That made it easy for her to follow Pirotess' trail, though she had to wonder what sort of place this was. Still, if they were so accepting of oddities, she wasn't going to mess it up. She had a criminal to catch, and the first order of business was to find her. The trail had led to this part of the city, and she was sure that given enough of a chance, she could catch her quarry before the deadline was up.
Unfortunately, that seemed to be harder than she thought, what with the fact that there were so many hiding places just in the general vicinity. One would have thought that Pirotess would stand out, but it seemed that she was oddly staying under the radar. That was going to make it all the harder to catch her, since the outlaw was not making a lot of the mistakes that others in her 'profession' would.
So, she had to pay special attention to her equipment in the hopes of catching even the smallest indication of Pirotess' trail.
As a result, the only warning that she had as she walked down a residential street was a young male voice yelling, "Watch out!" before another body slammed into hers, sending her tumbling down to the ground in a totally shocked state.
Tapping her pen against a window sill, Nabiki wondered about what she should do about the hand that she'd been dealt. It was at least partly her fault, but she was sure that she couldn't have realised the full implications of what she'd done. After all, it was harder to properly word a wish than one might initially think.
However, that was neither here nor there, since she seriously doubted that the genie would show up again. Instead, she was stuck with how things were now, which was, in some ways, subtly different than what she'd known before. Everything was basically the same until the point where a certain pigtailed 'girl' had shown up with 'her' father. But, she was now the only person who remembered that 'other life', as things had not gone in that direction, and she'd lost out in some ways.
After all, she had made quite a bit of money off of Ranma's unique situation, for a teenaged girl, what with pictures of his girl form, moneylending and the bets from fights. It hadn't been much, as her fellow students didn't have that much cash to begin with, but it had been hers. She could see that things were different, as he seemed to have good manners and a better reputation. From what she'd seen of him, he still looked attractive, and she was sure that he'd be a better prospect for other things than simple patsy now. Heck, even Akane thought of him as 'that nice non-perverted boy'.
Not that she was planning on doing anything like dating him, since she hadn't really considered doing that. Her father, on the other hand, had some wierd ideas. Upon seeing a boy run from the house, and likely from her presence, he'd come to the really odd conclusion that the boy in question was a sign that she was becoming a 'fallen woman'. When she'd tried to explain that nothing had happened, and that this particular boy wouldn't have thought to simply fall into a girl's arms, he'd decided that this was a proper young man to be courting his middle child, but that the next time they wanted to meet, she should bring him to meet her father properly.
Either way, he seemed unable to grasp any other possibility, and she had to wonder just what sort of a heritage he had passed on to her.
Yet, she was not about to let herself be pulled down by worries. Certainly she could handle a situation like this if anyone could. Her mind was a well oiled machine, able to make money from any sort of wierd occurrence. All she had to do was to figure out how to handle it, and everything would be okay.
Left with nothing better to do before class started, she looked out the window and watched the students enter. She wasn't sure that they realised that she was watching, but it wouldn't matter if they did. It wasn't like she was doing anything wrong, and this way she could see what was likely to happen later. There was one thing that did bother her this morning though.
For a reason she could not fathom, she wondered what was taking Ranma so long to get to school.
It took a moment for Ranma to be able to pull himself up after tumbling to the ground. He hadn't hurt himself in the collision, but he had gotten winded, and the simple accident was a surprise that had made him need a little time to collect himself. But then he hadn't expected to literally run into somebody on his way to school.
Not that he thought that he could have avoided it, as she'd walked out from a side street and right into his path. For that, he didn't blame her, as it wasn't her fault that he'd been running full pelt to get to class before it got too close to the bell.
Unfortunately, blame wouldn't help either of them, as what had happened had already happened. All that could be done would be to apologise for the accident, and hope that it would be taken. A fight was something that he didn't want right now, and he could only hope that she didn't desire one either.
Though he did think that an angry girl was not too much to expect, as he spotted her slim form laying on the ground, her golden curtain of hair partially blocking her features. There was little doubt that she was female as he'd both felt that fact during the collision, and saw it now. But he did note one odd fact as her hair fell so that he could see that her ears were pointed.
As he pondered that discovery,:
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(Posted Thu, 02 Dec 2004 23:35)
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