After Tissue poured the Nyannichuan water on her reluctant husband, the occupants of the Tendo room immediately went silent. It wasn’t because of the novelty of seeing someone suddenly change genders—everyone present had seen a Jusenkyo curse in action before. No, what surprised everyone was that the female Genma would end up being drop-dead gorgeous. But then, this surprise mostly came from the fact that it was very easy to misjudge the male Genma’s physical characteristics.
As a man, Genma Saotome had a squat, stocky frame, which often gave the impression that the martial artist was both shorter and fatter than he actually was. Genma tended to encourage this view (at least, he did nothing to discourage it) simply because it often led his opponents to underestimate what he was physically capable of doing—and exploiting an opponent’s faulty assumptions was a key tenet of Anything Goes.
Genma-chan, on the other hand, had a svelte build that conveyed notions of both athleticism and voluptuousness. Her female body did a much better job of reflecting her physical condition than her male one; even at a glance, one could tell that there wasn’t an excess ounce of fat on her. This was accentuated by the long, luxurious, jet black hair that spontaneously escaped from underneath her bandanna (after all, women usually aren’t susceptible to male pattern baldness), as well as a much softer face (though her large, round glasses didn’t seem to frame her face very well. But as interesting has her face was, it wasn’t nearly as interesting as her chest. The two bumps were visible even through her now baggy gi, suggesting that Ranma-chan owed her own prodigious bust size to her father’s genes as much as her mother’s. Of course, the bagginess of the gi meant that it didn’t hide Genma-chan’s breasts for very long—while they weren’t fully exposed, the plunging “neckline” of Genma’s outfit revealed quite a bit of cleavage, resulting in a massive blush from Soun (as well as a less massive but still noticeable blush from Nodoka for some reason). It was this that snapped Genma back into reality as she gathered up her loose clothing in an attempt to restore some modesty.
“AAUGH!! What the hell did you do to me, you pscyho?!” she cried in a strangely melodic alto.
“Is not obvious? Tissue give husband Nyannichuan curse.”
“But why?!”
“So husband can have month and become woman, of course.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Tissue not see why you so worked up. You have to do it one way or other. Is part of being Amazon.”
“Are you brain-dead, woman? I don’t want to be an Amazon.”
“Should have thought of that before marrying into tribe.”
“Now hold on a second,” interjected Soun. “You can’t really expect Genma to willingly go through this—your laws may say that the two of you are married because more than a week has passed since he defeated you, but is it really right to enforce them on him if he never actually agreed to marry you?”
Tissue merely raised her eyebrow at this. “Maybe it not right—but what that have to do with Genma?”
Soun wasn’t sure what to make of this, so he just repeated the obvious. “He may have left without voicing his opposition to the marriage, but he never actually said he wanted to be your husband, right.”
There was silence for a few seconds before Tissue suddenly burst out laughing, much to Soun’s continued confusion. “Did I say something funny?”
“Genma? Opposed to marriage? He accept marriage five minutes after defeating Tissue! Very loudly, too, complete with boasting about prowess at both martial arts and in bed, though Tissue not get chance to see last one, since husband have too much to drink that night. Leave next evening after find out that he supposed to go through same ritual as Ranma, so Tissue not have chance to find out then, either,” the Amazon concluded in mild irritation.
“So you mean you were prepared to just leave Nodoka waiting for you and Ranma here in Japan for the rest of her life?” Akane asked Genma in a tone that was clearly portrayed accusation, rather than any desire for confirmation.
“I, uh, wouldn’t exactly put it that way….” replied the Saotome patriarch, who was growing even more nervous.
“Then how would you put it, husband?” Nodoka inquired, her facial expression having lost none of its severity.
“Um… well… you see…” Genma was in big trouble, and she couldn’t figure out why. After all, six out of the seven people in her audience were women, so (with the possible exception of the Amazon, who’d had the misfortune of growing up in a matriarchal society, and yet to learn what the proper place for a woman was) they should have easily succumbed to their inherent emotional weaknesses and forgiven all of the petty misdemeanors he’d committed—and she was being generous in granting that they were misdemeanors at all. After all, a woman couldn’t possibly know the qualities that were truly important for a man, which is why they should have taken what he’d said at face value, but for some bizarre reason, they actually seemed to want her to explain his actions, which was completely and utterly preposterous. Men didn’t have to explain their actions to women! It was one of the chief reasons that being a man was better than being a woman!
