Nodoka's solution of holding a tournament for all of Ranma's fianceés to decide who would get to marry Ranma Saotome was at first glance a typical insane Saotome plan. Having the girls fight it out and inviting even more suitors to participate sounded like a recipe for disaster. The Saotome matriarch's hinting that Ranma, in addition to marrying the winner of the tournament, would take the second and perhaps third best as mistresses was a product of the woman's strange ideas of manliness and her warped image of her son.
A sane person should never have agreed to any of it. There was no way that it would actually solve things instead of making them even worse. But Ukyou had remembered that Ranma regularly managed to make insane Saotome plans work. She could make it work for herself.
If Ranma was not going to marry her anyway, what did she have to lose by agreeing to Nodoka's plan? And the way the contract had been worded, family honor would be satisfied for all the contestants. She was sure that Nabiki had done that to mostly protect her own family, but it would also mean that Ukyou would not be as disgraced by a loss in the tournament as she would have been if Ranma had simply married someone else.
And it wasn't like she thought that she would lose. Ukyou was confident that she could beat Kodachi in a honest fight every day of the week. The Kunou girl was simply too inexperienced in that arena. She was also fairly sure that she could win in a fight with Akane. Ukyou after all had been spending years on the road training hard in her quest for vengeance while Akane had been pampered by her loving family. True, Ukyou had let herself go somewhat when she stopped chasing revenge and started chasing Ranma, but she still should be able to best the youngest Tendou daughter without too many problems.
Shampoo on the other hand was a tougher cookie. The foreign girl was strong and skilled. If Ukyou had to face her in the tournament she could be in real trouble. Ukyou thought that she might still win in a serious fight against the purple-haired nuisance, but Shampoo would likely be her hardest opponent.
Ukyou was shaken out of her musings by the arrival of a group of loudly talking female customers. Judging by their uniforms, they were students of the nearby Catholic girl's school. They only took a moment out of their arguing to order before resuming their animated discussion. Ukyou could not help but overhear what they were talking about.
"Could you believe her nerve?" One of the girls complained.
"Our captain has always been very serious about training. This just means we will have to train harder," another girl replied.
"I have no problems training for our sport, but I did not sign up to train for some street-fighting tournament. This has nothing to do with our team and only with our captain's personal obsession!" the third girl exclaimed.
Ukyou was now listening closely. She had a suspicion just who the girls might be talking about.
"Not only does she want us to waste our training time preparing her for this tournament, she wants us to try to enter too!" the first girl exclaimed.
"She just wants us to help her gain an advantage to make things more fair," the second girl defended her captain. "It's the least we could do for her after everything she has done for the team."
"That nut wouldn't know the meaning of fair..." the first girl began.
"Aiko!" The second girl interrupted. "You should not speak of the captain like that. You should be more respectful."
The first girl thus admonished merely huffed, but she did not press the point. Ukyou was now fairly sure who they were and what they were talking about. The nut comment had confirmed it.
"Well, I don't mind helping our honorable captain by wearing down the competition and thinning out the field a bit," the third girl offered after a while, "but at least she could pay the entrance fee for us."
"Shiko is right!" The first girl exclaimed. "You saw what kind of money that organizer was asking. There is no way any of us could afford such an exorbitant fee."
They must have visited the Tendou dojo and stopped here on their way back Ukyou concluded.
"We will just have to fight our way through the qualifiers to get a place in the tournament and try to knock out the strongest contestants on the way," The second girl reasoned. "It will be easy. Everyone else will be fighting to win and we will just have to make sure that no strong opponents advance to challenge her. We won't even have to fear being disqualified."
"She wants us to go for such things as double-ring-outs or knockouts or whatever and to goad our opponents into breaking the rules. And if we by actually come up against her we are supposed to throw the fight," the first girl complained again.
"It is not like any of you could actually best her," the second girl objected. "Besides I thought you had no interest in winning such a prize."
"Well after seeing the pictures I could be tempted. Not that I would defy our captain," the third girl hastily amended her admission, "but if she were to be knocked out and I was still in the running I might go for it. And after having the whole cold water deal explained to us I think you would too."
The first girl who had been thus teased simply blushed.
Yes, there was something in it for everyone with this prize and it would be all hers, Ukyou concluded smugly.
