This is the very first part of Comes the Cold Dragon. I have, at the request
of the good folks over at www.sofaspudscouch.org, been revising the earlier
chapters. Because I have had so many questions come up during C&C that had
been covered by previous chapters, I decided to re-post it to FFML. Yes, I
am still working on Part XII. There is some delay towards getting it to
pre-readers because I am not happy with what I have written thus far. It is
shaping up to be a crucial part of the story.
Thank you one and all for your patience,
Don Granberry.
======================================
Most of the characters in this piece and the setting for it,
were conceived of by Rumiko Takahashi for her Ranma1/2 series
of Manga. All such characters and the setting are the
property of Takahashi-san and her licensees. All other
characters in the piece are purely fictional and any
resemblances to actual persons living or dead, are purely
coincidental.
------------------------------------------------------------
Comes the Cold Dragon: Part One REVISION Three
-------------------------------------------------------------
Nabiki Tendo rose uncharacteristically early on the Monday
morning following her sister's aborted wedding. She had done
so hoping to be out of the house before Akane made an
appearance. She did not quite make it. Just before Nabiki
could finish an intentionally light breakfast, Akane walked
in and sat down at the table. She looked as though nothing
was wrong and the world was a beautiful place. Nabiki knew
better. This was Akane at her most dangerous. This was the
Akane struggling to contain a fury only slightly less
powerful than a category five hurricane. This was the same
deadly, misleading calm that preceded the swirling, howling
hell that rushed in from the sea to swallow entire cities.
The situation was especially dangerous because Ranma was not
around for Akane to unleash her fury against. Their father
and Genma Saotome had quite wisely skipped breakfast that
morning for a "little jog." Neither of them had gone jogging
in recent memory. Nodoka had been careful to confine herself
to the kitchen. That left only Kasumi and Nabiki to deal with
their baby sister. Nabiki had no illusions about how Akane
was feeling towards her at the moment. She decided that her
meager breakfast was not worth the risk and left for school.
Nabiki walked at fairly fast clip, but did not overdo
her exertions. She had plenty of time and there was little
point in working up enough sweat to dampen her hair or mar
her makeup. Akane would surely go visit Ranma at the clinic
rather than come after her. She was not all that concerned
about taking a drubbing from Akane. The trick was to avoid
provoking her younger sister while within her reach. Sooner
or later, Akane would realize that the wedding was doomed no
matter who Nabiki had invited to attend the ceremony.
Happosai would have acted just as he had no matter who had
been there. The same went for Genma. Even if she had not
invited the Kunos, or Xian Pu or Ukyo, word would have gotten
around and they would have shown up anyway. Had they arrived
without invitation, the trouble would have been much worse.
By sending them formal invitations, Nabiki had obliged them
to bring wedding gifts and to behave.
They had not behaved of course, but their gifts of
money had been generous. Kodachi Kuno had been surprisingly
generous. Now Kuno would find himself paying for repairs to
the dojo because Nabiki would convince him that the entire
mess was his fault. He drew a sword at her sister's wedding.
Such behavior was conduct unbecoming of an American suffering
from the touristas, much less a high-born samurai. Guilt, she
reflected with an evil grin, was a far better weapon than the
sword.
No matter how much it upset Akane, things had worked
out the way they were going to work out. This time matters
had worked for the best. Neither she nor Ranma was ready to
marry. They weren't even out of school, and they were going
to have a hard time finishing thanks to all the distractions
and interruptions. The last thing either of them needed was
the added strains of a premature marriage. Besides, had they
gotten married they would have spent last night together
and...Nabiki forced her thoughts away from that particular
subject.
Fate could be incredibly cruel at times, but Nabiki
Tendo regarded fate as something to be dealt with, not
something to cry about. She had no choice about this
attitude. She was the second of three girls born into a
family of martial artists. Unfortunately, it was a family of
martial artists possessing a rather muddled heritage. Her
mother was a Tendo of the Tendo no Taira Clan. Her father was
a Mitamura who was adopted into her mother's clan as
muyokoshi. Both families had always specialized in teaching
the use of weapons, particularly the naginata.
Soun Tendo never became entirely comfortable with the
clan he had joined upon marriage to his wife. Weapons,
particularly in modern Japan after World War Two, were worse
than an anachronism, they were often a liability. Shortly
after he was licensed to teach the Tendo-ryu, he decided that
a different form of instruction was needed. His students
needed techniques that focused upon a broader range of
skills, especially the forms of stealthy and unarmed combat.
This decisioin made, he began to study under the already
infamous Happosai, founder of the Anything Goes School of
Martial Arts. This odd, newly founded school did not ignore
weapons, but taught its students to never become reliant upon
them. This kind of instruction made better sense in the
current era. The ownership of many weapons was illegal, and
the use of almost any weapon, even in self-defense, carried
huge fines if not long jail sentences.
The problem with her father's decision was that it put
an enormous strain upon their relationships with the greater
part of the Tendo families. Nabiki did not understand and
resented the stigma attached to her father for years until
Happosai returned. The realization that she would never be
fully accepted by her cousins, no matter how good she became
was the main reason she had given up the Art. Well, that and
the fact that boys tended to shy away from girls that could
pull their arms out of socket. Nabiki could, of course, pull
a man's arm out of socket, she just never made a show of her
abilities. It saved her no end of trouble.
Still, she had not given up all of her interest in the
Martial Arts. She had become an excellent judge of athletic
ability and a connoisseur of the masculine form. She became
an ardent follower of Sumo for quite a while. Her interest in
Sumo and what she learned in mathematics class led her to
discover her talent for figuring odds. She loved playing with
numbers almost as much as she loved spending other people's
money. The two complemented one another nicely. It had not
taken her long to get things going her way. The betting pools
at school led to other enterprises which were, quite often, a
good deal more profitable. Life was nearing perfection until
fate dropped Ranma Saotome in her lap. Well, sometimes she
wished she had Ranma Saotome in her lap. That was the rub.
