"Aw, that's not fair!" Nabiki protested. "I won the bet!"
"Nabiki-chan.... What would Ranma have won if you had lost?"
"Uh.... Nothing," she admitted.
"That doesn't seem a fair bargain to me," Kasumi admonished, while Ranma assimilated this new information. Kasumi had just bailed him out of a very close call, and he felt there was a lesson to be learned here -- aside from the one about how martial arts could be used as a model for math.
He filed that thought away for later consideration.
The lesson he thought he should learn was to think before acting. He had even known that Nabiki hadn't offered anything to him. He supposed if his math skills improved, then it wouldn't be a bet at all, it would just be a trade; her training him in exchange for his services.
"Hey," he said, to the still sulking middle Tendo. "How about we say I owe you a favor, and call it even?" he asked. "I mean. I got your math trick, it'd only be fair."
"Fair?" she asked, smiling, as a spark lit up in her eyes.
"Hey, you gotta let me know what your favor is going to be ahead of time," he warned. "I'm not going to do just anything. But I owe you, and I gotta see that debt paid off."
Nabiki raised an eyebrow, and then nodded. "Good enough for me," she decided. "So, what do you have planned for today anyway, Ranma-kun?"
He considered that for a moment, and began to answer when his phone rang. He blinked, quickly pulling it out, flashing a smile at his daughter, and saying, "I'll be right back." In an instant he was on the peak of the roof, hopefully out of earshot of anyone in the house, and he opened up the phone to answer it. "This is Ranma," he answered. "'Sup?"
"Morning, Sweetie!" Urd chirped at him. "How you doing?"
"Uh, fine," he said, blinking. "Is something wrong?"
"Yep! Just wanted to give you a heads-up that since you dodged a proverbial bullet, a bigger one's going to be coming at you. Remember, heroing requires heroism. You're going to need to rescue damsels in distress, fight off villains ... that sort of thing. Since my notes say you just narrowly evaded a 24 hour Labor," he couldn't help but flinch at the emphasis on that word, "and instead gave up a minor boon, the difference is about to catch up to you."
He scratched behind one ear absently. "So, you're saying because not enough bad things have happened to me, something's gonna blow up?"
"Exactly!"
He thought of a few things he could say, but ultimately chose, "Thanks for the warning." While he'd mastered a lot of profanity, and would have dearly loved the opportunity to vent with it, he wanted control over his curse more than he wanted to gripe. Also, he didn't particularly think it would be wise to swear at a goddess. "So, anything in particular, or...."
"I'm still trying to see," she admitted. "Honestly, I probably shouldn't be telling you all of this ... but most heroes of the ages have an army and decades of experience behind them, so.... Well."
"Yeah," he sighed. "I get the impression that heroes tend to be older than me."
"I don't really think you're too young," Urd said in a thickly honeyed voice that made Ranma shift his shoulders around uncomfortably, and listen for the bell-tones of an approaching bicycle. When he didn't hear anything, he relaxed very slightly. "Anyway. I just wanted to let you know that. Are you free the day after tomorrow?"
"I think so," he said with a shrug. After a moment of hesitation, he checked his data cube. Didn't it have some sort of calendar function? It did, he noted with a frown. And it had information on Hotaru's school, her class schedule.... Well, he didn't need to do anything for her until after vacation -- that entire week was just blocked out with 'your discretion'. "Looks like it," he added after pocketing the cube again.
He made another mental note to read up on that sub-space thing later. He might not always have pockets, and he didn't want to leave the Celestial Cell where someone else could get their hands on it.
"I'll let you get back to work," Urd said. "So, I'll meet you at ... Tokyo Tower. Let's meet at around, let's say ... five o'clock in the evening?"
"Sure," he said, pulling out the cube, and poking his finger through the date on the calendar. The square of the grid representing next Wednesday suddenly flickered, and then said, 'Meet with Urd @ Tokyo Tower: 17:00'. "Hmm. See you then?"
"It's a date!"
He was about to ask what she meant when the line suddenly clicked off. Then he turned around, sensing the approach of....
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(Posted Mon, 18 Jul 2005 20:36)
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