Akane slowly opened her eyes to the sound of someone knocking on her door, and smiled to find her vision obscured by Ranma’s red hair. It really happened, she thought contentedly.
“Akane? Ranma?” came Kasumi’s voice. “It’s time to get up. You’ll need to clean up before school.”
What! Akane glanced up at the alarm clock on her headboard, then groaned at the time. “Thanks, Kasumi, I’m up, we’ll be down in a minute!” she called out, then gently shook the shoulder of the girl spooned back against her. “Come on, Ranma, time to get up,” she reluctantly murmured, and the naked redhead stirred, then sat up, blanket falling to her waist, and stretched with a yawn. Ranma looked around, then down at Akane gazing appreciatively at the bountiful assets her actions had revealed.
Blushing slightly, Ranma smiled back. “Uh, good morning?” she hesitantly asked, and Akane’s smile broadened into a grin.
“A very good morning, indeed,” she purred, and Ranma’s blush deepened. “Still,” Akane continued with a sigh, “we don’t have time for it to be as good as it could be. Let’s get to the furo.”
“Sure, you go first,” Ranma offered, but Akane shook her head.
“No time, we’ll have to use it together.” And I wonder if big sister timed it that way on purpose?
“But, I’ll be a guy,” Ranma protested.
Akane shrugged. “It isn’t like I haven’t seen you naked as a guy before. Besides, we’ll be getting clean, not having fun — though now that I think of it, you’ll be a girl for the scrub down. I’ll do your back — and front — if you’ll do mine,” she added, leering a bit, and Ranma nodded happily.
Kasumi looked up from her seat on the floor at the table as Akane and Ranma, once again a pigtailed boy, walked into the family room. “You’re a little late, Nabiki’s already left,” the eldest Tendo sister said as the pair joined her at the table, and the pair blushed slightly.
“Uh, we had ta clean up a bit,” Ranma said, and Akane’s blush deepened as Kasumi sternly suppressed a sudden urge to giggle.
“Well,” Kasumi said serenely, “I’m sure that the two of you working together were able to speed things up.” < i>Odd, I thought it was Nabiki that liked to mix things up.
Now Ranma’s blush had caught up with Akane’s, and he quickly glanced around looking for a distraction, then frowned. “Where’s Mom?” he asked, and Kasumi stiffened.
“Ranma, your mother … she … she’s not here,” Kasumi said hesitantly.
Ranma froze for a long moment, then forced himself to relax. “She’s not coming back, is she?” he asked. “Did she throw me out of the family on her way out?”
Unable to face the pain hiding behind Ranma’s relaxed expression, Kasumi looked down at her clasped hands. “Auntie Nodoka said she’d be staying at a hotel until her home is repaired, but said nothing about declaring you ronin.”
Ranma shrugged. “Huh, I guess that’s a p-plus,” he said, his voice cracking slightly at the end, and Akane reached out to pull him into a one-armed hug.
“I’m sure she’ll be back,” she said comfortingly, and Kasumi quickly nodded agreement.
“Your mother loves you,” Kasumi asserted, “but your decisions, both to live as a girl and to ... to become Akane’s lover, hit her hard. I’m sure once she’s had time to reconcile herself to what you’ve done she’ll be back.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Ranma said, then with forced lightheartedness added, “C’mon, Akane, let’s eat, we’re gonna be late for the morning beatdown if we don’t hurry. Just think, in a couple a’ weeks we won’t have to deal with Kuno every morning!”
Akane smiled at Yuka and Sayuri as the two sat down beside her, bentos in hand, then her gaze returned to Ranma, her smile softening, where he was sitting under a different tree with his usual two hangers-on.
“So you finally caught him, did you?” Yuka asked with a knowing smile. “Or should I say ‘her’?”
Akane’s eyes darted back to her friends. “What makes you say that?” she asked with an attempt at nonchalance, and her friends giggled.
“Girl, you’ve been glowing all day, and you keep staring off at nothing,” Sayuri said. “In fact, you look a lot like my big sister the day after she finally caught her boyfriend. To us, that means you got laid last night by someone important to you that you’ve been chasing, and the only person that describes is a certain redhead. So, are we right?”
Blushing faintly, Akane nodded. “Mostly. Actually, Ranma was the one that got laid, in her girl form. More, she’s agreed to live as a girl!”
Her friends’ eyes widened at that. “Wow! That’s a lot more than we expected. Have you told anyone else about it yet?” Sayuri asked.
“Yes, Ukyo, the Amazons, and our families. But we aren’t going to make a big deal out of it with anyone else — we won’t lie about it, and after the school year ends we won’t hide it, but we won’t be ‘in your face’ about it, either.” The other two girls nodded, looking somewhat wistful, but Akane frowned slightly.
Catching the frown, Yuka asked, “So what’s the fly in the ointment?”
For a moment it seemed that Akane wasn’t going to answer, but finally she sighed and shrugged. “It hasn’t been all good. The fathers objected, of course, but Happosai sided with us and has taken them off on an extended training trip. But Ranma’s mother … didn’t take it very well, and that hit Ranma harder than I expected.”
