No one, least of all Ranma, likes to wake up to an electronic beeping that is getting steadily faster.
"Wake up, Ranma!" a cheerful voice cut through Ranma's sleep-addled mind. "You have one minute to disarm me!" Ranma shot out of his bed in a manner that would have suggested a previously-unknown teleportation ability, or at least fast enough to make Brittney envious. He took in the situation instantly. Next to his bed lay one of Brianna's Peebos, a happy look spread all over its artificial features. "Lemme guess," he began in a drawl, "you're set to go off if I go near the door."
"Yep!" the bit bomb answered in an altogether far-too-chipper tone.
"Hell," Ranma growled as he used his speed to disassemble the casing surrounding the happily-beeping weapon of minor destruction. Inside he found one of Brianna's snarky messages. Something about "try this one, big boy" and a poorly-drawn sketch of the same girl's head sticking its tongue out. He was going too fast to really get all the subtext.
Pawing through the mechanical innards, Ranma found that this was another one of Brianna's "specials". Specially created for him, that is. This one had a bit of a surprise for him, though. All the wires were the same color. 'Man, this thing must have been a bitch to put together,' he commented mentally.
There had to be some sort of distinguishing marks on the wires themselves. Brianna was crazy, but she wasn't stupid. She had to have some way to test for the ground wire. And then he saw them. Little hash marks near the terminals on the plastic coatings of the wires themselves. Of course, without knowing what they meant, he'd have to do this the hard way.
Getting the toenail clippers from his bedside, Ranma swiftly stripped the wires of their coating one by one while the digital readout on the status of his well-being was quickly running out. Ignoring the beeps that were now far too close together for his comfort, Ranma began running his hands over the wires. 'Cold...cold...cold...come on...' he pleaded mentally for a hit on the ground wire. He really should have paid more attention to that "MacGyver" program. He never knew someone could make a nuclear power unit out of an aluminum can, some bailing wire, chewing gum, and the glowy stuff from a half-dozen illuminating watches.
Finally, his hand hit the hot wire. "Yes!" he hissed in triumph. Ranma prepared to pull the wire, but he stopped a millimeter before disconnect.
'Too easy,' he warned himself. The wires all looking the same was a trap. Brianna would have expected his attention to be drawn to that. Ranma slowly pulled his hand away and got down for a closer look. There it was- a collapsible circuit. A backup ground wire was all set to fire the primer if the primary ground got disconnected.
'She's getting better at this,' Ranma inwardly groaned.
"Ten seconds!" the Peebo chirped.
"Dammit!" No time for subtlety. This had to be perfect. Ranma grabbed both wires, counted to three, and...
Click!
Ranma cracked open one eye at the Peebo, his hands still in the same position he left them in after yanking both wires.
"Aww... you disarmed me," the Peebo said in a disappointed tone.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Ranma brushed his hands off and started re-assembling the bit bomb. Sans detonator, of course. "Sorry, little guy. Maybe you'll get me next time, huh?"
That perked up the Peebo in a hurry. "Yay! I get to try again!" The repaired machine zipped out of Ranma's room, leaving him with a huge sweat drop on the back of his head. Nothing should be that chipper about trying to blow itself up.
Ranma got up off the floor and stretched out the various kinks he had in his spine from yesterday's activities. Sure, waking up and immediately having to disarm a bomb was rough, but at least it was better than in Nerima. There, he'd either get soaked but Akane to get him out of bed or punted out the window by his pops. Here, if he did a good enough job, he'd avoid getting wet or hurt at all. Ranma really wanted to avoid becoming a char mark on the wall.
As with everything else in his life, Ranma looked upon his impromptu EOD training as just that - training. The whole thing started when Brianna had sicced one of the Peebos on him as a joke. When Ranma had returned the thing to her in pieces, unbroken pieces, Brianna was amazed. Ranma replied with his standard "aww shucks, t'weren't nuthin'" response, all the while basking in her stunned surprise. When she commented that the Peebo had an anti-tampering device attached, Ranma commented that he had deft fingers.
