In the end Ranma decided to do nothing and stay where he was. There was no imminent danger and little he could do to make things better and quite a lot he could do to make things worse if he got involved at this point. Silently observing the goings on in the doujou below while keeping himself ready seemed to be his best bet right now.
Down on the floor Kodachi had meanwhile been convinced to accept without argument the absence of the pig-tailed girl during the 'girls night' and her presence on some of the Ranma-snapshots photos that Nabiki had provided. When she relented and agreed to use them as stakes in the poker game, she claimed that she planned to trade any photos that showed the harridan instead of her beloved Ranma to her older brother.
Ranma did not know what upset him more: the thought that Kunou might get his hands on photos that showed his female form more or less naked or the fact that Kodachi had not sounded very convincing when she had announced her intentions. He really did not like the speculative look in the crazy girl's eyes when she had examined the photos in question.
Akane had made a big show of declaring herself uninterested in Ranma and proclaimed the whole business with the photos to be very much perverted and wrong before making up some sort of story about family honor and having to win back all the evil photos her sister had taken of their houseguest. Ranma was only surprised that she had not accused him of being perverted for not preventing Nabiki from taking such pictures of him. Maybe she reserved those kind of logical leaps for the times when Ranma was actually around to be pounded for his sins.
Shampoo and Ukyou after drooling for a bit had easily embraced Nabiki's suggestion about poker and were now helping her set things up. They probably expected to win big in this game. Shampoo was naturally very self-confident and Ukyou likely still remembered all the IOUs she had won of Ranma during the Gambling King disaster.
Soon the girls had carried in a small round table from outside and sat down around it. Ranma moved around under the roof for a bit before finally finding a perfect spot lying on top of a crossbeam. From there he could look down directly onto the table. He could see them, but since the underside of the crossbeam he was on held the bright lamp they were using for light they could not see him. From his vantage point he could easily peek into all of the girls' cards and incidentally also see down their cleavages. At least Nabiki put a stop to the later for herself when she put on a funny green plastic visor that shielded her face and front from his view.
He wondered what her game was. Even if the middle Tendou daughter managed to win all the stakes in the game she would not come out any richer then she had been before. Maybe she was trying to drum up business for her new line of collectible Ranma cheesecake snapshots. Or perhaps she was just setting up the girls for something else.
Beneath him the game was starting to begin. With a minimum of prompting from Nabiki the girls had managed to agree on how many ordinary photos an explicit photo of Ranma was worth, what the ante was and how much they were allowed to maximally bet and raise during the game. Rather conservative amounts had been chosen at first with a collective nervous glance at Nabiki. Ranma was apparently not the only one who thought that she was up to something.
As the first hand was dealt Ranma vowed to pay special attention to how they were playing the game. He was still smarting over his defeat the last time he had tried anything like this and hoped that he could learn to improve his skills by observing the girls. He also hoped that he might be able to catch any cheaters or find out what Nabiki was up to. Maybe he could even avert or deflect the worst of the near inevitable catastrophe if he saw anything.
The game started out slowly enough. Cards were dealt bets were made and rounds were won. Photos changed owners, but nobody seemed to be winning or losing big time. That astonished Ranma a bit who had expected Nabiki to dominate the game. Was she holding back?
None of the other girls were playing up to Ranma's expectations either. Akane who normally had as much control over her emotions as Ranma had over the weather actually managed to keep from showing too much on her face. Ranma was surprised to even see her win a round through bluffing when both Ukyou and Nabiki had had better hands.
Which was especially strange as Ukyou was playing with an unusually aggressive and tenacious style only rarely folding or backing down. Ranma knew that the crossdresser had these qualities, what with her training for a decade to get her revenge on him and everything, but she rarely showed them around him anymore and usually acted far more meek and demure in his presence.
Shampoo had also started to show some unusual behavior. After at first unsuccessfully trying to pretend that she was a complete beginner and had no idea what most card combinations were worth she had soon almost completely dropped her cute but dumb bimbo act and was now openly playing like somebody who knew what she was doing. In fact from what Ranma could see Shampoo was going about her business very intelligently with an emphasis on strategy and analyzing her opponents. Seeing her acting like this Ranma could readily believe that she was the shifty old crone's grand-daughter and heir.
