At the girl's question, Ranma shook his head. "I don't need anybody's permission to fight off people who bother me.
If he wanted to direct his time and energy, he'd rather find a worthier goal. As for Konoe, why bother?
"And," he said, "the people in this school annoy me. Helping people I don't like would be—"
He searched for an acceptable word, but couldn't find one better than what he started with.
"—insincere."
It was accurate, though.
After rejecting the girl's invitation, Ranma returned his attention to finishing lunch. His chopsticks were falling apart, and Ranma wondered if he should've sprung for more durable plastic ones rather than the dirt-cheap wood sticks he originally bought for cooking.
From the seat on the lunch table's other side, Ranma began hearing girlish sniffles, and as he continued to shovel boiled rice into his mouth, the sniffles turned into sobs.
Ranma could feel the heavy gazes of nearby students, while the girl continued to sob for a minute before stopping.
Ranma handed her a napkin.
He didn't know how real her sobs were, but either way, she deserved to cry for recruiting him so poorly.
The girl stared at the napkin in silence, but the next words came from a voice behind him.
"Well, if you're not going to join the disciplinary committee, then we won't tolerate your fighting."
Ranma swallowed his mouthful of rice, turned around, and gazed at Nanoha Takamichi in her white school uniform, which he noticed now also included a red disciplinary committee patch, the same patch that the girl on the other side of the table wore.
That patch hadn't been on her sleeve two days ago in the courtyard. Then again, her hand hadn't been bandaged back then either. It still was today.
Ranma's amused but disapproving eyes raked Nanoha up and down, until she felt uncomfortable enough to demand, "What?"
"You joined them, I see."
"Yes. And?"
"No, nothing." Ranma turned back to his lunch.
It made sense. He saw Nanoha's meddling tendencies from the first day, so he felt no surprise that she joined a club devoted to meddling.
Nanoha walked around the lunch table to stand in his line of sight again. She loomed over the girl—
Okay, now that there were two girls, he had to label the other one instead of calling her "the girl". She might have already introduced herself but Ranma didn't remember it, so Ranma put her picture on his mental corkboard and labeled it "Recruiter".
Err... not a girl-sounding label.
—over Recruiter's shoulder. "What's with that reaction?" Nanoha said. "Do you have a problem with me joining the disciplinary committee?"
Ranma lowered his eyes toward the compartment of his lunch box from where he was scooping rice. "Of course not. If you want to help others, what can I say against it? More power to you. Do your best."
Nanoha narrowed her eyes at what she probably thought was his sarcasm. "My best is what I'm doing," she said. "Again, if you don't join us, we're going to take you to the principal and have him reprimand you for all the injuries you've caused this week."
Ranma opened his mouth to remind her that the school already knew about those injuries and did nothing, but on Nanoha's cue, another five students with red sleeve patches appeared around Ranma, and he—
Ranma glanced up.
"Wait, you're all girls?"
—he was surrounded by gray skirts.
Ranma blinked. "So your committee is all girls? Good thing I didn't join you, then."
Kidding aside, he didn't see how they could drag him anywhere, since the lot of them were all rather tweedy.
"No, we're not all girls." Nanoha crossed her arms. "I just called them here because I know you're going to be difficult, but I don't think you'll resist girls like you would guys."
Ranma opened his mouth, then closed it and tapped his chin in thought.
"It's true," he said at last.
Nanoha smiled a small smile of triumph.
Ranma realized something. This was the first time he had seen her smile. While it wasn't the innocent smile he wanted her to show, it was still a rather nice smile to see.
Ranma put his chopsticks down. "What's with the rape face?"
Nanoha's smile folded like a paper crane.
Or maybe that was the impression it gave Ranma, and the way her unwrapped hand balled into a fist made Ranma worry she wanted to arrange his own face the same way. Ha. And why did he say those words? Because she hadn't earned triumph on him. Not even close.
"Just because I won't fight you," he said while the disciplinary committee girls glared at him in outrage, "doesn't mean you've won. For one thing, I should warn you that sending so many girls to subdue one guy who won't fight back will look just as embarrassing for your club as it will for me."
But before Nanoha or any of the girls Nanoha brought could retort, Recruiter spoke up. "Wait! We don't have time for this!"
Recruiter didn't seem to be crying anymore. Instead, she directed her words toward Nanoha and the rest of her peers in the disciplinary committee. "We're trying to win him to our side, remember? We need as many fighters as possible, so we can't afford to be on anyone else's bad side right now, especially someone who can fight as well as he can."
Ranma heard her words, but the committee's reason for recruiting him didn't interest him. He began packing up his lunch, because if the girls demanded a confrontation then he wouldn't have time later.
