Naked and lying on her stomach on the blanket-covered floor of their bedroom, Nabiki groaned with pleasure as Ranma’s broad, male hands worked over the sore, tense muscles of her upper back and shoulders, gently massaging away the tight knots left over from her afternoon training with Nodoka. “Oooohhhh,” she moaned, “a world-class martial artist and a masseuse, too. Are there no end to your talents?”
Ranma chuckled. “Yeah, well, Pop may have done his best ta kill me from time ta time, but he did his best fer me when I failed ta die, an’ that best wasn’t too bad. That’s why I wasn’t too surprised when we found him workin’ fer Dr. Tofu.”
“Well, I was,” Nabiki muttered, remembering how she’d been reduced to stuttering by her shock when she and Ranma had walked into Dr. Tofu’s clinic the morning after Gosunkugi’s summoning to find a giant panda greeting the patients. Ranma had ended up being the one to pass on the message that they wouldn’t be able to try to break the curse on Tofu and Kasumi that weekend, after all.
“At least Mom decided ta do yer kenjutsu trainin’ in the afternoon instead a’ the mornin’,” Ranma continued, and Nabiki thought she could feel his grin in the amused affection caressing her as gently as his hands. “She muttered somethin’ about a livin’ zombie when I asked her why.”
“Right, do you know how disgusting it is, the way you and your ... and Mother are so alert and cheerful that early?”
Ranma just laughed as he continued working his way down along her body until he reached her toes, then ordered her to roll over and worked his way back up her front. She was practically purring by the time his hands moved from her breasts to her shoulders, down along her arms, then cupped her cheeks and leaned down to gently press his lips to hers — not exactly professional behavior, but she definitely had no complaints.
Okay, so it isn’t sex, but I could definitely get used to this. It might actually make Mother’s training worth it, she thought through her pleasure-haze as he carefully picked her up and laid her on their bed. Scooping the blanket from the floor, he spread it across her, turned off the light, then slipped beneath it and pulled her against him.
“My turn ta hold you, tonight,” he whispered in her ear, and a happily much-loved Nabiki faded into sleep with his breath on her neck, a smile on her lips, and the sound of falling rain on the roof.
Ranma’s eyes shot open, instantly alert. Normally, he was a sound sleeper, but he’d found sleep difficult to come by and uneasy when achieved this first night since Gosunkugi’s summoning that he’d spent in his human form. Now he listened intently for some hint in the sound of the rain still falling for whatever had awoken him. Then it came again, the faint scuffle of careful footsteps of someone looming over the bed — someone male, by the slightly darker outline in the room’s general darkness.
“Wake up, Ranma-kun, it’s me — Ryoga,” the dark form demanded.
Ranma’s eyes widened. Ryoga, here?! But the way he’d attacked him without warning at the school, and Nabiki in bed between him and the Lost Boy....
Without a word, Ranma’s hands shot out, grabbing onto the front of Ryoga’s shirt, yanking him forward even as Ranma’s legs bunched to catch him in the gut, and with a twisting grunt Ranma threw the larger boy over the bed, through the closed window and out into the rain. Even as a groggy Nabiki was lifting her head from her pillow, the pigtailed boy rolled to his feet and dove through the broken window after him, dropping to land feet-first on the narrow strip of lawn that ran between the compound wall and the house under the Tendo sisters’ ... and now his ... bedrooms. Even as a growling Ryoga climbed to his feet and shrugged his backpack into a more comfortable position on his back, Ranma felt her rain-soaked boxer shorts and T-shirt drop through her now-insubstantial body to the wet grass she was abruptly floating a few inches above. The night suddenly became lighter, and Ranma winced as the hatred and anger radiating from Ryoga rolled over her.
“Ryoga-kun, it’s the middle of the night! What are you doing here?!” the nature spirit demanded.
“Silence, does revenge know night or day?!” Ryoga shouted, his eyes searching for the origin of the now-female voice.
Ranma rolled her eyes. “That, again? What did I ever do ta make ya hate me that much? It can’t just be fer beatin’ ya ta the bread at our old school.”
Glaring at the empty space that as best he could tell the female voice was coming from, the fanged boy ground out, “I’ll say one thing, before I send you to hell. When you ran out on our duel, I followed you ... all the way to China!”
“To China!? How did you ... ?” Ranma broke off, staring at the practically naked boy in the hazily translucent clothes and thinking furiously. Considering the cool rain she could feel (she was finding it hard not to giggle at the sensation of scores of tickling fingers slashing through her) Ryoga couldn’t have visited Jusenkyo, he must be soaked. But what else ... ? “You got Kissed, didn’t you?” she hooted, instinctively clutching at her sides as she broke into gales of laughter.
“Silence!” Ryoga screamed, and Ramna’s laughter cut off as she found herself squinting against the sickly-green glow of ki the Lost Boy was suddenly radiating. “Because of you, I can never know peace! If I must know hell while alive, you will know it in death!” he shouted, and leaped straight toward the supposedly invisible succubus in a flying kick. Ranma spun up and over the boy as she instinctively tried to leap up out of the way and knock his forward-thrusting leg safely down and sent herself flying instead.
Nabiki stared helplessly through the broken window down into the yard, ignoring the rain on her face as she watched her lover bring her spin under control and whirl where she floated just in time to dodge another flying kick, her own foot slamming into Ryoga’s stomach as she twisted out of the way and instinctively counterattacked. But instead of Ryoga folding over her foot, the redhead was sent flying backwards, carried by the boy’s momentum until Ryoga grabbed the leg offered and threw her at — and through — the compound wall.