Nabiki often wondered how things might have gone had
she encountered Ranma in his male form first instead of his
cursed form. His female form had put her off to no end. She
had been expecting a sleek, powerful martial artist to walk
through her door. Come to think of it, a sleek, powerful
martial artist had walked through her door. The trouble had
been that said martial artist was sleek, powerful and female.
It didn't help that the martial artist seemed to like,
despite her protests to the contrary, having her breast
squeezed by another girl. Nabiki had risked the girl's wrath
a second time just to make certain. She had been furious with
her father. What kind of weirdos did he think his daughters
were that they would actually marry a lesbian? And how in the
very devil was a pair of lesbians ever going to produce a
proper heir? Besides, what girl in her right mind would want
that bum Genma Saotome for a father-in-law?
It wasn't until several days later that Nabiki
realized the magnitude of her error. Ranma, in his male form,
was a thrill to look at. He was even more of thrill to watch
whenever he was in action. One morning, as she watched Ranma
spar with his father, she got to thinking about the day they
had first arrived. It was then that she remembered the
sensation of Onna-Ranma's nipple stiffening beneath her palm.
Oh, Kami-sama! The full realization of what she had rejected
was like being trapped on the downhill side of a volcanic
eruption. The suffocating heat she felt at that moment was
still with her, but she had already made her decision and the
die was cast. Fate was something to be dealt with, not cried
about.
From that day forward she had done everything she
could think of to alienate Ranma. The few days that she had
been affianced to him had been the most exquisite torture she
had ever endured. Being able to rub up against him with
impunity, but knowing that she could never have him, had been
little different from walking on coals. Nabiki was very proud
of herself for the way she handled that little episode. It
would have been so easy for things to have gotten out of hand
it was frightening. As it was, she had managed to walk the
line and was proud of it, even though she dared tell no one
of her achievement in self-control. Over time, and little by
little, she had become the Ice Queen of Nerima. Sooner or
later her obsession with Ranma would fade, then she could
become Nabiki Tendo again. For now, she would remain the Ice
Queen and be proud of her hard-won title.
Akane would eventually marry Ranma and carry forward
her father's heritage. Sooner or later, Kasumi would marry
and carry forward her mother's heritage. As for Nabiki?
Nabiki would make her own way. That was the hand fate had
dealt her and she was determined to play it for all it was
worth. The world might never hear of the Tendo School of
Anything Goes School of Capitalism, but it would without
doubt feel its efficacy.
The sound of masculine voices broke her revery. Much
to Nabiki's disgust, the Hentai Brigade had reformed. She
could hear them milling around in the school-yard, although
she was forty meters short of the gate. Kuno was haranguing
them. She did not find them disgusting because of their
obsession. Her little sister after all, was an
extraordinarily attractive girl. More to the point, most of
the Hentai Brigade was quite athletic and a joy to look at.
What disgusted her about the Brigade was that they let a
brainless wonder like Kuno lead them around by their penises.
"I, Tatewaki Kuno have at last defeated Ranma Saotome,
the foul sorcerer who has too long held Akane Tendo and the
lovely Pig-tailed Girl hostage. Now that I have banished him
to the lower, nether regions, I declare that ill-considered
match between the fair Akane and the wretched Saotome null
and void. None may date her save he that defeats her! So say
I, Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High!"
This was followed by a round of cheering. Nabiki
rolled her eyes and quietly made her way to class. Mentally,
she began racing ahead of the morning's unfolding events. She
needed to restructure the morning betting pool. These fools
had no idea what they were about to do to themselves. Akane
would not be the kind and gentle little warrior they had
known in the past. Although she often griped about how Ranma
never took her training seriously, Akane spent at least an
hour per day in the dojo trying to land a solid punch on her
mercurial fiance. The memory of Ranma's incessant teasing and
Akane's answering growls of frustrated fury echoed in
Nabiki's ears. It was hard to listen to and even harder to
ignore. Saturdays were the worst. Nabiki had long ago lost
count of the weekends when Akane would insist upon sparring
with Ranma for hours at a stretch, but never getting in a
solid punch. The bills for repairing the dojo were nothing
sneeze at, either.
Akane was neither the fastest nor the most graceful of
martial artists, but she could deliver a punch that would
bring a freight train running at full throttle to a cold
stop. Nabiki had the invoices to prove it. There was entirely
too much madness to the Saotome training method to suit
Nabiki's tastes, but training was training and Akane had been
doing a lot of it. Her little sister was whipcord lean, and
as of today, had plenty of reason to be mean. The Brigade
would suffer this morning.
"Let's see," Nabiki muttered to herself, "We'd better
reduce the odds for a serious injury from two-to one to even-
steven, and lower the odds of a fatality from a hundred to
one down to ten to one." She decided on her way up the stairs
to adjust the odds for bets on the numbers and types of
injuries as well.
The battle turned out to be something of a
disappointment once it finally occurred. The action had been
too fast for most observers to follow and too brief for
almost anyone to believe. One moment Akane was standing in
the school-yard gate being confronted by fifty or more
hormone crazed athletes, the next moment she was standing in
the schoolhouse door and straightening her hair before
continuing on her way to class. She had simply flowed through
the mob as unstoppable as the incoming tide and as elusive as
a tiny bead of quicksilver. The Brigade milled around in
confusion for several moments after she had entered the
school, many of them still unaware that Akane had already
passed through their ranks and was safely out of their reach.
Six of their number however, had definitely noticed
her passing. Four of them were rapidly turning blue and would
soon pass out. Another, Furinkan's best soccer goalie, was
struggling to remove a rapidly swelling foot, already
straining the laces of his tennis shoe. A sixth, the captain
of the soccer team, lay flat of his back, taking long, deep
breaths, then exhaling with a long drawn out cry of agony.
Nabiki figured that he had a cracked pubic arch judging from
the way he was holding his knees slightly bent and curling
his toes. She had of course seen this particular injury
accidently inflicted on more than one occasion at the dojo.
It was not quite as bad or as dangerous as a cracked sternum,
but seemed a good deal more painful. Even a wannabe martial
artist's life is rife with hazard.