Sayuri shook her head. “No surprise there, you know Yuka’s mother is a big reason we’re so careful. But that’s not all of it, girlfriend, something’s got you worried, not just sad. So what’s up?”
“Nothing, really — at least, I don’t think so. It’s just that … well … there’s a ceremony Ranma has to go through to get Shampoo off her back, and I think there’s something they aren’t telling us — something Happosai knows about, and isn’t telling us, either.”
“Kitchen Destroyer smart girl, sometimes,” said Xian Pu from the tree above the three girls, and the purple-haired girl dropped down beside them. Yuka and Sayuri flinched back, and Akane rose to her feet, fists clenched.
“What do you want?” she snarled, and Xian Pu stepped back, hands raised.
“Shampoo no want to fight. Will Kitchen Destroyer and Ai — New Girl be home in bedroom tonight?”
Slowly, Akane nodded.
“Good!” Xian Pu said. “Leave window open, Shampoo be there, talk then!” And with that, even as Ranma ran up to join them she leaped back up into the tree, with only a slight rustling of new leaves to mark her passage out of the tree and over the wall around school grounds.
“So what did she want?” the pigtailed boy asked suspiciously, and Akane shrugged.
“It looks like we’re getting a visitor tonight.”
Catching herself glancing up from her homework yet again to look out her and Ranma’s open bedroom window at the gathering darkness, Akane finally gave up trying to study and leaned forward with her arms braced on her desk and simply stared out into the dusk. “What do you think is keeping her?” she asked.
“Dunno,” Ranma replied from where she lay on their bed’s fresh sheets, without looking up from the history book she was trying to read. “Busy night at the Cat Café, can’t get Mousse to leave her alone, a lot of deliveries … could be a lot of things. She’ll get here when she gets here.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I just — Aaah!” At the sudden appearance of Xian Pu’s face directly in front of her, Akane tried to spring backwards, tangled herself up in her chair, and a chuckling Ranma rolled off the bed to catch her lover before she could crack her head on the floor and found herself keeping a furious Akane from attacking their laughing visitor.
A few minutes later Ranma finally got Akane calmed down, and from where the two sat on their bed she asked, “So, what’s so important ya wanted ta meet us in secret?”
A still-chuckling Xian Pu went instantly serious. “It … it about ritual for New Girl to become Amazon ally,” she said quietly, and Ranma’s eyebrows rose at her new name while Akane erupted.
“I knew it! It’s a trap, that bitch is trying to lock Ranma in guy form, isn’t she?”
“No!” a glaring Xian Pu, almost shouted, and Ranma gripped Akane’s shoulder.
“Easy, girls, remember, this is supposed ta be a secret meeting. So, Shampoo,” the redhead asked, turning to the girl seated at Akane’s desk, “if it isn’t a trap, what’s the problem?”
A tense Xian Pu looked down at the floor. “Everything Great-grandmother say was true, but not whole truth. Alanya was great warrior, great sorceress, great-hearted person, but … not human. She was demon,” Xian Pu whispered. “She reason Amazons not consider all demons evil, kill on sight.”
She fell silent, and when it became obvious she wasn’t going to say anything else, Ranma finally asked, “So why didn’t the ol’ ghoul tell us, instead of you sneaking over here to tell us yourself?”
“Because she afraid that if she tell, New Girl would refuse to become battle sister, ally. Then Shampoo have to kill New Girl or die trying, or become servant of all other Amazons for life, or leave village forever if not willing. Besides, probably nothing happen but New Girl get wet.”
“So why are you telling us now?” Akane asked suspiciously, and Xian Pu looked up briefly to glare at her formal rival before looking back down at the floor.
“Because not right to let New Girl risk becoming demon without telling first,” Xian Pu said quietly. “Great-grandmother say Elder need to balance honor and need, sometimes act without honor but not lose love of honor, but Shampoo no can do that.” With a half-laugh/half-sob, she added, “Even if New Girl still become battle sister, ally, Shampoo have to give up dream to be Elder, be War Leader instead, between battles train warriors, train children when too old. Would be good life.”
She fell silent, and for a few minutes the pair on the bed simply stared at the tense, miserable girl huddled on the chair, barely recognizable as the usual bubbly-cheerful girl they knew. Finally, the redhead got up from the bed and walked over to put her hand on Xian Pu’s shoulder. “Shampoo, thanks for tellin’ me. And don’t worry, I’m still willing to go through with the ceremony, you won’t have to become a slave or outcast.”
Xian Pu slumped in relief, explosively releasing the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, then leaped to her feet and glomped a surprised Ranma. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she exclaimed, then when she calmed down smiled wistfully at Akane over Ranma’s shoulder. “Kitchen Destroyer very lucky girl,” she said, and Akane smiled back.
“I certainly think so,” she replied.
Xian Pu finally released an almost panicking Ranma, then jumped up onto the desk and moved to the window. “And now Shampoo have to get back to work, Great-grandmother will be angry at how long delivery take. Good night!” and she was gone.
In the next room, Nabiki slowly removed and unplugged her headphones and put them back in their secret compartment in the floor, then just as slowly got ready for bed, turned out the light, and getting into bed stared up at the darkened ceiling. Sleep was a long time coming that night.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:55)
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.