Frowning at being ordered around so, Jane decided to hold it in for once in hopes of getting this over with, and out of this damn place that much sooner, and simply complied along with Six. “Okay let’s see here,” Jane mumbled as she looked down at the piece of paper before clicking her pen. She didn’t really see the point in this stupid thing, but Ranma had said he needed her to do this, so here she was. “Name-”
“Jane.”
The platinum dragon stopped right before her pen hit the paper and looked over to her co-wife. “Yeah Six?”
“What am I supposed to put here?” Six asked as she held the form and pointed to the blank that was giving her trouble. It was the first one. Should I just go with Number, and then have 6 be the second one? Or do it the other way?" Pretty much everything did seem to be backwards here.
Jane looked up from the paper to raise her eyebrow at Six. “You can’t be… oh that’s right, you never did decide on a name, didn you?”
“Only dragons have names Jane,” Six told her with a frown.
“Have you looked in the mirror in the past two months?” Jane asked sarcastically. Rolling her eyes at the other girl’s reply, Jane wondered how the creature in front of her ever ended up being her best friend. Maybe she was just going soft. They had just started out as co-conspirators in helping Fauntleroy get what he wanted in exchange for becoming dragons, but now… Six was the closest thing she really had to a friend. “Look, if you want a name, I’ll just give you one.”
“Ummm… thanks, but no thanks,” Six replied, trying not to sound too opposed to the idea.
“Why not?” Jane demeaned.
“Well… you’ve got Dreadwing, D’bra, T’mat, R’zaan, Xroth, Phyrogoth, Exthilion, and then you… Jane,” Six finished, making the last name in what was a long list of famous dragons come out far more lame sounding than the first ones.
The other dragon glowered at her friend. “So I want humans to actually be able to pronounce my name correctly while they’re running in terror. What’s wrong with that?” After seeing the way the humans had mangled the names of the old great dragons in their ridiculous fairy tales, she hoped that something simple would keep them from screwing it up. Plus she rather liked her name.
“Just put down Six,” Jane told her before waving the girl off.
“So, you think I should go with 6?”
“No, Six,” Jane said as she shook her head in a tired fashion. Jane couldn’t see why the girl just couldn’t hurry and pick a name for herself.
“Then, you want me to put No. Six.” Six replied, needing clarification. Six supposed Jane had a point. She could just abbreviate the first part and have it all be on first name.
“SIX!”
“What now?” Six whimpered.
“Just put Six! S-E-I mean, S-I-X!” Jane shouted in their natural language apart from the letters before jumping out of her chair. “If it’s such a problem to think up of something to put on a stupid piece of paper, then just put that and think of whatever you want to be called later!” Panting for breath when she was done, Jane fell back into her chair and turned her attention back to her form.
Okay what’s next? Jane thought before looking over to the blank for her family name. Not feeling too original, or caring about something completely made up since dragons only had one name, she just put it as dragon and moved on, mumbling to herself as she wrote down the answers. “Age, sixty eight. Sex, If anyone ever so much as tries, I’ll cut off their balls.” Unless Ranma caved in to her advances of course, Jane supposed she could take one quick roll around with him, if it was quick that is.
“Let’s see, what’s next?” Six asked herself when she looked back down to the form. Skipping over her family name since she didn’t have one, Six moved on to the questions that she could answer. “Age… eighty nine. Sex… hopefully never again.” Six shuddered at the memories that brought up, and wondered how humans could possibly ask these kinds of questions.
Jane continued on with the list. “Place of residence… that dump of a dojo on…”
Between questions that made no sense to the dragons, questions that had no answers, and the fragility of pencils when it came to the hands of an aggravated magical lizard, it took almost an hour to complete the whole thing. When they were finished, the two dragons both went back into the office and tossed the sheets on the clerk’s desk.
But it seemed Ranma was agitated about something. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO RETAKE ALL MY CLASSES?”
“Mr. Saotome please control yourself,” the clerk told him in an uncaring tone. Unlike those girls and that Kuno boy, since Ranma Saotome wouldn’t do any damage to the surrounding area and school if he was held back. “Like I said earlier. Due to your excessive and unexcused absences you are being held back.”
Ranma’s hands trembled as he resisted the urge to just knock the pompous woman upside her head. “But I finished all my classes, I made up all my work from when I was gone! I even finished all my classes and passed the freaking finals.”