"Did we get this on tape?" Nabiki asked one of her
assistants who was speaking into a cellular telephone.
"We sure did! Got it from two different angles."
"Send someone out to check on Kuno. He's so still I
can't tell if he is breathing or not." Kuno had not joined
the fight as was his usual habit, yet he was now lying face
down upon the grass, unmoving.
"Already done. He didn't get hit. He just passed out.
Oh, wait! Hang on a second," Nabiki's assistant listened
intently to her cell phone for a moment. "He's running a high
fever."
"Get a water hose on him and cool him off. I don't
want any arguments with anyone that bet on a fatality."
"Hai!"
"Nabiki-san!"
"Yes?"
"Good job on shifting the odds. It looks like we are
going to clear almost fifty-thousand yen."
Nabiki allowed herself to look smug despite her inward
misgivings. The money was great, but she did not want her
baby sister going to jail. If the Hentai Brigade formed up in
front of Akane again tomorrow, things might get very ugly.
"Have Gosunkugi bring the tapes to the infirmary. I
want to see what happened in detail."
"Hai, Oyabun!"
----------
-
Onna-Ranma woke up weak at the knees and nauseated,
only to discover that he was standing at the front of a room
crowded with people. Someone was holding his right arm, and
some unidentified jerk was playing music so loud it made his
head hurt. His abdomen felt all puffy, and he had that greasy
feeling that he got a couple of times back when Ko Lon had
given him the Full-Body Cat's Tongue. Worse, he was wearing
his boxers and could not feel a pad. He felt something
tickling his ears and realized that some idiot had let his
hair down. He looked down. He was wearing a white dress.
"Oh, shit! What idiot dressed me in white on a day
like...wait a minute! Wait a fucking minute! This is a
wedding dress!"
Onna-Ranma glanced around quickly, trying to figure
out what was going on. Sure enough, there was a priest in
front of him, going on about obedience and fidelity and
...CHILDREN? He glanced to his right and the nausea became
much worse, forcing him to gulp at the bile in his throat. He
was standing next to Tatewaki Kuno, who was now fumbling
around in his pockets as though trying to find something. He
glanced over his left shoulder and spied his father, sitting
on the aisle end of the front pew.
"What the hell is going on, Old Man?"
"Look boy, since you and Akane never got along all
that well, Tendo and I decided to make a deal with the
Kunos."
"With the Kunos?" Onna-Ranma felt a flood of
adrenaline slam into his bloodstream. "You mean both of 'em?"
"Yes! Just think son! This is your lucky day. You'll
have two weddings! First to your new husband, and then in an
hour or so, to your new wife. The truly great beauty of it
is, they're both rich!"
Onna-Ranma gritted his teeth in fury.
"And you needn't worry about Akane, either!" Nabiki's
voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Her future is
secure! Kuno set up a permanent, irrevocable trust for Akane,
Ryoga and their kids."
"You may now kiss the bride!" The Priest happily
proclaimed.
Ranma woke with a violent start. He regretted the jerk
immediately. His sudden motion made the soft gauze of his
bandages grate against his burns like so much sandpaper. Nor
did the movement do his head any favors. Sharp pains snaked
though his skull, accompanied by bright flashes of false
light that he felt as much as saw behind tightly shut
eyelids.
"Ouch!"
Opening his eyes revealed a stinging, blurry mixture
of fluorescent lighting and squirming ceiling tiles. It took
several minutes for his vision to clear.
I'm in Tofu's clinic, Ranma said silently to himself.
Why am I here? What happened? Why was I dreaming about
marrying...Oh, shit! The wedding! Why won't the stupid
bastards give us a rest! Akane's gonna be furious.
The effort needed to contain his anger made him grit
his teeth. Gritting his teeth, made the pain in his head
nearly unbearable. He went through the flashing lights and
blurred vision ordeal again.
"Note to self," spoke an echoing voice in his head,
"Do not! I repeat, do _not_ grit your teeth until this
concussion has healed."
"Concussion?" He whispered to himself. "I got a
concussion?"
"Yes!" The echoing voice answered as a great wave of
pain broke just behind his eyeballs and washed around them.
"So don't grit your teeth and try to lie still! It hurts when
you do that!"
"All right already! I only did it because I was mad,
okay? The way I found out I was getting married was by Tendo
and my old man knocking me out and dressing me in a white
tuxedo--stupid bastards! I was so pissed I couldn't see
straight. We hadn't been home from China for more than two
days. They wouldn't even let us get a decent rest from that
long-assed trip," he told the voice in his head.
"Yeah, that was pretty rotten, all right." The voice
sounded doubtful for some reason. The voice was both female
and familiar, but Ranma could not identify the speaker. He
found this annoying. He knew the person was someone close to
him.
"So I broke loose from Pops and ran up to Akane's
room," Ranma told the disembodied voice, "I wanted to see if
she was okay. If they had knocked her out again just to get
her into a wedding gown, I was going to whip every ass in the
house."
"But she was okay, wasn't she?"
"She was more than okay. She was beautiful!"
"Yeah, that western-style wedding gown looked great on
her. She glowed, didn't she?" The voice asked, sounding
slightly envious.
"Glowed, hell! She shone like the morning sun on a
clear day in winter."
"Yeah, you're right, Saotome!" The voice said,
suddenly sounding like a little girl lost in the stygian
depths of a great cavern. "She was beautiful."
The word beautiful echoed around the inside of Ranma's
skull a few times, making his eyes water.
"The funny thing was, she was willing to go through
with it. She said it was because I said I loved her while we
were at Jusendo."
Ranma paused to swallow at the burning pain he now
found in his throat.
"She was willing to live with me forever, even after
nearly dying because of me and my stupid curse! Two weeks ago
I was holding her in my arms and feeling her body cool as she
died, then yesterday, she stood in front of me looking for
all the world like an angel."
"But you argued, didn't you?" The voice asked,
quavering with anger. "You big jerk!"
"Yeah, we argued. I never told her I loved her, and I
knew it."
