Ranma went into the kitchen and found Miu finishing the preparations for lunch. As expected, she was dressed in her usual fighting clothes underneath an apron with a cat’s paw on it. It was the usual lunch of fish and rice, with a side of pickles that could be added for flavoring.
As soon as he walked through the door, Miu turned around and smiled in a way that seemed to brighten up the room. “Hello Ranma, lunch will be ready in a few minutes.”
“Hey Miu, let’s go to China,” Ranma said. “Today. Right after lunch.”
The unexpected statement made Miu blink. She wondered what brought the sudden rush on. They were supposed to be heading out tomorrow morning as soon as the sun was up. Although, she couldn’t find a good reason not to argue with the change of plans besides that it wasn’t what they agreed on before hand. Honoka was agreeable to the light amount of training and work the masters were putting her through, and she had showed good enough cooking skills when it came to making breakfast, even if her eggs were a little salty for Miu’s taste.
After turning off the stove, she turned around to look give Ranma her full attention. “Why?”
Ranma broke eye contact, as if everything else in the room suddenly became more interesting that Miu was at the moment. “Well… uh, it’s just… we should probably get an early start when we leave Japan!” Ranma told her in a way that it was obvious he just of it on the spot. “We can probably make it to China by dark if we start swimming when the sun comes up and switch off when one of us gets tired.”
Miu crossed her arms and looked down at the floor to think. The lie was obvious. It was one of the things she loved about Ranma. His guilt seemed to get in the way of lying so much that even though he did it, it was so obvious that he was doing it that Miu barely considered it lying at all. “Well if you don’t want to tell me the real reason…” she paused.
But, Ranma had a point. Since they weren’t taking a boat to China… well they had an inflatable raft to carry their stuff, but that was different, it would meant they could only go anywhere when it was daylight for fear of being turned around or sent too far off of their set course.
There was another good reason to leave a bit early and spend the night down by the ocean: sex. The money they had got from turning that maniac into the police more than made up for the cost of a room for a night. Miu hoped she wasn’t turning into a hussy or something, but… she really enjoyed sex with her husband, really enjoyed it. Maybe it came from a harsh life on the road where comforts were few and just a littlest of them was heavenly, or the deeper connection that came from sex with a person she loved after having only the barest of friendships in her early childhood… or maybe it was just new a and enjoyable experience mixed with the taste of forbidden fruit.
Whatever the reason, Miu liked sex, and the promise of that added to Ranma’s reasoning, plus his real reason to go that he was hiding that made him bring the whole thing up in the first place was good enough for her.
“Well, if you don’t want to tell me… that’s okay, we can leave after lunch,” she agreed.
Ranma blinked at the sudden agreement. “Oh… okay.” He hadn’t really been expecting that. “Um, where’s Honoka?”
The question made Miu look away, a little embarrassed at the answer. “She went to the hot spring with Shigure for… uh, special training.”
Meanwhile, at the aforementioned place…
“After building up a light sweat… you need to massage them,” Shigure explained to the girl sitting in the water next to her. “In the bath is the best place.”
Honoka looked down at her chest, and then over to Shigure’s. With the evidence in front of her, Honoka couldn’t find much room to argue. “Is that how…” Honoka blushed. “How yours, and Renka, and Miu got that big?”
For a moment Shigure was silent, she wasn’t quite sure how she could explain it. That really wasn’t how the martial artists got their figures, although Shigure was pretty sure Kensei knew what he was talking about with his methods of… beauty enhancement. For Shigure, Miu, and Renka, they owed their figures to ki development. She wasn’t sure as to the ‘why and how’ of the thing, but a side effect of developing their inner strength was a figure supermodels would kill for. The more ki they had, the bigger they were. For people like Renka… and Ranma when she first showed up, that meant huge breasts and a slender waist from plenty of exercise. For girls that went even further like Shigure, Miu, and Ranma after the elder’s training, a fine ass, even firmer breasts, and nice legs were added to the end product.
“Not exactly,” she finally said.
Luckily for the ninja, Honoka just took that to mean she’d be getting the refined method that gave more bang for her buck.
After lunch, which Kensei and Shigure were suspiciously absent from, Ranma and Miu went off to go pack. They went back to the storage room that had begun to serve its original purpose once again, and began to sort through everything needed.
