Chapter Nine


	"For the tooth," said Chef Luigi. "In Italian it is, ‘al dente.’ It is
that perfect moment when  pasta is just right to chew. For me, al dente
is a spiritual thing. I have a pot boiling, and I simply know. You must
develop the instinct for that. You must be spiritually attuned to your
pasta."
	"Gimme a . . ." Ranma started to say. He shut himself up. Chef Pierre
had told him yesterday that good cooking  was like meditation. Maybe
Chef Luigi had something useful to say after all.
	"We don’t have to do Buddhist chants or anything, do we?" Akane asked.
	"No, no," Luigi said. "If that suits you, do it, is good anyway. But I
have  only song I do in my head, I call ‘pasta song.’ Is in Italian, but
I try to translate into Japanese haiku." He stood a moment, rubbing his
brow. "Is hard, still head hurts from drinking sake.

           "Bubbling pot, new steam
             Red, tender hands touch pasta
             As winter sun burns.

	Hee, hee, what do you think, eh?"
	"Okay," Akane said, and repeated it. Ranma noticed the wrinkles of
thought on her forehead. She was trying extra-hard to commit it to
memory.
	"That really helps?" Ranma asked.
	"Puts me in the mood," said Chef Luigi. "First step, how to boil
water."
	"I can do that," Akane said. It was the first page in her mother’s
recipe book.
	The lesson proceeded for some hours. There was a different way to boil
water for pasta – a different adjustment of temperatures, a different
speed of boiling desired. Chef Luigi had a bag full of different types
of pasta of  different sizes and consistencies. They spent all day, up
until lunch time, practicing. There were no explosions, no boiling water
was hurled. Akane did knock a pot of boiling water off the stove, but
Ranma happened to have a pot holder in his hand, so he caught it without
burning himself.
	While the pasta was boiling, Chef Luigi himself cooked up three
different sauces and a huge bowl of salad, and another western-style
lunch was served.  As Akane carried the salad bowl out, she found Genma
still seated at the table where he had been at breakfast.
	"You haven’t moved all day?"
	"A man doesn’t want to wake up from a good dream," he said.
	"I’ve never eaten real Italian cooking for lunch before," Kasumi said.
"It smells wonderful. Maybe I should be taking cooking lessons from the
great chefs, too. Not cooking three meals a day feels like cheating in
school."
	Akane noticed Kasumi’s hair was maybe not so perfect today as usual,
but she couldn’t concentrate on figuring out why; linguini _she_ had
boiled was going to be on the table. 
	There was a knock on the door. Kasumi started to go answer it, but her
father’s voice was heard in the hall.
	"Hello? No, he lives with me. Yes, yes, I’ll sign for it."
	Soun padded into the dining room holding a large wrapped box. "Special
delivery for you, Saotome," he said as Ranma and Chef Luigi carried out
more food for the table.
	"Hm," Genma said, "No return address. I wonder what. . .?"  He smiled,
set the package on his lap, and tore off the wrapping. Slowly he lifted
the lid. "Smells like a fresh sea breeze and tropical fruit," he said.
"I wonder if . . ."
	There was a loud pop and a spurting sound. Pineapple juice flew in all
directions. Ranma managed to scoot out of the room. Genma, however, was
drenched.
	"Rrr," said Genma-panda. He held up a sign that read, "Of course you
know, this means war."
	A loud crashing sound as Kasumi’s best large ceramic bowl fell and
shattered, spewing spaghetti all over the previously clean floor. Chef
Luigi said something in Italian that sounded like cursing as he stared
at the panda.
	Nabiki stepped into the room, holding up an open notebook as she
checked her watch. "Let’s see," she said. "That’s seventy-two hours,
fourteen minutes, eleven seconds. That’s Daisuke’s time block, but . . .
good, he bet it was Ranma who would change first, so he only gets half
the pot. Headed back to school, see you guys."
	While Genma, having wolfed down his lunch, took a hot bath to change
back and wash off the pineapple juice, explanations were given to those
who needed them. After a while, the lunch was finished, and all the
