Preparing to chop up her second carrot, Akane grabbed the carrot and brought her knife up into the air.
Then as she chopped down forcefully, she was momentarily confused by Ranma catching and holding her wrist.
Sighing in relief as saving the cutting board and perhaps Akane’s fingers, Ranma quickly came to a decision. “Wrong. That’s not how I taught you.”
Breathing hard as she fought down the impulse to shout at him, Akane got herself under control. “But, I was just...” Taking another breath she reminded herself of her situation. “My apologies Master Ranma.”
Sighing himself, Ranma’s uneasy feelings about how easy it was going seemed true. “Do you know why that was wrong?”
Staring at him blankly, Akane frowned a little as she realized the reason. “Because I disobeyed you.”
Feeling a little exasperated, Ranma did his best to stay cool. At least this time she was actually listening to him. “No, it’s wrong because it’s wrong. One of the things you do wrong in cooking is impatiently chop and grind stuff up too vigorously. Chopping like an axe is how you end up with pieces of cutting board mixed in with your carrot chunks. Those neat slices you did are how the carrots are supposed to be sliced up.”
Conflicted, Akane looked at her perfect little carrot slices. Part of her knew they were better than usual, but didn’t want to admit what her usual was like. That part of her wanted to argue with Ranma, but part of her demanded she shouldn’t.
Ranma in turn swept the sliced carrot into a bowl and handed it to Akane. “Go show them to Kasumi and ask how they are.”
Faced with a simple but direct order, Akane accepted the bowl and went in search for her older sister. Finding her in the family room serving tea, Akane respectfully presented her with the bowl despite taking a nervous gulp. “How are these Kasumi-nëchan?”
Accepting the bowl, Kasumi paused before taking a second look, then swirled the pieces around with her finger to check the bottom pieces. Surprised yet again, she pulled out a single coin shaped piece for closer examination before putting it back into the bowl. “They’re perfect Akane-chan.”
Walking up behind Akane and slicing the other carrot up by simply miming using a knife on the carrot, Ranma dumped his handful of carrot into the bowl. “I peeled them, but Akane sliced that one.”
Smiling and nodding, that apparently relieved Kasumi. “Ah, that explains why they’re so perfectly round, but they really were sliced evenly. Not even a single splinter to be found in them.” Looking to Akane, Kasumi smiled happily for her. “So Ranma-kun is teaching you self-control now?”
Briefly thinking it was control as in master and slave, Akane realized that wasn’t what she said. “Self-control?”
Going by the bunny-maid outfit, Kasumi assumed that meant Ranma was teaching her on the sly. “Oh yes, self-control is very important, especially for someone with much strength. That’s one of the big differences between Hibiki-san and Ranma-kun. Ranma-kun is very careful to be just gentle enough for whatever he’s doing.”
Personally aware of Ryöga’s uncontrolled strength as one of the reasons she was scared of him trying to hug her, it was hard to think of Ranma the same way.
Kasumi however saw the look on her little sister’s face and got up to lead her into the kitchen. Going through her pots and pans, she pulled out one of the cast iron skillets Ranma had used to deflect fireballs with before. Presenting the handle to her little sister, a handprint was visibly pressed into the solid iron handle. “I know he’s at least strong enough to squeeze iron with his bare hands.”
Staring at the handprint evidence, Akane was reminded of a few other incidents where Ranma surprised her with feats of strength, but usually she saw him doing ridiculous feats of agility or stealth instead. Ryöga recklessly destroying stuff just made it easy to forget that Ranma was also ridiculously strong.
That confused her slightly as to why Ranma was training her, causing her to look at him with wide eyes. “Are you seriously training me?”
Ranma in turn merely stared at her dully. “What did you think we were doing?”
Akane went from startled to confused to upset and finally settled for blushing and looking down in embarrassment.
Sighing briefly, Ranma wasn’t wanting to ruin the good moment. Giving the bowl of carrots to Kasumi, Ranma led Akane out into the yard.
Sitting down under a tree in the corner of the yard, Ranma waved Akane over to join him. Once she was seated beside him, he decided to get some answers. “Okay, so just to be clear, you’ve been behaving so far because of the promise you made to me earlier, not because you understand the training?”
