Sighing in relief at diverting a near disaster, Nabiki took a moment to catch her breath and recenter herself. Telling them her suspicions about Nodoka had been a potential disaster, but things seemed to be going her way. The last thing she needed was for the girls to get riled up at the idea of new girls competing for Ranma, bringing out the possessive fighting over Ranma that was the norm until now.
Now all she had to do was smoothly keep things going on their earlier track so they could have a nice night together and learn to get along. As long as things stayed friendly and easy going, not only would the girls have a chance of getting along, but she'd be able to relax and have fun with this.
But alas, something happened to to make her insides curdle into a tight ball of tension with the dread that things were about to spin wildly out of control.
For Ranma opened his mouth, absently uttering an off-hand comment that seemed innocent enough. "Eh, that maid team you're talk'n about, only one or two would be ninja-girls. They'd all be different, ya know, with specialties and stuff."
Not letting her emotions show, Nabiki responded in an only slightly curious manner. "What makes you say that Saotome?"
Shrugging, Ranma had still yet to look up from discussing with Kodachi ways to tune up her character. "Eh, that's what Uncle Jiro's maids were like at least. They could all fight I guess, but I'm not too sure what styles the other girls used, I just know they could handle Pops easily enough."
Swallowing hard as she found out he at least had a rich uncle with a maid team of pretty fighting girls, Nabiki never-the-less didn't let her concern show. "You never told us about your Uncle Jiro before."
Shrugging, Ranma responded a bit defensively, actually glancing up at Nabiki this time to check if she was upset. "Eh, I didn't really recall it until I heard you talking about Mom arranging some sort of martial arts maid contest. It's not like I'm hiding it from you, it's just I did a lot of stuff on my training trip, and visiting Uncle Jiro wasn't all that special."
"What's this about a martial arts maid contest?"
"Huh? Wasn't that what you were talking about just now? 'bout how Mom was arranging something. You doing all of this makes a whole lot more sense now if you're trying to win some sort of prize."
"Ah, I see." Sighing in relief, Nabiki was glad to find out it was a misunderstanding on Ranma's part. She'd been worried that Nodoka's plans were real for a moment there, though to be honest she wasn't entirely sure that wasn't so as his words were such that they didn't preclude him knowing Nodoka was up to just such a thing.
Unfortunately for Nabiki's burning desire to assuage her curiosity about this, she had four very volatile girls in the room with her, and she was still trying to defuse the fiancee situation. That said, she had to start getting the girl's back on track with the game while she could. "Well, I don't know about any tournaments, but if some sort of tournament shows up that we can enter, I'm all for it as long as it's fun."
Walking forward, Nabiki turned away from Ranma to face the four remaining girls with her hands set confidently on her hips. "That said, since the meaning of the card game has been revealed, I'll make things simple so we can move on. Since you all were practically tied there at the end, you all take fourth place and the ten days that go with it."
Predictably, only Akane was truly upset at that pronouncement. "That's not fair! I could still win it!"
Shrugging, Nabiki turned to regard her little sister. "If that's how you feel Akane-chan, you can quit and go inside. I'm going to have to warn you though, Auntie is supporting this. As such, I'll have to warn you not to bother Ranma or interfere with this game while it's in progress."
Standing up in a huff, Akane turned for Nabiki instead of the door. "Tell the me truth here, why are you doing this?"
"To tell the truth, it's because I think it'll be fun. While a lot of this is to give you girls a chance to work things out between yourselves and Ranma, there are a lot of simpler ways to go about that. It doesn't really matter if anyone believes me, because I've basically promised to be nice to Ranma for the next month, and that will be all the proof you'll need."
"You think this is going to be fun?"
Smirking at Akane, Nabiki turned her smirk meaningfully towards Kasumi. "Hey, if you won't believe me, see how Kasumi feels about it eleven days from now, eh big sister?"
Avoiding Nabiki's gaze, Kasumi managed to avert a blush, though the accompanying bout of shyness still showed through. "Ano, I'm not sure I should play this game..."
