"It's not that funny," Ranma muttered, nettled by Herb's reaction.
The Musk princess finally got her laughter under control and stared at Ranma's face for a long solemn moment, only to collapse back into drunken giggles at his pained expression.
"Hah! You, with all those girls after you, have your little girlfriend turning to a pig for bedtime comfort? My apologies, but that's just rich!"
She was clearly not sorry at all and enjoying every moment of his discomfort.
"And, even better, you know all about it but she doesn't? What kind of silly idea is that?
Do you not have a man's pride, that you'd let him get away with it?"
That, Ranma felt, was hitting well below the belt.
"Yeah? Well, you're one to talk about a 'man's' pride now, aren't you?"
Her face sobered up fast and her eyes clouded, and Ranma had a moment to wish he could take it back before her fist was heading right for his face. Luckily the alcohol was affecting her coordination more than his, so she missed.
"Bastard!" she spat, following the punch up with a kick that upset the table and narrowly missed hitting him in a rather sensitive place&ndashhis thigh quickly went numb from the impact. The drunk male martial artist backpeddled awkwardly as the drunker female martial artist dove over the spilled bottles, out for blood.
"Well," Ranma muttered, "I guess that demonstration of drunken boxing'll be sooner than I thought."
He assumed a lopsided stance, only to crumple with a whimper as one of Herb's follow-up kicks hit right on-target.
Happosai grinned as he clung to the beam in the Tendo dojo's ceiling. He'd been following Shampoo, hoping for a good time to demonstrate his affection for her bountiful... charms, and found himself over-hearing some very interesting pieces of news.
He'd known that Nodoka was truly a woman after his heart. Granted, she did resent him, rather unreasonably he thought, for taking away her 'manly' husband for several years on a training trip after Ranma was born and for upsetting her wedding night. But, in his defense he had had several bottles of a very excellent distilled rice wine earlier and Genma had been slacking off in the weeks prior to the happy event. Besides, she got Genma back for their honeymoon a month later, so no harm no foul, right?
But aside from a tendency towards grudges, her sense of what a man should be had truly gotten his hopes up for any sons she had. Genma, in spite of his aptitude for the martial arts as a young man, was overly fond of eating and not fond enough of women; something Happosai had despaired of ever teaching the oaf.
And then, while he was... indisposed, his foolish student had up taken the boy for a whole decade of training. Under Genma's tutelege, he had little doubt Ranma probably came away with no idea how to seduce, grope, liberate panties, caress, or otherwise leave women in states ranging from ecstacy to outrage.
When he'd found out that Genma had engaged Ranma several times over, his hopes had returned. Perhaps he'd misjudged his student? But no, his hopes vanished as, even with girls quite willing to do almost anything with a little coaxing, the boy had done... nothing. Nothing! If it weren't for his excellent grasp of fighting, Happosai would've washed his hands of the whole family and started over.
But now? Surely, once Ranma had tasted the delights that lay under the silken undergarments he would be much more amenable to the teachings of a true master. A concubine? Visions of exotic beauties wearing equally exotic underwear paraded through Happosai's head and he hastily wiped a trickle of saliva off his chin before it dripped on those below and alerted them to his presence.
Nabiki cursed Ranma for not being there and distracting his mother and her sister. She cursed Happosai for not being there and distracting, well, everyone. She cursed Ryouga for not showing up and maybe giving her an opening to take off.
But mostly she cursed Ranma and his strange family, which she had no intention of joining, let alone as some kind of slave girl. She knew she was beat in any "feminine" contest, from fighting to cooking. With no chance of winning, and the possibility of fixing this whole thing, there was no way she wanted to participate.
Unfortunately, Ranma's crazy mother assumed otherwise, and somehow had convinced her normally stable sister to go along with her, enthusiastically even.
She carefully combed through different tactics as she mumbled something about a shop not far from the school that closed down a few months ago (a lie, but there had been a shop and it had closed down; it had been a little electronics store though. There was no way in hell she was going to talk about her 'toys' and how to get them with everyone else there; for free, at least).
She ran through tactics one by one. Nobody was obliging enough to interrupt this meeting, apparently, and there wasn't any school tomorrow. Ranma was with his so-called 'concubine', so she couldn't take off with the excuse of getting his input (or, although it'd confirm Mrs. Saotome's and Kasumi's completely off-base guess on the pictures, to go see him or some nonsense like that). Her father was useless, and Mr. Saotome was worse than useless where his wife was concerned.
