Kasumi came back with a bottle of soda with a quartet of glasses on a tray, and smiled at all those there before pouring out drinks for each of them. "Here we go. Now that we have something to drink, we can get to what we really want."
"I know what I want," her married sister murmured.
"Oh, you do?"
"But of course."
"And what is it?"
"This," Nabiki replied, and moved one of her hands to cup her husband's cheek so that she could gently turn his face towards her. Then she gave him a deep and passionate kiss that had her leaning into him, seeming to need his body to support her as she went weak with the obvious pleasure that she was getting from it. Not that he seemed to be unaffected, considering the fact that he had a goofy grin on his face when she finally pulled back. "That was definitely worth the wait."
"We could tell," Akane murmured dryly as she swirled the liquid in her glass.
"I did have to go a long time between kisses."
"That's true, and I can understand why you'd be so happy to get another one now. But there is one thing that you should remember. You aren't the only one waiting for a good kiss."
"Are we talking about you, sister dear?"
"Nope. Your husband."
"Huh? He... oh...."
Ranma nodded several times in rapid succession. "I've been wonderin' when I'd get another one of those for a while now."
The youngest Tendo chuckled as the normally collected Nabiki went pink with happiness. "I'd expect for that to be the case, considering how long you two were apart."
"Yeah, and since it was pretty lonely bein' on that trip without her...."
"Really?" his wife asked.
"'Course. Pop's got his uses, but he ain't 'xactly anythin' like havin' ya with me."
"Ranma...."
"But if ya were ta come with me on a trip, then I'd have ta set it up proper," he commented, and then gave a long sigh. "This trip wasn't 'xactly the sort of thing that'd be good for ya."
"How was your trip, Ranma?" the eldest sister asked, sounding a bit curious.
"In a word? Rough. When Pop decided ta go ta China, I never thought that he'd do some of the things that he did."
"Like what?"
"Kasumi, we swam to China."
"From a ship? But wouldn't that be dangerous?"
"Could be... if we did that. We swam from Japan, all the way across the sea."
"Oh my!" Kasumi gasped, putting a hand to her mouth. "Why ever would you do something like that?"
"It was Pop's idea. He said that it was for trainin', but it coulda been inspired by him not wantin' ta pay off a ship captain or somethin'. He never said, so...."
"Was it all like that?"
"Nah. Some of it was real boring. So much so that I wanted some textbooks ta work on. 'Course, that'd be a bit much. Ya still got my books, right?" the pigtailed boy asked his wife.
"Safe and sound," Nabiki replied. "And I won't even make you pay for their keeping and return."
"Nabiki...."
"Don't worry about it. I'm certain that you'll be giving me what I'd want freely, so there would be no point in charging you."
"Is that so?"
"Yup. And you want it too. Like now," his wife impishly responded, giving him a peck on the lips.
"Man.... Ya could drive a guy nuts. But it's good that ya kept them for me. I ain't inta the whole 'book education' thing, but I'll try for ya. But I know that Pop wouldn't understand, and I didn't wanna have a fight with him 'bout it."
"Then if you had all that free time, what did you do?" his younger sister in law asked.
"Trained and travelled mostly. Where Pop thought that we could get a place ta train, he made us go. He even decided that we were gonna hike inta mountains deep in China."
"He did?"
"Yeah, and I saw some amazin' things. There was this one place that he insisted on goin' ta when he heard 'bout it in a brochure."
"And what was there? Another training ground?"
"Somethin' like that," Ranma said with a shrug. "It was a trainin' place, called, Jusenkyo, but it had somethin' really weird with it. Ya see, there were all these pools of water there, and the Guide told us that anythin' that fell inta one got turned into what had drowned in that pool."
"You've got to be kidding."
"I'm not, but I don't blame ya for sayin' so. Pop and I didn't believe that it was real either. But he decided that he had ta show us then. He took this little lizard, dropped it inta one of the pools, and, poof, there was a bird flying outta it."
"That's.... not real, right."
"It didn't look like it was faked at all," he answered with complete confidence.
Nabiki looked at her sisters, and got the same confused look that she knew was on her face, though:
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(Posted Wed, 30 Nov 2005 06:34)
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