Behind her, her bedroom door slammed open as Akane and Kasumi rushed in, Akane in her nighttime T-shirt and panties and Kasumi clutching her nightgown closed with one hand and holding a dumbbell in the other. Akane snatched up the bokken leaning against the wall by the door, and was quickly followed through the door by Mother Nodoka in a night gown with sheathed katana in hand. The middle Tendo glanced over her shoulder long enough to verify the identity of the newcomers, then turned back to the window just in time to see Ranma flash back through the wall, flying level with her fists thrust forward like a movie Superman. The succubus lost a bit of momentum to the need to adjust her direction as her opponent tried to dodge, but was still moving fast enough for her fists smashing into Ryoga’s jaw to twist his head around and send him stumbling to the side, dropping his umbrella.
Nodoka and the other girls joined her at the window, her sisters on either side as Nodoka stood on tiptoe to look over their heads. “Oh, my!” Kasumi gasped, her free hand over her mouth in dismay at the sight of the part-time nature spirit swinging up wide into the air, then swooping back down toward the large boy only to get hammered to the side by a twisting kick.
“How is he doing that?!” Nabiki all but yelled. “In the last fight he couldn’t see or sense Ranma in nature spirit form, and now he’s nailing her every time, how?!”
“It’s the ki,” Akane said suddenly.
“What?” the other three chorused, looking at her.
“He’s radiating ki ... he’s making it stick to the rain, somehow. It must be like the way he was able to make his bandanas hard when he threw them at Ranma last time, when Ranma kicked one away from him ... her. I asked Ranma later how he did it when he can only touch living things, and he said Ryoga had put some of his ki in his bandanas to make them stiff and hard, it made them glow. I think Ryoga’s doing the same thing with the rain, and —”
“And that’s turning the rain into a detection system from the way Ranma pushes it out of the way when she flies through it, if it doesn’t just outline her from sticking to her,” Nabiki finished, turning back to the fight just in time to see Ranma charge in, wings now visible and pulled in tight for extra speed, only to plow face-first into the lawn as Ryoga whirled out of the way and smashed an elbow down into the small of her back. Ranma shook her head, then frantically rolled toward the wall as Ryoga’s leap brought him smashing down where she’d been a moment before, only to shout in pain as one of her wings didn’t make it out of the way and was ground into the grass under the boy’s feet, leaving her pinned in place, lying face up on the grass and staring up at Ryoga’s fanged face.
“Okay, that’s it,” Nabiki said, “time for us to break this up.”
Ranma tried to block Ryoga’s follow-up punch only to have it hammer through to smash into her gut, and Akane winced as she watched the faint greenish glow-speckled female-shaped something that felt like Ranma curl around the strike with an involuntary mew of pain. “But ... it’s a duel ...” she said reluctantly.
“Does my broken window look like it’s a duel?” Nabiki demanded. “He crept into our room in the middle of the night! He’s no different than Kuno and the Horde.”
Nodoka nodded, dropping off her tiptoes and drawing her katana from its sheath. “You’re right,” she agreed, turning to stride toward the door.
Akane started to follow, bokken still in hand, only to stop as Kasumi grabbed her shoulder. “Wait, it’s too dangerous,” Kasumi asserted, and handed her youngest sister the dumbbell she’d brought with her. “Here, use this.”
Akane stared at the dumbbell for a long moment, then grinned viciously. “Nabiki, out of the way!” she ordered. Nabiki watched yet another punch slam into Ranma’s chest, glanced up at her younger sister, eyes widening as Akane held up the dumbbell, then hastily stepped out of the way as a grin to match her sister’s spread across her face. Akane stepped into the space in the middle of the window, hefted the dumbbell as she watched another blow hammer home, then threw.
Ryoga snarled as he smashed another blow through Ranma’s weakening defense, viciously twisting his feet on the trapped wing, exultation washing through him at the breathy shriek from the semi-amorphous female figure framed by softly green-glowing drops and rivulets of rain. It had worked! It had worked, and now he finally had the arrogant coward that had run out on their fight and led him to China where he could repay him for every moment of self-loathing, every sleepless night, every replay of the nightmare that had haunted him since China, every ...
Pinwheeling stars exploded across his vision, his chin smashing into his chest as the hurled dumbbell slammed into the back of his head. He stumbled forward, tripped over the succubus lying at his feet, and smashed head-first, backpack and all, into the compound wall and flopped at its base. Groaning as he rolled onto his side, he shook his head and instantly regretted it as pain exploded behind his eyes. Sitting up and clutching his head, he looked toward his nemesis to see the glow-speckled and -streaked form rising, the wings vanishing into the humanoid torso ... and the glow was flickering. He realized with dawning horror that his ki was no longer radiating, and fading from where it had lodged. Time to go.
Forcing himself to his feet, the Lost Boy looked around for his umbrella ... it was behind and to the side of an increasingly invisible Ranma, he’d have to recover it later. Turning and leaping to the top of the wall (and suppressing a yell of his own at what the effort did to his throbbing head), he dropped to the sidewalk beyond it (a not-so-suppressed groan) and started to run across the street, only to freeze as half a dozen women ghosted out of the night into the light of the streetlights, forming a half-circle in front of him.
A girl stepped forward, a chúi in each hand ... the same girl that had interfered with his last duel with that coward Ranma. She smiled broadly. “So, you have finally returned ... Husband.”
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(Posted Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:53)
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