Hindsight being 20/20, saying that to a nymphomaniac was probably a bad idea.
Before then, Brianna had held off sexually assaulting Ranma's person by telling herself that he was too young, that he wasn't buff enough (barely), that he was too immature. However, her resolve had been sorely tested over the past few months by a series of mishaps involving Ranma's morning kata exercises, an open widow, and a swarm of genetically-enhanced moths that devoured every piece of clothing in their path. (Don't ask.)
Blushes, stammered excuses and recriminations (from Brianna and Brittney directed at Gina, who had no idea how the force field had failed) culminated in a very naked and embarrassed Ranma asking if anybody had any clothes he could borrow. Brianna immediately volunteered to show him to her wardrobe, but the situation was handled by Gina, who threw him one of her father's mage suits. Ranma decided that the suit was barely better than nudity, as it left very little to the imagination. Brianna, however, had to hunt down Genn before she did something she would regret, all the while mumbling something about the English translation of Ranma's name being correct.
The "deft hands" comment was the proverbial straw that broke the lycanthropiod's back. Ranma found himself stripped and in Brianna's bed before he could blink, and the next eight hours were forevermore seared into his memory as, quite possibly, the best time of his life.
Afterward, however, he felt obligated to propose to Brianna. They had sex, so that meant they had to get married, right? He could have done a lot worse. Brianna was beautiful, nice, and, most importantly to Ranma, listened to him. Being married to her would be... weird... at first, but he was certain they'd get closer as they spent more time together.
He was not prepared for her to fall over laughing. When he asked what was going on, she answered that just because they had sex didn't mean they had to get married. If that was true, she'd already be wed to Genn.
The term "casual sex" had not been a part of Ranma's vocabulary before then. It absolutely blew his mind to learn that sex did not always lead to a wedding. Certainly if he had bedded any of the girls in Nerima, the next thing would have been a trip to the altar. (Or the funny farm in the case of Kodachi) He henceforth decided that casual sex was the best thing the modern world had invented. That or hot running water. Either or.
Ranma went over to his dresser to get ready for the day. He pulled out what had now become his new standard outfit: black silk pants, as in Nerima, but now he wore a white shirt with a short black vest. The dragon on the back was a real nice touch, along with the Japanese characters for his name in stylized kanji underneath. Ranma was resistant to the change in wardrobe at first, but the loss of most of his clothes to mutated bull moths necessitated changing something. When Brianna commented that he looked a little like Jackie Chan from his role in "Rumble in the Bronx", his hesitation vanished.
It helped that the shopping trip was capped off by an ambush from Lord Talon's goons, Daishi and Zelda. Ranma got to break in his purchases and kick butt at the same time. What could be better? He figured if all trips to the Atlanta Mall were like this, he could definitely see the attraction girls had for shopping.
Ranma walked out into the hall to the kitchen. His stomach, as with any occasion in which he hadn't fed it in the past four hours, was grumbling. On his way there, he ran across Brianna, who was leaning up against a wall with a smirk on her face. "Hello lover. Busy morning?"
Ranma shook his head. "A bit. The thing with the circuit was a nice touch."
"I try. Well, I didn't hear a kaboom, so you must have disarmed him."
"Was there a doubt in your mind?" Ranma said as he continued walking past. "By the way, here." He tossed a small container over his shoulder, which Brianna bobbled around a bit before getting a handle on it.
She only had a second to see what it was. The detonator to the Peebo. "Oh shi-"
KABOOM!!!
A singed, smoking, and twitching Brianna stood alone in the blackened hallway. "Oh, that boy is going down," Brianna growled through clenched teeth. Whether she referred to the traditional or biblical sense, she wasn't quite sure. First one, then the other probably.
But first, a shower.
Ranma chuckled to himself as he walked down the hallway. Generally speaking, blowing up your host and lover was considered a big social faux pas, but Ranma knew Brianna would be able to appreciate it.
Lots of things to do today. First up was:
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by lil bunny MoFo
(Posted Fri, 04 Aug 2006 06:58)
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.