“That is irrelevant Mr. Saotome. You still missed more than the allotted days and didn’t provide adequate excuses for the time that was missed.”
“I had excuses!”
“That were not adequate young man,” the woman replied. “All excuses, even ones from family members, must be accompanied by note from a physician, copy of a death or wedding certificate, or any such proof. You did not provide even an excuse from your family, nor such evidence, the school policy states that you must repeat the classes you failed to attend.”
“Since when?” Ranma demanded.
The clerk simply opened the folder in front of her and skimmed it. “Since the third week that you began attending this institution. That is about the time when your collected absences caused you to automatically be unable to graduate.”
Ranma fumed at as the old woman simply put the file away, and looked at him with no concern. “AND YOU’RE TELLING ME THIS NOW? You don’t think you people could have said something when this all started?”
“It is none of our concern if some children are too stupid to keep track of their own schedules,” she told the boy in front of her. “Now I don’t care to spend all my day talking to a whiney little brat that can’t seem to deal with something children can understand. So get out of the way, and let the two women pick up their placement tests so we can put them in the right classes.”
Ranma blinked at the demand, and turned around to see Six and Jane standing there, the annoyance clearly written on their faces. Too upset to even be afraid at what he might have done to piss them off, Ranma grabbed the unneeded piece of paper that said what rooms to go to for the rest of the day and stormed pass them with his intent on the door. But just as soon as he passed the two dragons, a gloved hand grabbed his arm and almost ripped it out of the socket when it pulled him back.
“Is this woman troubling you dearest?” Six asked in an ice-cold tone while looking at the clerk. Ranma was almost certain that the grip she had on his arm was going to start crushing his bones any minute now.
“I think she is,” Jane said. Jane looked back to see for some confirmation from Ranma, and blinked at the sight of her husband on his knees while Six had a hold of his arm. A large drop of sweat rolled down the dragon’s forehead at the sight. “Uh… Six, you might want to let go and check on him.”
“Six, my arm, pain… arm… please let go… lots of pain.”
“Huh? Oh! Sire I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m soooooo sorry!” Six immediately let the boy go and then dropped to the floor herself to check on him, forgetting all about the insignificant human that had been the sole focus of her attention just a second earlier.
Jane just shook her head at the sight of her husband trying to fend of Six’s attentions and apologies. Ever since they became indebted to Ranma, even bore they were married, Six had been ferociously protective of the boy; far more so than Jane. It was a strange sight really, most of the time Six was the much less…threatening of the two dragons. Every time she jumped into combat before her evolution she usually cried about the smallest things or damages; and Jane supposed Six still might, it was just that now that they could fling spells around the girl was much less prone to chipping a claw on some rocks, or getting dust in her eyes. But now, the slightest thing that seemed to upset Ranma made the other dragon go from crybaby pacifist, to revenge seeking psychotic.
Jane supposed she could understand a little what Six was going through. The girl almost had a mental breakdown in China, and was now latching onto the thing that pulled her out of it and gave her a new short-term purpose in life. Six wasn’t going to be letting that go anytime soon; and she apparently considered not keeping Ranma happy might change things.
Well it’s better if I handle this anyway, Jane thought to herself. Six may have had her moments of violence, but even those were sloppily done, and since it seemed she was keeping their husband busy, Jane’s nagging conscience wouldn’t be butting in this time.
Turning her attention to the woman on the other side of the desk, Jane looked down at her while hiding her distain. “What’s troubling him?” Jane asked, motioning with her head towards the boy on the ground. She knew that something was obviously wrong thanks to all of Ranma’s shouting, and although she didn’t understand all of it, she figured it would be easy enough to fix.
“Bah nothing you seem to trouble yourself with. It’s the idiot boy’s problem, not yours,” the woman replied. “Just some stupid student thinking he can get by without paying attention to the rules.”
“Really?” Jane replied. Her hands clenched into a fist at the woman who called Ranma stupid. Okay, so he was pretty much a fool who did everything without thinking. But that was also the same reason Jane was where she was. For that, no one else was allowed to insult her husband except Six. “In that case, you are going to change the rules, or do whatever you need to do in order to fix it so that my husband doesn’t have a problem.”