Nodding, Akane had thought it was either an excuse for her to fail and be punished or a test of her obedience.
Relaxing against the tree, Ranma took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Well, I guess that works. I’d rather you understood, but if you did you probably could have fixed it on your own.” Since he had her attention, he supposed he should just spell it out anyways. “A lot of your problems with cooking, sewing and advancing in the art are because you don’t have the patience to be delicate or hold back or just take your time. If you knew that, you’d know brick smashing and jogging isn’t the sort of training you need.”
Pointing at the dojo, Ranma continued his explanation. “The rice grain plucking, you already have the eyes for it, at least at that level. What it develops is your patience, fine movements and a delicate touch. Also I noticed you had to get into a certain mood for that, kinda peaceful. Hopefully once you get familiar with it you won’t need to be in a special mood.”
Pausing, Ranma looked over at Akane. “You got that?”
Breathing a bit hard, Akane was struggled to contain the thought of not needing such silly training to improve herself. A bit distracted by those thoughts, she at least realized there was a ring of truth to it. Settling down, she just decided to accept it on faith. “Understood.”
Humming to himself, Ranma had hoped to waste more of the day with training, but stress would be counter-productive for Akane’s training. She would need some time to get used to it. That left him dealing with their new little arrangement and particularly how everyone else would take it. “Okay, Akane, pick which one works the best for you. You pretend everything is normal, or that we have a public arrangement. Martial arts student, maid, samurai or kunoichi are the only ones I can think of.”
Cocking her head, Akane wasn’t quite sure what he meant. “You mean how I’ll act in public? We’re going to keep our arrangement a secret?”
Looking at Akane, Ranma raised both eyebrows. “Do you wanna explain that to your family and your friends? I’m pretty sure a lot of people are gonna freak and demand explanations.”
Gulping at the implications, Akane blushed a little as she made her quiet counter-point. “I just thought you’d say I’m yours and that’d be it.”
Sighing, Ranma resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Why would she think it would be that simple? “Well for one your family would freak and blame me. They’d probably assume it’s some kind of mind control and blame the hell out of me, so whatever I said wouldn’t matter. Then the only way you’d be able to convince them would be to have Kasumi read your diaries to vouch for you.”
Having hidden this for quite some time, Akane did not look forward to detailing her fantasies to her family to prove she was willing. “Right, well I don’t know if I could just pretend everything is normal. How could we pull off the others though?”
Ranma however didn’t miss a beat. “You put on a cursed collar, and removing it before the curse breaks will make it permanent. So I’m training you as whatever to satisfy the spirit and free you from the horrible curse.”
Blinking, Akane fingered her collar idly. “So...I’d have to wear it all the time, to school and in the bath?”
Ranma relaxed back against the tree. “Yep, so choose whatever I’m training you to satisfy the curse.”
Idly playing with the D-ring on her collar, Akane threw out samurai just because she didn’t want to see Kuno’s reaction to that. “Combat maid with a side of kunoichi.”
Resting comfortably now, Ranma supposed that was a good choice. “Okay, and not behaving, it makes you do strange embarrassing stuff like put on a maid outfit and bunny ears and need to stay by my side and stuff.”
Blushing, Akane got up and crawled into Ranma’s lap, cuddling into his shoulder. “Mhmm, I just can’t help myself.”
Ranma made a show of making a sigh of long suffering. “Well, I guess I’ll put up with it, I don’t wanna make it worse, right? Just no helping it.”
Relaxing into Ranma, Akane developed herself a naughty little smile to go with her blush. “Oh, I think I need to be felt up.”
Rolling his eyes at her bad acting, Ranma put his hand on her butt while quietly correcting her. “You might wanna be a little more embarrassed and reluctant.”
Pouting, Akane sniffled as she clutched at his shirt. “I’m sorry Master, this poor girl is trying hard to fight it.”
Sighing, Ranma ruffled her hair, playing along. “It’s alright Akane-chan. We'll get through this somehow.”
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(Posted Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:21)
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