"Well there was that...Hey! We fell in the koi pond and I'm still a guy! OW! What was that for?" He rubbed his arm where she punched it, breaking him out of his own victory dance.
"How old do I look, you baka?"
"Dunno. Never paid that much attention, didn't matter until those aging mushrooms...hey, you're like... like... uh... less than eighteen?"
"Good call," she said sarcastically. "By the looks of it, you're around ten or eleven. Me, about eleven or twelve. I have to find a calendar to make sure, and, I'd suggest you check your 'package' to make sure you're not a girl...a young girl without chest appendages. Anyway, back to my point, what's the last thing you remember?"
Ranma stood and turned his back to the house and Nabiki, then let out a sigh of relief, before collapsing back on to the steps. "I'm still a guy."
"Now, what do you remember?" Nabiki had to harp on the subject because she knew he was paying very little attention. Usual in his case.
"Okay! The training trip. Everything up to Saffron. That stupid cloud. That arch thingie. It had something written on it, but I don't remember what it said. Falling in the koi pond." Not being charged for you pulling me out, he thought but, wisely for once, did not say aloud.
"That jibes with what I remember. Can you make a chi ball?" A small bluish translucent ball appeared in his hand. "Can you do an Amaguriken?" The ball dissipated and she heard the wall of the dojo struck multiple times in less than a second. "Okay, that answers that. Now, do you want to do that training trip all over again?"
"Not hardly," he scoffed.
"Then why don't we go see your mother? Maybe she can convince Panda-san not to go?"
"Yeah, that's a great idea!"
He was about to run off, but Nabiki pulled him down again. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Mom's place?"
"Not without me there to keep you from getting the Saotome foot-in-mouth disease."
"Huh?"
"I don't think you can talk to your mother without you saying you've come from the future, or a different dimension, or whatever. If you think I'm going to allow that, buddy boy, you've got another THINK coming. Now," she said, rising from the steps, "no roof hopping. Follow me and try not to say anything contradictory to what I say. Got it?"
"Yeah, yeah. You sure you're not really Akane in disguise?" he asked, rubbing his shoulder.
"Keep that up and you can finish that training trip at Jusenkyo."
Ranma shut up. Mostly. He kept his mutterings low enough that Nabiki could not understand them.
Nabiki led him back into the house, where she paused at the kitchen door. "Kasumi? I'll be showing Ranma around the neighborhood. I'll call if we'll be late for dinner."
"Oh (my, just for the cliche), that sounds like a marvelous idea! How very sweet of you!"
"Yeah, sweet," Ranma muttered, but smiled at the fourteen year old Kasumi. He could not help smiling. At nineteen, she was beautiful. At her current age, she was unbelievably cute, even as she towered over him at his present height.
As she led him out of the Tendo gate, Nabiki told Ranma, "Go ahead and walk the fences, but don't get too far ahead of me. I may want to make a stop or two."
A few minutes later, Nabiki passed by a newsstand and panic set in as she caught the date on the Asahi Shimbun. Oh, shit! her thoughts nearly screamed. 5 October 1987! Just a few days before I had to go into the information racket because of the stock market crash.
The crash had affected everyone around the world, but not as badly as in Japan. The economy was already bad before it hit and after most of the corporations cut their stock dividends, much of the middle class moved down in status to upper lower class. Monetarily, that is. The Kunos, for example, had moved from rich to upper middle class. But, being from a noble (read samurai) family, they recouped their losses within a year or two. Yes, it is good to know low people in high places.
The Tendos, on the other hand, never recovered. Especially with an empty dojo. They went from comfortable to living hand-to-mouth and the arrival of the Saotomes shot that all to hell.
I have to short all our stock and maybe find a way to get more money to cover a larger short position. Dammit! The only way to get enough money would be to hit Kuno up for a loan. He's not as stupid as he will be in the future and he doesn't have as much access to money as a twelve year old. Oh, hells! It's just about this time that his mother suicides, too. Damn! Damn! Damn!
Nabiki's thoughts were dark enough for them to show on her face. Enough for even a clueless Ranma to observe them. He hopped down from the awning of the newsstand and asked, "What is it, Nabiki?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just that we're going to lose about three-quarters of our family money and half our income in about a week or two. That's all," she glowered. "Then I'll have to keep the family fed. Again. And Daddy won't work. Again. Because Daddy's too damn proud to work anywhere other than his own dojo. Again. And I can't do anything but loansharking and extortion and blackmailing. Again." She grabbed the younger boy by the shoulders and shook him. "I don't want to have to go through all of that all over again, Ranma! It's painful enough to remember, let alone have to do it a second time!" she all but shouted.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on! Stop!" Ranma detatched her hands from his shoulders and, curiously for him, drew her into an embrace. He had just wanted her to stop shaking him, but throwing her across the sidewalk did not seem the right thing to do with a non-combatant.
She hugged him tightly, tears beginning to stream down her face. "I haven't cried at all since my mother died, not for eleven years. Now, I can't stop. Now we're here, stuck in the past, no way to get back, too young to do anything about what's going to happen, probably no way to prevent it, and the only so-called responsible people old enough to do something to change it are screwed up themselves. I can't win!"
Ranma tried to calm her down all through her diatribe the only way he knew how. He did his best to copy Kasumi's soothing of Akane. The stroking of her hair, the wordless cooing, until he heard her last sentence. He tilted her head up so she could look directly into his eyes. "Nabiki. Who am I?"
Nabiki was confused. "Huh?"
"What is my name?" he said, slowly and deliberately.
"Ranma Saotome. So?"
"And Ranma Saotome..."
It took her a few moments, but she finally understood the point he was trying to drive home. "Ranma Saotome never loses. Not when it counts." She hugged him harder and buried her face into his shoulder.
"Just remember that. And we'll be working together for a change. If I remember right, Nabiki Tendo doesn't lose, either. She can always come up with a plan." He chuckled. "Just as hare-brained as mine, but she always sees them through."
A minute or two later, she disengaged herself and gave him a peck on the cheek. Dragging the now stunned boy behind her, she told him, "Let's go see your mother. Maybe we can get her to do a few things to help us."
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Fri, 04 Apr 2003 04:50)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.