“Now, where is that villainous scoundrel?” Kuno asked of nobody in particular as he got up and looked around. Despite his thorough scanning, he couldn’t find his opponent anywhere. “This will not suffice,” the kendoist stated. “How can I possibly mete out the divine punishment he so obviously deserves if he keeps withdrawing like a craven milquetoast? Yet I should not be surprised, as one should expect cowardice from a deviant as immoral as he.”
As he continued to inspect the area, he allowed his mind to digress into a related topic: the mysterious girl that Saotome had so obviously wronged with his negligence. Unfortunately, due to the frenzied activity, he had been unable to take visual note of any of her features, though from his gentle squeezes, he’d deduced that the girl had clearly been blessed with an ample bosom. But there was no girl in sight, either. This did not surprise Kuno either; obviously, the girl would want to distance herself from a base deviant such as Saotome as quickly as possible. No doubt she had been acting on instinct from the point when she first hit the water, and had mistaken Kuno for her assailant, which explained why she’d reacted by throwing him into the fence, as no woman who was thinking clearly could possibly object to having her breasts tenderly caressed by his noble hands. Truly, he would have to find this young woman so she could have the opportunity to apologize to him, and would thus not have to live under the stigma of having accidentally assaulting an upstanding young man such as himself.
But simply standing around and looking was having no effect; thus, he decided to take his search to another part of the school grounds.
From her perch up in a large, leafy tree, Ranma breathed a sigh of relief as she watched the knucklehead pick up his bokken and stroll out of sight. As much as she would have relished giving that self-righteous mental case the thrashing he so dearly deserved, she couldn’t let her curse become public knowledge—at least, not until the population of Nerima clearly understood that he had been quite male when he and Kasumi had married. The redheaded girl sighed; she hadn’t had her curse for very long, so she hadn’t yet developed the habit of avoiding large bodies of water whenever possible. After checking to make sure that no one else was around, she proceeded to take off her shirt and start wringing it out.
Nabiki was in a bit of a bind; Ranma’s secret was out, as she’d half-expected it to be. Granted, she thought that her sister and brother-in-law would have been able to keep a secret for a bit longer than thirty minutes, but there was no point in swelling on that. First of all, though, she had to know how this information had been spread—the more reliable the source was, the harder it would be to dismiss it as hearsay. She looked at the class representative who’d broken the story. “Where exactly did you hear this?”
“I overheard it from some kids talking in the hall. But from what I could tell, it was Akane who broke the news, and the new guy didn’t deny it. Also, Kuno apparently didn’t take the news well, because I saw him chasing the new guy outside, spouting his usual nonsense about how he was going to ‘wreck vengeance upon the deviant.’”
“Wait… I thought he was obsessed with Akane,” another student interrupted. “Why would he be so upset that the new guy married Kasumi?”
“Hey, this is Kuno we’re talking about. He’s probably mad that the new guy isn’t conforming to an opinion he made about him in less than a second.”
“In other words, he’s decided that the best way to deal with the possibility that he might actually be wrong about something by using violence. Again.”
“Look, we’re getting distracted. The important thing is that there’s a new rumor floating around, and somebody in this room can tell us everything we need to know.” All eyes turned back upon the middle Tendo daughter.
Fortunately, by then, Nabiki had decided on her course of action: she’d tell them the truth. She reasoned that the consequences of ignoring the queries (or worse, outright lying) far outweighed any benefits that might be gained from keeping the secret a little bit longer. At least this way, there would be an “official” story. Not the whole story, of course—she’d just confirm a barebones account of what went on. Besides, it wasn’t as though the marriage was the really important secret, anyway; it was far more imperative that Ranma’s curse not be revealed until later.
“Yes, Ranma has married my older sister, who now goes by the name Kasumi Saotome. All of the specific details are a private matter between the two of them, so I am going to leave it to Ranma and Kasumi to decide if and when to make those details public. That’s all you’re going to get from me, and if I find out that anyone is hounding any of my family members for details, they’ll be sorry. Got it?”
Everyone in the room nodded nervously; Nabiki rarely made threats openly like that, but when she did, they were always taken seriously—more seriously than Kuno’s threats, some would argue. After all, Kuno might be able to put you in a hospital, but Nabiki could probably convince a hospital to throw you out.
Ranma had finished wringing out her shirt and had moved on to her pants when she heard a familiar voice sighing beneath the tree. “For goodness’ sake, don’t you have any sense of female modesty?”
“Hey, after that jerk groped me in the swimming pool, I wasn’t about to take any chances that he’d want to continue the conversation.”
Akane sighed again and lifted a steaming kettle. “Here. I would have been here sooner, but when I saw a bare-chested redhead in a tree wringing out a Chinese shirt, I backtracked to the janitor’s office to get some hot water. I’ve also got a hall pass for you as well.”
“Thanks,” Ranma said, giving her pants a final twist before flapping them out again and putting them back on. The redhead hopped down from the tree and accepted the kettle from Akane.
“Are you sure that’s dry enough to keep you from changing?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ranma replied as she changed back into his male form. “A little bit of dampness isn’t really enough to activate it—otherwise, I’d change form whenever I started sweating.” He handed the kettle back to his sister-in-law. “Let’s get back to class before that lunatic shows up again.”
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(Posted Tue, 18 Apr 2006 04:36)
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