Nabiki left to check the damage on her older sister’s room (as well as to try and figure out how best to improve the security on said room), leaving Akane and Ranma to comfort an extremely hurt Kasumi.
“There, there,” Akane said, hoping that her words would sound too awkward. “It’s… it’s not that bad—um, I mean, it is bad, but it’s not like it can’t be cleaned up.”
The words didn’t comfort Kasumi very much, but she did appreciate her youngest sister’s intentions. “I know. It’s just… I just can’t believe it… my kitchen… and my room—our room!” Kasumi buried her face in her husband’s shoulder, her tears clearly ready to burst from their ducts. For his part, Ranma simply sat in moderately stunned silence. Not just because their fathers prove to be so callous, but also because his wife was actually beginning to think of the room as belonging to both of them.
“About that…” Nabiki interjected as she came down from the upper floor, “I’ve got good news and bad news.”
Ranma continued to hold his wife as he let out an exasperated sigh. “Alright, let’s hear it.”
“Well, the good news is that Kasumi’s room is as immaculately clean as it usually is—and unless Genma is the kind of person who leaves a room exactly as he found it after going over it top to bottom, I think I can safely say that he wasn’t in there at all.”
“Hmph. Don’t be so sure—Pops knows lots ’bout the basics of thievery.”
“That may be, but I have further reason to believe that Genma wasn’t in Kasumi’s room—and that, incidentally, brings me to the bad news.”
“Which is?”
“The reason I think that Genma didn’t search Kasumi’s room is because right now, Akane’s room looks like a tornado went through it.”
This news left the youngest Tendo understandable miffed. “What?!”
“Apparently, Genma got the order of our rooms mixed up. It’s not that surprising—he’s only been here once before, and he didn’t spend much time upstairs then.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! Not only does he think he can invade our privacy, but he can’t even figure out who’s privacy to invade!” Akane let out a short, annoyed grunt. “He’d better not have taken anything important….”
“Well, he did mention finding some pills….” Kasumi managed to say.
Akane put her hand to her forehead. “Great. What did he do with them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hang on,” Ranma interrupted. “Why do you got birth control pills, Akane?”
“Well, in case you didn’t notice, I get attacked by a horde of perverts every morning, and there is no way I’m going to risk any of them taking advantage of a lucky shot.”
“Look, why don’t you guys start cleaning up the kitchen—I’ll talk to our fathers,” Akane put forth.
“Really, Akane, you don’t have to go out of your way on my account.”
“Kasumi, I know that you don’t want to make any more trouble than necessary, but somebody needs to figure out what was going on, and it may as well be me. What Dad and Mr. Saotome wanted to do to the two of you was bad enough, but if they’re going to drag me into their dealings with you, accidentally or otherwise, then they’re going to have to deal with me directly.” Akane didn’t wait for an answer, turning on her heels and heading towards the dojo.
Kasumi sighed as she stood up and reluctantly backed away from her spouse’s grasp. “I suppose I might as well start cleaning this mess up—”
Ranma didn’t wait to be asked: “I’ll help.”
“Me too,” Nabiki added.
“I knew this was a bad idea. I just knew it.” The two fathers were in the dojo, trying to figure out how their well-intentioned plan had gone so sour, so quickly. “And I can’t believe I actually let you talk me into doing it.”
Of course, one of the men had yet to emerge from a state of denial over the whole fiasco. “Come on, Soun, I know she’s angry, but I think you’re overreacting…”
“Overreacting? We betrayed their trust! We snooped around in their private life, trying to put them in a situation they probably won’t be ready for until much later in their lives, and now Kasumi’s never going to speak to me again! I’m a horrible father!” Soun’s self-control finally gave out as tears started gushing from his eyes.
“Humph. At least you managed to search the right room.”
Both men whirled around to see a very annoyed Akane scowling at the two of them.
“What do you mean, girl?” Genma asked in a tone that was much more brusque than it should have been.
“Apparently, in your eagerness to get my sister pregnant as fast as possible, you went and searched my room instead of hers. And I am not happy about this.”
Genma started to look nervous at the youngest Tendo’s glowering, while Soun’s attention immediately focused on something else. “Wait… those were your birth control pills?”
Akane sighed. “Yes, Dad, they’re mine, and before you ask, I take them because I get attacked by a horde of perverts every morning, and I don’t intend on taking any chances.”
“But you said you could handle them!”
“And I can, but that doesn’t mean one of them can’t get in a lucky shot, and I doubt that any of those jerks would be considerate enough to use a condom.”
“But…”
“But we’re getting off the subject at hand which was why you thought this was a good idea in the first place.”
Soun sighed. “I’m sorry, Akane. I never really thought this was a good idea… I just didn’t use good judgment.”
Akane’s expression didn’t change a bit at this. “Uh-huh. And what about you?”
Genma looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “Um, well, my wife… she… she gave me this list of herbs and such… and I just, well, took her idea to the next level.”
