“The way I see it, Ranchan, is that you just don’t communicate very well.”
“Huh? What’s that s’posed ta mean?”
“Well, take Akane for instance.”
“What about her?”
“She’s always clobbering you, because she thinks you’re always insulting her.”
“Hey, I ain’t always doin’ that. Sometimes I’m just tellin’ her what I think the cold, hard facts are.”
“But she can’t tell the difference, and part of the reason is that you’ve got this aloof attitude that generally makes it hard for anybody to tell the difference.”
“Huh?”
“Look, Ranma, it’s not just Akane that misunderstands you. I do, too: when I first got to Nerima I wanted revenge, because you gave no real indication that you didn’t know I was a girl. It’s the same with Shampoo — hell, considering her language skills and the cultural differences between Japanese and Amazon society, she probably has even more problems understanding you than Akane and me combined. And if you really want to push the idea to the extreme, one could argue that even your problems with Kodachi are there because you can’t get her to understand that you’re the same person as the ‘redheaded harridan’ she despises so much. And if you think about it, most of your stress in life is a direct result of having to deal with the four of us.”
“Even you?”
Ukyo stared at the floor. “Yes, even me, if I’m honest with myself. Having to try and handle four different girls at the same time would put a lot of strain on a normal guy, much less someone like you who doesn’t know how to say what he means and as a result rarely means what he says.”
“Ya really think that?”
“Of course — that’s why you asked for my help with this in the first place, remember? Because you ‘ain’t no good with words.’”
“Oh yeah. I guess yer right. But it ain’t all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Ukyo admitted. “I guess by now we all should have figured out that your lack of eloquence works both ways, and that you have just as much difficulty understanding us as we have understanding you. Understand?”
“Um, I think so, but what’s an ‘L of quince’?”
Ukyo had to resist rolling her eyes as Ranma inadvertently proved her point about his communicative skills. “You need to do better at talking to us, and we need to do better at talking to you.”
“So…”
“So, what I’m trying to say is that if there was some way to get around your lack of skill with words so that it was easier for us to communicate with you, that could help with your problems, as it would clear up a lot of the misunderstandings that cause those problems in the first place.”
Mihoshi suddenly grinned; it felt so good when she got the chance to help people. “Granted!” chirped the amiable genie.
To say that Ukyo was startled by the stereotypically ditzy blonde’s sudden outburst would have been a rather severe understatement. “What do you mean, ‘granted’? I haven’t made the wish yet!”
“You haven’t?”
“No!”
“Then what was all that before?”
“I was explaining to Ranma the reasons behind the wish.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure I got it pretty close to what you would have wanted.”
Ukyo’s eye started twitching. “Pretty close?”
“Well, yeah. You said that you and those other girls had problems communicating with Ranma, so I made it so that won’t be a problem ever again.”
The chef was almost afraid to ask her next question but she knew she had to: “How?”
“Why, telepathy, of course!”
This time Ranma joined Ukyo in shouting, “What?!”
“Nothing makes it easier to understand what somebody’s thinking than being able to read their mind!”
“You can’t just do that!” Ukyo insisted.
“I already did. In fact, it should start working right about… now!” As soon as the blonde genie made this pronouncement, both Ranma and Ukyo fell to the floor grabbing their heads as both spontaneously developed massive splitting headaches.
Elsewhere in Nerima, Akane Tendo’s daily practice was suddenly interrupted as she collapsed on the floor while something that felt like a cross between a migraine and a jackhammer began searing her skull.
Similarly, at the Nekohanten, Shampoo appeared to spontaneously develop an uncharacteristic klutziness as she dropped (and shattered) several bowls of steaming hot ramen, much to the concern of everyone present, but especially Cologne.
For her part, Kodachi didn’t collapse when her headache hit, as she was used to them; she’d been suffering from migraines since her mother died (few people knew about this particular problem, however, because Kodachi didn’t want other people thinking that she had weaknesses of any kind). Due to her rather extensive knowledge of botany, she knew several effective treatments, not a few of which were of her own devising, and thus she had multiple ways to cope with the pain. Still, this was an unusually severe one, and it forced her to momentarily pause in her Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics training so she could sit down and wait it out.
It was then that Mihoshi realized she may have committed a tiny faux pas: “Oh, yeah, I guess I should have told you that there might be some minor discomfort while the telepathic links are being forged because I had to make them were extra strong to make sure that none of those nasty misunderstandings you talked about ever happens again. Don’t worry, though: they should pass in a few minutes, and then, everything will be hunky-dory!”
“AaAargh!!” groaned Ranma from the floor.
“Well, I’d love to stick around to see how this turns out, but I’ve got more wishes to grant, so I’d better be going. Bai bai!” And with that, the Mihoshi (and her lamp) poofed away to meet up with the next soon-to-be-satisfied customer.
It was a few minutes before Ranma and Ukyo (and Akane and Shampoo and Kodachi) recovered, and when they did, they discovered just what the scatterbrained genie had done.
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(Posted Fri, 29 Dec 2006 05:02)
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