Here's the recap from the start of the tenth chapter of Scarlet Spring.

The chapter itself should be obvious from the direction of these notes.



[Ranma] "Scarlet Spring" (10/11)

By Henry J. Cobb

$Id: scarlet_spring10.txt,v 1.2 1997/06/25 05:05:59 hcobb Exp $



The Ranma 1/2 characters and situations are the creation of Rumiko

Takahashi.  No infringement of her copyrights is intended.



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I am Akane Tendo, youngest of three daughters of my father, Soun Tendo.



My father has always been very sensitive, ever since my mother died

while we were off on a training mission to China ten years ago.



I've always felt that it was my fault that we did not return in time to

see my mother before her death, because while she was ailing, I was

unable to travel, due to a fever I had picked up in a spring in China.



Not everything on that trip was a disaster.  I was saved from the spring

by the girl who became my best friend and more, the amazon Shampoo.



Needless to say, I wasn't very impressed when Genma Saotome arrived

recently with his son, Ranma from their training trip to China.  In

fact, I didn't even bother to ask them if they'd met Shampoo there.

China is such a big place with so many people, after all.



I agreed to an engagement to Ranma to keep daddy happy.  It seems he had

arraigned the engagement before I was even born, in a scheme to pass on

the Dojo to their combined fighting schools.  Wouldn't it have served

those two men right, if Ranma and I had both been born girls?



Well, Ranma is a girl, at least part of the time.  I wonder what she

looks like?  During their trip to China, Genma and Ranma had picked up

curses that change their forms.  Genma becomes a Panda when splashed

with cold water and Ranma turns into a girl.  I've seen the panda close

up several times, but Ranma keeps the girl side hidden, even from me.  I

guess he's ashamed of being a girl.



Ranma is a bit of a jerk, but thanks to our engagement I've managed to

become the number one girl at Furinkan High.  All of the other girls at

our school think that Ranma is a real dreamboat.  I wonder how they'd

react if they knew he was a girl too?



Shampoo also thinks very highly of Ranma.  She arrived in Nerima

recently, seeking revenge against me, but Ranma defeated her and this

activated a marriage law.  Shampoo hasn't told me why she needed to kill

me.  She seems to be ashamed about it somehow, ever since giving up her

vengeance for the sake of our old friendship.



Shampoo picked up this curse in China recently, that turns her into an

exact physical copy of me, all over her body, but first she fought this

other Akane, back when Ranma didn't remember me.



This other Akane also got me into some trouble with Dr Tofu, who I've

had a crush on, but she did win the match against Kodachi, with the help

of P-chan, my pet pig.



I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I haven't missed P-chan that much, now

that Shampoo has moved in.  Her own great-grandmother, who had given

Shampoo the Akane-curse in the first place, poked Shampoo's "cat tongue"

point and now she can't change back to herself or go back to her home at

the restaurant, until she gets Ranma to agree to marry her.  Since then

Shampoo has been staying at our place, as my cousin "Ami".



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	Henry J. Cobb	hcobb@slip.net          http://www.io.com/~hcobb