"I hardly did any of that," Ranma defended himself. "Shampoo was the one who did most of the damage. I wasn't even here when she made that first hole."
"She came here for you. She is your responsibility," Nabiki argued.
"No she is not! Shampoo is her own girl. She is not my responsibility." Ranma denied the accusation. "It is not like she is my slave or something."
"A real shame that is too." Nodoka said coming down the stairs.
"Huh?" the entrance of the Saotome matriarch made Nabiki pause.
She had been doing fine at guilt-tripping Ranma into accepting responsibility for this mess until now. The damage wasn't really so great, but the guilt would have given her a good handle on forcing Ranma into some lucrative situations.
"I mean that it is a shame that such a wild and untamed girl has nobody to hold her in check. If I ever saw a girl in need of some discipline than she was it," Mrs. Saotome declared. "But I guess it would take a really strong and manly master to tame such magnificent girl."
She gave her son a meaningful look. Ranma did not seem to get her message. Anything subtler than a mallet to the head was often lost on him, but Akane at least seemed to have been inspired as she gave her master a thoughtful look.
"Yeah, we saw most of the fight from the window. That amazon really was something else," Minami said coming down the stairs behind Ranma's mother.
"Minami what are you doing here?" Nabiki asked puzzled by her friend's presence.
"Oh, I was just... you know in the neighborhood and you weren't there and then I thought I might as well say hello to Mrs. Saotome while I was here," Minami lied unconvincingly.
Nabiki had known that Nodoka had been busy having 'counseling sessions' with girls from school and filling their poor heads with nonsense, but to think that Minami too had fallen for it? This was getting out of hand.
To escape Nabiki's accusing looks Minami changed topics. "Well if you need money to repair all this damage, then I am sure Ranma will help you raise some cash after all he must feel at least partly responsible for not taking firmly control of the amazon earlier."
Thank you, Minami, Nabiki thought sarcastically. She had not actually planned on spending any of the money she was going to scam out of Saotome on repairs.
"I really don't think that Shampoo want's to be anybody's slave," Ranma commented cluelessly. "She is an amazon and they are really strong on chicks-rights and stuff from what the old ghoul says."
"Shampoo might come from a female dominant culture, but that doesn't mean that she shares all of her tribes notions and ideas on the subject. They would only make it harder for her to express herself and you should take that in account when dealing with the girl," Nodoka told her son.
"I dunno," Ranma was not convinced, "she seemed really determined to bash my skull in back there. Screaming at me that I was a slaver and oppressor of women. She yelled that she would not allow herself to be enslaved. I don't know what gave her that idea in the first place."
"Maybe she really wanted you to enslave her, but because she is an amazon she couldn't bring herself to openly admit it," Akane speculated. "You don't know how hard it was for me to come out and say it and I didn't grow up as an amazon."
Actually Akane had not come out and admitted that she wanted to be Ranma's slave either. Nabiki had merely made her think that she had, but apparently Akane was already filling that little hole in her recollection with memories of how it must have been.
"Akane," Ranma asked astonished by her sudden support of the idea, "aren't you at all jealous about this idea of me taking another slave?"
"It is not my place to be jealous, Master," Akane told him earnestly while looking at him with big eyes. "I only serve my master's pleasure. If it pleases my master to take another girl as his slave I will submit to his desires and do whatever he wants me to do. It would be my duty to work with my sister-slave to make all his fantasies come true."
Sure, Akane was only thinking about her master's pleasure. If it happened that Ranma wanted to do two chicks at the same time or watch two girls getting it on then Akane would just have no choice but to comply and have sex not just with whatever form her handsome master/beautiful mistress was in at the moment, but also with a very hot amazon. The sacrifices Akane was willing to make for her master were definitely underwhelming Nabiki. And if Akane didn't cut it out with the big eyes and steamy talk of desire, then she would end up serving her master's pleasure right here in front of everyone on what was left of the living room table — and she would probably enjoy that too.
"Right," she said trying to get Ranma's attention away from ravishing her sister, "getting back to my money. How do you plan to raise the cash?"
Looking up from his devoted slave Ranma stared at her befuddled trying to catch up with the world outside the hormone filled fog he had been in. Up until now Ranma had not even agreed to help raise cash and it had not been Nabiki's money they had been talking about either. Hopefully those details would be lost in the momentary confusion. If nobody interfered Ranma would owe her big time.
"He could help by doing those courses that we had been talking about," Minami suggested totally missing her cue. "There really are quite a lot of people who would like to try their hand at taking the master test and Ranma could do great by teaching a preparatory course."
"I don't even remember taking that test. How could I teach anybody?" Ranma objected.
"Don't worry, son," his mother told him, "you are a natural. Just telling them the answers you gave wouldn't do anybody any good. You have to teach them how to be a proper master not how to recite some answers by rote. If you can instill the right sort of values in your students they would have a far better chance of passing. Simply having you as a manly role model will be a lot of help."
"I don't know. I guess it would be a bit like teaching the art. We could use the dojou and everything, but I really don't want to teach any creeps like Kunou or some of the other perverts at school. They have the completely wrong idea what it is all supposed to be about."
"We could filter out applicants to exclude the totally lost causes and you could set the rest of them straight," Minami assured him.
"Think of it as a challenge of your abilities as an instructor, Ranma." Nodoka added.
Ranma looked half convinced. He had that look in the eye he always had when somebody had surprised him with a new and devastating move and he was thinking about a counter. Nabiki had a bad feeling about this. When he got like that Ranma tended to be very determined and had only little regard for sanity and common sense.
"And Akane could have a course on proper behavior for girls who are interested," Minami added.
This would surely end in disaster of some sort or another, but it might also be Nabiki's salvation. If Ranma were busy teaching a bunch of idiots and Akane was training a new batch of slave-girls, Nabiki might yet escape the fate Nodoka had foreseen for her. Ranma's mother had been trying to blackmail Nabiki into joining Ranma's little slave-harem once he was ready for taking on another girl. Between the added work and the sudden overabundance of willing slave-girls this might be some time.
"Yes, I think that courses are a good idea." Nabiki declared finishing the deal.
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(Posted Sun, 20 Mar 2005 03:03)
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