Ranma managed to stifle a sob, but he could not stop
the tears which now began to stream down his face.
"I remember thinking of how much I loved her. I
remember regretting never telling her that I loved her when I
felt her dying, and I yelled out her name in my ki voice. I
put everything I had into it."
He shuddered involuntarily at the memory. The movement
generated many little ripples of pain in his skull. He wanted
to howl, but held the urge in check. Such an act would only
make matters worse. The pain faded after a minute or so.
"Then she hugged me and I knew she had returned. I
must have been heard on the kami-plane, and they sent her
back, but I still never told her that I loved her. I didn't
want her thinkin' I did."
"Why?" The echoing voice asked.
"Because I don't want any more lies between us, that's
why! Who the hell are you, anyway?" he asked the voice.
"I'm the part of yourself that knows all the stuff you
never admit knowing," the voice answered. Its echoing made
Ranma's head pound. "Now then, why no lies between you and
Akane?"
"Because I really do love her, that's why!" he
answered the voice mentally. "I love her more than my own
life, but I can't do anything about it right now."
"As if not revealing the truth to her isn't a kind of
lie!" the voice answered in a cynical tone. "So, O wonderful
and noble Saotome-sama, why won't you marry her?"
"I ain't worthy of her yet," he whispered aloud to
himself. "What the hell do I have to give her besides me?
Ain't I some kinda sweet deal! What good am I to her? I'm a
girl half of the time! How am I gonna take care of her? Sure,
I'm a world class martial artist. So what? That won't put no
rice in her bowl by itself. Besides, all I've ever done is
make life hard for her. Akane's lucky to have lived through
all the crap that followed me here."
"You worry too much about the curse, Saotome." The
girlish voice sounded miffed.
"How do you know?"
"Trust me. I know!" The voice said confidently. "It
bothers Akane some, but not enough to spoil her love for
you."
"Whadda ya mean her love for me?"
"Oh, come on, Saotome! She loves you, and you know it.
You worry about the curse because you think you're starting
to like it."
"I don't like the stupid curse!"
"Bullshit! You use it all the time. It's handy."
"I'm afraid I'll turn into a girl full time. What if I
start likin' it too much after I marry Akane, then what? I
expect her to...to..."
"That ain't gonna happen and you know it."
"Yeah, you're right. I'm a guy. Even when I'm girl and
tryin' to act like a girl, I'm a guy. I don't know how they
do it. Bein' a girl is a pain most of the time."
"And sometimes it's an even bigger pain, right?" Now
the voice sounded positively impish.
Ranma shuddered and the new waves of pain made his
ears ring.
"Please, I don't want to think about those times."
"So the curse is something you can live with, right?
It ain't holdin' you back that much."
"No, not really."
"It's the money, ain't it?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Whadda ya mean, why?"
"Why is the money a problem?"
"'Cause when you ain't got money ya hafta depend on
somebody who _has_ got money. I don't like depending on
anyone else. I don't want Akane havin' to depend on anyone
else," Ranma said as rising anger made his headache worse.
"All me and the old man have done for ten years now is bum
around and leech off other people. I'm sick of that! I
haven't made a fuss about it before because it would be
embarrassing, but I want to end the mooching. I wanna earn my
own way...and Akane's."
"You can teach the Art to make money."
"To do that, you gotta be able to hold classes on
time."
"So?"
"So when do I have control of my time?"
"I'd say you need to take control of it, Saotome."
"Easier said than done!"
"Not so hard you can't do it though. All you really
need to do is end the chaos."
"Things are never goin' to be neat, peaceful and
orderly around me. No one has that much control. Whadda ya
think I am? Lord High Daimyo of the Universe or somethin'?"
"No, but you can put a stop to much of it, and you
should," the voice said, "Trouble is, you _like_ the chaos."
"Huh? Wadda you mean, I like the chaos?"
"Gimme a break!" the girl's voice said angrily. The
echoes in Ranma's head became deafening. "You're an
adrenaline freak, Saotome! About half the trouble around here
is your fault, and when it ain't been your fault, you've made
it worse by acting like the backside of your namesake!"
Ranma made no answer. The pain was too much for him to
come up with one and not all of the pain came from his
concussion. The voice would not let matters stand though.
"So if you really wanted to end the chaos around here,
you could end half of it by cleanin' up your own act, right?
I mean, the least you could do is try and be nice to Akane!"
"Yeah," Ranma whispered aloud, "I guess I could."
"But will you?"
Ranma almost made the mistake of nodding his throbbing
head.
"Yeah," Ranma finally answered the voice contritely,
"I'll stop all of it I can. Then I'll marry Akane."
"Not quite."
"Whadda ya mean, not quite?"
"There are a couple of other things you need to take
care of first."
"Such as?"
"Well for starters, you have some ass whippings to
hand out."
Ranma felt as though a jolt of electricity had passed
through his body.
"Damn straight, I got some ass whippings to hand out!
Plenty of people there yesterday had reason to be mad at me,
but none of 'em had a reason to hurt Akane. It was _her_
wedding. It should have been regal, and nice,
and...sacred...Yeah, sacred! They're gonna pay. Some of 'em
are gonna pay a lot!"
"Better make a list," the girlish voice said in a grim
tone, "You don't want to miss one or kick the wrong ass by
mistake."
"Pop comes first."
"Why your dad first?"
"Because he's the one that talked Tendo-san into
setting up the wedding, then made a mess of it by trying to
steal our most important wedding present."
"You mean the water from the Spring of Drowned Man?"
"You got it! That water was as much for Akane as it
was for me."
"I suppose your right about the water," the girlish
voice said, sounding unhappy.
"Damned straight I'm right about the water! What girl
in her right mind wants to be married to a guy that becomes a
girl at the drop of a cold glass of water? I mean, I got the
Nekko-ken because Pops was trying to make me a better martial
artist, right? Okay it was a really stupid mistake, but he
was just trying to help me out. I can forgive him for it. I
got this curse because he took me to Jusenkyo. Okay, he was
trying to make me a better martial artist. That's fine, Just
another stupid mistake. I can forgive him--sorta. But this
time he's got no excuse. He set this wedding up, then he help
make a mess out of it and shamed Akane. I may donate him to
the zoo and leave him there for a year."
