The next morning Nabiki rolled out of bed in her typically unenthusiastic way and proceeded to the family room with her typically zombified gait.
“Hey, Nabs!”
The semiconscious ex-mercenary Ice Queen attempted to glare at the absurdly perky source of her exhaustion. “Mraph.”
Ranma blinked and cocked her head. “You okay?”
Nabiki yawned and sat down heavily. “Tired,” she growled out.
Ranma made a noise of understanding and nodded. “Yeah that fair was really late.”
Nabiki made an effort to keep from falling on her face. “I’d say it was after the fair that did it, darling,” she said sarcastically, jabbing the spirit with a finger.
“After? Ummm…” Ranma’s face scrunched in concentration. “The walk home? I offered ta carry ya.”
“Oh my. Wouldn’t that have been very odd, Ranma?” Kasumi asked from the kitchen.
“Right, and it was after we got home,” Nabiki growled.
Ranma held up a finger. “Oh, ya mean the-erk.”
“Right, the ‘erk.’ All three times. How the hell can you eat so much?”
“Ungrateful boy!” Instantly there was a Genma in the room. “How dare you find free food and not offer any to your deserving father?”
Ranma was actually shocked silent. It wasn’t that she couldn’t believe that Genma was that stupid, she learned after the Neko-ken that lies and delusions were her old man’s bread and butter. No, what shocked her was that the sheer number of responses to that particular outburst left her unable to decide on a course of action. Remind him of her dietary needs? Question his deservingness? Suggest that the meal was not free but bought with love and respect? /Insult the old man or compliment Nabiki, how can I choose? I must have them both!/
Nabiki faced no such deliberative conundrum and quickly scrawled an address on a scrap of paper. “If you want what Ranma got, Uncle Saotome,” she drawled, “I would suggest going here and asking for ‘Honey.’” She folded the paper and held it on the table under her hand. “One thousand yen.”
Genma produced a badly-mangled yen note. “Deal.” He snatched up the bit of paper and was gone before Nabiki had pocketed her profits.
“That was nice of you, Nabiki,” Kasumi said cheerfully as she set the table. “I didn’t know you had a friend named Honey.”
“I don’t,” Nabiki said with a smirk. Fleecing a deserving mark always made her feel better. “But then again, I don’t know any professional prostitutes by name.”
Ranma started laughing while Kasumi merely blushed. “Oh my!”
Nabiki shrugged and got to work on her own breakfast. “I don’t think anyone else would want to give him what Ranma gets.”
“What does Ranma get?” Soun asked, walking in himself.
“You don’t want to know, Daddy.”
Soun blinked at his middle daughter in confusion, wondering just what he had missed.
-----The Amazons of the Nekohanten turned to the sound of the front door slamming open with enough force to crack the glass. Their eyes were treated to the fading, blurry after-image of a dematerializing redhead. “Where’s the ghoul?” Ranma growled into the sudden silence.
The answer came with a slurp from the one person too busy with her ramen to give notice to the rude spirit-girl-boy. “Giving up already?” Cologne asked calmly. “I was expecting another sneak attack.”
Ranma floated over to the old Amazon slowly, keeping her senses open. The other Amazons were radiating surprise, concern, anticipation. A few seemed to have an idea where she was; Ranma quietly marked them as skilled and dangerous. Cologne, however, was a void. Ranma read her as well as she could in her human form – the crone was /good/ at masking her feelings. “Who said I was giving up?”
Cologne almost sighed as she dodged the first strike. Calmly getting closer, reading her body language, quiet tone. Ranma may have well had been screaming “I am going to take a swing at you the moment I stop talking.” Her son-in-law had much to learn.
Of course, the point of this exercise wasn’t to demonstrate her superiority over Ranma. If the groom had indeed achieved the Chestnut Fist, she had earned her prize. All Cologne had to do was keep her from succeeding with any lesser skill. She could do that in her sleep.
Ranma still couldn’t read Cologne with her empathy, but that wasn’t going to be a problem for long. She came around with a vicious roundhouse right at Cologne’s midsection.
/Foolish move/ Cologne thought as she casually jumped overhead. Such flashy kicks have power, but an amateur could read them. Her eyes widened slightly as Ranma flew up in time with her leap, still spinning around to deliver her blow. She intercepted the kick with her staff and ricocheted off the walls to buy time to regain her bearings.
Ranma gave a smirk as her gambit paid off. She fought like she had been trained, as a human, which let her slip some of her unique talents into a predictable move with an equally predictable countermove. The ghoul was skilled but she couldn’t pivot mid-air, so for a split-second…
“Kashuu tenshin amaguriken!”
Cologne twisted around to block her son-in-law’s blows. She had miscalculated and was at a disadvantage, but no cheap trick was going to get Ranma through this trial! /But this speed…well done, son-in-law. Well done./
Ranma felt her hand close around the enchanted stone and pulled it over Cologne’s head before pulling back. “Well ol’ ghoul, it’s been fun but I’m ready to end this now.”
Cologne cackled. “So you finally mastered the Amaguriken. You’re the one for Shampoo alright.”
Ranma shook the necklace and smirked again. “Your age is showin’. Ya ain’t got nothing on me anymore, remember?”
Cologne smiled. “And just what are you going to do with that trinket?”
Ranma blinked and suddenly realized she had no idea what to do with the rock now that she had it.
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(Posted Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:15)
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