[Episode 115301] [Episode 115301]Tendo Nabiki felt like breaking something. Preferably someone's head, but at the moment, cinderblocks would have to do. While this would normally have been Akane's purview, Nabiki's younger sister was currently...indisposed, and it was indirectly Nabiki's fault, although the connection was so far back it was almost not noticable. Oh, but for the fluttering wings of a butterfly...
It had started a couple of years ago, when her classmate Kuno Tatewaki - a rich, pompous self-styled samurai (whose family had actually bought their swords towards the end of the Tokugawa era, and never raised them in anger) - had decided to crush on her younger sister. Naturally, Nabiki had thought it funny - and profitable, since the gullible fool could be made to pay large sums of cash for the smallest detail of Akane's life. And so, she had fed the obsession. A few months later, Kuno had issued his infamous challenge - that no man would date Akane without first beating her in combat. The collective stupidity of the Furinkan sports clubs had soon turned that on its head, into "anyone who beats Akane in a fight gets a free date". Nabiki had been livid, but Akane had paid it no mind - there was no way any of those boys could beat her, and she wasn't interested in boys anyway, so there was no way in hell she'd let any of those perverts win.
And that had been that, for the next several months - until Nabiki stumbled upon a secret so well kept it had slipped totally beneath her radar. Akane really wasn't interested in boys - she had a girlfriend. And in her curiosity over exactly who that girlfriend was, she'd made some truly frightful decisions - one of which had led to Kuno finding out the girlfriends identity before Nabiki, and acting on it before any attempt at damage control could be made. After being publically denounced as lesbian in front of the whole school, and subsequently kicked out by her overly traditional parents, Asami Yumiko had thrown herself into the Nerima canal, and drowned. Akane had been devastated, and Nabiki had felt little better.
It had taken ages for Akane to return to any semblance of normalcy after the loss of her girlfriend, but she had finally come out of her shell at last, and reconnected with her social life. And then this.
It had started that morning, with another fresh bout of fighting with the remnants of the hentai horde - those elements that still remained, as recruitment over the last couple of years had been severely curtailed, in large part due to Nabiki's efforts - and Akane's battle prowess, of course. Then Kuno had shown up. And over the course of two minutes utterly decimated Akane, in the end pinning her against the tree in the front yard of the school, and dictating the terms of his date. Pickup at seven, casual dress. No tardiness. The "date" had taken seven hours, and Akane had returned white-faced, walking like an animated corpse, and had spent most of the night in the bath before locking herself in her room. Nabiki had no illusions at all about what had happened on that "date" - she'd seen the symptoms too many times. She also knew that Akane would be too stubborn to ever admit to it - not to her, not to Kasumi, not to the police, and certainly never to their father. And without a police report, there was nothing at all that could be done.
How on earth was she going to fix this? Was it even fixable?
Nabiki wasn't the only one tearing herself a new asshole that morning. One Ninomiya Hinako, of the Furinkan faculty, was doing the same. She had seen the whole fight, of course - her new office as assistant headmaster had an excellent view of the courtyard. She had also had a perfect understanding of the stakes. What she hadn't had, was time enough to get down and stop it from happening. And after it was over - well, then it was too late. The only thing she could do then was file a complaint against Kuno Tatewaki at his new school, and to his parent - who, while still nominally principal of Furinkan, normally spent this part of the year counting coconuts in Hawaii, having draconically decided that he would vacation on American time. Not that he ever listened to complaints regarding his son, either - as the cream of the crop of the athletics team, young "Tacchi" was "entitled" to any girl he liked. How the fool had avoided the boot for that little tidbit, Hinako wasn't sure she wanted to know.
But what had Hinako really swearing at the moment, was the file on Kuno's previous involvements in Akane's personal life. Any one of these infractions, if reported to the proper authorities, should have netted young Tatewaki a stiff fine, or even prison time. That is, if the complaints had ever been forwarded out of this same office - which they hadn't. Either her immediate predecessor in this office had been a complete coward, or an utter fool - it didn't matter one whit, Hinako would have his head. Literally, if all else failed - there was enough dirt here to force a very old-fashioned solution. In any case, the time for hindsight was over - she had to write out some notes.
Ono Tofu, M.D., read the note he'd received with a face that was growing grimmer and grimmer until it was a wooden mask. Damnit, he should have seen this coming, and prevented it! It was his sole reason for being in this district in the first place - not that the clientele didn't make it worth his while, but his mission, as handed down from his father on his death ten years ago, was to watch over the Tendo clan, and if possible, the Saotome clan as well. Blood debt was owed those clans, and today, through his mistakes and lack of foresight, the debt had grown deeper.
Tofu crushed the un-doctorish impulse to beat his knuckles bloody on the concrete wall - or Tatewaki Kuno's head. The fool and son of a damned fool had messed things up royally for more people than he would ever know, and had through his acts the past twenty four hours gained for himself and his clan a formidable host of enemies - and the worst of those had yet to hear the news. If what his father's old friend Saotome had told him was true, the Kuno clan's days were numbered in single digits once he and his son returned. And today, all Tofu could think was "good riddance to bad rubbish".
But that was not his immediate concern. Ono Tofu was a doctor first - a healer of the old school. And he had patients to tend, even if they wouldn't really welcome his presence. His distinguished and elderly clientele would have to do without him today. Crumpling the note, he put it in a metal bedpan and set it on fire. No need to let potentially damaging information lie around, as that could lead to unfortunate incidents. Then he took out a scroll and a pot of red ink, and with his best calligraphy wrote out: "A debt has been called in." The note was hung in the door as he left. No one who read that note would complain at not being informed of a cancellation - the message and the color of the ink would see to that, as the red was a symbol of blood. Blood debt had been called, and the proper man answered blood debt before all else.
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(Posted Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:38)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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