great chefs knew about both Saotomes’ curses. Well, almost.
	"So you change into a wild horse?" Chef Pierre asked Ranma.
	"Forget it!"
	Genma came back to the dining room dressed in a fresh gi. "If Principal
Kuno wants to play childish practical jokes on me, he’ll have to pay for
it," he said sternly. "Anything Goes Indiscriminate Grappling has its
own special attacks for that sort of thing. Hold the fort, Ranma m’boy."
Walking slowly and proudly, he headed out the front door.
	"This I gotta see," Ranma said. "See you later, Chef Luigi."
	"Wait, Ranma, I’ll . . ." Akane said, but he was already out the door. 
"Oh, forget it. Those two will never grow up. I’ll help clean up, Chef
Luigi."
	Genma sent  Principal Kuno a basket of fruit laced with a substance
that would turn his urine blue. Principal Kuno sent Genma a ukulele
filled with itching powder. Genma covered the floor outside Principal
Kuno’s office with rotten banana peels. Principal Kuno ambushed Genma in
Furinkan’s parking lot and pelted him with leis dripping with skunk oil.
So it continued throughout the day. Both men looked deadly serious, and
were red-faced with anger, but no blows were exchanged. It was almost
like a ritual; neither man really tried to avoid the other’s tricks.
Watching this from concealment, Ranma was aware that he was missing
hours and hours of cooking lessons, and he felt more guilty about it
than he had expected to. He had already forgotten the words to the pasta
haiku, and the stuff about cooking being like meditation was kind of
interesting, whereas the  practical joke war was just pathetic.
	He was concealed in a tree, thinking about this, when he saw Tatewaki
Kuno approaching the tree, looking directly at him.
	"Spying, Saotome? How unworthy of you."
	Ranma dropped down out of the tree. "You know what our fathers are
doing, don’t you?"
	"Aye, and I relish it," Tatewaki said. "Never do I feel so secure as
when my father’s attention is elsewhere. To go an entire day without
being called ‘Tachi’ is as close to paradise as any day can be in which
I embrace neither Akane Tendo nor my beloved pig-tailed goddess. Ah,
never mind it. I have words for you, Saotome."
	"All right, spit them out,  but don’t take all day."
	"Lout! You so scorn my public challenge?"
	"Public? There’s no one here but the two of us!"
	Tatewaki gestured at a nearby bush, where Hikaru Gosunkugi was crouched
with a video camera, and at another, where lurked Furinkan High’s
chemistry club with a box marked "explosives and sleeping gas for use on
Ranma," and at a nearby tree, from which protruded the face of Tsubasa
Kuranai, with a sign around his neck reading, "Maybe Ukyo will show up."
 	"My words are these, Saotome. Though I will not support the
dishonorable methods my twisted sister will use to defeat you,  nor do I
object to observing my father’s schemes overcome, even at your
scurrilous hands, still I must do what I can to promote your defeat,
Saotome. This defeat will unite you with Kodachi and thus free the
beauteous and high-spirited Akane Tendo to date with me. Therefore I
shall strike against  you openly during this cooking contest. I am not
unacquainted with the subtleties of modern television."
	Ranma was already tuning him out – a daily declaration of Tatewaki’s
hostile intent was about as inevitable as homework – when the last few
words caught his attention.
	"Television? What television?"
	"Have you not been informed?" Tatewaki said. "Ah, Saotome, your
habitual ignorance and expressions of helpless puzzlement drastically
amuse me. The competition will be held on the next installment of Yen
Can Cook, the same culinary game show upon which the three gaijin chefs
in your home are scheduled to appear. It is a special challenge match.
Nabiki Tendo has arranged this. If only I could learn the name of the
judge, I would act openly to sway the judge in Kodachi’s favor.
Farewell, Saotome. Prepare to fall into ignominious defeat, and to see
the exquisite Akane Tendo practicing on my palatial estate."
	"A TV game show," Ranma said as Tatewaki passed out of earshot. "I’m
going to get Nabiki for this."


