Now the main problem was trying to find Ranma. Where could he go? Would he cause a whole lot of destruction in his wake? Would he stalk his prey? Its days like this she felt all her years on her shoulders. She stepped into the kitchen and felt her jaw drop.
Or he could be sitting at the kitchen table eating cake while chatting with Kasumi.
At that sight, Cologne, Matriarch and Battle Master of the Amazon, did something she hadn't done in about a hundred years.
She fainted. It had been a long day after all.
******************
The initial response to seeing Ranma was to hide, for those conscious anyway. It took an hour to sink into people's head that he was not here to rip their hearts out. It took an hour after that for Nabiki finally crawled out from under her bed, for Genma, Soun and Mousse to recover, for Cologne to wake from her fainting spell nap. Ranma spent all that time in the kitchen chatting with Kasumi and helping every so often totally oblivious to what the others were doing. Mostly he just snacked.
Kasumi, being Kasumi, invited the Amazons and Ukyo to dinner, who of course accepted. She would have invited Ryouga as well except he was in the Amazon rain forest at that time, discovering why it was called a rain forest.
Dinner was a quite affair.
"Airen let wife feed, yes?"
"I'll be the one feeding Ranchan, sugah." Ukyo glared at Shampoo who glared back.
Well relatively quite anyway.
"Boy, don't scare me like that. To make up to your poor father you should give me some of your food," said Genma reaching towards Ranma’s plate, only to have his hand knocked aside and a lump of wasabi shoved up his nose. Ranma stole most his food as he danced around trying to dislodge the offending lump out of his scorching nostril.
Cologne watched the usual circus show of dinner. It was toned down drastically, which she attributed to people being nervous around Ranma, but still entertaining. Outwardly she was calm. Inside though, curiosity burned a fiery path in her mind. There were no new reports of mass death and destruction. So how did he snap out of the rage? Did something happen? Why were his mannerisms different?
It was only after dinner when everyone was relaxing over a cup of coffee, after Moose had been knocked unconscious again and Soun and Ganma had started playing Shoji, that she brought up the question.
"Ranma what happened?"
Ranma blinked and looked confused as every one staring at him. "What happened to what?"
"To you moron," snapped Akane. "What happened after you ran away?"
"Indeed son-in-law, you were in a berserk rage when you ran out of the restaurant. There are only 3 things that can stop a berserker, as I mentioned before, and those are," she held up a wrinkled finger, "death, either them or the enemy," a second finger joined the first, "an object, person or situation that would shock them out of that state or," third finger, "divine intervention. The last is not likely but not improbable. So what snapped you out of that state?"
"Divine intervention," Ranma replied calmly sipping the tea.
Silence filled the room.
"Yeah right Saotome," said Nabiki recovering first, "what deity would take their time to go out of their way to help you? And for that matter why would they help you?"
Ranma smirked and held out his hand to Nabiki. "500 yen."
Nabiki blinked and stared dumbly at the hand until a flash nearly blinded her. She scowled at a chuckling Ranma as he put away the camera. "Not funny Saotome. We'll talk about this later. Now stop fooling around and tell us who helped you."
"Yeah, Ranchan, spill it. And I want copied of that shot," said Ukyo.
"Shampoo want too," added Shampoo.
"Oh my, it would make nice addition to the photo album," agreed Kasumi. "It has been a while since we had a candid shot of Nabiki."
"That is true. The last candid shot of Nabiki was when we were in the beach and Akane accidentally dropped the ice cream down her bikini," Ranma added.
Akane stated to giggle, "I didn't think she could jump that high."
"Or scream that loud," added Kasumi also giggling.
"Would you stop talking about photos," screamed a red faced Nabiki, before another flash stopped her in her tracks. "Saotome stop taking pictures and tell us your story," she shouted.
"I already told you, divine intervention."
A vein popped on Nabiki's forehead. "But what deity," she ground out.
"I'm curious myself, son-in-law."
Ranma looked around the staring faces. "A deity of cats of course. I thought it would be obvious," he said rolling his eyes.
There was much blinking. Then a collective "oh".
"So what did this deity want with you." Nabiki leaned forward in interest.
Ranma also leaned forward. The look on his face was one of suppressed glee, like a housewife that is just dying to tell the latest juicy gossip. He motioned them closer and they leaned forward eagerly.
"That," he whispered, "is a secret."
The facefault shock the house. Ranma managed to get a few more good pictures as the others lay switching.
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(Posted Mon, 01 Nov 2004 03:08)
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