Whoever'd said that parenting was the most natural thing in the world had obviously never raised a boy. Even with her innate Senshi enhancements and the temporal mastery which enabled her to almost literally be in two places at once, the last (objective time) decade had still manage to come within a hair's breath of driving her to a screaming fit. The act of laundering his fortune in gold bullion and adding his name to her own family rolls (as her orphaned nephew) had been child's play compared to seeing to the million and once needs of a hyperkinetic seven year old. Between the constant shopping trips for new clothing (those that he didn't outgrow within weeks seemed to be quickly shredded in his constant schoolyard fights or irredeemably soiled by his persistant exploration of every filth encrusted nook and cranny in all of Juuban) and the regular meetings with various concerned school officials (about the aforementioned fights) Setsuna had undoubtably engaged in more human interaction during the past few years than she'd had during the previous thousand years combined.
Added to this was the frustration of having to balance his continued martial arts training (at several reputable local dojos) with the needs of a solid education (at a private boy's academy). She had eventually been reduced to ferrying him back and forth to the gates of time so that he could do his homework and daily kata outside of the normal flow of events. Even that had proved insufficient to seriously bolster his flagging grades, so Pluto had simply placed a school desk directly in front of the time gates themselves and forced Ranma to sit there and watch as she replayed that day's classes as many times as necessary for him to understand the material. Ranma's capacity to retain the information had still remained negligible until she'd begun rewarding his progress with brief glimpses of great martial artists practicing and teaching the Art. After that his grades had soared to a respectable B- average and his martial arts had begun to progress in leaps and bounds.
Of course even this had some attendant problems. Ranma would often obsess over a new move or technique for however many days or weeks it took to master, leading Pluto to quickly adopt a policy of only showing Ranma martial arts scenes only marginally beyond what she believed to be his current limits. Also, and more disturbing to the Senshi of Time, some few of the martial arts masters that she'd viewed had seemed to be peripherally aware of her observation. Pluto had quickly learned to recognise such individuals and promptly turned the gates away from their observation, much to Ranma's chagrin and repeated complaints.
All of this did manage to take up a significant amount of time, but luckily the Gates of Time were a self contained demiplane; they existed outside of the normal flow of time (enabling visitors to spend months inside and to then leave moments after entering) and the environs were metaphysically timeless (meaning that visitors did not age and required no food, water or sleep). Thus Ranma could get home from school, spend untold hours doing homework and revieving his day's classes, learn exotic and long lost martial secrets and still find time to attend his evening martial arts classes, have dinner and get a full night of sleep in time to get up for another day of school.
But now that Ranma had finally turned sixteen, at least according to the calendar (his extended stays at the Gates of Time had left him more along the lines of a twenty year old in a sixteen year old's body and with the emotional maturity of a fourteen year old [which was still an improvement over the baseline Ranma presented in the manga]), it was time for Setsuna's "nephew" to live on his own. Getting a sizeable and customized (reinforced walls, soundproofing, etc.) loft apartment (he actually owned the entire building) and an almost obscene weekly stipend from his enormous trust fund, Ranma was all set to:
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(Posted Sun, 29 Jun 2003 18:16)
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