Chapter Ten

	Akane tossed the pot of white sauce across the room.  At the impact,
the sauce splattered all over the floor. A sulfurous odor came from it,
which changed into an acidic one.
	"Well, how am I supposed to know the difference between yeast and brown
sugar?" she screeched at Chef Luigi.
	"You’re not. . ." Chef Luigi began.
	"You’re right, I’m not, so why do you keep picking on me? Maybe it
isn’t my fault I didn’t get it right!"
	"You’re not . . . " Chef Luigi tried again.
	"Maybe it’s your fault this time! How about that?"
	"You’re not supposed to put yeast OR brown sugar in white sauce," said
Chef Luigi. "I try to say this, and always with you answer is to go
crazy. Why you always go crazy?"
	Akane had been stomping the pot into the floor. She stopped, one foot
slightly raised, and looked at him. ‘What do you mean I’m crazy?" she
shouted. Then she fell silent. "Crazy? Do you really mean that?"
	The kitchen door popped open. The heads of several supporting
characters appeared. They all shouted, "Yes!"   The door shut again.
Akane lowered her foot gently to the floor, nudging the flattened pot a
little with her toe.
	"First time I see you," said Chef Luigi, "I try to offer you special
pasta and red sauce I cook for your welcome-home, and you kick it into
my face. Good thing I am drink a little that day, or she hurt too much,
you know? This kicking, is just crazy."
	"I thought you were attacking me."
	"With a bowl of pasta? Is crazy. I know crazy. They say always, I am
crazy. Maybe is true. But in kitchen, Chef Luigi, he is not crazy. You
know why? Chef Luigi make crazy go out of him and into food. Not  crazy
bad, you understand. Crazy good. You listen, I tell."
	He went over to stand by the stove, stirring a clam sauce he was
working on as he spoke.
	"When Chef Luigi was a little boy, was school bully, his name was
Gepetto. Before you ask, is no relation."
	"No relation to whom?"
	"Never mind it. You listen. School bully, he come to Luigi, and he say,
give to me all your money. And every day, I give to him money, and he
laugh and push me in mud puddle. Yes?"
	"I hate bullies," Akane said.
	"You are not there to protect me, eh?" said Chef Luigi. "All this
bullying, it make little Luigi crazy, so he say, today I fight back. I
get a, how you say, a tree branch to hit him with. Gepetto come up to
Luigi and he say, give to me all your money. I say no, and hit him with
tree branch. It no hurt him. He beat me up, very hard, and push me in
mud puddle, and take off my shoes and throw them in the canal. There
gondolier find them and give them to his little boy, who Luigi meet
later in life, they become friends. I meet him in…"
	The kitchen door popped open. Several supporting characters shouted
"Get on with it!" and withdrew.
	"Right. So this what happen. Next day, Luigi is all covered with
bruises, and he say, is no good this way of being crazy, I get hurt
worse like that. So I do something else, also is crazy. I cook crazy
food and give to Gepetto, and then maybe Gepetto change his mind about
Luigi."
	"So," Akane said, "you cooked him a meal, and the two of you were
friends after that."
	Luigi shook his head and took the clam sauce off the burner, scooping
it into a dish with his wooden spoon. "No. I pour into food water that
have, how you say, amoebas in it. Gepetto get dysentery, never come to
school again. But this is not the point. Point is, there is lots of
crazy, but you pick what crazy you use. Is crazy good, is crazy bad.
