he was born a girl, and is stuck turning into one occasionally, partly stabalized by avoiding using the raijuu's power and the cherry blossom spirit, but not completely, so Ranma takes the Ranko name while in girl form. Because Ranma has no control of the transformations, Leaf is told of this and it is in Ranma's passports with 2 ids when he enters the chuunin exams, one for Ranma and one for Ranko, and leaf's ANBU and jounin are informed of Ranma's condition, as are the council and Hokage, and it has to be demonstrated to the Hokage on Ranma's arrival, Sakura also finds out because Ranma is sent to stay with her family while in Leaf for the exams. Ranma and Sakura aren't there due to this when Naruto and the K corps and Sasuke run into Garra and Temari, although Temari doesn't try to hurt Konohamaru, just scare him.

Naruto runs into Ranko later that day, who is seeking out a place to eat, and at first mistakes her for Sakura, but notices she's shorter, has a better figure, wears a more boyish style with slightly oversized clothes, and is cuter without the oversized forehead, and has a pigtail instead of long, silky hair like Sakura's, but still strongly resembles Sakura. Ranko is rather shy towards Naruto at first, and polite and kind, as she usually is to new people and people who haven't made her dislike them, and tells Naruto when he calls out to her thinking her Sakura that Sakura is her cousin, who she is staying with, and her name is Ranko. Naruto thinks she's really cute, much cuter than Temari, and 'slightly' cuter, at least in Naruto's biased opinion, than Sakura. Naruto explains that he is Uzumaki Naruto, Sakura's team-mate, and asks if Ranko is in need of help. Ranko proceeds to take advantage of the fact that she's currently a girl to get Naruto to buy some food for her, laying on the charm and ending up eating with him at Ichikaru's, horrifying Naruto afterwards since he was duped into paying for it beforehand and she ate nearly as much as she did, which resulted in quite a bit of money lost, he also finds her slight fangs cute. Naruto asks Sakura about Ranko later, obviously crushing over her, which Sakura finds hilarious but won't tell Naruto why, because she knows Ranko is usually Ranma, even if Ranko is the true form, Ranma is usually very insistant that he's a boy, even while Ranko, probably due to being raised as one, and she tricks Naruto into thinking Ranko and Ranma are different people, twins who are cousins who are staying with her. Sasuke doesn't know about his engagement to Ranko at this point, nor Naruto about his, only Sakura's family and some Konoha higher ups like the council knows about that bungle. Sasuke makes a joke about Naruto having a thing for pink, and questions if Ranma looks like a sissy and has pink hair, which enrages Naruto and Sakura corrects Sasuke, explaining that Ranma has dark brown hair, and actually is about as handsome and popular as Sasuke, explaining that he's the Sand's version of Sasuke, their number 1 rookie, and on a team with ninja known as Garra and Temari, which startles Naruto and Sasuke who had run across Garra and Temari the year before. Naruto asks why Sakura has cousins from Sand, and she explains about the alliance between Sand and Leaf and it being from a political marrige, and how her, Ranma, and Ranko are the first real ninja from her family, the rest being priests and priestesses of the fire temple and guardians of the Sakura forest.

Sasuke ends up asking for info on Ranma, Garra, and Lee from Kabuto, although Ranma's stats are only about as detailed as Garra's, except for noting that he was from the alliance between Leaf and Sound, and the son of Genma Saotome, who is the butt of a number of shinobi jokes, none of which the rookie 9 know because they've never been to bars.

Ranma actually does fight Shino, but that is the only real difference during the exams besides some comedy during training time and Ranma calling Tenten cute after finding out she's his childhood friend 'Tenchan' and Tenten finding out from her father that she is engaged to Ranma, although she doesn't get around to telling him because he's training in various places, and some comedy between Ranma/Ranko, Sakura, and Naruto, with Naruto oblivious to Ranma's two forms, Sakura thinking it hilarious, Ranma/Ranko awkward around Naruto due to not expecting Naruto to go after Ranko so seriously and Naruto trying to become Ranma's friend with the goal of getting his permission to date Ranko or Sakura and find out more about Ranko and Sakura from him, which puts Ranma in a very weird position, that has him beffuddled as to how to deal with Naruto, especially knowing Sakura doesn't like him that way, and finds him annoying, as she's told him, and Sakura purposefully making the problem worse for her own amusement. Jiraiya also knows about Ranma and questions him about how he controlls the raijuu's power to get better ideas on how to train Naruto for summoning.