"What about Happosai?" the voice asked in a tone so
cold that Ranma felt icicles forming on the roof of his
skull.
"We're gonna hold off on the old lecher."
"Good idea, Saotome!" the voice said sounding
regretful, "I don't think we want any more blood on our
hands, now do we?"
"Whadda ya mean, more blood?"
"You killed Safuron, remember?"
"I didn't kill Safuron--not really anyways."
"Bullshit, you didn't kill him! You shattered him like
he was a piece of cheap pottery."
"But he didn't really die, did he?"
"Yes he did," the voice said, sounding as though it
were near tears, "Just because he was reborn a few minutes
later, don't mean you didn't kill him. You know damned good
and well you meant to kill him."
"Yeah, I did. I killed Safuron and I did it on
purpose, but only to save Akane."
"You were angry, Ranma!" The voice said, obviously
crying now. "You _wanted_ him dead."
It was not a vision Safuron's shattered body filling
the eye of Ranma's mind, but the sight of Happosai clinging
to Akane in her wedding dress.
"So you see my point, right? I'm still pretty angry
with the old freak for gropin' Akane on her wedding day.
Let's give me time to cool off. Put him on the bottom of the
list."
"Do it this way," the voice said, sounding much
calmer, "Wait and cool off a little so you know you can stay
in control, then you can make him miserable for a couple of
months."
"I really like that idea."
"I knew you would. What about Nabiki? She invited
every nut-case in Nerima to the wedding, you know."
"Yeah, I know. But she's just trying to pay the bills.
Besides, we need her help."
"Tryin' ta fill her own purse, is more like it!"
"You're not bein' fair to Nabiki, now. Sure, she
always takes a cut for herself, but we'd be broke without
her."
"Okay, Saotome. You win. Her punishment will be
helping us clean this mess up--and no posing for her for a
month. Note to self: Search out, steal and hide all of
Nabiki's cameras as soon as possible. Better yet, search out,
steal and hide her collection of negatives while you are at
it. Even better, no more pictures until things are settled
between us and Akane. This is for damned sure going to be on
top of whatever it is Akane is already doing to her."
"What are we going to do to Kuno?" the voice asked.
Apparently she could clench her teeth without making Ranma's
head hurt. "What that asshole did was unforgivable."
"I will think up something massive for Kuno." Ranma
answered calmly. "He drew steel at Akane's wedding. Worse, he
thinks he can lord it over her and tell her and her family
what they can or can't do. That shit is going to stop as soon
as I can get out of this bed. I am going to hurt him so bad
that the very mention of Akane's name will make him break out
in hives."
"Okay, what about his sister?" The voice asked,
sounding as though smoke was beginning to pour from her ears.
"That goofy bitch arrived at Akane's wedding wearing a
wedding gown."
"Hmm, better let Nabiki work on that one. If I can get
Big Sister good and pissed at Kodachi, it will be the end of
the Kodachi problem--maybe forever. Why are you so pissed at
Kodachi, anyway?"
"It's strictly a girl-type thing," the girlish voice
said in a superior tone of voice, "You don't wanna know. What
about Ukyo?"
"Jeez! I can't really blame Ukyo for being angry with
me and Pop, now can I? Okay. I'll let her off with no more
than a spanking."
"Careful, Saotome! You know how much Ukyo craves
attention. She might actually enjoy being spanked by you.
Ignoring her for a couple of weeks would work much better,
and would be a whole lot safer for all concerned. Besides,
Akane might misunderstand if she saw you spanking Ukyo."
Ranma sighed aloud.
"Yeah, you're right. Come to think of it, Akane might
have already beat the tar out of Ukyo. Ukyo is pretty good,
but no match for Akane in full hurricane mode."
"I was wondering when you were going to start
respecting Akane's..."
"I'm going to kill Xian Pu," Ranma thought, feeling
his heart grow heavy, as it shrank to the size of a small
marble.
"What? Come again, Saotome?" the voice asked, sounding
alarmed. "You don't even like to hit girls, now you're
thinkin' about killin' Xian Pu? What the hell has gotten into
you?"
"She is going to kill Akane. I have to do something to
stop her and she isn't very easy to stop."
"What? Oh, you're just thinking about what she said
when she threw that bomb at you during the wedding!" The
voice quavered as it spoke.
Ranma's blood ran cold as Xian Pu's words came echoing
back up to him from the well of his memory.
"Aiya! Xian Pu aiming for Akane, not Airen!" the
Amazon had said.
"I remember what she did at Jusendo, too!" Ranma said,
very nearly gritting his teeth.
"She couldn't help it! She was under a--"
"Do you really think for one second she ever had any
intention of using that bottle of water to cure Akane? No
way! As soon as I had been engulfed by one of those surokomi
egg things, she would have thrown Akane's body out with the
trash. Then I would have been Xian Pu's slave forever because
she would never be able to release me and stay alive.
Remember! She threatened to kill Akane after the bottle of
water got broke and Akane was still untreated. Akane was
already dying! Do you really think Xian Pu was kidding? What
do you think she's planning to do right now?"
Something Xian Pu had said on other occasions came
back to haunt him, "Obstacle is for killing."
"Killing Xian Pu won't solve the problem, Ranma!" the
girlish voice said in pleading tones. "You gotta stay in
control!"
Ranma's blood ran cold again. He shivered and it ran
even colder. Actually it was his ki that had begun to run
cold. So cold in fact that the room temperature began to
fall. He was so preoccupied with his internal struggle, that
he was unaware of the effect he was having on his
surroundings.
"Xian Pu saw how you really felt at Jusendo, boy," the
echoing voice had begun to sound like Genma, "She is going to
become desperate and a desperate foe is the most dangerous
kind of foe. How many times did you have to stop her from
killing Akane just after she came here? Twice was it?"
