[Episode 250303] [Episode 250303]Belldandy was pleased. From the moment Ranma said the magic word, she was bound to grant the wish he spoke. Had someone yelled and made him stop, the Be Careful What You Wish For clause would have made everything "simple," and Belldandy didn't think any simplification would be particularly welcome. Banishing Ranma and Akane, maybe the whole dojo to Jade would do the trick.
However, Ranma had been allowed to ramble. And Belldandy instead evoked the Genuine Heartfelt Desire clause under the Largely Selfless provision. "I grant you the wish of Sanctuary, Ranma Saotome. For as long as your clan survives, it will always know a home to which it can find shelter and safety. In the darkest of nights, they will always have hope, even should the sun not rise again. Our contract is concluded, my master. Be well." She sipped her tea.
Nabiki's jaw worked. "Wait. No one in Ranma's clan can be harmed when they're at home?"
"Mmm, not quite," Bell said pleasantly. "The Sanctuary only promises a safe haven for the clan. Right now, that is this building. But if it is torn down, or Ranma's clan grows too large for it, the clan will find a safe place to live quickly. If they look for it, that is. The wish guarantees successful efforts, not success without effort. You will always have warning of threats to the clan's home, but only if you pay attention."
"Any other limits?" Nabiki asked. Soun was crying for joy that his house would never get blown up like Saotome's was.
"The wish guarantees a safe haven for the clan, not individual members of the clan. Small as it is now, that doesn't matter, but a clan of a few hundred could lose dozens to a surprise attack and easily survive. And you only have the one haven, however big or small it may be, and that means any clansmen who live away from the haven are not protected."
Ranma blinked. For as long as he lived, and even longer than that for his descendents, they would always have a Home. That…"That was exactly what I wished for, isn't it?"
Bell smiled. "It's very, very rare for a mortal to wish for exactly what he wants. You are something very, very special, Ranma Saotome." She turned to Kasumi. "I'm afraid that I won't be able to help with the dishes," she apologized. "With Ranma's wish complete, I must be moving on. I have already stayed longer than I should."
"Oh," Kasumi said, blinking. "No, don't trouble yourself. Come back any time."
Bell smiled. "Maybe," she said. She faded from view, slowly growing transparent, and within a few seconds she was simply gone. Ranma looked around for the lamp, but it too had vanished.
Akane blinked. "Why can't all the cute girls in your life leave that quietly?" she asked Ranma.
Ranma shrugged. "Dunno. So I guess that's it for the wishes. Just us now." He looked at Akane and glanced away quickly.
Akane blushed mildly. "Um, if you're done eating, we could go up to my room and read that were book together?"
Ranma glanced at his plate. Suddenly it didn't seem that important anymore. "Yeah, sure."
Ranma settled into a crouch by the door in Akane's room while the tomboy took the bed. By unspoken agreement they waited a full minute of idle chatter before acting.
When that minute was up, Akane moved to disable Nabiki's bugs while Ranma 'accidentally' opened Akane's door. Soun and Genma toppled inside, with Nodoka standing behind them and sporting a mild frown. Ranma yelled at them and the fathers scattered.
Nodoka looked to Ranma. "Son…"
"Give us an hour, Mom," he said quietly.
Nodoka nodded and left. Ranma closed the door and turned to Akane.
The shorter teen looked back and they shared a sigh. "They never give up," Ranma said ruefully.
Akane laughed lightly. "They had us at the altar just a month ago. They're not going to pass up a chance to get you to marry me again."
Ranma looked at Akane's feet. "I guess they don't hafta worry about that after this."
"Eh?" Akane asked intelligently. "What do you mean?"
"I…I bit ya, Akane," Ranma said.
"Oh, really? I thought I was imagining my hair changing color."
"Sarcasm ain't cute, tomboy. Guess I deserve it, though. You didn't want this."
Damn right! Akane thought in properly self-righteous feminine indignation. "Why do you think I didn't want it?" Akane asked. Wait, what did I say?