"This guy," said Nanoha to Recruiter, "will be just as much trouble if we go soft. I know you said there's more trouble coming, but while we have some time, we need to deal with him."
"We can't afford to bother anybody," said Recruiter. "Since he doesn't want to fight, we're better off leaving him alone."
Yeah, nothing he needed to hear. Ranma tuned out the discussion as he picked up his lunch box and moved to slip past the surrounding ring of girls.
Unfortunately, the five girls stood against him like a fragile and feminine wall, and he couldn't get past without also getting physical. Nor could he jump over them without attracting attention. He certainly didn't plan on persuading them to move, since talking with girls hasn't worked well lately.
But before he could focus his mind on the problem, Nanoha said, "Alright, then I guess we have to let him go."
Huh. Recruiter convinced her while Ranma wasn't listening. He didn't know how Recruiter did it so fast. Maybe it was a girl thing? Whatever, the outcome was what mattered.
Nanoha turned her burning glare toward him, but before she could speak again, a student ran yelling into the lunchroom.
"Hey! The suspended guys just got back, and they're already at each other's throats!"
Ranma was looking at Nanoha and Recruiter when he heard this news, so he saw the surprise on Nanoha's face and the ill resignation on Recruiter's. Both reactions were overshadowed by the other students in the cafeteria. The bulk of them sprang up noisily and stampeded towards the lunchroom doors.
Recruiter hurried out with that same ill look on her face, and the five girls Nanoha brought went with her. Nanoha lingered to glare at him some more.
Ranma gave her points for not succumbing to the rest of the room's herd mentality, but after a moment she stalked out all the same.
He didn't know why everybody was leaving so eagerly, but Ranma decided it had nothing to do with him. As far as he was concerned, he got through lunch without a problem, even if he had to annoy the disciplinary committee.
As the students left the room for whatever reason, Ranma looked down at his lunch box. He had already closed it up, so instead of opening it again to enjoy the sudden solitude, he went back to his own homeroom to finish his lunch there.
He didn't find peace in homeroom. A handful of his classmates at lunch without leaving the class, and today they were all staring out the windows, speculating in fearful mutters about what they saw.
Hmm. Although Ranma knew neither his classmates' interests nor their outlooks, and therefore knew nothing about why they'd be worried, he felt he should keep up with local news.
His homeroom was on the first floor, and it looked out into the school courtyard. In fact, Ranma hadn't even noticed the view before, because nothing pleasing sat outside to look at. He could daydream through a boring class just fine while staring into his textbook.
His desk was in the middle of the room, and as he sat on top of his desk with his lunch, Ranma swung his gaze toward the windows.
Outside, kids were fighting.
And that's it? A fight didn't seem very noteworthy. The kids in his homeroom could see fights every day just by watching him.
Ranma continued to eat while his classmates fearfully ooh-ed and aah-ed at whatever they found so interesting.
He found his rice to be rather bland. Sure, he never made plain rice fancier than it should be, but if he had to bring his own meals then maybe he should garnish it with something. Fry it, perhaps.
A rock smashed into one of the windows with a loud crack. It didn't break through the glass, but it shocked the students and drew Ranma's attention in that direction again.
From his vantage point on top of his desk at the center of the room, he watched the fight progress for a few moments.
Pff.
Maybe he was too far away, but the fight outside was as boring as his classes. He could see a dozen kids with red sleeve patches, versus many more without. The patched kids fought to keep the unpatched kids from moving further past the gate into the courtyard, but plenty of unpatched kids already stood inside the courtyard. Those were the ones throwing stuff.
An entire group of bystanders seemed to cower in the middle of the fight, trying not to draw attention. The lunchtime courtyard crowd, if that's who they were, didn't seem to be fighting.
It was just a brawl, and in the midst of it, Ranma could follow Nanoha's white hairbows.
The fighters without disciplinary committee patches were fighting with sticks and basic weapons, while the patched committee members Ranma saw were empty-handed, even Nanoha. She must've not brought her sword, since that was against school rules, but Nanoha seemed to fight well enough without it. She wasn't giving an ass-kicking, but she wasn't receiving one.
The unpatched kids, probably from some of the delinquent cliques Konoe talked about, weren't focused on the committee. They seemed to spend just as much time kicking around the students cowering on the ground.
That wasn't nice, Ranma thought.
Besides the three sides, Ranma couldn't see anyone else. So the kids in the lunchroom didn't run outside to watch the fight? Running away was better than running toward, but the evacuation was still a herd response that Ranma couldn't approve of.