"I will stay in control! I will stay in control," the
girlish voice chanted softly inside Ranma's head. "I will
not kill Xian Pu. That will not solve anything. I will stay
in control."
"What do you mean it won't solve anything, boy?"
Genma's gravelly voice ground it's way around the confines of
Ranma's mind. "Killing a snake leaves you with one less bite
to worry about."
"Yeah, but then I'd hafta worry about every Amazon in
China coming over here lookin' for revenge, shit-daddy!" The
girlish voice shrieked back at the Genma voice. "Think
straight!"
"Well you had better come up with something soon,
little girl! Amazons don't let anything stop them from
getting what they want. She knows you and Akane are getting
closer! Do you really think she's going to just stand by and
let that happen?" The Genma voice sounded like boulders
tumbling down a mountain. "Xian Pu ain't laid up on her ass
and helpless like you are right now, boy!"
"I _will_ stay in control!" Ranma said aloud to what
he thought was an empty room.
"Ah, Ranma-kun! I see you are awake at last," Tofu Ono
said with a wry smile. "How are you feeling?"
Ranma quickly realized that Tofu was having to
struggle to maintain his normally affable, bed-side manner.
He was shivering. Something is very wrong, Ranma thought to
himself. What's bothering Tofu?
"Mornin', Doc." Ranma grunted from the pain the effort
of speaking in a normal voice caused him. He lay still for
moment, wondering how he would muster the strength to get up.
"I feel like somebody just dug me up out of a bomb
crater," Ranma said with a forced smile. "Do I look that
bad?"
Tofu laughed nervously. "No, not quite that bad, but
you won't be back up to full speed for a week or so. That
blast of Happosai's was pretty heavy. You have some minor
first degree burns on your upper chest, neck and arms. The
real damage came from your breaking through the floorboards
of the dojo with the side of your head."
Ranma suddenly realized that Akane was happily going
about her daily affairs, completely unaware of the danger she
was in. Xian Pu could strike at any time, and Akane would
never see it coming. Her anger always burned out quickly, and
she was trusting by nature.
"How long have I been here, Doc?" he asked, unable to
keep the fear out of his voice.
"Half of a day yesterday, all night last night, and
half the day today. It's Monday. I didn't think missing one
more day of school was that important, given your physical
condition--and everything else."
"I've gotta get outta here, Doc! Where's Akane? Is she
at school?"
"You aren't going anywhere for a couple of days," Tofu
said sternly, "but I am pretty sure that's where Akane is.
She stopped by to check on you this morning, wearing her
uniform."
"I've got to get out of here!" Ranma tried to get up,
but the pain in his head nauseated him and the burns on his
neck and shoulder hurt so badly he nearly screamed.
"There, you see? I'm not keeping you here to be mean.
I'm keeping you here so you can heal."
"Doc, you don't understand! I can't leave her out
there by herself right now!"
Tofu froze in place and regarded him with a sad
expression. Ranma had seen that look on Tofu's face before.
Now he thinks I've flipped my wig or somethin', Ranma
thought. He watched in horror as the doctor fetched a chair
and sat down next to the bed. The air in the room seemed to
be clouding up with a fine mist. Is the air conditioner on
the blink? Why is Tofu shivering? How come I don't feel cold?
Who gives a shit right now anyway?
"Ranma, tell me what has been going on this last month
or so."
"It would take too long!" Ranma said, trying not to
sound desperate and failing, "Anything could happen before I
got it all explained!"
"Would you feel free to talk about it if Akane were
here?"
"Yeah, but I can't let her go walkin' around by
herself!"
Tofu stared at Ranma for a moment with a very
thoughtful gaze. The concern the doctor felt was very evident
on his face
"You are worried about something or someone nearby."
The burning pain in the back of Ranma's throat was so
intense he knew that his voice would crack if he tried to
speak. He stared hard at Tofu, aware that his eyes must be
burning like those of a madman, but he could not help it.
"Have you told Akane about any of this?"
He shook his head and immediately regretted it as
waves of nauseating pain washed through him.
"I didn't realize there was a problem until just a few
minutes ago," Ranma said with an involuntary gasp. He could
feel bile rising in his throat.
"Do you need a pan?" Tofu asked.
"No," Ranma said, being careful to not shake his head,
"but some aspirin would be nice."
Tofu handed him a small bottle from his pocket, then
poured a cup of water from the pitcher on the bedside table.
He glanced at his watch.
"I'll tell you what I'll do. I will personally go get
Akane and escort her back here. Then, if the three of us
decide it is best, she can stay here until you are able to
get around. Is that a deal?"
Ranma felt a sudden surge of relief. Tofu was a
powerful martial artist, one of the few Ranma knew to be
capable of concealing most of his aura. Akane would be safe
with Tofu around.
"You'll stay with her the whole way and never let her
out of your sight for a second?"
"Since you think it is necessary, yes. I will."
"You'll have to watch for trouble like you were up
against a bunch of ninja, Doc."
"Oh?"
"As long as you are around Akane, that's the kind of
trouble you are in."
"Oh, really? How many will I be up against should
hostilities break out?" Tofu's voice remained perfectly even
and serious. Ranma was not too terribly sure that Tofu
understood. Tofu was such a kindly soul he might not even be
able to understand.
"Just one, I think. I doubt if she will risk asking
anyone for help."
Tofu cocked an eyebrow at this last as he stared at
Ranma again, his gentle, brown eyes were unreadable. He
reached into his pocket as he stood up and pulled a heavily
laden key chain from his pocket, then he walked across the
room and unlocked a metal cabinet. Ranma's eyes widened with
shock as Tofu withdrew a shoulder holster from the cabinet
and put it on. Even more shocking was the fact that he had
something suitable for filling the holster. What the hell?
Ranma thought to himself, Tofu owns a gun? Then, watching as
the doctor loaded the weapon, he realized that it was a
tranquilizer gun.
"How many times have you had to use that thing?"
"Only twice so far," Tofu said with a rueful grin, "I
had to use it on your dad once down at Miyagi-san's."
"Let me guess, he was in his panda form, right?"