What did she say? "So you did want this?" Ranma asked.
"Well either way you should have asked that first, tomcat," Akane smirked.
Ranma shook his head. "Guess so. I, uh, I guess I'll ask Bastet if ya still count as part of the 'clan' if ya ain't my fiancée. We'll figure something out."
"Oh, so you're just going to run off with one of those hussies?" Akane asked angrily. "'Sorry for turning your life on your head, but I'll just bite and run?' Since when does Ranma Saotome run away?"
"I ain't runnin'!" Ranma snapped. "I just want ya to be happy!"
"How am I supposed to be happy without you, jerk!?" Akane yelled back.
Utter silence.
Ranma stared at Akane.
Akane stared at Ranma.
More silence.
Ranma sniffed. Akane choked.
Then they both collapsed into laughter.
"We…we are really…bad at this…" Ranma choked out.
"No kidding," Akane giggled. "Well bugs or not, Nabiki heard that. Want to place any bets with her?"
"For the next time we get this close to saying 'I love you?' No thanks." Ranma snickered and finally got his laughs under control. "Last thing we need is a pricetag on that."
That set Akane off on another bout of giggles. "You know the bets on one of us actually saying that are piling up enough that she might not make any money on it?"
"Ha. Serves her right for betting against us."
Ranma gave Akane a troubled smile, but at least he was looking her in the face now. "Are we okay, Akane?"
Akane considered the question and smiled back. "I think we are. Now come on, you have a lot of reading to catch up on."
Nabiki switched off her parabolic microphone. Akane had become too good at finding her bugs to rely on them. She turned to her computer and added some new data to the relationship.
Nabiki had a number of vested interests in her little sister's relationship, but in truth she had stopped taking bets on if the two would ever get together shortly after Ryogenzawa. Getting the full story out of them had been expensive, but Nabiki knew then that it was no longer a matter of if but when they admitted their feelings. There was the longshot of complete rejection after a particularly stupid fight, but their mutual misery would serve to draw them back together.
Saffron had been the real game changer. Ranma is no prince charming, but he became Akane's knight in shining armor with a chunk of heroism to spare. They came within a hair's breadth of marriage and Nabiki had actually had to scramble to ruin that. The really scary thing about that incident was that Kasumi had been the mastermind behind it. Their sweet, kind, somewhat vacant older sister had told Nabiki that Akane and Ranma needed time to recover from Saffron and let their relationship mature, and that they shouldn't marry until out of high school. And she had been scary.
Common wisdom in Nerima was that crossing Ranma meant going to the hospital, crossing Nabiki meant going to Hell. Crossing Kasumi, in Nabiki's opinion, was worse.
In the past month, Ranma and Akane had gotten smarter about foiling her. They checked for sources of interruption. They had Nodoka run interference on the fathers. They even had an escape plan for a fiancée attack that they had successfully deployed no less than three times. Akane even had an electric thermos of hot water under her bed. But they didn't know Nabiki had equipment for listening through walls.
Nabiki looked over her projections and sighed. Ranma and Akane were accelerating towards open romance again. They'd never call it that, but voice analysis showed the average physical gap between them closing almost every day. Today was an outlier, the full room between them, and reading a book together made voice analysis useless of course. But they were sharing this new experience and letting it pull them together.
It wouldn't take more than a few well-chosen barbs on Akane's insecurities to fix that, though. Or just get Akane to try cooking again. She hadn't since Saffron. Yes, that could drive them apart long enough to keep them focused on what really mattered, like this new paradigm.
Nabiki switched to the internet. The Joketsuzoku were hardly ready for the twenty-first century, but they had had enough visitors over the years that some traces of their culture could be found. Nabiki didn't expect their stances on werecheetahs would be as easy to find as their marriage laws, but it was worth a shot. Plan B meant calling in favors from Shampoo, and that was always dangerous.
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(Posted Mon, 05 Sep 2011 06:00)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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