Wait, back-track a bit. She'd tried this before, but it'd gotten lost in the confusion.
"Auntie, you said something about Ranma being with his... concubine? Is that anyone we know?"
Her voice was pitched slightly too loud and she chose a moment when Kodachi was't insisting that Ranma's girl side had nefarious designs upon Ranma's natural form.
"Oh, I don't know. But she said she'd come all the way from China to see him, and they looked so happy to see each other. And a princess, no less! Oh, I'm so happy for my manly son!"
The resulting silence was impressive, and Nabiki inwardly cheered. If this didn't start a stampede to find one gender-bending martial artist, nothing would. Besides, she was kind of curious herself. Chinese... there weren't a lot of women from there Ranma might be connected to from there, aside from Amazons, of course.
Her little sister's thoughts were running along the same tracks, apparently. "Great; another Amazon bimbo."
And Shampoo, predictably, took exception to that. "Amazons don't have princesses; we have warriors and we have elders." Maliciously, she added her own thoughts. "Probably bird-girl who look like pervert-girl, no? Teach Ranma what pervert-girl look like under that dress..."
As Akane went completely red and impotently sputtered, Ranma's mother cut in.
"Oh no, she looked nothing like Akane. Beautiful girl; Ranma must have missed her very much, all those months apart."
Shampoo exchanged a look with Ukyou, who exchanged one with Akane, who gave it back to Shampoo. Kodachi was ignored, as she probably wouldn't know anyway.
"Spatula-girl have idea?"
"Nope, none. Akane?"
"No!"
"If not bird-girl, then who? All Ranma's fights male. Saffron, illusion-boy, lucky gods..."
"Wait! One of them was a woman, remember?"
Shampoo's eyes lit up as she remembered the fight. One of her most cherished memories, that; she'd done her ancestors proud.
"That what-her-name, Mon-Lon?"
The other two girls nodded, then they all looked at Nodoka, then at the door, then back at Nodoka.
"We've got to go!"
"See Ranma's mother again soon!"
"That pervert!"
Tossing parting remarks over their shoulders, the three raced out the door, Ukyou and Shampoo grabbing Kodachi's shoulders and dragging her out with them.
Ranma rolled to the side as the aforementioned princess kicked at him again. Scrambling to his feet, he held his hands out placatingly.
"Look, I'm&ndash"
"Shut up!"
He blocked another kick to the groin. "If thish is&ndash"
"Jus' shut up and le' me hit you!"
He swayed and grabbed her fist before it could reach his face, yanking on it to pull her off-balance. He was rewarded for his efforts with another kick to the groin, which he avoided, and an elbow across the ear, which he didn't.
"Ow! Damnit, stobbit with th'&ndash"
He ducked and grabbed her other fist inches from his stomach. Herb brought her knee up and he swayed his hips backward... only to bite back a yelp as her bare foot came down straight on his.
They wrestled across the room until finally Ranma got Herb pinned down on the bed, his shirt torn and bruises over most of his body.
"Look, I'm sorry 'bout what I said, 'kay? It's... it's... you know, a sore spot."
The dragon girl slowly relaxed, but Ranma made sure to keep his grasp on her wrists in case she was just resting up for round two.
Herb looked up at the face of 'her' erstwhile 'husband' and sighed. She felt a momentary impulse to tell him everything, about the debate that had raged over the discovery of her (then his) curse when she and Lime and Mint had returned from Japan, about the eventual uneasy compromise that depended upon finding a cure within a year. About how, after months of careful experimentation, she had discovered a way to finally cure the curse for good... and how, accidentally or deliberately (she had her suspicions, but no proof) the waters had been switched beforehand. About that final demand by the Ancestors Council, that she must abdicate her position and marry for strength, wed the strongest of the rest of the Musk (who by now numbered no more than a few dozen dozens, no counting the women), who would become the Emperor-Regent for her eventual sons. And, finally, about her departure (flight, really), leaving a small note declaring that she would find her own strength to wed.
She opened her mouth to explain... and closed it again. She didn't feel like talking about it right now, with the adrenaline from the fight coursing through her veins. Maybe tomorrow.
"All right. You can lesh-let go now."
He slumped, and his body became dead weight across her own. She shook him slightly, only to hear a slight snore. That reminded her how tired she suddenly was, and, sleepily, she elected to join him, not even bothering to push him off her. It was kind of like having a large pet curled up on you, she decided. Kind of comforting, when you got down to it.
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(Posted Wed, 03 Jan 2007 21:20)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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