Ranma watched Nanoha in the distance. He knew her a little, so her movement held his attention more, but while her unarmed skill was good enough to fight with, it was inefficient. Melee didn't look like her best environment, but of course an injured hand couldn't be helping.
"Hey, Saotome," said a guy at the window. Ranma didn't remember his name, but then he didn't remember any names in his class. "Why don't you go out there and help them?"
Ranma looked over at the guy who interrupted his train of thought. It was the same guy who ate near him in the lunchroom on the first day of school.
Umm, what's-his-face.
Ranma found the guy's question a little weird. Why would he, Ranma, be the right person to help? But first things first. "Them? Who's them?"
"The kids who're caught in the middle, duh! Who else would I be talking about?"
"Okay." Ranma shrugged, and moved to his real question. "Where are the teachers who're supposed to take care of this? If a fight's going on, shouldn't they come out and deal with it?"
For that matter, where was their homeroom teacher?
Ranma looked around, but since he knew the teacher usually left for lunch, he wasn't surprised by the man's absence. Still, surely the staff would stop the fighting before he, a student, had to act.
"Don't you get it yet?" said the guy. "The teachers are never around to deal with fights among the students. We can't depend on them."
But Ranma had seen teachers deal with problem kids. The teachers did act when they were there. Were they just not around? And nobody told them about the fight? Huh. When Konoe said this school was understaffed, he wasn't kidding. How understaffed do you have to be so that kids can brawl in broad daylight, in front of the school no less, and no adult is available to notice?
Maybe the teachers all hid in a bunker beneath the school from the dumbass kids they dealt with.
"Well," said Ranma, "that's what you have the student council disciplinary subcommittee for, right? They seem to be on top of things."
"Are you nuts?" said the guy. "You think they'll make anything better? They're no better than the thugs they're fighting!"
Ranma sat up a bit straighter. Now this was new. "You mean nobody likes the disciplinary guys any more than I do?"
"Hell no we don't care about them. The disciplinary committee just makes everything worse by pissing off the bullies, which makes things miserable for regular kids like us. Everybody stays away from them, especially when they act like they're on duty."
Ranma looked around and saw no disagreement upon the faces around the room, so it seemed this was a widespread opinion. This opinion was one-sided, but even so it came from a neutral bystander with more experience in school politics, and that had some value.
"Okay," said Ranma, "if you want me to help, you'll have to give me the story."
The guy looked a bit put out at having to explain, but he didn't stop talking. "What's going on right now is that the bullies and the committee had a big stink last semester over territory, and a bunch of people on both sides were suspended. They're just coming back to school right now and clashing again."
Wait, thought Ranma. Didn't that exact same thing happen yesterday?
Hmm. Must be ongoing.
"And what's the problem," asked Ranma, "with fighting as soon as they come back? It sounds like a good time to do whatever they have to do."
"Because it's horrible for everybody else. The disciplinary committee is made up of former troublemakers, so they don't care if the normal guys are hurt as long as the complaints stay quiet. That's why we never go to them for help."
Oh? Ranma didn't think the disciplinary committee agreed. As far as he could tell, the Recruiter girl seemed to believe in the ideal of helping others while she hawked it, and Nanoha probably wouldn't want an uncaring image.
Then again, Nanoha had people in the club to support her, even if nobody she helped liked her efforts. Hell, the first day she was trying to help Wrinkles, who didn't appreciate it. She already had experience with that.
"Then what's the point of me going outside?" said Ranma. "The normal kids wouldn't like me stirring up the delinquents either, so my contribution wouldn't be appreciated."
"Because you're a fighter and you're not attached to any of the cliques here. You're strong enough to do something about all this stupid fighting. We're just sick of it. We want to get through school without all the abuse."
Ranma found that reason suspicious and more than a little self-serving. "You want me to be your hero and clean up this mess for you? If it bothers you normal guys at this school so much and you're in as much agreement as you make it sound, why don't you do something about it yourselves?"
"What can we do? We're just average kids. We can't fight all the bullies."
That attitude was faintly disgusting, but Ranma didn't care about the students at this school nearly enough to try convincing them to change it, so as tempted as he was, he didn't point out that the normal kids outnumber everybody else, or call the guy in front of him a coward.
Gah, was there a vending machine around here? He should've brought something to drink. Ranma wondered if he should go buy milk from the lunchroom, since it was empty of students and had no lunch lines.
Get a drink, or go out and deal with the fighting outside. Huh. What a choice.
Ranma pulled a 500-yen coin out of his pocket and flipped it into the air. It fell to the floor, displaying a picture of branches and leaves on the small exposed face.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:47)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.