“So let me get this straight,” Akane said dubiously. “You want me to start a fire in the yard.”
“Right.”
“And then dump a bag of chestnuts in it.”
“Right again.”
“Chestnuts you asked Kasumi to buy immediately.”
“Well she was the only one home and I can’t stay solid near long enough to get ‘em.”
“And you are going to pull these chestnuts out of the fire without getting burned.”
“Well, more or less. I can’t actually grab ‘em.”
“Uh huh. Can you actually feel fire?”
“Yes,” Nabiki said, looking up from her manga.
Akane blinked. “How do you know that?”
Nabiki blushed. So did Ranma, but Akane couldn’t see that.
Akane shook her head. “I really don’t want to know.”
“You really don’t,” Nabiki confirmed with a lecherous grin.
Akane looked around for the invisible girl. “Ranma, you are such a pervert.”
Not for the first time, Ranma thanked his lucky stars that he didn’t fall into a spring that would give him a bashable cursed form. “It was her idea.”
Nabiki looked to Akane and then back to Ranma. “I think you broke her.”
Ranma sighed. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Absolutely,” Nabiki said with a nod. “She needs to be exposed to good clean healthy perversion.”
Unable to cope in her usual fashion, Akane fell back on her family’s secret technique and fainted with a thud worthy of her father.
Ranma sighed. “Nabs, think you could start that fire?”
“Sure.”
Unsurprisingly, the training went poorly. “You haven’t been burned once,” Nabiki said helpfully.
Ranma frowned and waved her hands through the fire easily. “That’s the easy part. Anyone can move fast enough to move through a candle; this is jus’ bigger so ya gotta move faster. The hard part’s gettin’ the chestnuts and gettin’ out in time.”
Nabiki frowned. “Could you try manifesting?”
“Ya mean goin’ solid?” Ranma frowned and shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.” Schooling her features she closed her eyes and meditated on being solid. After a few moments she felt ground beneath the grass she was crouched on and struck. “YEEEEOW!!”
Nabiki winced as her fiancée danced around, grabbing her burned hand and whimpering. “Okay, so manifesting slows you down too much?”
“I’d say so!” Ranma whined, sucking on her hand. It wasn’t helping as much as she hoped.
Nabiki walked over and firmly brought her hand out of her mouth to look it over. “Well, a little rest and a lot of energy and it should be all better.”
Ranma blinked and blushed. “Um, maybe later. I gotta keep up with this.”
Nabiki pouted and gave Ranma a light kiss on her burn. “Later, then,” she whispered huskily.
Back in the house, Akane groaned. Her pervert sense was tingling.
Nabiki watched Ranma burn herself again and winced. This time she managed to scatter a few of the nuts but from the girl’s expression that had as much to do with accepting the pain as it did speeding through it. In some ways, though, Ranma’s progress was considerable. Over the past few days the spirit had managed to manifest completely at will, although she couldn’t hold it for more than a few seconds and had serious issues with being naked and visible.
Akane’s ability to bash the visible pervert were part of that issue, Nabiki had no doubt.
“Groom. Have you mastered the Amaguriken?”
Nabiki and Ranma looked up to the shriveled Amazon radiating…Nabiki frowned. That wasn’t the slimy smug superiority she was expecting. If anything, Cologne was feeling…worried?
Cologne’s eyes locked on Nabiki’s for half a heartbeat and suddenly Nabiki wasn’t getting anything from the elder. Nabiki kept the scowl off her face. If I ever find out how she does that… Her unvoiced threat was cut short when she noticed Ranma and Cologne had a full audience.
Ranma was paying far less attention to Cologne’s emotions than she was to her own. “Ol’ ghoul…” she growled.
“Lookie lookie!” Cologne cackled, hopping down and dangling the rock necklace. “Here’s the anchor on that curse of yours!”
What happened next was no surprise to anyone, least of all Ranma. She lunged at the rock, Cologne pulled it away like she had all the time in the world and smacked Ranma’s outstretched hand. A blindingly fast exchange of blows left Ranma thwarted, and Cologne plucked the chestnuts from the flame before hopping back over the outer wall, cackling madly.
Tendo Soun narrowed his eyes at Cologne’s back. “Ranma,” he said with complete seriousness, “that’s some lady you’ve gotten mixed up with!”
“I gotta master this speed,” Ranma growled in response, glaring first at Cologne, then the traitorous fire. “Hey, she stole my nuts!”
“It’s for the best,” Akane offered. “It wasn’t working anyway.”
Ranma turned around to retort but stopped halfway. “Yeah rig- Akane? What’s with the getup?”
Akane looked over her kimono, then the matching outfits on her sisters. “The fair, remember?”
Ranma blinked cluelessly.
Nabiki giggled. “Baa~aaka. C’mon, you need a break. You’re barely even eating anymore!”
Soun frowned and looked towards the fire. “Absolutely! No training does any good if you run yourself to exhaustion first. You’ll come to the fair, get your mind off this craziness, and have a good hot meal.”
Akane choked.
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(Posted Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:40)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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