"I personally don't know what to believe," the second girl cautioned, "It was a bit convenient that the prize turned out to be not available to demonstrate this strange effect."
Ukyou wondered what that was supposed to mean.
"Ah, knock it off," the fist girl countered. "Everyone there confirmed the video and you saw the panda. They assured us that the prize will be back before the beginning of the tournament."
"I just can't understand why our captain did not confide to us about this aspect of the object of her desires earlier." The second girl relented. "Surely she must have known that we would not think badly of her for having a broader taste?"
Ukyou had to bite her lip to keep from telling the girl that her captain had not told them about it because she was a deluded, clueless twit who did not know it herself. She served them their food and thought about the information they had provided instead.
While the girls ate and continued their argument, Ukyou made a short phone call to the Tendous.
A short while later she slammed the speaker back down onto the cradle in disgust. Not a training journey, my ass, she thought. She had known that Ranma would be favoring Akane a bit, with him living with the Tendous and all, but this was unacceptable. Their fathers must have pressured him into it.
Calming down, she concluded that it could also be taken as a compliment. Obviously Ranma-honey had confidence in her abilities. He must think that Akane needed the help much more than she did to make it a fair fight.
To make sure that she would not disappoint him she might have to do a bit training herself while he was away.
Meanwhile the three girls from earlier had already finished and were about to leave. Ukyou made sure to smile and thank them for their patronage and encourage them to come again, but they were paying little attention to her as they were again discussing their captain's plans.
"I am actually exited about the martial-arts masters that the captain said she would try to hire to teach us advanced techniques," the first girl admitted as she got up. "Just imagine what we could learn from the teachers her family money can buy."
"You don't think that she was serious about finding someone to teach us one of those self-destructive ki techniques, do you?" the one that had been defending their captain asked somewhat fearfully on the way to the door.
"Even if she were, I sincerly doubt such a thing exists outside of bad anime, so you can rest assured that you won't be asked to explode yourself for the good of your team captain," one of her teammates assured her teasingly.
"Yes she will just have us take our opponents down with us with regular near-suicidal moves," the third chimed in half seriously as they exited the shop, nearly colliding with Konatsu on the way out.
"Is everything all right, Ukyou?" The cross-dressing kunoichi inquired when he found his mistress looking in concern after the leaving customers.
"No, no. I just got some distress news," Ukyou assured him. "But it really is nothing to worry about. Just a deluded Kunou."
There really was no way that Kodachi could become a serious threat even with all her money and her entire gymnastics team backing her up.
"Then I have some good news for you," Konatsu tried to cheer her up. "It looks like we will be doing good business the next few weeks. I ran into Mousse in the market and he told me that the Nekohanten would be closing for a while. We should get many of their customers."
"Did he say why the Amazons were closing shop?" Ukyou asked confused by this latest revelation.
"He said it was a secret and that he could not tell anyone," Konatsu related. "But I think he was very angry with Elder Cologne about something. He defiantly told a hydrant that he would not allow it to do something painful to his love and kept mumbling about boulders and spirals. And for some reason he was carrying an entire sack full of chestnuts. Does that mean anything to you?"
It meant something to her. Ukyou almost snapped the spatula she was holding in two in anger. Everyone but her was getting help and training in preparation for the tournament. something had to be done!
"Konatsu," she ordered, "from now on we are going to be closing an hour earlier in the evenings and we will use the time to spar."
"You and I sparring?" Konatsu asked, looking very honored.
"Yes, in fact you are going to teach me some of your ninjitsu techniques," Ukyou demanded.
"But I am not a teacher and you are not a kunoichi," Konatsu objected. "It would not fit into your style. And my family..."
"Don't you worry your little head, sugar," Ukyou assured him. "We are going to get those ugly, cruel women to agree to let you share those techniques."
She snapped her spatula menacingly on the counter.
"And for my style..." she continued, "I will just have to be adaptive and do a bit of 'anything goes' myself. It will be good practice. With me having a business to run I might not have the time to go out on a training journey or be able to afford to have masters come to me to train me, but I am not completely helpless. I will call in a few markers and convince a few people to give me some tips. With all the martial-artists passing through Nerima I should be able to pick up a thing or two just by staying here behind the counter."
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(Posted Thu, 15 Dec 2005 20:15)
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