Now, when Luigi cook, crazy good come out. Crazy goes into sauce, and
you eat it, you come out crazy happy. Now come to counter, is lesson in
chop onion."
	In moments Akane had bits of onion and shards of cutting board flying
in all directions.
	"No, stop!" Chef Luigi cried. "Is crazy bad!"
	Akane lowered the knife. Sweat ran down her brow. "What’s crazy good,
then?"
	"Find way to cut onion clever, that no one ever expect," said Chef
Luigi. "Anyone can move knife fast. You find way to move it sneaky.
Look. Onion is not tasting same all the way through, no? You no believe,
you take bite."
	"No thanks," Akane said, "I believe you."
	"OK, so how cut onion to get best mix of how this part taste, that part
taste?"
	"But when you cook it, all the flavor goes out anyway!"
	"Maybe," said Chef Luigi. "But you cut it right, maybe not. Crazy good
is sneaky crazy. You try. You learn try hard is not always try fast, or
even try again and again.  Try hard sometimes is not work hard on what
you do, but is work hard on you who are doing it. Here. Use the smaller
knife."
Akane took a moment to contemplate the small vegetable knife. She
imagined for a moment what it would be like if Chef Luigi had a
conversation with Shampoo. She winced, then looked at the knife, felt it
in her hand, then gently touched it to the surface of a new onion Chef
Luigi had placed on a new cutting board. Slowly Akane began to press the
knife into the flesh of the onion. . .
SLAM! BANG! (The front door.) Ranma shouting, "Nabiki!!"
Akane flung the knife upward, where it stuck in the ceiling. "I’ll kill
him! I swear I’ll kill him!" She grabbed an already-dented frying pan
from a wall rack.
"No,  no," said Chef Luigi, stepped between her and the door. "No crazy
bad. You do crazy good. He is fool, yes? You fool him."
"I’ve got to hit him! He’s making all that noise while I’m trying to
concentrate!"
"No. You fool him." He held out his fat hand for the frying pan. She put
it in his hand. "Now you be crazy sneaky, instead of crazy with
hitting."
She opened the kitchen door and leaned part way into the hall. "Ranma!"
she called gently.
"Nabiki!" Ranma shouted again. He came to the kitchen. "Yo, Akane.
You’re not going to believe what Nabiki did."
Akane used her softest voice. "Ranma. I just wanted to tell you that if
you eat the dinner I cook tonight, I’ll have something special for you.
Something extra-special." She winked at him, tilted her head a little,
wiggled her finger.
"Huh?" Ranma said. "Well, gee, Akane. If you put it that way. . ."
"You want a sample of it right now?" Akane said, giving him another
smile and come-hither tilt of her head.
"Well. . . I mean . . . are you sure you want to . . . I mean, I don’t
want to force you into anything. I mean, we haven’t known each other
that long, and . . ."
"Come and get it, Ranma."
Ranma stepped toward the kitchen. Quickly Akane snatched the frying pan
from Luigi – surprising the grinning chef – and  bent it around his
head. "This is a sample of the special treatment you’ll get if you keep
making noise while I’m in here cooking!"
"Gnp," Ranma said. "Mrd. Frp. Ugh." They would be his last words for a
while.
"Crazy good?" Akane asked, nudging  Ranma’s unconscious form out of the
doorway with her foot and shutting the door again.
"Still crazy bad. I want you trick him only, not you trick him and then
hit him. But maybe is better than before."
Akane smiled her most angelic smile. "I’m getting better," she said. "I
really am."
 

