It cost both of them an hour of time to enter, but only Ranma had to pay for losing.
Of course, if she wanted to win, she would need to work at it, so there was a trade-off.... But she felt it would be worthwhile. "This is a trick my mom taught me," she said to Hotaru, before comparing various math problems to a number of chocolates on the table. Every time Hotaru correctly solved a problem, she got to take one of the small candies.
That was simple enough, and soon, even without chocolate, Hotaru was solving problems easily. Nabiki doubted Ranma would be interested in simple treats, but had planned for this. Really, chocolates, apples, pennies ... it didn't matter. All she needed was a context to put math in that would interest him.
His martial arts were more advanced than her own, so she wasn't certain what she could say without coming across like a total idiot ... but she had an idea to work around that. "Okay, Saotome," she said.
"Yeah?" Ranma asked, as Hotaru looked up, echoing his question.
"Ooh," Nabiki sighed. "Oh well. I meant Ranma-kun, Hotaru-chan."
"Okay Nabiki-nee-chan," the little girl said, before going back to her sheet of practice problems.
"Right," Nabiki said, turning to look at Ranma. "Let's say that Akane can break ... oh ... four bricks in an minute."
"Okay," he said dubiously.
"If she spends an hour breaking bricks, how many are broken in the end?"
Ranma looked thoughtful for a long minute. "That's a lot of bricks," he finally said. "Um ... three hundred or so?"
Well, that didn't quite work. He'd need to care about figuring out the answer, and finding out how many bricks Akane could break didn't really seem to interest him.
"Starting over. Let's say that Kuno challenges you twice a week," she said, trying a new tactic.
"Okay," he said, nodding.
"Now, every two fights, Kuno says something stupid, and Akane knocks him out before you do. After seven weeks, how many times have you beaten Kuno?"
He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, "Well, that'd be ten beat-downs and four malletings, I think. But I thought you were asking me math questions."
"Uh," Nabiki said, blinking. "Okay. Let's say that Hinako can drain thirty students of chi in a minute. After you beat her, you find seventy-two drained students. How long did it take?"
Ranma blinked, and answered, "Two minutes, twenty four seconds." After a pause, he added, "Which is about sixty five students too many."
"How long would that--"
"Fourteen seconds, more or less," he said, shrugging. "If she really goes all out, I usually need about ten seconds to actually get her, but the rest of the time is making sure that I get between her and anyone who can't handle a drain."
"Well, I want to show you these equations that you just solved," she said, pushing a piece of paper in front of him. As she watched, it seemed like something behind his eyes suddenly ... snapped ... into focus, looking at the equations.
"Hey!" he exclaimed. "Neat!" He grinned. "This is--" His grin fell. "Oh, man. Twenty five hours as Nabiki's slave!"
Nabiki began with a chuckle, worked her way into a chortle, and was well into a full blown guffaw before she felt any need to slow down.
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(Posted Mon, 18 Jul 2005 09:12)
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