"Yes, but that isn't why I used a tranquilizer dart on
him. I did it mostly to make the police happy. They were
going to use something rather more potent."
"He must've been drunk out of his skull."
"No, not really. It was just one of those situations
where a number of people leapt to erroneous conclusions."
"Oh," Ranma said, "I see." He really did understand in
spite of being angry with his father. He had been the victim
of such circumstances too many times himself to think what
ever happened would necessarily have been his father's fault.
He knew his father would not have gone to Miyagi's in his
panda form, so there must have been some kind of accident
involving cold water. A panda in a beer joint with a bunch of
drunks had to have been a rather volatile mix.
"I'll be back here with Akane in a little under an
hour I should think," Tofu said reassuringly as he put on his
lab coat, "You just try to relax, okay?"
"Just be damned careful, Doc."
Tofu flashed Ranma a toothy grin. "Ranma, I've been
practicing in Nerima for quite a while now. One thing I do
know how to do is to be careful."
Tofu walked over to the bed so that he could lean over
and look Ranma closely in the eye.
"Now, I want you to stop pulling all the heat out of
the room! It's already cold enough to store meat in here. Do
you want Akane to get a chill?"
"Do what?" Ranma asked, sounding startled. Pull heat
out of the room? He had never done anything like that before.
He looked around and realized that the mist he noticed
earlier was thickening into a fog and beads of condensation
were forming on the walls near the floor. Am I really doing
this? He silently asked himself. He looked inside himself and
realized that he was indeed the cause. He took a deep breath
and stopped it from happening. He looked back outside himself
to find a sadly amused Tofu smiling at him.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Tofu! I didn't realize I was doing
it."
Tofu smiled and said, "I know that, Ranma."
"I didn't even know I _could_ do it," Ranma said
sounding puzzled, "What the hell was I doing?"
"We'll talk about that when I get back here with your
fiancee," Tofu said and patted him carefully on his left arm.
"Okay, Doc."
"I won't be gone long," Tofu said over his shoulder as
he started to leave the room.
"Oh, by the way, Doc?"
"Yes?"
"If you happen to see Nabiki, tell her I need to talk
with her as soon as she can come over here."
"I'll make sure to find her," Tofu said, "You get some
rest, okay?"
"Okay, Doc."
Tofu flashed him one more smile, then left.
----------
-
Akane Tendo was in a bad mood. She hated having
English class in the afternoon. She naturally became sleepy
in the mid-afternoon and English bored her to tears. She had
gotten little sleep the night before, although it had turned
out to be her non-wedding night. Being greeted by the return
of Kuno's Hentai Brigade at the school-yard gate this morning
had done little to improve her disposition. Matters were
further aggravated by her own friends during lunch period
with their endless stream of questions and catty commentary
about a "non-wedding" night.
The weather isn't any help either. Akane thought
sleepily to herself. It was warm despite being the middle of
the fall. She watched out the window as a gentle breeze
stirred fallen leaves beneath a beautifully blue sky while
the year's last hatch of cicadas whirred one last tune before
an overdue frost came to end their summer-long cacophony. I
wish I could have gotten some sleep, Akane thought. It isn't
as though I had good reason to lay awake till dawn.
Her imagination had teased her with the sensations of
Ranma's hard, flat belly cuddling up to her bare back as he
put his arms around her and kissed the back of her neck. She
tried hard not to think about such things the whole night
through to no avail. Even now, during the brightly lit
afternoon, long suppressed desires wore away at her, taunting
her with things she seldom allowed herself to contemplate in
the darkened privacy of her room, much less in a public
place.
"Now, what do you say in English when someone
sneezes?" Hinako-sensei asked as she turned from the
chalkboard to face her class. At that very instant, Akane
felt the touch of Ranma's ki. The feeling was like being
hugged by a strong man while having one's ankles stropped by
a large, tomcat.
"Atchoo!" Akane sneezed.
"Bi-resu, ryu!" The class chorused, then promptly
burst out into paroxysms of laughter.
"Excellent timing, Tendo-san!" Hinako-sensei quipped
as she waited for the class to calm down.
Akane felt her cheeks redden as her classmates
continued to laugh. Much to her horror, Ranma's ki manifested
itself again. This time she felt as though Ranma's female
form were cuddling up to her back while the cat part of his
touch gently batted at her ankles with bared claws.
"Hai-a-tchoo!" Akane sneezed again loudly. The class
fell silent, as Akane was again seized by the unstoppable
urge to sneeze. She failed to notice that the uproar had
ended.
"Ranma," Akane muttered as she put her hand over her
nose and mouth.
"Hai-a-atchoo!"
"I'm fine," she muttered into her hand, "Now..."
"Hai-ai-atchoo!"
"Stop that and leave me alone!"
"Ai-choo!"
"You pervert!"
Ranma must have been reassured in some way, Akane
thought, I can't feel him anymore. She glanced up to
apologize to Hinako-sensei, only to find that everyone in the
room was staring at her with knowing smiles. The silence did
not last. Everyone again burst out laughing and Hinako gave
up any hope of regaining control of the class. It was only
five minutes to the bell, but that short remainder of English
period seemed several lifetimes long to Akane.
----------
-
One floor down on the far end of the building, Nabiki
Tendo spent fourth period straightening up the nurses station
and catching up the filing as she had done since the
beginning of her enrollment in Furinkan. This was her third
and last year to work at this volunteer job. It had been
quite useful to her. It had gotten her out of other, far more
onerous chores one was normally expected to perform at
school, while allowing her access to information which often
confirmed, refuted or clarified the endless rumors that wound
their way around the society of Furinkan High.
The morning's reappearance of the Hentai Brigade had
not surprised her in the least. Wishful thinking was the
hallmark of those hormone addled fools, especially with Kuno
around to whip them into slavering frenzy. Leave it to Kuno
to decide that he had defeated Ranma at his own wedding.
Maybe I should talk to Ranma about not hitting Kuno on the
head quite so much, she thought. Nah! Waste of time. Ranma
wouldn't listen and Kuno's brain could never be any worse
than it is now and maintain autonomic functions.