Chapter Eleven

Deep Character Development Time:

Chef Gottfried:

Growing up in Wien, home of the Waltz King, Chef Gottfried hated the
music of Johann Strauss, Jr. His father and mother used to take him to
open-air concerts, and every time the orchestra struck up "Blue Danube
Waltz" or "Tales of the Wien Woods," or even a harmless little ditty
like "Tritsch-Tratsch Polka," and the audience were swaying in their
seats or humming , Gottfried would grind his teeth. He hated Strauss,
and eventually he realized it wasn’t only Strauss. He hated all music.
It was thus that he developed the first symptoms of a hatred for all
mankind. Everywhere he went, the fools had their eyes closed, or their
lips flickering as they sang along. To him, music was no better than the
barking of dogs, or at its best, the songs of evening-birds whose
chirruping kept him from sleep.
	Young Gottfried went on about this hatred of all mankind, until he
discovered crullers. The flaky crullers which his mother purchased for
him in the department stores were of such delicacy, such air-light
flavor, that they seemed to slip away from his lips as he bit into them.
"This is to me, as music is to others," Gottfried said to himself. "I
shall see to the matter." Upon finishing his mandatory schooling, and a
stint in the Austrian army in which he was a cook, he attended the
finest culinary school available, and became a pastry chef. While
schooling he met Komiko, his love, who however slipped away from him. He
began to search for the elusive combination of ingredients which could
impart the sweetness of the taste of a woman’s skin beneath his lips. He
did not succeed, but his efforts brought him great renown.
	It was at this time that Chef Gottfried began to see unidentified
flying objects. He was certain that no madness was the cause, first of
all, because if he was concerned about being mad, then of course, the
concern was proof of his sanity. Second, he was certain he was not mad,
because his studies had persuaded him that madness did not exist.
Finally, he was certain he was not mad, because sometimes others saw
these objects too.
	The first one, which he saw in the sky above his kitchen window while
cooking blintzes one evening, was neon purple and shaped like a
fish-hook. He watched as it zigzagged and tritsch-tratsched across the
sky, then suddenly darted behind the moon, went around and came out on
the other side, and vanished into a cloud.
	The second time he saw a UFO, he was in France on vacation, and had
stepped out of the Louvre to have a cigarette. There in the sky, among
the fluffy white clouds, was a gigantic rotating cylinder of cinema
popcorn.
	"I am mad," Chef Gottfried said. Accordingly he asked another man next
to him, an older man with a swelling gut who also was smoking, "See
here, do you see that box of popcorn in the sky?"
	"I don’t speak German," the man said in French.
	"Do you see the giant popcorn box up there, next to the cloud shaped
like a wedding cake?" Chef Gottfried said through his teeth, speaking
French this time.
	"Oh, yes," the man said. "Yes, I do. Sure thing, old friend. It’s big
and it says ‘Hohenzollorn Popping Corn’ on the side."
	"You have good eyes," said Chef Gottfried, peering more closely at the
UFO. "I can’t read anything on the box at all."
	For several years thereafter, a succession of pill-bottles, pocket
calculators, lavatory paper rolls, cheese graters, pick-axes,
eight-track tapes, shaving brushes, dot-matrix computer printers drifted
through the sky under Chef Gottfried’s direct scrutiny. When he
described this visions to others, they always nodded carefully and then
quickly left his company to pass on to others the news of what startling
things were to be seen (usually over Austria).
	Then, one bright spring day, Chef Gottfried realized that he had not
seen a flying object for over two years. "It’s over," he said. "I must
have been mad, but now I’m not." He then checked to be certain that both
pairs of his ears were in place.


 Chapter Twelve


	Carefully, Happosai balanced a cherry on top of the pile of lingerie.
	"Ha ha!" he cried. "I love it!"
	Since the pile of lingerie was over twenty feet high, reaching the top
had required him to use his power to float around in seemingly random
directions as if weightless.
	"Ha ha!" he cried. "I love it!"
	And he did, too.

Chapter Thirteen

	While Happosai was placing his cherry, some time passed. In the
kitchens of the Kuno ancestral home, Kodachi had spent the week so far
busily experimenting with a ton of pineapples supplied to her by her
father, who now referred to her as "Pineapple Girl in Blue Leotard." She
considered changing her nickname to "The Black Pineapple" to please him,
but seeing what had happened to her brother the previous week, she
decided in a lucid moment that getting so much of his attention meant
getting her lustrous hair cut far too close properly to frame her
magnificent eyes and delicate facial structure.
	Kodachi was certain that she had managed to incorporate pineapple into
every recipe she knew. In addition to pineapple cake, pineapple bread,
and pineapple cookies, and various kinds of meat, fowl, shellfish, and
finny fish impregnated with pineapple, she had also made pineapple tea,
pineapple coffee, pineapple salad, pineapple eggs scrambled, fried,
boiled, poached, and folded like an omelet, pineapple pizza, pineapple.
. .  Well, her hands smelled like pineapple. The kitchen smelled like
pineapple. The hands and kitchen of everyone within a block smelled like
pineapple. She was ready.
	"I wonder how my darling Ranma and that repulsive nit Akane Tendo are
doing with their preparations?" she fluted. "I just simply must go and
spy on them just a little. Oh, what a joyous lark this shall be! I
haven’t had so much fun since I tripped Kerri Strug during her final
vault! HAHAHOHOHEHE,  HAHAHOHOHEHE!"
	She then flounced off, with ribbons, flower petals, bits of pineapple,
and the sound of shakuhachi playing  "The Mother Crane Calling to her
Babies" drifting behind her.
	When she arrived at the Tendo dojo, taking up a hiding place on the
roof, she saw Genma Saotome in his panda form, reading a book called
"How to Defend Yourself Against People Armed with Fresh Fruit." Hanging
from the roof, she read over his shoulder.

