Control was important to Nabiki and ever since she had played her prank on her younger sister she had had precious little of it.
Who would have thought that Ranma and Akane would so readily accept the ridiculous fiction that Akane was now Ranma's slave? Who would have expected everyone else to ready believe it? Who could have foreseen that Nodoka would attempt to use the situation to enslave further girls (including Nabiki herself) to her manly son.
Well, Nabiki wasn't really worried that she might end up becoming a slave-girl over this. No, not at all! Sooner or later the whole house of cards would collapse and the truth would be revealed. She was surprised that it had held up so long.
Right now her first order of business was to make as much money as possible of the whole slavery scam as long as it lasted. That was why she had worked so hard to publish the booklet.
The booklet would contain all the lies that she had made up, the ideas that Nodoka had added and the rules that Ranma and Akane had come up with themselves. It included a few photos and several essays on what it meant to be a slave. Ranma and Akane had each written their own thoughts Nodoka had butted in and added her opinions so that Nabiki had been forced to write some stuff to balance it out. Minami, Kasumi and Kodachi had given a woman-on-the-street sound-bite each.
Normally she could have published all this piece by piece over a long period of time to maximize profits, but since she did not know how long it would last, she had decided to sell all of it in one big package.
Minami should have picked up the finished brochure from the print-shop earlier this morning.
Turning the corner to the school-entrance she saw that Minami had already started sales without her. At least her classmate Tatewaki had already acquired a copy and was reading it while he waited to harass Ranma and Akane at the gate.
There was no telling how Kunou would twist and misunderstand what was written in the booklet. Nabiki only hoped that Minami had remembered that Kunou always paid their special price for preferred customers. (Preferred because you could sell them stuff for twice the amount that everyone else paid.)
Upon entering the yard, she quickly located Minami who appeared to be doing a brisk business selling their brochures. Joining her at her improvised stand Nabiki picked up one of the little booklets for inspection.
"This is the expensive binding," she observed, "It was supposed to be stapled!"
"And good morning to you too, Nabiki," Minami replied cheerfully, "Don't worry. I managed to talk the guy at the print-shop into giving us the better binding real cheap as part of out volume discount. The little we had to pay extra for it is made up for twice by the higher prices we can demand for a product that looks much more professional."
"Yes, good morning," Nabiki replied grouchily. "What do you mean with volume discount? How many copies did you have made and how much did you pay for them?"
Nabiki hated not being in control and Minami had deviated from the plan they had agreed on. Angrily she took the print-shop's sales slip that Minami handed her without looking up from doing business.
"That is more than twice the number of copies we had agreed upon yesterday!" she concluded after studying the slip for moment. "We are never going to sell that many!"
"I changed it after making an improvised peer-focus-group phone poll this morning and determined that we had underestimated demand," Minami explained.
"She called me and asked if I wanted to earn some money helping her with sales and I told her that this was going to be a huge seller," Noriko translated helpfully from where she was handing out copies to customers who had given Minami their money. "And just for the record: We are going to sell that many! In fact, if this keeps up you might have to send somebody to do a second print run."
"To sell this many you would almost have to sell on copy to every student here at school," Nabiki exaggerated only slightly.
"Not just students and not just this school," Minami corrected. "Several members of the staff have already purchased a copy."
"So they would know what sort of behavior to expect from their students," Noriko elaborated." Yeah right! But as I keep telling them, we are just merchants and it is not our place to judge."
Nabiki preferred not think about what other reasons they might have had.
"And then there was the girl from St. Hebereke," Minami continued. "Apparently Kodachi had sent her over to get her a copy, but when she saw what it was about she decided that the other girls in the gymnastic club would be interested in the subject too so she ended up buying a whole box."
"Expected a discount, too and even wanted to talk us into letting her sell them at her school on commission. Can you belive that?" Noriko added.
Nabiki couldn't believe it. In fact she couldn't believe that there was such a huge demand for it at all. True, news about Ranma and her sister was always popular, but not this many people normally cared about them. It couldn't have been just the somewhat racy pictures either. She had sold pictures of them wearing less for less money and not gotten such a response.
She looked around at the people standing in line to buy their own copy and the students who already had bought one and were now reading it or discussing it with friends.
Ukyou was standing in a corner and scowling angrily at the offending paper in her hands. A small cluster of Ranma's classmates were sharing an issue and excitedly pointing out things in it to each other. Nearby was a group of Akane's friends. One of the girls was reading loudly from an open booklet while the others commented and giggled.
Nabiki noted that unlike the boys each of the girls also had her own rolled up copy, even if they were not currently reading it.
"It's the coupon," Noriko explained that observation when Nabiki pointed it out.
Nabiki could not believe that there were so many perverts at her school, but apparently the inclusions of a coupon for a free basic counseling session by Nodoka was a driving factor behind the desire of many of the girls to own their own copies of the booklet.
Nabiki felt that she should never have let Nodoka and Minami talk her into including the coupon even if it did now increase sales and was making her lots of money.
"It doesn't mean that they all want go as far as Akane has gone, but many of the girls feel that they would like to at least talk about their feelings with someone who won't just dismiss them as a pervert," Minami pointed out when she voiced her concern. "I am sure that Mrs. Saotome will talk them all out of it. She wouldn't let a girl take such a huge step on just a whim."
Nabiki was not that sure about that. Nodoka might end up doing the opposite. She had at least been doing her best to get Nabiki enslaved to her son. It seemed that she would not rest until all three Tendou daughters were in Ranma's possession. Nodoka wanted him to be manly with them like he already had been with Akane.
To distract herself from this potential fate awaiting her Nabiki decided to change the topic.
"Have you at least remembered that Kunou pays special prices?" she asked Minami.
"I gave him half the price off on his first copy to wet his appetite," the girl admitted.
Nabiki was about to scold her, but Minami continued.
"He promptly ripped it apart in rage when he saw Akane on Ranma's leash on the cover. When he got a glimpse of some of the other pictures in there I sold him another copy at his usual price of twice what everyone else pays. He got as far as the picture of a female Ranma with slave-girl Akane before bleeding all over it from the nose. The third copy went for four times as much again as his second. He had his servant bring him quite a lot of extra spending money after that, so I think he would be willing to pay for one or two more issues if something happened to his current copy," Minami smugly narrated.
Impressed despite herself, Nabiki had to admit that there was little that she could criticize about that. All she could do now was hope that Ranma and Akane would end up ruining his copy when they beat him up upon arrival.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Mon, 07 Mar 2005 21:27)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.