Standing by the dojo wall, Ranma took a deep breath. Okay, let’s see if I’ve figured this right. He took several steps to build some momentum, tucked to roll — and the hoop in his hands caught on his heels, he landed flat on his back, and the hoop snapped between his hands.
He stared for a moment at the broken rhythmic gymnastics martial art accessory, then surged to his feet and hurled the hoop across the dojo. The hoop hit the wall a few yards from Akane and broke in half, making her flinch. Ranma noticed and took another deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, we’re gonna hafta think a’ somethin’ else, this isn’t working,” he said with forced calm.
“I could have told you that,” Akane said. “In fact, I did.” She motioned to the stack of manuals on the floor by her feet. “What made you think you could learn it from pictures and descriptions in manuals, anyway?”
“Seein’ Pop do it with scrolls he stole from places we stopped,” Ranma snarled, then paused. “Ya know, I don’t think I’ve mentioned those ta anyone. I’ll hafta get ‘em, get with Mom an’ Nabiki an’ see if we can figure out who they belong to an’ give ‘em back.”
He thought it over for a moment, then sighed and continued reluctantly, “Anyway, Pop has ta struggle, but he can do it. I figured the way I soak up techniques just by watchin’ people do ‘em, if Pop could do it, it’d be easy for me ta figure it out from the photos in the manual. Problem is, it isn’t workin’ — I need ta see the flow from beginning ta end instead a’ just a few points.”
Akane resisted the urge to twit Ranma over his admitting that there was something martial arts related that he couldn’t do, at least not effortlessly. A side glance at the broken hoop and the way ponytailed boy was beginning to pace made resisting temptation easy. Instead, she frowned thoughtfully. “The girls were too beat up to show you themselves, but what about video tapes?” she asked. “I’ll bet they’ve taped a bunch of their matches. If they kept them, that would let you see the moves from beginning to end — and not just in practices, either.”
Ranma broke off his angry stumping to turn and stare at his student. “They do that?”
“Yeah, haven’t you ever been in a competition before?”
Ranma shook his head. “Nope, Pop said we shouldn’t pick on civilians.”
“More likely he didn’t want to draw attention,” Akane said, smirking. “They give out prizes, but you have to register.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Ranma agreed with a laugh. “The only thing that’d keep Pop from goin’ fer easy money is gettin’ the cops on his trail.” Sobering, he continued, “An’ yeah, videos’d be a big help. But that gets us ta the second problem, I’m a guy.”
“I’ve noticed.”
The two turned to find Nabiki standing in the dojo doorway, a dusty Ryoga beside her carrying his umbrella and massive pack on his back. Instantly, they tensed up, looking for an opportunity to strike. “Let her go, Ryoga,” Ranma growled. “You’re fight’s —”
“Whoa, easy!” Nabiki shouted, stepping in front of Ryoga and spreading her arms out. “I’m not a hostage, he isn’t here to fight! I ran into him on the way home, and since he was heading here himself we came together.”
Slowly, Ranma and Akane relaxed, and Akane shivered with the clash of conflicting emotions when she noticed the way her older sister seemed to ... relax, soften ... as their tension eased and her eyes met her lover’s. On the one hand, her sister was sharing a bed with a part-time sex demon! She knew it wasn’t Ranma’s fault, it was her nature now (when he was a “she,” anyway), but still ... On the other hand, Nabiki seemed a lot happier since before she’d first met “Ranko,” not to mention was a lot easier to live with, her biting wit easing off into a wry sense of humor, at least with her sisters — she was becoming someone Akane actually liked, not just tolerated because they were family. If only magic wasn’t part of the mix, the youngest Tendo thought with another shiver.
“You’re a little late,” Ranma commented.
“Yeah, since your ... since Mother has to move my training to the evenings so she can stay as long as she needs to at her business, after my meeting I decided to take some time to see if Gosunkugi had emptied out his little hidey hole yet, and make sure he hadn’t left any traps behind — he seemed to be just the kind of vindictive asshole that would do that,” Nabiki said nonchalantly.
“Did he?” Akane asked, intrigued against her will.
“Yes, and yes. Good thing I checked, too, the idiot didn’t quite get the circles right, and he wouldn’t have been the only one hit by the backlash. So I shielded and triggered them so he’d be the only one hit,” Nabiki finished, smirking. “Nobody important gets hurt, and he gets another lesson in how incompetent he is.”
“Nabiki, he may be incompetent, but —” Akane started, only to break off when she noticed Nabiki’s eyes slide toward Ryoga. Right, keep it inside the family.
