“And if I don’t find anything?” Artemis was growing concerned at the way Minako had been ignoring his attempts to make caveats for the Mau “mind meld” technique.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find something. Ranma’s such an interesting person, after all.”
“Minako…”
“Look, just do it, or I’ll squck your thrug until all you can whupple is geep.”
Artemis didn’t know what idiom Minako was mangling, but it didn’t sound pleasant. He quickly nodded and scurried to the rear of the house. Smiling to herself, Minako knocked the door.
Haruka was about to head upstairs to wake up her lover when she heard the knocks at her door. Now who could that be? She certainly wasn’t expecting anyone—if that was the mattress delivery, then those guys deserved a medal for speed. An ugly thought caused her to freeze in her tracks for a split-second: What if Hypercorp’s going door to door now? Still, the knocking continued unabated, so Haruka finished the journey to her front door and, bracing herself for the worst, opened it.
Fortunately, the person standing there had no connection to the credit card company. “Minako! This is certainly a surprise.”
“Uh, hi, Haruka.”
“Well, don’t just stand there like an idiot, come in.”
“Um, I don’t want to expose myself.”
Haruka paused as the images conjured up by that particular malapropism planted themselves firmly in her brain. She shook her head a few times to get herself back to reality before answering. “It’s no problem at all—though I wouldn’t have expected you to be up and about at this hour.”
“Uh…”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. Just get in here.” Minako complied with the request as Haruka continued talking. “Actually, I’m kind of glad you stopped by…”
“You are?” The nervousness in the teenager’s voice was obvious.
Haruka sighed. I guess I really have messed things up, haven’t I? “Look, there’s something I have to tell you, and you’ll probably want to sit down,” the androgynous blonde said to her guest, motioning toward the rather large couch in the middle of the room. Minako took her up on this offer, and looked at her expectantly, glad that she didn’t have to put too much effort into being a distraction just yet.
Well, I have to do it sometime, so I may as well start now. Haruka took a deep breath and began, “Minako, I’m sor—”
“Minako? What are you doing here?” Haruka’s attempt at an apology was interrupted as the teenager in question turned and saw Setsuna coming down the stairs in a bathrobe.
“Um… well… I…” Unfortunately, Minako hadn’t actually thought things out as well as she should have—she neglected to come up with a legitimate reason for coming to the Outers’ residence (or at least one that would be believable). Thinking quickly, she decided that her best course of action would be to tell the partial truth. “Um… I’m here to try and make up for the, um, ‘poking’ I did last night. I, uh, don’t want Ranma to get any wrong ideas, you know?”
Setsuna just raised her eyebrow in response.
It was then that Minako noticed that Haruka was giving her a similar look. “Uh, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I wouldn’t want Ranma to think I’m that way because I’m not but I was just kind of curious because it’s not everyday you see a guy change into a girl and I was just wondering if they were real and it’s only when I look back on it that I realize that I probably made him really uncomfortable and I just want him to know that it didn’t really mean anything well I’m sure it meant something to him, but I didn’t mean anything by it and I’m not going to try and do anything and I don’t want him to feel uncomfortable around me because that would be really awkward seeing as he’s your husband and all—”
Setsuna held up her hand before Minako could dig herself any deeper. “So, what you’re telling me is that you’ve actually made the effort to wake up early on a day when you don’t have to go to school, and you’ve traveled all the way here, likely spending money on a bus, for the sole purpose of correcting a relatively minor faux pas and at the same time reaffirming your heterosexuality?”
“Um… yes?”
Setsuna stare became even more pointed. She would have continued grilling the Senshi of Love if her communicator hadn’t crackled to life. “Setsuna? Are you there? Come in!”
“I’m here, Ami. What’s going on?”
“Do you have any idea where Minako might be?”
“Actually, yes. Right now, she’s sitting on my living room sofa.”
A panicked groan came from the communicator—surprising, considering that Ami wasn’t one to lose her head over anything. “Is Artemis with her?”
“I can’t see him anywhere. Why?”
Unfortunately, Ami’s answer was rendered instantly superfluous by a blood-curdling shriek from the upstairs bathroom.
What the hell are you doing, Artemis? The white mooncat’s reservations about Minako’s “plan” had only increased when the two of them had separated. Not only was this course of action ethically questionable (at best), it was also likely to turn up absolutely nothing—the Mau had established a strict code of ethics concerning what could be unearthed without the subject’s full cooperation, and that was pretty much limited to memories of past lives (and even that required that there be some immanent threat to the wellbeing of society that could possibly be resolved with that newly reacquired knowledge). And if Ranma was a reincarnation of anyone significant, Setsuna would already know, since she probably would have remembered the original.
Of course, that was a moot point, because as Artemis had repeatedly attempted to point out to Minako, he really wasn’t very good at this sort of thing—even when he did have his subject’s full cooperation. Not for the first time, he considered just giving up this fool’s venture. There had to be a good reason for Setsuna to give the mooncats the “glare of death,” right?
But in the end, he decided to take his chances, mainly because he was just plain curious about Ranma. Would he regret it the next morning? Probably. But then, everyone goes through self-destructive phases now and again, right? That line of reasoning sounded just as ludicrous to Artemis’s ears as it would to anyone else’s, but that didn’t stop him from hopping through an open window in the back of the Outers’ home.
Alright, now where do I find Ranma? That question was answered when he heard a distinctly male voice belting out an off-key version of a J-pop song written for someone with a vocal range several octaves higher than his, slightly muffled by the sound of water hitting a tiled floor. I see—singing in the shower. Artemis briefly wondered why humans seemed to find the sound of their own voices so entertaining when they were cleaning themselves, but then his mind turned to the task at hand. He silently moved towards the door (which wasn’t really that difficult—he was a cat, after all) and there encountered a further dilemma: how do you open a door (which is probably locked) when you don’t have the opposable thumbs necessary grab and turn the doorknob? Luckily, this problem soon became moot. Unluckily, it was replaced by an even bigger problem.
As Ranma stepped out of the shower, he realized something was missing: clothes! He’d forgotten to bring a change of clothing with him to the bathroom. Well, that was easily solved; his backpack (and all the clothing contained therein) was still in Setsuna’s room. Wrapping a towel around himself, he opened the door… and found himself face to face with one of the most unspeakably vicious monsters to ever be coughed up from the depths of hell.
“C-C-C-C—” stuttered the martial artist as his eyes grew wide.
This isn’t good, thought Artemis. Ranma was obviously so surprised to see a cat inside the house from out of nowhere that his brain apparently had locked up. Thus it was that the Mau made what in retrospect would prove to be one of the most unwise decisions of his life: he decided to follow Minako’s advice and act like a normal cat. “Meow.”
The results were not quite what Minako had predicted.
“Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!!!”
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(Posted Thu, 19 Jan 2006 06:34)
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