Ranma actually fights Shino in the finals, and defeats him, resulting in the shadows being longer and Shikamaru defeating Temari in their match, although that has no real effect on things as it doesn't affect Sasuke's match with Garra, and Ranma and Temari aren't really interfering with anything once Garra starts transforming, so there is no need for someone instead of Shino to defeat Ranma. Plus Ranma has mixed feelings due to his loyalty to Sand but Sakura being trapped by Garra's hand, and ends up getting knocked out by an attack from Garra that was meant for Naruto, while trying to free Sakura with Naruto's help. Ranma wakes up soon enough due to regeneration to see Naruto use the Kyuubi's power to summon Gamabunta and transform with Gamabunta into a fake Kyuubi, and realizes Naruto is the Kyuubi jinchuuriki. But still accepts him at least as a friend.

After this, Ranma is left behind by Sand in Konoha due to Konoha council bringing up the engagements while trying to work out the peace since Sand had been tricked into attacking and is now in a bad position politically. The engagments of Ranko to Sasuke and Naruto are revealed by Kakashi and Jiraiya to team 7 and Ranma, as well as Ranma's engagment to Hinata, and Ranma's 'curse' becomes general knowledge and the engagements and curse the butt of jokes, but not before Tenten also reveals her engagement before hearing of the other ones. The Konoha council decides to just see how things turn out for now, but that Ranma/Ranko _will_ be marrying one of the 4, Sasuke, Naruto, Hinata, or Tenten, and it can be decided who when they are all older, and other engagements can skip generations, or be fulfilled by Sakura.

Sakura wants Ranko to marry Naruto, in order to avoid having to marry Naruto herself and keep Sasuke availible. She also thinks Ranko and Naruto are cute together, and that Ranko should have the gender seal permanently removed, and stick to her true form, as she thinks the gender seal is criminally weird and Genma is a bastard for trying to force a son.

Naruto is weirded out by the 'curse', and doesn't pursue Ranko anymore, although he's still attracted to her. He is also protective of her, which pisses Ranko off occasionally because she insists she's just as strong as her male form and Naruto doesn't act that way towards Ranma. Naruto sees Ranma as something of a rival.

Sasuke sees Ranko as a better choice for a bride than Sakura, because she better understands his perspective as the victim of fangirls, isn't a fangirl, and is a stronger shinobi, thus their children would be stronger, so he tries to make sure Ranko will choose him over Naruto or anyone else, and avoids Ranma, because the curse weirds him out, but he doesn't pursue Ranko very strongly and directly, because he is more focused on killing Itachi and training to kill Itachi. It still is another point of rivalry between him and Naruto. If anything, he hopes that if Ranko/Ranma marries someone other than him, it's not Naruto, and that Sakura marries Naruto, instead of him, so he's trying to keep Ranko from getting too close to Naruto, while Sakura is trying to get them together.

Tenten is bi, so she finds the curse a turn on, and finds Ranma _way_ more attractive and nice than the two boys she'd had crushes on before, Sasuke and Neji. She pursue's Ranma strongly and likes romantic stuff and won't be put off by any competition, and thinks that her marrige to Ranma is destiny due to them being childhood best friends, and uses the angle of her being Ranma's first friend and being friends with Ranma to pursue him, and views the other engagements as obstacles placed in their way in order to make it that much sweeter when she is the one who ends up marrying him.

Hinata has a crush on Naruto, but like Tenten is bi, so she has fantasies of Naruto becoming Hokage and marrying both her and Ranko, in order to satsify more than one engagement at a time, so she wants Ranko to marry Naruto, but also wants Naruto and Ranko to like her as well, although she is too shy to pursue them properly, and rather jealous of Tenten's confidence, but has the advantage over Tenten of a better figure and not scaring Ranma by being overly agressive like Tenten is about the engagement. Hinata doesn't know how to react to Ranma, but doesn't find him nearly as attractive as she finds Ranko, and prefers Naruto to Ranko.

