"It would only be polite," Kasumi told her. "After all, we wouldn't want to be bad hostesses."
"For that guy, I'd take that risk."
"Well...."
"I do think that we have another reason to go," Akane put in, rising and cracking her knuckles.
"What would that be?"
"I want to have a 'chat' with that barrel bellied idiot."
"I suppose that we have no choice," the middle sister murmured, and shared a nod with her siblings before the trio headed out to the front yard.
When they exited the front door, they found their father standing there with a slack jaw, for which he had a good reason. The front gate was shattered, with the pieces of it littering the walkway from the sidewalk to the house. On top of it were a pair of figures, with one being a middle aged man in a gi laying on the ground, and a teenaged boy was crouched on the man's belly with a handful of his top clutched in his hand.
"Genma? Is that you doing all this?" Soun demanded in a strained voice.
The big man leapt to his feet, tossing the boy off of his body, and looked to the other man. "Who else would be coming now, Tendo?"
"It's just that this is a surprise, what with all the mess...."
"Oh, right. Sorry about that, but the boy was being stubborn, and I needed to teach him."
"This is your son?"
"Yes, it is. He is my son, Ranma Saotome," the man in the dingy white gi answered, puffing out his chest.
Kasumi turned to look at the other figure, and used her Daxamite Supervision to check him out to see if he was in need of some care. But as she got a rather good look at that buff body, her cheeks became stained with a light red color. "Oh my...."
"Isn't he something? I'll know that he'll make me proud, not only because of the promise."
"Then we've finally come to the promised time?" Soun asked hopefully.
"But of course! That is why I brought him here."
"For which reason we now have to deal with having the blimp man around again," Nabiki muttered, giving a snort of derision at the idea and the man.
Ranma stopped in the middle of brushing the debris from his pants and stared at the girl for a long moment before a 'new' memory from this timeline hit him, making him laugh rather loudly.
"What's so funny?"
"'Blimp-man'," the teenaged boy replied.
"What about it? You do have to agree that he's got the shape."
"He's got more than that. I remember this one time when that gut of his got him into an odd situation. There was this weird plant, and it had this fruit...."
"Which did what?"
"What do you think? He ate it, and well, if the name fits.... Or 'floats', as it is in this case," Ranma told her, and acted like he was holding his breath before miming floating away.
"You don't mean...."
"Yup, for a little while."
All three sisters stared for a moment before their own laughter burbled out as they imagined the man in question floating about like a balloon. It was a rather amusing picture, and none of them could stop the giggles as they came up with all sorts of images of what it would be like to have him be like that.
"I didn't mean to be 'Blimp-man'," Genma muttered under his breath.
That set of another round of laughter, and he managed to look fairly disgruntled by the whole scene.
For her part, Akane was pleased by how he was put out by the situation, and turned her attention back to him, as it had been when she'd gotten outside. Her mind had been momentarily distracted by the appearance of the boy from her vision in her 'real life', which meant that what she had been seeing would happen sooner or later. That didn't seem to be a bad thing though, as the vision had made it seem like the two of them were getting along, so she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The same couldn't be said for his father, as she had some unfinished business with his father, who she stomped to stand in front of, so that she could glare at him straight in the eye. "So, you decided to show up here, huh?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Genma asked, sounding thoroughly confused.
"How can you ask that after what you did?"
"But what did I do?"
"You don't remember?"
"No, I can't recall anything that I would have to regret...."
"You don't call dumping me in that lead pit something that you 'have to regret'?!" she screeched.
"When did I.... Oh, right.... Well, it might not have worked, but at least you had someone who could figure out a way to treat you like that."
"Why you?!" Akane snarled, and grabbed him by the front of his gi. Flipping him upside down, she slammed him down into the grass like a she was pounding a tent stake into the ground. "See how you like my way of helping you understand that you're an idiot!"
"Akane, I wish that you hadn't done that," Kasumi admonished, with her father smiling approvingly at her words.
"But I needed to hurt him...."
"I know that, but that wasn't the way."
"Then what would be?"
"Couldn't you have done that elsewhere? Now we'll have to fix the lawn, and he'll be tracking dirt all over the place," the eldest of the daughters commented, shaking her head. "It will be ever so much a mess."
Her sisters looked at each other before giggling at what she was saying, with Nabiki nodding in approval as she spoke. "I think that she understands what you mean, sis."
"That's good to hear."
Soun sighed as he considered his daughters' behavior, and wished that things would go better. Hopefully taking this indoors would help in that, and he was certain that he could get things back on track. Certainly, he was not pleased with his friend's actions with the pit, but he did understand that the man had been trying to help. He just hoped that they would get over this dislike of Genma, while:
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(Posted Tue, 09 May 2006 04:01)
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