“Anyway, what’s your problem with being male?” Nabiki hastily asked.
Akane and Ranma exchanged glances. “Well, on our way home ...” Ranma started.
A quick explanation later, and Nabiki was shaking her head. “Another Kuno, as nuts as the first, that’s just ... wonderful,” she muttered, rubbing her temples and thinking dark thoughts — she didn’t want to try to kill the girl (or risk dying if it didn’t work), but maybe if she got a hold of some of her hair ... “So what does that have to do with you being male?” she asked.
Ranma shrugged, and gestured toward the broken hoop. “First, I’m too big,” he replied. “Second, guys aren’t build the same way girls are, we don’t walk the same way, bend the same way — I’m not sure I could curl up tight enough for some a’ these stunts even if I was small enough. That’s not a problem with Akane yet, ‘cause we’ve been focusin’ on her speed and getting’ her caught up on the basics, but this goes way beyond just speed.”
“Got it, that makes sense,” Nabiki mused. “But as stubborn as you are I doubt you’re ready to give up, any ideas?”
“Well, actually ...” a little shamefaced, Ranma reached up to scratch under his ponytail. “I was thinkin’ a’ gettin’ some help from the Amazons. I figure they have lots a’ experience trainin’ girls, an’ Shampoo was using a couple a’ clubs when she fought Ryoga.”
“Not a bad idea,” his lover complimented, “how did you intend to pay them?”
“Pay?”
Nabiki rolled her eyes, chuckling. “Of course it didn’t occur to you, you’d do it for free just to see if you’d learn something in the process. Don’t worry about it, if need be I’ll pay for it — this is family, after all, and I have quite a bit salted away. Actually, I’ll come with you. I wanted to visit the Amazons, anyway. So does the Lost Boy, here,” she added, stepping to the side out of Ryoga’s way.
Akane and Ranma focused on a suddenly blushing fanged boy, and Ranma grinned. “Decided ta take ‘em up on their offer, did ya?”
“Yeah, I ... wait, you know about it?” Ryoga demanded, tensing up.
“Yeah, I followed ya after they beat ya down, heard the whole thing,” Ranma tossed off, then glanced over at a Nabiki suddenly inching to the side, away from the boy behind her.
“How dare you spy on me!” Ryoga erupted, charging forward.
“Whoa, easy!” Ranma shouted, throwing himself to one side as Akane dove away in the opposite direction, rolling to her feet braced for action. Ranma backpedalled as Ryoga followed up, thrusting repeatedly with his umbrella. “Hold up, I just wanted ta make sure you were all right!” he insisted as he dropped below another thrust and tried to kick the umbrella out of Ryoga’s hand even as Akane slammed into the Lost Boy from the side. The larger boy managed to hold onto his umbrella, but staggered to the side as Akane’s strike combined with the weight of his backpack to pull him off-balance.
Nabiki took the opportunity to step between the combatants. “That’s enough!” she shouted. Turning to Ryoga, she said, “Hibiki-san, if you’re going to make things work with your wives, you have to stop attacking Ranma whenever he pisses you off — something I’ll admit he seems to have a talent for,” she added with a smirk over her shoulder at her lover.
“Yeah, right,” Ranma growled, glowering at Ryoga, and Nabiki sobered as a wave of worried self-disgust from the ponytailed washed over her.
Ryoga glowered back, but reluctantly nodded. “Whatever,” he replied, then paused. His eyes dropped, his cheeks again darkening red. “Uh, could you guys take me to the park?”
Ranma held the glower for a moment, but finally sighed. “Sure,” he agreed. “When did ya last eat?”
“Uhhh ... I don’t know,” Ryoga admitted, then winced as his stomach growled.
“Right, I’m sure Kasumi’ll be happy ta feed ya, nothin’ makes her happy like someone enjoying her cooking. Just don’t try ta leave the kitchen till we come for ya. Akane, ya want ta use the furo first? I’ll be goin’ in spirit form. I can clean up after we get back, then we can do our homework while Mom whales away on ... ah, trains Nabiki.”
“Actually, Mother called me to say we won’t be training tonight, something came up,” Nabiki broke in to add, with a grimace of her own as she started toward the dojo entrance. “She said we’ll have to make it up in the morning.”
