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Subject: [FFML] [Fanfic][Ranma][Lime] The Taming of the Horse Chapter 

9: Honeymoon

The Taming of the Horse

    ~~~~~ Chapter 9: Honeymoon ~~~~~

    "I'm not goin' inta the hotel like this!"

    "Yes, you are.  I'm cold, I'm tired, and I'm hungry, and I
want to get checked in just as soon as we can."

*Heh.  I found this amusing, mainly because it was usually Akane who 
freaked about the "both girls" thing.*

    Akane prevented Ranma from decking the porter when the man
tried to pick up their packs and led her off down the hallway,
following the manager.  The porter brought up the rear,
staggering.  *How the hell did those little girls carry these
damn things?!*

*Snicker.  I've always wondered how many porters Ryouga's pack has put 
into traction.*

    They went out a side door and down a graveled path to a
small building set off by itself in a grove of pine trees.  The
manager pulled a key out of his pocket, took an ofuda off the
doorknob, opened the door, and handed Akane the key.  "Here it
is," he said, waving.  "We had it cleaned up especially for your
arrival.  I hope everything works out all right... if there's
anything you need, just use the intercom..."  He hurried away.
The porter gave them a glance fraught with some unidentifiable
emotion, dropped the packs in the entryway, and fled without
waiting for a tip.

*It's a ghost, isn't it?*

    Ranma exploded out of the water carrying his screaming wife
in his arms, landed neatly on the flagstones, put Akane down, and
faced the ghost.  "DAMMIT!  IS EVERY ONSEN IN JAPAN HAUNTED?!" he
roared.  Akane stopped screaming suddenly and blinked.

*Oh, Kami, this whole scene had me in stitches, from that line on.*

    "Now then," the manager began once the young women were
seated, "I must tell you a very tragic story of a young bride who
drowned in that spring-- what's the matter with her?"

*cough.  cough.*

    Ranma glanced at her.  "Nabiki's gone too far this time,"
she said in a dangerously calm voice.

    Akane half-smiled.  "Only if we don't get our cuts."

    Ranma boggled a bit.  "Two hundred thousand..."

    "Plus the money she was supposed to spend on our honeymoon,"
Akane pointed out.  She considered.  "Let's get our money from
the room," she said finally.  "I saw a phone in the hotel."

*Heh.  They're learning....*

    Soun and Nabiki arrived shortly, Soun looking panicked,
Nabiki looking bored.  "What!" Soun expostulated.

*Should be "What?!"  It's that double-punctuation thing again.*

    "Haunted onsen?" Soun reminded her.
    
    "Never mind, Father," Kasumi said soothingly.  "They're just
having another adventure.  I'm sure they'll tell us all about it
when they get back."

*This was spot-on, for all three.  I feel just a little sorry for Soun, 
but hey, that's what he gets for being clueless.*

    Ranma snorted.  "Gimme a break, Akane.  I got no more
interest in dead gals than I do in live ones."  She paused.
"Uh... I mean... oh, hell with it."

*Ah, yes, the dreaded Saotome Foot-in-Mouth Technique.  Often a prelude 
to the Crouch of the Wild Tiger.*

    Akane splashed Ranma with hot water from the bucket, watched
as her husband appeared, and suddenly had to overcome a severe
case of weak knees.  Ranma looked down.  "Oops."  He hastily
retrieved and donned the dotera.  "Better?"

    "No.  Um, I mean yes.  I mean..."

*Snicker.*

    "No, " Akane interrupted.  "She gets all crazy when you're a
guy.  I'll have to do it."  Akane looked down into the spring.
The ghost was pointing down into the water, and when she moved
her head a little, she could just see an occasional flash of
something reflecting as the ripples on the surface crossed and
rebounded: an improbable glint down in the shadows between the
boulders.  *Where the water was deep enough to drown a poor woman
who got her arm caught between them...* Akane thought, and
shuddered.

*This was a well-thought out dilemma, and well-scripted.*

    Ranma reached down and gently maneuvered her arm out of the
crack between the boulders.  "Up, mostly," he said.  "I used its
heat for a Hiryu Shoten Ha."  He snorted.  "I shoulda done that
first thing."

*Nice solution, too.*

    Ranma's face froze.  Akane took her finger away.  Several
expressions crossed Ranma's face in rapid succession.  "Ick," he
said finally.  "I think I'd rather be watched by Happ--"
    
    Akane's hand was over Ranma's mouth in an instant.  "Don't,"
she hissed.  "Don't say that name!"  She took her hand away.

*Mmmph.  I just got this image of three naked women, standing in 
different parts of Japan, all calling out "Happousai...." and having the 
old lech self-destruct.*

*Of course, this is the second time I've seen something in this fic that 
reminded me of someone I'm prereading for (the first was Lord Archive's 
Nekoken is Out of the Bag, and this is fairly similar to Three Souls, 
One Heart, by David Tatum).  This is not to imply, however, that you're 
stealing material--I don't know how many things I've plotted for 
Illuminations that showed up in fics that beat me to the least by a 
weeek or two.  I guess these things just all come up at once.  Maybe the 
ancients were right about memes....*

    "KYAAAAAAAAAA!"
    
    "What?!  WHAT?!  Are you all right?!  OW!"
    
