“What made you pick that one anyway?”
The question and harshness in Jane’s tone made Ranma jump and look up to the girl’s face. “What?”
“That fiancée,” Jane clarified. “What made you pick her? And Akane for that matter. Why them? From what I saw, Akane belittles you, mistrusts you, and they both wanted to beat you to death. That other girl probably would have if I hadn’t gotten in her way. So why did you choose them as candidates for marriage?”
“Gimmie a break, I ain’t that stupid,” Ranma replied. “My old man sold off engagements in return for junk. For the Tendos it was their dojo so I could support him when he got too old to feed himself, and for Ukyo it was just a bunch of food so we could eat. Of course he didn’t count on Ukyo chasing me down for ten years. He never thinks about anything past his own stomach.” Not that the old fool would do anything about it now, or anyone seemed to put any lasting blame on him for his stupid deals. Oh no, even Nodoka said that this mess was Ranma’s to work out.
“That’s still a pretty far range,” Six commented with a smirk before Jane cut her amusement off with a glare. Straitening up, the usually chipper dragon asked the obvious question. “Wait a second, if she wanted to kill you for ten years, why do you still want her as a fiancée? Why haven’t you just killed her by now?” The difference in power between Ranma and Ukyo was pretty obvious.
Rolling his eyes at the question, Ranma gave a quick explanation of what happened when he and Ukyo met again last year. “… and after she found out I didn’t know about the engagement she’s been trying to get me to marry her ever since. Course she also wants me to just run off and become a stupid chef too, like I’m ever gonna do that.”
Six nodded her head in agreement. “Wanting to kill the you to loving you in a split second… the girl really is nuts.”
“Actually… I never really thought about that,” Ranma mumbled. But, he seemed to have that effect on people. Heck, it seemed every girl he met wanted him in some way or another. How could Ranma blame Ukyo for not being about to resist him? “What I meant was, every time I give the girl a compliment she hits me, and there was this time when she was living at the dojo that she tried to cook me like food. But what really gets me is when she bombed my wedding a week before I went to China and met you girls.”
Jane blinked at that little piece of information. “You have another wife besides us?” The fact that he hadn’t told them about her made Jane only able to get the sentence out through her teeth.
“Is she out of town or something?” Six asked. She knew Ranma would have introduced them to her during their first day back if she was around.
“Nononononono! It’s not what you think!” Ranma exclaimed while waving his hands wildly. When the two dragons looked at each other, and then back to him, Ranma sweated nervously. Why did he have to bring that up? “We’d better get to the office if we want to get to class on time.”
No running away from the question this time Jane thought before she snatched Ranma’s shoulder and pushed him up against the wall with enough effort to be forceful, but avoid hurting him… too much. “So what? None of us really care to be here anyway. Now talk, a husband shouldn’t keep secrets from his wives.”
“Look it’s nothing, I didn’t go through with it,” Ranma replied in an annoyed tone. When it looked like neither of the dragons was going to take that, Ranma sighed. He hated having to remember this. “I’m not even sure why I almost went through with it now. I mean… okay look, here’s what happened.
“I was coming back from China after this whole stupid thing with a tribe of bird freaks called the phoenix people. I had just sort of killed their leader because I thought he killed Akane when she got in the way of them trying to kill me. When I got back my old man and Akane’s father kind of railroaded me into it, and well… I figured if I could kill a guy for her then I thought I could marry her too. I still don’t know why she wanted to go through with it, and every time I ask her she hits me.”
With a bit of reluctance, Six spoke up. “Do you still want to marry her?”
“No,” Ranma told her without a moments hesitation. Ironically, nowadays he was actually glad that the other girls had shown up to ruin the wedding. “I guess I just got swept up in the moment, and I figured that if she can throw her life away to save me then I could do the same. But now… heck I’ve saved her life so many times I should practically own it by now. I wouldn’t have even been in that mess if it weren’t for her. She never showed me any gratitude or respect for all I do for her, so why shouldn’t I do the same? I ain’t marrying any of my fiancés, and as soon as I find a way out of those stupid arrangements I’ll take it and be gone.”
Letting Ranma off of the wall, Jane rolled her eyes at the boy’s stupidity. “Then we can simply kill them for you.”
“NO!” Ranma shouted, and then instantly regretted it when the two girls frowned at him.
Six couldn’t believe how stubborn the boy was being. “Fine then, let’s just leave. Jane and I can have you anywhere on this entire planet in a matter of hours, or minutes if you want to keep to Japan. I know this lovely beach in Tahiti that I’ve been wanting to get back to.” Fauntleroy had gone there to enslave some ancient spirit of a volcano, but left in bad temper when the legends turned out to be untrue.
“Look, can we just get out schedules and talk about this after school, please?” Ranma asked hopefully.
Seeing that this wasn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon, Six took Ranma’s hand to pull him down the hall. “Come on Jane, if our husband wants to talk about it later, then we’ll talk about it later. We’ve delayed him enough anyway. Now uh, this is the office, right?” Being a dragon, magic allowed her to read the sign on the door as well as understand pretty much all languages, but being so new to this stuff, Six didn’t have that much confidence in her abilities.
Jane crossed her arms, but reluctantly agreed to let it drop. If Ranma wanted to waste his talents in this place, it wasn’t exactly her place to stop him. But on the other hand, it wasn’t like he actually wanted to be here either. It was like the boy couldn’t decide anything for himself without someone to push him in a direction.
So maybe he just needed a little shove. But first Jane needed to make sure that she would be pushing him in the right direction.
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(Posted Wed, 10 Aug 2005 02:22)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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