Smirk in full force, Nabiki reminded everyone she was still a manipulative girl, bunny outfit and pink hair non-withstanding. "Really? Can't give it a chance for ten days? I'm surprised, you must dislike Ranma a lot if you can't stomach being nice to him for a week."
Unfortunately, Kasumi lost her battle with her shy romantic side as she was briefly imagining being 'nice-nice' to Ranma for over a week. "Nn-no, it isn't that..."
Grin quirking just a bit higher, the bunny went for the kill. "Oh, well I hope this isn't about you being too shy to play a bit of dress up and have some fun, 'cause I do have a cure for that you know."
"..."
"Mhmm, I had a feeling you'd give it a try." Smiling like the bunny that got the cat that got the canary, Nabiki casually spun on her shapely heels to face her little sister. "Anyways Akane-chan, you might want to stay a bit, at least to see me demonstrate this a bit more."
Turning on heel and strutting towards Ranma, the bunny-girl struck a pose and began modeling parts of her costume. "Now, my costume is a bunny outfit, which means my character's class is a bunny-girl martial artist. Bunny-girls are fairly specific, being mostly agile and fast and physically oriented, with three sub-classes specializing in martial arts, guns, and technology skills.
"Now, there is also a basic class, the school girl. No particular strengths there, but they can learn from a wide range of skills. Overall though it's weak, but it's a basic free class you can say learn magic with to practice for say unlocking the genie or miko outfits.
"Just as versatile, but much more powerful while still being free is the maid outfit, the catch being that to get it, you need a contract."
Turning on heel once more, Nabiki walked around to stand behind Ranma before kneeling and peeking over his shoulder. "Would you bring my character up and select that outfit for me?"
Squirming a bit and trying not to blush as the sexy bunny-girl draped herself over his back with her cheek rubbing against his neck, the young martial artist studiously concentrated on operating the control device instead of reacting to her.
As he had three fiancees, one blushing housewife in a skimpy island girl costume, and one normally psychotic girl that was currently a disturbingly pleasant dark elf watching him, it was entirely understandable why he might attempt to pretend the luscious bunny-girl on his shoulder didn't exist.
Looking up at the girls and grinning at the uncomfortably restrained looks of jealously, Nabiki helpfully explained it to them. "Now, just to show I'm serious, we'll go for the total service package, one month locked contract. In case it isn't obvious, there wasn't anything magical about the card game. Without this contract it would just have been my word that I'd be nice to him for the next month."
Heaving a happy sigh that somehow managed to sound mischievous, Nabiki lowered her chin to Ranma's shoulder, her voice dipping a bit lower with a tone Ranma considered dangerous. "Now that means I do what you say, if not I take a penalty. If I do a good job though, I get bonus points instead."
Of course, Ranma wasn't like most boys, in that he saw seductive girls as dangerous, and blade wielding violent maniacs as an interesting diversion that broke up the day to day monotony of life.
Akane Tendou was firmly in the latter category, yet was ironically why Ranma found naughty girls to be so scary. The reason for this was somewhat obvious as the tomboy was currently glaring at the bunny-girl nuzzling shamelessly into his shoulder. "So what, you just lose some measly points in some dumb game."
Hearing Akane take the bait, Nabiki couldn't help making Ranma squirm as she sighed into his back and squeezed him closer to her. It wouldn't do to make him too uncomfortable, but teasing the girls, Akane in particular, was proving more fun than she'd hoped for. She'd have thought what kind of fun she was intending to have would have been obvious, but ironically the girls were to busy trying to figure out her scheme to notice.
Smiling all too warmly at her little sister, Nabiki pulled back from Ranma before rising up on her knees to press her breasts into the back of his head."Ah, close but not quite. The penalties are just as real as the rewards. Penalty points earn interest, extend my contract automatically, and enact penalties. A minor one for instance might be locking me in my costume. In other words, you really don't want more contract than you can handle with this."
Still smiling at the girls, the bunny-girl was enjoying the looks the girls were giving her. Ukyou and Shampoo were still uncomfortably restraining their jealousy, though she figured the prospect of getting to do the same with Ranma was helping that self-restraint. If they managed to hold out she was planning on making it one of her next lessons as a reward for their good behavior.
