If left to himself, Ranma woke gently, rising gracefully from the depths of Morpheus's oceans to breach delicately into consciousness without a ripple.
More often than not, he awoke urgently. Calling 'breakfast' was a sure-fire means of getting him out of bed, dressed and downstairs before you closed your mouth.
Actually, that had a similar effect on his father, and only years of domestication had worn the effect off Mr Tendo. Happosai's teaching methods had a lot to answer for.
Other methods of instantly propelling him into wakefulness included a bucket of water (favoured, on past occasions, by his fiancee) and hurling him from the window (favoured by his father). Attempting to beat him up in his sleep (attempted by his best friend) resulted in him defending himself effectively - and waking up later.
A broad selection of other cues could also raise him to consciousness, many of them only detectable to a ki adept. So it was that this morning, he woke quickly and troubled. Something was wrong, something was missing, something that should be near at hand.
As he lunged to consciousness, he began to assess both his body for readiness for battle and his surroundings for the need for it. The unmistakable sounds of breathing and a heart beating, combined with a ki source, indicated that his bedroom had been once again invaded; it was too light, and too unfocused, to be his father, besides being against the wall instead of on the other futon. Thinking of which, where was his father?
Deciding he had woken sufficiently to take action, he sprang from the futon to the wall opposite the intruder, landing in a low stance ready to defend himself from any direction. It was no great surprise to discover that the intruder was a naked teenaged girl; actually, the surprise was that it wasn't Shampoo or Kodachi, both of whom had tried this before, and that the girl was kneeling beside his futon rather than lying on it.
Unlike his fiancee, the hair colour didn't throw him for more than a second. On recognising her, his conscious thoughts switched from 'Akane's gonna kill me' to 'AKANE'S GONNA KILL ME' and he immediately took the only defensive action he could conceive of under the circumstances.
He buried his head protectively under his arms, curled up against the wall, and whimpered, "Ididn'tseenothingWasn'tlookingDidn'tdoanythingItain'tmyfault!"
He had repeated himself twice and was working through denying all the petty sub-crimes he could remember committing in the last month (including chewing the end of the pencil he borrowed last Tuesday) when his fiancee finally made her move.
"You didn't see anything?"
He shook his head convulsively, his pigtail drumming a tattoo on the wall behind him.
"You didn't look?" she confirmed, crawling over the futon to loom over him.
He screwed his eyes shut and commended his soul to heaven as he nodded.
"Why not?"
He stared at her for a fraction of a second before he realised his mistake. "Eeep!"
She giggled. "You know, if you're really not going to look, I can do... this!"
"Ahh!" He shivered as her fingers teased lightly up his sides.
"Or I could..." Her fingers tapped lightly at his inner thighs, and as he reacted to that he felt her knees drop between his legs stopping him from protecting himself.
"Eee-Ah, N-no..." he begged, acutely conscious of his vulnerability.
"No?" she asked, innocently. "How about here?"
'Here' was the back of his spine, the fingers of one hand dusting across the base of his spine in a way that made him arch his back and groan involutarily in remembered pleasure. Then he realised exactly what that was showing off and hunched over again, fighting the instinct and burying his hands in his lap.
His lips were met, and he opened his eyes again in shock as her other hand curled behind his head. 'When'd she learn to do that?' passed through his mind, followed by, 'Mmmm...' His hands reached almost without instruction to slide around her waist.
She shivered as he touched her and conscious control reasserted itself. Eyes closed once more, he sprang from her grasp and wedged himself into the corner of the ceiling.
"Ranma!" she shouted, an edge of disappointment evident even as she giggled. "Get down here and take your punishment like a man!"
He shook his head firmly, and started to work his way towards the window. He could get outside, to the ground, and swipe an outfit from the basket in the bathroom before anyone else got downstairs; then he could start figuring out just what was going on with his fiancee.
"Or are you too chicken?" There was an undertone of seriousness now; at least that was more familiar than the nearly playful tone she had used so far.
"I ain't afraid of nothin'!" he returned, feeling the top of the windowframe with his feet. He'd be outside in a moment now...
"You're afraid of cats," she said, reasonably.
"I ain't afraid of cats!" he yelled back, glaring at her.
Realisation struck both of them together. He wasn't afraid of cats. And he should have been.
Memories filtered in. Ranma dropped from the wall to stand with her. Their nakedness didn't matter. That her hands came to rest on his shoulders didn't matter. That his hands found homes on her hips was normal.
"I-I remember..."
"Something came out of me..."
"An angry thing..."
"A-a demon? And-and the cat fought it..."
"Yes. But the demon threw something at you..."
"So you got in the way and it got both of us..."
"And the cat..."
Ranma lifted his hand behind his fiancee, and curled his fingers. He swallowed at what he saw. "A-Akane? Look at my hand."She turned, leaning back against his chest, clasping his free hand over her navel. Her eyes widened at the sight of the familiar ghostly claws extending from his fingertips. Slowly, she raised one of her hands to meet the ki claws. He hissed a warning, but she gripped the hand in front of her warningly, and stroked the shimmering manifestation of his power.
Frowning, she formed her hand the same way, and a faint glitter of light appeared at her fingertips; not claws, certainly not the finger-length cutting blades he had formed, but... something.
"We both know the Neko-ken?"
"Something like that, love," she replied shakily. He let his claws fade, and took her hand gently in his, focusing on what it had felt like to project them. Her clawlets shimmered, then abruptly lengthened before vanishing with a blinding flash. "Maybe I need a little work yet, though," she admitted.
"I could help, I think?"
She looked over her shoulder, smiling gently. "Thank you," she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek.
(Posted Fri, 02 Jun 2006 16:55)
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