Ranna chewed on the senbei, as did Shinji-as-'Ranko'. Wow, though were some spectacular kawara-yaki. Ranma pictured Akane again, making a face at the sweet senbei, saying it looked awfully fattening...
"...And then?" Shinji prompted.
"OK, and then...well, since it's night by then, Kasumi-san goes and tells 'Shinji-chan' to take a bath, and 'Shinji' does."
"And turns back male, I suppose?"
"Yep." Ranma sighed, then. So did Shinji.
"So then...Akane-san drops by, trying to take a bath, I suppose?"
"No, no, that's what happened to me, not you - I mean, 'Shinji'. What happens then is that Akane calls and asks if 'Shinji-chan' is there, but 'Shinji' doesn't answer as he's male at the moment and flustered as all heck. Then Nabiki comes in and says she wants to take a bath too, and Kasumi-san comes over to ask if 'Shinji-chan' is all right in there, and all three of them end up seeing Boy Shinji in the bath..."
Shinji groaned, then. "Oi, oi."
Ranma sighed, too. "Yeah, Kasumi-san just goes all wide-eyed, but Nabiki almost calls the police and Akane in the meanwhile wrecks the Bath door and wall while she screams. 'Shinji' manages to get away alright, though - he's good at that, as it turns out - and then Uncle Souun and Pops come out to explain stuff, and 'Shinji' and Pops get introduced again properly. Pops trys to talk about the engagement again, but Uncle cuts him off again, there's a couple of panels of the two of them just making faces and gestures at each other and sighing..."
Ranma sighed, yet again. "OK, as things turned out, Pops in the manga did try to bring up his son Shinji to be a Martial Artist and the Saotome Style Heir, but..."
The 'Shinji' in the manga wasn't all that good at it at all, and by the time he was walking and talking, he'd decided that being a Martial Artist like his pa wasn't what he wanted to do at all. No, no, no, no, no - what he wanted to be was to study hard, get into good schools, and become a lawyer. Or a persecutor. Or a high-ranking civil servant. Or a highly-paid businessman. Anything but a Martial Artist, in fact...
Ranma sighed. He couldn't even imagine not wanting to be a Martial Artist.
...Even though he did know most 'ordinary' people simply...didn't want to.
"Well anyway, 'Shinji' wasn't very good at that, it seems, and when he was pretty little, he decided that what he wanted to do was study hard and get into good schools and become a lawyer or something and earn lots of money. Pops didn't like that at all, but..."
"I'll bet he didn't." Shinji snorted. "And...uh..." 'She' wrinkled her nose. "I don't seem to be especially scared of cats, even now, by the way..."
"Oh, the neko-ken. Right. ...'Shinji' read the book through even if Pops didn't, and smacked him over the head with it for not reading it properly, too. So, no neko-ken."
Ranma sighed, yet again. If only he'd thought of doing that, at that age...
And then he blinked. Usually, even thinking of cats would make him feel a bit shaky, but...Hmmm. This was odd...
Well, he'd think about this later.
"So anyway - so life goes on, till one day, Pops finds out of something called Jusenkyou. And more important - something called the 'Spring of Drowned Martial Artist'."
Shinji stared, then.
"OK, so let me guess - in a last-ditch attempt to make his son into a proper Heir, he - ?"
"Yeah, yeah. Except that it turned out to be the Spring of Drowned Martial Artist Girl."
And the rest, as they say, was history.
Shinji was shaking like a leaf. Ranma looked at 'her', somewhat alarmed.
And then 'Ranko' burst into laughter.
It was unmistakably laughter, even if there was a very faint touch of hysteria in the outlines.
Ranma sighed again. Well, if 'she' found that so amusing...
Ranma sighed yet again,@then, thinking. There was something Shinji had said that...
No, wait. It had been about the bath and...Akane.
Why had Shinji thought that Akane was the one that had come in on 'Shinji', anyhow?
Ranma slowly, slowly looked at the red-haired girl crunching stuff and sipping tea. And Shinji had mentioned...
"Mmmmm?" Shinji murmured.
"You were saying something about a manga called 'Ranma 1/2' before, weren't you..."
Shinji couldn't mean that...there was actually a manga someplace which had...him as the progagonist and actually portrayed his real life.
He couldn't. ...Could he?
"...Mmmmmmm." Shinji nodded. "There sure is - was? - it was pretty popular, too. It was actually created a while back, I think - there was a revival of some sort a few years back, with 'retouched' footing for the anime version and all that, so..."
"But...um... you mean the 'Ranma' in that manga is actually supposed to be...?..."
"...Welll." Shinji seemed to think about it. "I dunno, frankly, as I don't know just what kind of life this you had, but...Saotome Ranma, Martial Artist, 10 year training trip...sound familiar?"
"......Um......"
"Well OK...Cursed Springs, girl curse, Shampoo-san, Mousse-san, Cologne-san..."
Ranma grabbed his head and turned away. There was actually a manga about him, and his real life.
Including all the embarrassing stuff, and what he thought about it all, and...and...
"...Hey, hey, don't look like that..." 'Ranko' mutters with a sidelong glance at him, reaching for another cracker. "You said you watched the - original - Evangelion series with me in it, right? So we're in the same boat..."
Shinji sighed, then.
"If the 'Ikari Shinji' in that was really supposed to be me, or at least a close approximation, anyhow, that is. I mean, it's not like I can watched it to check now, since Nabiki-san's collection is the 'Ranma version' now, but from what she remembered, it did seemed to match what my life was like up to now, so..."
...Errr....Ummmmm...
...Right.
"And anyway, from what Nabiki-san told me, what you saw about me is probably more embarrassing then what I saw about you, anyhow. You are supposed to get into weird situations all the time - You're a Martial Arts Love Comedy main chara, after all..."
Ranma really stared, then. He couldn't help it.
He was a what?
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(Posted Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:39)
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