“Young lady I-urk!” Jane’s hand gripping onto the clerk’s neck cut off any more protests that she was going to make, as well as her oxygen supply. “You don’t understand?” Jane asked in a dark tone. “Fix this, the way Ranma wants it fixed mind you, or you will die. I will pull down this entire building down on your head, and laugh while chunks of stone shatter every bone in your little body while you listen to the dying screams of everyone around you. Now, you can prevent all that by doing whatever it is you do in this pitiful place and fixing this little problem, or I can start having my fun, and then torture you to death after I pull your beaten and bloody body from the rubble, and trust me woman you will live through the first part where you want to or not.”
After dropping the woman down onto her seat, Jane looked back to Ranma and saw he was still too busy trying to fend off Six’s coddling to notice anything else. Jane heard a faint ‘yes ma’am’ coming from behind her and looked back to see the woman was messing with her computer and pulling out some files from a nearby cabinet.
“Six! Six come on I’m fine, let me up,” Ranma protested with the well-endowed woman bent over him, nearly giving the boy a nosebleed.
“No you’re not,” Six whined in a panicky voice. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Six berated herself. “You need a priest!” No not that, they didn’t use priests healing spells in this realm. Doctors! They used doctors. “A doctor somebody call a-”
“SIX!” The dragon flinched as Ranma shouted in her ear. “I’m okay. Now, just let me up. Please?” He added as an afterthought. That was one thing Ranma had found himself doing a lot more since he got married to the two magical lizards, his immense need for survival that let Ranma act like a girl around his mother and get into dresses had also improved his manners when it came to Six and Jane. After all, it wasn’t very smart to come off as rude to something that could step on you.
The dragon blushed in embarrassment after realizing what she was doing and quickly stood up, then slowly and carefully pulled Ranma to his feet as well. Well, the bones don’t feel broken, she told herself.
“Here.”
Ranma blinked as a piece of paper was suddenly lowered in front of his face. “A class schedule?”
Jane rolled her eyes as her husband took the paper from her hand and she threw the other to Six. “Your… class schedule,” Jane told him, mimicking the words he used. “Now come on and let’s go to… wherever the hell we’re supposed to now.”
“How did you get this?” Ranma deadpanned.
Jane thought about telling him some crap about the woman making some sort of mistake, but then threw the idea away. It wasn’t like Ranma already didn’t know what happened. “I threatened to kill everyone in this building and torture the woman over there to death unless she did what I wanted.”
“Can you even do that?” Six asked, confused. She was pretty sure that the humans could just change the… files later when they left. Humans were sneaky that way.
“OH! No need to worry about that Mrs. Saotome,” the clerk told Jane nervously. “I assure you that won’t be an issue. I’ve already falsified your husband’s records. If anyone asks, I’ll just tell them it was an oversight from last year.”
Jane looked back to the human and put on a fake smile. “Good, because if this does turn out to be a problem, you won’t be able to run far enough or fast enough to get away from me.” When the woman hurriedly nodded in reply, Jane took Ranma’s arm and led him out of the cramped room before he could say anything.
When Jane pulled him out into the hall, Ranma looked at her with a frown. “I can’t believe you just did that!”
“What?” Jane replied, a little annoyed that he was going to pull this again. “I got you your little advancement. I didn’t hurt her. So what’s wrong now? Would you rather I had just done nothing?”
Ranma reluctantly shut his half opened mouth. He supposed Jane had been able to… restrain herself. Plus, it wasn’t like this was wrong exactly. Ranma had busted his butt all last year to get that work done, and saved peoples lives! Maybe he deserved a little leeway on stuff like this.
Trying to get his mind off the whole thing, Ranma looked over to Six and blinked after seeing the frown on her face. “Something wrong?”
“I dunno,” Six mumbled, “I just keep thinking we forgot something.”
Meanwhile, back in the admissions office…
After scanning the papers in front of her for a second, the clerk just tossed them into the garbage. “Bah, stupid gaijin, they can’t even write.” She tossed the paper written in draconic runes aside and simply thought about just letting the girls go to their classes without them knowing the time would be wasted. But after remembering what that light skinned one said… the woman shivered and quickly opened a new file on the computer for a new student.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Tue, 16 Aug 2005 02:19)
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.