Kodachi was probably the greatest surprise among the girls. Not only had Ranma not yet seen her attempt to cheat as he had totally expected her to do, but she also appeared to have a firm grasp on reality throughout the game. She accepted defeat when she suffered it without complaints, demands for do-over, attempts to change what she had bet, or accusations of sorcery. She was acting almost sane. Granted she still uttered that crazy laugh regularly when she thought it was appropriate, but Ranma suspected she mostly did it to unnerve and unbalance her opponents. Kodachi might have been playing smart, with an realistic assessment of her own capabilities and unexpectedly by the rules but she was still devious and sneaky.
If Ranma was seeing things correctly Kodachi had been working hard over several games to convince her opponents that she had a small almost unnoticeable tell that she actually did not have. She had purposefully lost several games to establish that and so far only Shampoo and perhaps Nabiki appeared to have picked up on it, but it had the potential to pay of big later on.
Unfortunately for Kodachi her emphasis on long-term strategy and her attempts to play the players instead of her cards left her with a rapidly diminishing pile of stakes.
Eventually during a short break to allow Shampoo to visit the little Amazon warriors room Kodachi got up from her seat and approached Nabiki nonchalantly. She casually enquired if Nabiki might have some more photos on her that she would be willing to sell Kodachi.
This was the event Ranma had been waiting for. He expected that Nabiki would now that Kodachi had brought it up use the girls' natural competitiveness to sell them all large amounts of expensive photos so that they could try to bankrupt each other in bidding wars. It was the ideal way for the Tendou girl to make a huge profit out of this situation.
But to the surprise of Ranma, Kodachi and Akane and Ukyou who had watched the scenes with interest Nabiki merely told Kodachi that she unfortunately had no more photos on her at the moment, but would be glad to sell her some more come next Monday.
"Why everyone standing around looking shocked?" Shampoo wanted to know when she came back in.
"Nabiki said that she had no more photos to sell right now when Kodachi tried to buy some," Akane told her.
"So Greedy girl not trying to get our money by making us pay for more photos," Shampoo concluded thoughtfully as she made her way back to her place
"Apparently not," Ukyou agreed stumped.
"And I was so sure that was it," Kodachi added chagrinned as she also returned to her seat.
It looked like Ranma had not been the only one who had given some thought to the question of how Nabiki planed to profit from this scheme.
"So what is Greedy Girl's game?" Shampoo asked Nabiki trying the direct approach.
"What me?" Nabiki wondered with fake innocence. "My game is an entertaining evening of poker of course."
"Come on, Nabiki," Akane angrily told her older sister. "You don't honestly expect us to spend the entire evening playing for a few dirty picture. You've got something else planned."
"Yeah," Ukyou added. "Let's skip to the main part where you spring your trap."
"Honestly," Nabiki defended herself. "I have no ulterior motives in this. I am only chaperoning the girls night as a favor to aunty Saotome and thought we could all get to know each other better over a friendly no pressure game of poker."
"Right," Kodachi mocked. "A friendly game of poker where nobody has much to lose. And that will keep us all happily occupied all evening."
The other girls made noises of agreement and Ranma had to silently agree with them.
"Well, if you are all already bored with this," Nabiki began slowly. "I admit I did have something prepared to make things more interesting."
"Aha!" Came the cry from the other girls and Ranma had to stop himself from chiming in.
"You don't have to if you don't want to," Nabiki said defensively. "I just thought considering the spirit and purpose of this gathering as well as your naturally competitive attitudes that you can't express with physical violence at the moment you might want to raise the stakes a bit at one point."
"Yes?" Akane prompted impatiently.
Together with Kodachi, Ukyou and Shampoo she leaned forward expectantly and Ranma was nearly frozen in suspension on his perch overhead as Nabiki finally unveiled the next stage of her plan.
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(Posted Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:00)
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