"Not so loud," he was answered by a sleepy feminine mumble.
Nabiki silently counted: One, ... two, ... three, ....
"Hey!" finally came the joint yell of surprise, "What are you doing in my bed?"
The couple descended into a hot argument about whose room it was they were in and whose fault it was on the basis of no empiric evidence whatsoever. Akane had only been right about it being her bed by accident and likely would not have admitted to having been wrong about it if she had realized that she was somewhere else. Ranma was so used to defending himself against baseless accusations of perversion and genuinely innocent this time that he also would not back down.
The two of them could argue about whether the sky was blue. They could start fights out of thin air and at the moment they seemed to prefer arguing and name calling to actually analyzing their own feelings. The fight must have been a welcome distraction from such things as how it had felt lying in each others arms.
As they showed no inclination to notice the evidence she had planted Nabiki decided to intervene.
"I see you two are up again," She said as she entered the room, "You scared us quite a bit when you passed out from that little gas like that. But Dr. Tofu said that aside from perhaps a bit of memory loss you would be as good as new in no time. And you don't have to accuse each other about sneaking into each others bed. Kasumi and I put you to rest in Akane's room to sleep things off. Don't worry, we were careful with the merchandise."
Twin enquiries of "Merchandise?" from Akane and "Memory loss?" from Ranma came almost simultaneously.
The two glared at each other for having the audacity to talk when they had been about to say something themselves.
Nabiki decided to field Ranma's query first — keeping the best for the last.
"Nothing serious." She told them, "He said that it was only natural to expect some memory loss as a side effect from being knocked out by the gas especially after all that excitement in the last few days. Everything should come back to you in time."
In fact Dr. Tofu had said no such thing and they had only lost a few hours each.
"What excitement?" Akane asked a ting of dread in her voice.
She probably wondered what sort of events would constitute unusual excitement compared to the interesting times they were normally living in.
"I mean the marriage proposal. And I still think Ranma should not have let his mother pressure him into that."
"Ranma/I proposed?" the two asked incredulously.
Ranma's face had gone white his expression caught somewhere between dread and hope. And you could clearly see under the same emotions the unspoken question forming in Akane's head: "What did I answer?"
"Yeah the marriage proposal." Nabiki elaborated, "I still can't believe that Ranma did not have a breakdown right then and there when Akane rejected it."
"She did what?!" and "I did what?!" the two promptly yelled in horror.
It was almost to easy playing with them like that but it was time to bring it home before one of them had a heart-attack.
"Don't you remember, Akane?" Nabiki asked innocently," you said that that was not the type of relationship you wanted. Ranma was shocked but he finally agreed to do it on your terms. I don't know what either of you had been thinking. I guess it is not my place to criticize someone else's lifestyle choice, but I don't think that without my help you would have been able to formalize that kind of relationship. Few people know that something like that is even legally possible."
When they looked at her in confusion she simply pointed at the stack of papers lying on the desk. Akane picked it up and began to read.
"Certificate of Ownership? Voluntary Enslavement contract?" Akane read disbelievingly.
Ranma stared over her shoulder bug eyed.
"It is all legal," Nabiki told them, "It's got your personal stamps at the bottom. You finally filled everything out just before the attack. By now the clerk must have filed everything away and the contract has officially taken effect."
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(Posted Mon, 07 Feb 2005 20:56)
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