    "DON'T STOP NOW, YOU BAKA!  AAaaAAaaAA!"
    
    "Ow!  Getcher nails outa my back, dammit!  Aiee!"

*Ahem.  "Fiery Cloud" indeed....*

    Ranma knelt on the floor next to her.  "The villagers are
terrified," he said with a wry smile.

*Good line.  Very, very good line.*

    "It's not exactly what I imagined for our honeymoon," Akane
said softly.  "But now that I think about it, I should have
expected something like a haunted onsen exorcism.  It was so
perfectly... us."

*[nodding]*

    Ranma stared at her.  "Nah," he said eventually.  "She
wouldn't do anythin' nasty... hell, she gave it to Kasumi to give
to us.  It's gotta be safe."  He laid it down on the floor anyway
and teased at the knots with his chopsticks.  Once they were
undone, he picked at the seam until it gave, and lifted it.  An
ancient-looking scroll rolled out.  "Wow," Ranma breathed.  He
frowned.  "Crap.  It's in Chinese.  I think I know these,
though... uh, 'manual advanced' something 'techniques'?
Joketsuzoku lore, it's gotta be!"  His chopsticks made quick work
of the knot in the silk cord holding the scroll closed.  He
shaded his eyes with his hand, took a deep breath, and unrolled
the scroll across the floor with a quick jerk.

    Nothing happened.  Ranma and Akane bent forward and looked
at the pictures.  They looked at each other.  They blushed.  They
looked back at the pictures.  Akane found her voice first.  "Yes,
that's, um, 'advanced techniques', all right," she said.  "Um...
that one's got to hurt... doesn't it?"

*Man, did I call it, or what?  Course, you did leave a fairly blatant 
clue in the last chapter.*

    Akane recalled Kasumi's words: *'If you are honest with him
and yourself, it should all be all right.'*  "I don't know," she
said carefully.  "I... I wouldn't mind finding out."

*Nice balance of fear, desire and reservation throughout this 
conversation.*

    "Kasumi said--"

    "You told HER about this?!"

    "I told her about ME!  I was scared!  She's my sister!  I
had to talk to SOMEONE about it, and I couldn't talk to YOU,
could I?!"

    "...Oh.  I... guess not.  Uh... sorry."

*Heh.  The first time a person realizes that their S.O. is talking to 
someone about their relationship is always the hardest.*

    "No!  Just like I keep tellin' ya!  We're thinkin' about it
when we oughta just do it, and it's messin' us up!  Use the Art!"

    "...What?"

*I should've seen this coming, really.*

    A minute later, Akane leaned forward in her chair.  "Our
original deal was to remove the ghost from the premises.  We've
done that.  However, you don't know the end of your 'tragic
story', do you?  We do.  And we can tell it to you.  And you can
tell it to your guests.  And now that the ghost is gone--"

    "Yes, yes!" the manager interrupted.  "The haunted honeymoon
cottage... now that there's no real danger, they'll be lining up
to spend a night there."  He looked at Akane.  "So, you propose
to trade the tale for your bill?"  Akane nodded, smiling
slightly.  "That's an expensive tale..."

    "Compared to the fee you can charge now for one night there,
it's nothing,"  Akane pointed out.  "But if you like, we'll tell
you the story, and you can decide then whether it's worth it."

    The manager eyed Akane's trusting smile, Ranma's stern look,
and their obvious and exceptional fitness, and remembered the
phenomena, the screams in the night, and his own encounter with
the ghost, and suddenly realized that these were not naive
teenagers.  "I accept your proposal," he said formally.

*Heh.  Nice to see that the Tendou gene pool wasn't totally 
specialized--that negotiation was worthy of Nabiki.*

    Nabiki stood there with a bad case of dropjaw.  "Hey, have
you been feeding her meat, Ranma?" she asked finally.

*Oooh.  Talk about your straight lines....*

    Ranma smiled.  "You betcha."  Nabiki suddenly turned bright
red, but he ignored it.  "She's my partner.  She handles the
money, I handle the swimmin'."  He pretended to dodge Akane's
affectionate elbow.

    "Kasumi's doing kempo, Akane's making deals... I hope no one
expects me to start cooking," Nabiki muttered.  She studied
Ranma.  "There's something different about you, too, Ranma-kun,"
she said.

*"Nah, we'll just look at you strangely whenever you say something 
exceptionally clueless."*

    The door opened.  Ranma came in.  She closed the door behind
her.  "Now, about that girl-talk..."

    ~~~~~ end Honeymoon ~~~~~

*[applause]*

Very well done.

That's all I wrote.  I still haven't figured out a good way to end the
story; an epilogue seems called for.  I am currently mulling over the
feedback I have received, and gestating a revised version of TotH.

Hmmm... The only thing about the revision is:  I want more!  There's 
several things that were alluded to or implied, but never developed.  
For instance, we've received a number of hints that Ranma and Akane have 
developed a passle of "Partner" techniques, but you've only teased us 
with what what these might be:  The horizontal ki-blast you hint at in 
the fight with Shamps, and the 

Thanks again to everyone who sent me comments!


Vince Seifert    Network Analyst     seifertv@csus.edu
http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/  updated 1998Jun04
CSUS hired me to build their network, not to speak for the university.

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