Blushing at her own daring, Hotaru stepped closer to Ranma (he’d let her go when he fell on his face) and slipped an arm around his waist, prompting him to wrap his arm around her again. She smiled and added this moment to her rapidly growing collection of happy memories with his face on them.
If she was still feeling a bit weak and wanted his support he sure wasn’t going to say nothin’. This beat Amazon glomps hands down and was a possible second to being hugged by his mom. ‘It’s a martial artist's duty to help the weak and I bet it’s a boyfriend’s job to help his girlfriend and if it ain’t then it oughta be.’ He was quick to excuse his behavior in his own mind, sure that since she wasn’t a family member then this was either perverted or unmanly in some way since he was beginning to enjoy it so much.
She was just about to ask what they were chasing his tentacled friend for, if they weren’t trying to kill him, when her Senshi communicator vibrated in her pocket. Her brief urge to ignore it was quickly squashed by her loyalty to her friends.
“Um... I have to use the bathroom. Will you wait for me? It may take a little while.” She said nervously, hoping it wasn’t going to be something that would take a lot of time and ruin her first date, ever. She wasn’t sure if she had to trap him for another date or if she could just ask him, since she’d already caught him. Dating was turning out to be a lot more complicated then she’d thought it’d be. ‘I wonder if this why they say it’s a jungle in the dating world. I never realized traps and moose would be involved.’
“Sure.” Ranma replied, letting her go with a little reluctance on both their parts. Friendly physical contact with the opposite sex was a bit rare for both of them, her because of her reputation for being weird or dangerous because of her healing ability and the whole Mistress Nine fiasco and him because any contact with the opposite sex was usually accompanied by either lust or violence.
He leaned against the wall outside the restroom, figuring it wouldn’t take too long, as she was the only person he could sense in the immediate area. With as many girls as he knew, he was used to waiting while they did mysterious things, that took almost an hour and half a dozen girls to accomplish, in the bathroom. Not that he’d ever gotten curious enough to check or nothin’ and he’d certainly not fled when he’d heard the way girls talk when there were no guys around. ‘And they call guys perverts. Sheesh!’
Things were going so well that he was beginning to get nervous. He had made a friend who wasn’t looking to marry or kill him. Heck, she wasn’t even trying to grope him and even Akane’s friends did that when Akane wasn’t looking. All she had asked for was the occasional hug and truthfully... sometimes he could use a hug himself.
The semi-familiar tingle of transformation magic and the alteration in the feeling of Hotaru’s aura was almost a relief. He’d been waiting for something strange to happen and a magic field strong enough to be felt outside the restroom fit the bill. If it was strange enough he figured he could hit his weirdness quota for the day and he might even get to watch Naruto with Hotaru later without interruption. It was only his ingrained fear of entering a women’s restroom that delayed him long enough for the door to open and a girl to pop out.
“Excuse me citizen, the girl in the restroom said her stomach was acting up, so she’d have to postpone going to the movies with you, but that she really wanted to go with you, so she gave me this card with her name and phone number on it, so you could call her later and see about going to a later show. I have to go deal with a youma now, bye!”
Ranma just stared at the strangely dressed girl as she shoved a card into his hand and ran off. If he hadn’t been scanning for trouble and familiar with magical transformations, as well as able to feel auras, he might have bought it, but having felt Hotaru change and recognizing the outfit from one of Kasumi’s newspaper clippings... ‘I’m dating a magic girl?’
Shrugging, he pocketed the card and followed her. He was suppose to protect her from bullies and demons were bullies, right? Invoking the umi-sen-ken he faded from sight. Flitting from shadow to shadow, just in case the Thieves’ Cloak was ineffective against magic girls or demons, he followed her.
He wasn’t sure what the boyfriend of a magic girl was supposed to do, but he knew one thing for sure, ‘If the girls see her transformed like that, they are definitely going to have problems with me dating her. Cute and harmless is fine, but her transformation is a bit like Hinako’s and they aren’t going to like that at all!’
Taking in her new form, he had to admit she’d filled out nicely. She hadn’t filled out like Hinako did, but she’d gained at least five years of growth, hitting beautiful solidly and just missing sexy by a hair. ‘Still a bit thin though and she needs some more color. Hmmm...’
Carefully examining her aura, as she stopped to catch her breath against a dumpster, he noticed there was a slight deterioration effect, much like Hinako’s, but at a much slower rate and without the ki-pathways needed to absorb ki from an outside source. ‘It’s like her magic is nibbling away at her ki. That can’t be healthy. Hinako can absorb ki from other people to make up for the loss and Happosai got to her while she was young enough to permanently alter her pathways so she’d have a younger form to go into, so she wouldn’t lose so much energy in between drains, but Hotaru’s too old to do that to. I’m gonna have to feed her ki somehow until I can figure this thing out. Now how the hell do you feed someone ki?’
Ranma’s mind hammered away at the problem franticly, as his body slid through the shadows with the ease of long practice.
The Inner Senshi, plus Saturn, gathered in an alley just a couple of blocks from Statue Park.
“I hope this is important, Moon. I had a date with a really cute ice skater. I had to change in the bathroom and slip him a card saying the girl in the restroom had given it to me, because she was feeling sick and he was to call her later.” Venus complained, sure that no one else had, had to follow one of the many ridiculous escape plans Mercury had come up with.
Saturn wisely kept silent, knowing better than to mention her new boyfriend in front of the man-hungry inners, especially with the way Venus and Jupiter had begun to intensify their own efforts to catch one recently.
“I’m sure...” Mars began, only to be interrupted.
“You don’t understand! He was a sure thing. I’m the senshi of Love, dammit! And if I don’t get some soon, then the next dark general or evil prince we run across is going to find out some of the new uses I’ve devised for my ‘love me chain’ and you can purify him after I’ve finished forcing him to have his evil way with me!”
The other senshi leaned away from the ranting blond.
Jupiter started to say something only to have Venus pin her to the wall of the alley with her arms on either side of the startled girl and her face just a hands span away. “Not a word, Cutey! With every day that goes bye that final option we talked about seems more and more attractive and so do you!”
“But we aren’t thirty yet!” The brunette protested.
Venus stepped away from her and seemed to regain her bearings. “We turn thirty or thirty days goes bye, it’s all the same to me. I’m not feeling that picky at the moment.”
Moon opened her mouth to say something, but Venus didn’t even look back before interrupting her. “You don’t get to say anything, Moon. You have the perfect boyfriend for a magic girl and you won’t share!”
The predatory air the ranting blonde put out made Ranma glad he was well hidden. His eyes lit up as she started ranting about the ‘perfect boyfriend for a magic girl’. ‘Thank, Kami! I was afraid I was going to have to wing it.’ Ranma took notes, happy to have at least one problem solved.
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(Posted Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:13)
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