Fortunately, Genma had learned long ago that a true master of Anything Goes could apply its tenets to any situation, and this was no exception. True, she probably wouldn’t be able to get away with the Saotome Secret Mental Technique again, as it would make her look weak in front of a group of hostiles (and because Soun, doubtless applying Anything Goes self-preservation techniques to this situation as well, was clearly reluctant to provide any direct support), but that didn’t mean she couldn’t find equally effective ways improve her current situation. “I… I have to go to the bathroom.” Before anyone could respond, she darted towards the furo.
Helping one’s child with their schoolwork is a time-honored parenting tradition, and as Ranma was the only one of Hotaru’s guardians to have both a high-school diploma and a whole lot of time on his hands, he soon found himself with the responsibility of this particular duty.
Fortunately, the subject was Japanese history—one of the few subjects that Ranma had truly enjoyed at Furinkan. The reason was simple: out of all the subjects that high school students had to learn, it was history that had the most applicability to the Art—after all, anyone who gave the subject anything more than a cursory glance could tell that it really did have a tendency to repeat itself; one could learn a lot about human nature by studying the actions humans had taken in the past, and the more one knew about human nature, the better equipped one would be to exploit that nature while in the heat of battle.
On a more specific level, military history was extremely applicable to the Art, simply because of the fractal nature of combat—in Ranma’s opinion, the only difference between “strategy” and “tactics” was a matter of scale, thus studying the history of warfare at any level enriched one’s knowledge base. Fortunately for Hotaru, it was this aspect of history that her current homework was focused on.
“So ya see, the basic mistake we made at Pearl Harbor didn’t really have anythin’ ta do with the fact that American aircraft carriers weren’t there—it was a lot bigger than that. We pretty much assumed we’d won the whole war before the Zeros even took off, which is somethin’ that ya should never do, no matter what yer situation is.”
“But wasn’t it still a tactical victory?”
“In the short term, yeah, but we ended up underestimating the Americans as a result, and anyone who looks at their history realizes pretty quick that underestimating America usually ends up in disaster. It’s like Yamamoto said, all we really did in the long term is awaken a sleeping giant—well, he might not have actually said it, but that’s pretty much what ended up happenin’. It reminds me of somethin’ my Pop told me while we were trainin’. No matter how well ya think ya know yer opponent, ya can never be totally certain of what’ll happen in a confrontation until it happens, so ya always got ta be willin’ ta toss out all yer assumptions at a moment’s notice—and ya can’t assume that just because ya win the battle, that you’ve won the war.”
“I don’t understand it,” said the Tendo patriarch. “Why would Genma simply agree to this Amazon marriage so quickly?”
“Because he’s just a slime bucket who deserves to have his genitals attacked by rabid weasels?” posited Akane.
“Akane!”
“What? I think if this conversation has shown anything, it’s that he’s nothing more than a jerk who ought to be pummeled into mush.”
Surprisingly, it was Kasumi who responded. “Calm down, Akane. Although it may be satisfying to imagine such things happening to him, I think there’s a better explanation.”
“And that is?”
“He obviously thought that one of those marriages didn’t really count—most likely, his marriage to Tissue.”
“And how does that not make him a jerk?”
“Oh, it still makes him a jerk, but in this case, he’s at least a jerk whose ideas make some degree of sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nodoka, if you found out that Genma had a mistress, how upset would you be?”
Nodoka was a little surprised by the question. “Oh, uh, well, I suppose I wouldn’t have too much of a problem, as long as it didn’t become a scandal—after all, Tissue is his mistress as far as Japanese law is concerned, and the more I think about it, the less of a problem I have with it.”
Kasumi smiled. “Exactly—Japanese law considers Tissue to be just a mistress, and that’s probably what Genma thought, too. After all, he probably figured that Nodoka wouldn’t mind the notion once she got used to it, and since Tissue’s people don’t care about the laws of outsiders, perhaps he truly thought that there wouldn’t be any serious consequences to his actions.”
“I get it,” Nabiki said with a sudden look of epiphany. “Hanlon’s Razor.”
“What’s that?” inquired Chibi-Usa.
“It’s an adage developed in the West: ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.’ Genma wasn’t necessarily being a total cad, it’s possible he was just being an ignorant fool.”
“Of course, that doesn’t justify his abrupt departure from Tissue’s village, so he could simply be an ignorant jerk,” Kasumi clarified cheerfully. The others in the room didn’t have a chance to react to this comment, as their attention was suddenly diverted.
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(Posted Sat, 15 Apr 2006 21:53)
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