Ranma was accustomed to the taste of raw fish. After all, sashimi was a delicacy unique to the Japanese islands.
Ranma was accustomed to awakening in odd places with no memory of how he got there. Unlike his father (who would blame sake, except that he was too dishonest), he had a reasonable excuse – he was a practitioner of the feared Neko-ken, under the influence of which he operated under what amounted to a complete secondary personality who thought he was a cat and never told his main consciousness what it had done. His cat-self had been coming out more often of late, for reasons he tried to avoid thinking about.
He was becoming accustomed to awakening female. It was a consequence of the last training site his father had taken him to, combined with two other factors in his life: the fact that tents leak, and the corresponding consequence his father had gained at that last training site. He had learned to keep his eyes closed until he had some idea about his surroundings, and in particular the presence or absence of his father – the latter especially if the fat fool was currently wearing that consequential form.
He was not accustomed to waking on anything but the unimproved ground, or (on a good morning) his bedroll. He was particularly not accustomed to waking curled up on a firm, warm cushion. Nor was he accustomed to waking to the sensation of fingers rubbing firmly across his scalp, with special attention to the area behind his ears.
On consideration, he hadn’t woken on a cushion at all. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the heat spread across his face, and wondered if it was really a good idea to bring attention to himself… and not only because he couldn’t hear any sign of his father.
“Well, of course I’m not certain it’s a tiger! I’m not a vet – it’s a great big cat, orangey with black stripes… Hello? Hello?” She stared at the handset. “She hung up. I don’t… She hung up. On an emergency call.”
“Oh, my. That isn’t very helpful. Whatever will we do with the tiger?”
“I don’t know,” admitted the younger girl acerbically. “That’s why I called the emergency services. I suppose I can try calling the zoo instead… is it still unconscious?”
Both girls peered around the corner of the wall, to see through the living room into the garden. The tiger still lay on its side, half-in and half-out of the pond. Both girls discretely ignored the other’s sigh of relief.
Also in sight was something both found easier to deal with. “Oh, Akane?” started Kasumi, “Are you being gentle?”
“Hmm?” answered their younger sister, who seemed to have found the presence of the redhead in her lap uncommonly calming. She nodded reassuringly. “Why?”
“Well, she’s screwing her eyes shut – I thought perhaps you were pulling her hair by accident.”
“Oh. No, I’m being careful,” said Akane, nonetheless switching to simply stroking the smaller girl. “But… she did stop purring a moment ago…”
“She’s listening to us,” said Nabiki bluntly, observing the redhead stiffen as the sisters discussed her.
“Of course she is, Nabiki,” replied Akane, “but given how she was acting earlier I don’t think she understands us any better than – than a housecat.”
The figure in her lap shivered on cue, and Nabiki concluded, “She understands us just fine. Don’t you, Miss Cat?”
The stranger seemed to curl into herself a little more, and then, cautiously, she asked, “Where’s P-Pops?”
Akane jerked her hand off the girl’s head. Her eldest sister asked, “Pops? Is that the tiger?”
All three sisters noticed their guest’s tension at the word. She nodded tightly.
“It’s in the garden. In the pond. Akane knocked it out.”
“Whe…” The girl cut herself off, lifting her head enough to turn it slowly. She wriggled out of Akane’s lap, and sat on the floor, her back to the opening to the garden and her eyes still squeezed shut. “I’m Saotome Ranma. S-sorry ‘bout this.”
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(Posted Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:15)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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