Pulling herself back on task, Nabiki returned her attention back to Ranma, particularly the little gadget that was making this particular blend of fun possible. She did have to get her maid outfit and upgrade over with lest she spend too long with Ranma and one of the girls did boil over. "Now, how about a shorter skirt? Oh yeah, set bunny-girl as a locked sub-class. See, don't I look better with my ears. Oh, how about aqua colored eyes to go with my hair? Ohh, a uh, little bit more up top too. Aw c'mon, don't be shy, I'll let you know if you go too far."
Nodding as her virtual self obtained the kind of figure that would make her a popular model if she were interested in going that way, Nabiki was eager to get on to upgrading the rest of her virtual self, something she would need more points for. "Looking good, now let's see here, there was supposed to be some sort of point loan option, ah, there, Karmic Balance."
"Whoa, that gave you a lot of upgrade points."
"Mhmm, yeah, but look at my penalty bar now. I get a grace period to work off the debt before it starts earning interest, but that's still a lot...but this is to make up for all the stuff I did to you before, so it's okay if my contract gets extended a bit to make up for it. I do at least get a lot of points for the trouble, which is why I chose that option."
"uhm, that seems a bit much though..."
Feeling Ranma tense up and knowing he would baulk at making things tough on her, Nabiki was amused to be the one comforting him. "Ah, well you can lower it by picking some penalties. Let's see, requires heels to walk, that one isn't too bad as it enhances what I can do while wearing heels, and my costumes have heels. Let's see, give up control in these areas, and you can lock these. Ah, that one sounds fun. Mhmm, would you like me to be forced to do something, like call you Master?"
Blushing for a number of reasons now, Ranma was beginning to have certain suspicions about Nabiki. While there were more obvious instances, one of the things Nabiki had chosen for herself had a cartoon head shot of her putting a carrot to her lips to nibble on it. It wasn't anything he could put his finger on, as a bunny-girl nibbling a carrot was practically cliche, but the look of eyes-closed pleasure seemed to depict her as enjoying it a little too much. Thus, having a sneaky suspicion that asking what an 'oral fixation' was about would be very very bad luck, Ranma quietly tried to stay on safe subjects. "Uhm, that's okay...but uhm, this didn't really lower your penalty any."
Moaning quietly, Nabiki fought hard to restrain herself, to not rub herself on him too much, to keep her embrace at least somewhat friendly, and to definitely not start nibbling on his neck and ear. She had to take this nice and slow, and make sure everything stayed clean and simple tonight. Luckily thinking about her goals with this game renewed her will to do it right, allowing her to tone the purr she replied with to merely teasing levels. "Oh, it isn't an immediate pay-off, it just gives me more grace with it and it should be easier to get reduced. That penalty amount doesn't really have a number value anyways."
Taking a breath and centering herself, Nabiki turned to another surprisingly fun part to this, not that martial arts wouldn't have their uses. After all, if she was going to be hanging out with Ranma, she needed to at least be at the level where she could leap small buildings in high heels, and even kick butt while doing so. "Well then, how about you tweak my martial arts up a bit, and put the rest into improving my base stats? Ooh, is that a ki attack? That one looks good too. Well, that's a surprise, I've made it to the first level, guess that explains the new options. Need to upgrade my bunny outfit there. Ooooh, I do like that."
Taking one good last look at the spinning virtual image of her, Nabiki took the moment to pause thoughtfully. This, for her, would be the point of no return. Most obviously, apparent to anyone that was paying attention would be the contract she'd briefly explained to them, which would force her to follow through with her plans. Something much less obvious though was the thrill of power, and the abilities of her new form would make the basic bunny outfit pale in comparison.
Of course, she hadn't arranged all of this just to stop here.
Placing her thumb on the on-screen OK button, Nabiki waited for Ranma to thumb the Confirm button on the phone. "Alright then, let's do this."
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(Posted Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:12)
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