Ino doesn't really like Sasuke, she likes Sakura, and pretends to like Sasuke when Sakura is around to make Sakura her rival so that Sakura can grow strong, and by competing with Ino can surpass the other girls in her pursuit of Sasuke over the other fangirls, who would have been more aggressive than Sakura were it not for competing with Ino, because she is pretty certain Sakura is straight. Ino is secretly lesbian. Ino wants Ranko to marry Naruto so that Sakura can get Sasuke. She also has perverted daydreams one of which Shikamaru and Chouji hear her sleep talking about while Ino is napping after being exhausted by training, of herself, Ranko, Sakura, Hinata, Tenten and wrestling naked in chocolate syrup...

Most of the rest of leaf sees the engagement mess as another chapter of the bar jokes and horror stories about Genma Saotome, and Ranma's life as one of the biggest jokes and major pieces of gossip in shinobi history, or has various angles of their own on the whole mess.

Ranma/Ranko is taken along by Jiraiya with Naruto to find Tsunade, as he hopes Tsunade can do something to better stablize Ranma/Ranko's gender seal, which he doesn't understand due to it involving complex medical stuff. Itachi and Kisame laugh at and ignore Ranma/Ranko, as the joke has even reached Akatsuki, and don't take him/her seriously, draining him/her along with Naruto using Samedeha when Ranma and Naruto try to prepare to fight them before Jiraiya and Sasuke arrive, and plan to leave Ranma/Ranko behind, despite being a jinchuuriki, as they are only interested in the ones carrying the bijuu, and Ranma isn't the world dominating type and thus not somene to be a future recruit for Akatsuki.

Tsunade finds Ranma refusing to chose to become a girl for good like she thinks would be best, so she creates the hot/cold water thing from Ranma cannon, in order to stabalize the seal, partly as a joke of her own about boys and 'cold showers', and partly as using elements is an easier way to stabalize the seal, and water element is the easiest to make into a proper trigger, ground would be restrictive, wind would cause the transformations to be even more unstable, as would lightning with Ranma's powers, and fire would be dangerous. Ranma is left sleeping in the fight against Orochimaru and Kabuto, much to his ire later.

Tsunade's past bets with Ranma and Tenten become a point of humor upon return to Konoha, and a point of ire for Tenten's father, against both Ranma and Tenten, who have to make Tsunade lose the right to free weapons so that he doesn't go out of buisness with leaf nins all taking things from Tsunade's tab now that she is going to be innauerated as Hokage.

Rock Lee who is out of the loop falls comically in love with Ranko after the surgury, and tries to make Ranma a new rival, at least until the mess is explained to him, after which he loses intrest except as a rival in the martial arts.

Ranko is part of the Sasuke retreival group, taking Kankuro's place in helping Kiba fight Sakon and Ukon, and thinking that as Ranko she might be able to seduce Sasuke back, although she doesn't get a chance.

Ranko/Ranma is one of the only people who accepts Naruto and knows about the Kyuubi his age that he knows of. Hinata, Neji, Shikamaru, Kiba, and Shino also know about the Kyuubi, either due to their special abilities, or animals who don't understand laws telling them, or simply figuring it out with dates and simple deductions and observations, and none of them particularly care or hold it against him, but Naruto doesn't know about them knowing, only Ranma/Ranko.

Furthur hijinx involving Ranma progress after Tsunade becomes Hokage, involving all sorts of embarrasing, comedic and silly situations, nude scenes and bathouse accidents, Genma, Happosai, the Tendos, and Nodoka all coming to Konoha for long stays because of Ranma and the whole engagement mix up, and Ranma being involved in many of the filler arc episodes of the Naruto anime after the Sasuke retrieval and before the time skip.

[P.H. Wise]

If you have an idea, Nekomata, I suggest you post it as its own thread rather than hijack another person's idea thread with it.