A few minutes later, Nabiki looked around as she sensed her lover float into their room through the floor, up from the furo below. She smiled as her eyes roamed the length of the cute sex spirit on display. As she hoped, she felt her lover’s mood lighten as the redhaired girl practically wriggled with pleasure at the wave of lust and love Nabiki sent her. Nabiki spread her arms. “Get over here,” she said in a husky voice. Ranma eagerly floated over into the hug, her lips seeking her lover’s as she settled into Nabiki’s lap. After a long moment of luxuriating in the soft feel of skin against skin, Nabiki broke the kiss and sighed regretfully as Ranma’s head dropped to rest on her shoulder. “Too bad we don’t have time for a quickie,” the middle Tendo murmured. “Besides, we don’t want to disturb your mother.”
“Mom? She’s home? I thought you said somethin’ came up,” Ranma murmured into the hollow of Nabiki’s shoulder.
“It did. She’s going to be out late, so she said she’d be coming home early to get in a nap, first. Oh, and she gotten everything turned in for changing your last names today.”
“Oh.” Ranma fell silent for a long moment, then sighed. “We might want ta cut back on the feeding, anyway ... Akane’s complaining about the noise.”
“Oh.” Nabiki felt her cheeks heating. Hastily changing the subject, she asked, “Ranma, what was your problem with Ryoga, when I broke up the fight?”
“Caught that, did ya?” Ranma felt her lover’s nod press into her hair. “I wasn’t mad at Ryoga, he was just bein’ stupid. I was mad at me.”
“You?”
“Yeah ... he caught me by surprise. After havin’ Pop jump me whenever I get careless fer years, after gettin’ ta the point that he almost never catches me off guard, and I’m surprised by a guy standin’ right in front of me that I’m watchin’!” Nabiki felt the nature spirit’s arms tighten around her. “It’s this stupid body, I’m gettin’ ta depend on its senses.”
“Hey, there’s nothing ‘stupid’ about that body! It’s too cute for words,” Nabiki asserted. She thought back to the night before and the mix of pleasure and love that had swept through her as her lover’s increasingly skilled fingers had brought her to climax, and felt Ranma shiver as Nabiki’s lust-filled love washed through her. “And if you were normal, would you be able to feel that?” Ranma shook her head even as she relaxed. “And if you were normal, the first time we met would have been when your father brought you to the dojo. That ... would not have gone well.” It was Nabiki’s turn to shiver, as she thought of how her old bitter and sarcastic self would have reacted to being told that one of the sisters would have to marry an ignorant, egotistical boy whose only apparent redeeming feature was that he could beat people up — she’d probably have dumped him on Akane, and wouldn’t that have worked out wonderfully!
Ranma shivered again, and not pleasantly this time, at the feelings of guilt and self-disgust her lover was suddenly radiating. “You’re right, I’m glad things worked out like they did,” she hastily said. “I’ll just hafta remember ta be extra careful when I go anywhere as a guy.”
Nabiki took a deep breath and shook off the might-have-beens. “Right, you’re Saotome Ranma, you never lose. You’ll deal with it, right?”
“Right!”
And I’ll just have to put finding a way to enhance your senses while human at the top of my list, along with breaking the curse on big sis and the doc, finding a way to keep you from getting summoned whenever someone uses your name in the circle, strengthening the wards on everyone even further, surviving ‘Mother’s’ early morning training in kenjutsu, somehow getting everyone off my list of victims without incurring a karmic debt to the imps I used to collect the blackmail material, and figuring out what to do about a top-level demon trying to recruit me.
For a moment Nabiki quailed under the weight of her accumulated tasks and problems, only to yelp when Ranma reached right through her bra to tweak a nipple. “None a’ that, not while I’m around!” the nature spirit insisted, leaning back and grinning at the pageboy-haired girl.
Nabiki giggled. “Right, I have you on my side, how can I lose?”
“Damn straight!” Ranma agreed, floating up and away from her seat in her lover’s lap to strike a noble, self-confident pose. The effect was more than a little spoiled by the red-haired nature spirit’s tiny, cute, and especially naked appearance, and Nabiki’s giggles turned into laughter even as she felt herself heating up again.
A knock sounded on the doorframe of the open door, and the two looked over at Akane, standing there smiling at the scene, what she could see and sense of it. Nabiki returned the smile as she realized that this time there was nothing mixed about the pleasure her younger sister was taking in their happiness. She doubted Akane’s complete acceptance was permanent, but the girl was coming around.
“I’m ready,” Akane said, shaking her head and giggling a little, herself. “Let’s get Ryoga and get going, maybe we can be back in time for dinner. Unless you two are too busy?”
Nope, we’re good!” Ranma said hastily.
Akane’s giggle turned into a laugh. “Gotcha!” she called back over her shoulder as she turned to lead the way back to the stairs.
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(Posted Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:49)
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