Miu looked down at the checklist as she looked around to confirm they had everything. “Okay we’ve got food, water bottles, inflatable raft, climbing equipment?” She stopped to look up to Ranma. “Why do we need climbing equipment?”
Although he thought the explanation obvious, Ranma managed to keep the snide remarks out of his answer. “Well, Jusenyko is in the mountains. It would be faster if we went strait through in some places instead of going around.”
In response, Miu reached over to pick up a block of stone Akisame was planning to use for his one of his statues and held it in front of Ranma. She poked a hole in it with her finger, and another, and another, and then tore off a chunk in a different area to create an obvious handhold.
Ranma cleared his throat in embarrassment. “What about if we fall, or something?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he shook his head. “Never mind.”
They really didn’t have to worry about that. Both of them knew several techniques that would keep them from taking damage no matter what height they fell from. If they even reached the ground before grabbing something that is. Although Miu couldn’t fly, she could easily redirect her course in midair with the proper expulsion of ki easily enough.
“Cooking utensils… check,” Miu said as she continued. They were a bit smaller than she was used to, but more than enough to cook for two. “Map, compass, clothes, soap, waterless hand wash-”
Ranma frowned. “Why are we taking so much of this junk?” He picked up the deluxe sized box of the stuff and looked it over.
“Because China is a big place, and if we’re going to be traveling together then I don’t want only to be able to clean myself for the few short days we’re near a river,” Miu told him with a frown as she checked deodorant and detergent off the list. “Tent check, sleeping bags check, Japanese to Chinese dictionaries check.” She would have to thank Niijima for talking her into getting the electronic version of those things, it was much faster than looking words up in a book.
Right as Miu finished making sure they had the last of their supplies, the door slid open behind them. Akisame poked his head in and looked around. “Well if the two of you are heading off right now, I should give this to Ranma now. Miu, make sure he uses them every day.”
He handed opened the door a little further, and handed his student a large bag. “Hey, if you had another present you should have just given it to me at the-ugh,” Ranma grunted when he felt the unexpected weight inside it. Then he opened it and found out what was inside. “Training gear! What the heck kind of present is this?”
“It’s not a present,” Akisame explained evenly. “The minute you’re away from this dojo you’ll start slacking off. You don’t really have time to properly train of you want to go to China, but this will at least keep your body from declining in performance. I didn’t spend three years tearing down your muscle structure and re-sculpting it to let you just let you ruin my work.” Even if he did training while away, without proper supervision there was a good chance that the wrong type of muscles would be built up. Akisame didn’t like taking such chances.
“Stop talking about me like I’m a statue!” Ranma exclaimed.
Miu just smiled and tilted her head a bit. “I’ll be sure he keeps himself in shape Akisame.”
Tears ran down Ranma’s eyes as he looked over to Miu. “You’re cruel.”
“So you were planning to slack off,” Akisame reasoned. He nodded to himself, then left and closed the door.
A few minutes later, Ranma and Miu made it to the gate. Both had packs on their backs with bedrolls on top. Miu’s contained their tent, while Ranma’s had most of their food and cooking supplies. Each one had a duffle bag for their clothes, and a third for each one held various other things.
“Okay everyone, behave. I’ll see you in about a month,” Miu said as she waved goodbye.
Akisame sighed and shook his head. Did she have to say it like they were a kindergarten class or something? Not everyone here was a accident waiting to happen.
“Bye bye! Bring Apachai present!”
“Bye Big Boobs!” Honoka called out from her place on Apachai’s shoulders.
From her place she was hanging down in the tree, Shigure just waved.
“Good… Good…“ Hayato raised his hand, and then stopped to clench it into a fist. “No… no I can’t do it!” His eyes glowed with his gathering power and he took a stance. “Ranma, I want to remake on our deal and have a rematch. This time I’ll fight you with ten percent!”
Mustering up all his bravery, Ranma let out a girlish scream and quickly ran away.
Again, Akisame sighed, and then headed it the back yard. It looked like it was time to put that bomb shelter he made in the back yard to use again.
“OH NO YOU WON’T!” Miu shouted before she jump kicked him in the chin to knock the older man down, and then quickly ran after her husband.
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(Posted Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:25)
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