"First you shoot him. Then, you eat the pineapple, thus disarming him."

	"RRRM," said the panda.
	She crept over the roof to a position over the kitchen. Using one of
the spikes on one of her thousand clubs, she delicately punched a hole
in the roof in order to spy on what was happening below.

	In the kitchen below, the tall, scrawny gaijin -- Chef Gottfried,
though she did not know this was his name -- was pulling three batches
of doughnuts from the oven. The first batch was golden-brown, light and
fluffy, and gave off a tantalizing aroma of cinnamon. The second batch
was slightly burnt, and the doughnuts were not that well-shaped and
looked a little soggy, but the batch still looked edible. The third
batch was horrible. The doughnuts looked like mottled protozoa. There
were bits of what looked like fish bones poking out of some of them. The
smell from this batch was not earthly.
	"Generally, doughnuts are not prepared with tuna," said Chef Gottfried.
"However, we shall sample these nevertheless." Using tongs, he removed
one of the fishy doughnuts from the baking pan and took a tentative
bite. Immediately he fell to the floor with his face turning black.
	Kodachi watched, rubbing her hands together with glee. If this was all
Akane Tendo could do, then darling Ranma was as good as hers!
	"Yep, these should take care of Happosai all right," Ranma said. "I’ll
put on any bra that pervert comes up with if he can eat a whole tray of
these without dying." He leaned over the pan of slightly soggy
doughnuts. "Not too bad, Akane. I’ll try  to make a batch for real now."
	Akane grinned. "Okay."
	"What?" Kodachi shrieked, leaping to her feet. It was impossible! Akane
Tendo could never cook anything that was actually edible! "No! I refuse
to believe that! It is a deception they have perpetrated upon me, to
conceal the true calamity that is Akane Tendo’s culinary heritage. And
yet, if they seek to deceive me, then they must have discovered that . .
.  Eh?"  Someone was tapping on her shoulder.
She turned and saw Ranma standing there, holding one of the fishy
doughnuts.
"We don’t appreciate being spied on," he said, waving the doughnut under
her nose.
Kodachi slid gently to the rooftop, as unconscious as though she had
been dosed with ether.
She awoke to find herself lying on a mat inside the Tendo dojo. Soun
Tendo, who was missing the hair on one side of his head, was seated
nearby in the lotus position, smoking a cigarette.
"Wha?" said Kodachi.
"Some people come in by the door," Soun said sternly. "I get enough
holes knocked in my walls and roof  by the people who live here, without
you punching holes as well."
Kodachi sprang to her feet; but she was still a little woozy. She ran
for the door. Genma-panda, still holding his book about fresh fruit self
defense, entirely filled that exit. He lifted a sign beside his head: 
"Anyone for tea?"
His face unreadable, Soun snubbed out his cigarette on the floor and
rose. He cracked his knuckles, and lifted from the floor behind him a
large box. "Now, my dear," he said, as Kodachi cast her head rapidly
this way and that, "we have a message for you to deliver to your
father."

TO BE CONTINUED

In the next and final thrilling installment:

Kasumi and Ukyo talk about cooking; Chef Gottfried’s lesson in love; the
climax (??) of the practical joke war; and when the day of the contest
dawns, who really will be the special judge on Yen Can Cook?