That caught Akane’s attention—despite her obvious eagerness for grandchildren, Auntie Nodoka didn’t seem to be the type of person who would endorse this behavior. “Let me see it.”
A few minutes later, Akane’s anger had turned to disbelief at Genma’s antics—either he was really stupid, or just had a warped view of reality. “This is a recipe for a traditional birth control tea.”
“Exactly. My wife obviously wanted to make sure that her daughter-in-law didn’t accidentally prepare something that could get in the way of providing the schools with an heir—are you alright?”
“I’m not sure,” Akane said as she rose from the floor. This was just nuts. “You think that Kasumi could make a complex recipe like this entirely by accident?” Well, Akane assumed it was complex—at least, she was reasonably sure that she wouldn’t have been able to do it very well, and she considered herself to be a fairly decent cook (sometimes).
“Um, well, then why else would Nodoka have given it to me?”
“Well, considering the note she wrote on the back, I think it’s clear that she didn’t give it to you—she gave it to Kasumi. And nobody would give Kasumi a recipe unless it was expected that she would make it.”
“But… she wants grandchildren….”
“And she probably also wants to make sure that those grandchildren have parents who are ready to raise them.” Can he really be this dense?
Of course, such questions, even when they are unvoiced, tend to be answered in short order. “They wouldn’t have to raise them—after all, I can do that.”
Akane sighed. “You actually think that they’ll let you raise their children.” It wasn’t a question.
“Why not? I raised Ranma for ten years, and look how well he turned out.”
Akane just rolled her eyes—clearly, Genma honestly believed everything he had said thus far, and countering that type of mental process was next to impossible for her (after all, Kuno employed the same variety of “reasoning” every day, and even Nabiki had difficulty getting through to him). Fortunately, experience had taught Akane that there were other ways to handle situations like these—namely, gratuitous violence.
“Well,” she said, abruptly changing the subject, “I suppose it’s useless to try and argue with you, ‘Uncle’ Genma. What say the two of us have a little sparring match?”
Genma seemed happy that this awkward conversation had come to a close. “I’d be delighted to, my dear,” he said with a huge grin. It was so nice when things went his way.
Soun idly wondered if the dojo’s first aid kit was adequately stocked.
Ryoga’s life, to put it bluntly, sucked. First of all, like everyone else in the Hibiki clan, his sense of direction was horrible, if not nonexistent; he rarely managed to get from Point A to Point B in any reasonable amount of time—assuming he got to Point B at all. Likely as not, Ryoga’s attempts at reaching Point B would end up at Point X, Y, or Z—he even occasionally ended up at Points that were named after letters no longer used in the English alphabet, like Point Þ, which was on one of the South Sandwich Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
But Ryoga had gotten used to this; sure, it made it extremely difficult to get a traditional education, not to mention keep any position in the workforce other than “traveling salesman” (which happened to be his father’s chosen profession). In fact, with some help from some particularly understanding officials in the Ministry of Education, he was slowly but surely working his way towards a high school diploma through a correspondence course. And perhaps, if fate allowed him to once again meet up with his father, the Hibiki patriarch could use his connections in his company to secure him some steady work (granted, Ryoga wasn’t particularly excited about entering the oh-so-fascinating world of sales, but he really couldn’t think of any other job that someone with his peculiar disability could hold down).
Yet, none of the real problems Ryoga was currently having were the result of his inability to find his way out of an unlocked closet—not really. No, his current problems were all the result of the malevolence of a single person: Ranma Saotome. Sure, the two had been friends once—in fact, it was Ranma whose help had allowed him to regularly attend school for almost a year. But after a falling out over Saotome’s unscrupulous hoarding of the bread served in the school’s cafeteria, Ryoga had challenged him to a duel in the vacant lot behind his house that afternoon. This was where the trouble started, since Ryoga relied on Ranma to actually get to his house without getting lost, yet one that the dishonorable cur had actually left school before guiding Ryoga home! He’d obviously skipped town immediately, as Ranma wasn’t at the lot when Ryoga finally arrived—sure, he was three days late, but Ranma should have known he wouldn’t get there on time without outside help. Totally humiliated, Ryoga had vowed revenge, and had been doing his best to find Ranma ever since.
Unfortunately, this endeavor met with little success. Ryoga did come close a few times—in fact, once, he even found someone else who went by the name “Ranma Saotome,” but that person just turned out to be yet another unfortunate soul who’d been disgraced by the cad. After meeting this person, Ryoga doubled his efforts to find his rival—not so much out of sympathy for the faux Ranma, per se, but rather, because fake Ranma’s fighting style was so powerful, there was a reasonable chance that there wouldn’t be anything left of the genuine article if Ryoga didn’t get to him first.
But recently, Ryoga’s life had been made so hellish through Ranma’s actions that he had been pushed to the very limits of his temper. Ranma would pay for what had happened to him in China. The lost boy had almost caught up with his quarry when…
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Kwakerjak
(Posted Sun, 02 Jul 2006 04:35)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.