The reports Nabiki read while filing them for the
nurse confirmed her own battle damage estimates nicely. Four
had been examined and sent off to class with minor bruises.
The goalie, though, had a badly damaged foot. Several toes
and other small bones were broken. The soccer team captain
had a broken pubic arch. Both had been sent to the hospital
for further treatment. The official cause was being given as
an accidental kicking during soccer practice. Nice of Akane
to make it all so easy to explain, Nabiki thought. Neither
boy was likely to ever admit that they had been hurt by the
diminutive Akane Tendo, so it was unlikely there would ever
be a problem with the authorities or law suits. Revenge might
become a problem later, but Ranma could take care of that
kind of foolishness. Had he been with Akane this morning,
neither of these boys would have gotten hurt. The Brigade
would have scattered like a covey of quail.
The video tapes of her sister's battle proved to be
fascinating. A frame by frame replay of the morning's events
had revealed a different sort of Akane. She was furious, but
not out of control. Rather than take on all comers as she had
done in the past, Akane picked a path through the Brigade
like a woman finding the best place to step in a muddy field.
Her specialty had always been the devastating counter-attack,
but there was little of that to be seen on the videos of this
morning's battle.
Unless rigorously trained, and then only if they are
ordered to stay in some kind of formation, a large group of
people will form up into conversational groups. This was the
sort of shape Furinkan's Hentai Brigade was in as Hurricane
Akane swept into the school-yard. The camera caught the
changes in Akane's face as the situation registered in her
mind. Without pause or hesitation she walked directly to the
nearest group. It took them a second or two to realize that
their prize was walking right into their hands. Before the
signals in their little brains could reach their arms and
legs, their "opportunity" was lost. Akane's left arm flashed
upwards in a sweeping motion that was a combination of
Western style boxing and Aikido. The camera was just barely
fast enough to get a good picture of her hand as the heel of
her palm slammed into the first boy's chin. This started him
over backwards and Akane helped him along with a short,
wicked heel sweep with her right foot. He fell back onto his
two companions entangling them long enough for Akane to get
past them and inflict pain elsewhere.
She dispatched one boy approaching her more or less
alone from her left with an elbow stab to the solar plexus.
He was one of the ones turning blue as Akane entered the
building. At one and the same time, three boys were coming
in on her fast from her right. Akane caught the leader in the
solar plexus with a straight snap kick and he went down in
front of his hard-charging companions as though shot by an
elephant gun. They tripped over him as Hurricane Akane swept
past them and thrashed another group of voluntary victims.
Nabiki replayed the segment twice hoping to get a freeze
frame shot of Akane's foot. It was not to be. Video operated
at thirty frames per second, which is more or less the
equivalent of a still camera stuck on a shutter speed of one
thirtieth of a second. One hundredth of a second may have
gotten a good, single frame, but one thirtieth was no where
near fast enough to get a clear picture of Akane's foot. All
any one frame of the clip revealed was a blurred streak of
fast moving sock and shoe. Even her recovery from the kick
was blurred. Little wonder that the boy folded up like a
portmanteau and dropped like a rock.
Six boys approached Akane from her left. She feinted a
turn to her right, but with a sudden pivot on her firmly
planted right foot she slammed the heel of her right hand
into the right shoulder of this group's leader. He spun like
a top, taking two of his companions down with his flailing
arms. The remaining three dodged around their fallen comrades
in a vain effort to get their hands on Akane, but she
clambered over the boys that had fallen, taking no more
cognizance of their dignity than she would that of a
stepladder.
She made a good ten yards progress towards the school
building before another group managed to get in her way
again. The strange thing was that Akane did not run. She
merely walked along at crisp pace, as though preoccupied and
in a hurry. A crack behind the knee of the leader with her
book bag managed to slow this group to a stop and a very
crafty dodge by Akane caused the next group to go down in a
tangle as they desperately over-reached themselves.
Five yards from the schoolhouse door, two groups
managed to coalesce in front of her. Akane feigned a hard
turn to the left, then a hard turn to the right, thinning
their ranks in the middle, and that was where she then
struck, and struck hard. Her first victim took a punch on the
nose that must have been heard blocks away. He went down in a
spray of blood. The next nearest boy was awarded Akane's
sharp little right elbow to the solar plexus, and a backfist
to the sensitive upper lip for good measure. Blinded, out of
wind and in considerable pain, this young man tried to turn
away, thus blocking the paths of his companions and freeing
Akane from any pressure on her right flank. She very calmly
resumed her business-like stroll towards the schoolhouse
door.
Just as she stepped clear of this last group, the
soccer team captain's hand came in from Akane's left and
seized her by the breast. It was not an accident, nor was the
stupid jerk simply copping a feel. He squeezed Akane hard,
intentionally trying to inflict pain. Akane's right knee came
up precisely on target. Her aim had been quite deliberate and
she had not aimed for the boy's testicles. Her kneecap
collided squarely with the front of his pubic arch. It broke
with a crack loud enough to be recorded by the video camera's
puny microphone. True to form for this particular injury, the
boy came up on the balls of his feet, then fell over
backwards without attempting to break his fall. Nabiki
watched that part of the video twice in slow motion. The
young captain's head bounced beautifully on the hard ground,
but he seemed oblivous to the beating his skull was taking.
Clearly, he was too busy worrying about other agonies.
The goalie approached Akane from the right, seizing
her by the back of her bra strap with his left hand, and
reaching for the front of her blouse with his right. Akane's
knee had just dealt with the Soccer captain's pubic arch.
Akane brought her knee up higher as she rolled her pelvis and
pivoted on her left leg, then her foot rocketed down as a
single, long streak of light on the video. Her heel slammed
into the front part of the goalie's right foot. She may as
well have used a five-kilo sledgehammer. The blow landed with
enough force to drive the ball of the boy's foot down past
the surface of the school-yard's hard-packed soil. Just as
the pain made him turn loose of Akane's bra strap, she nailed
him on the nose with a right-handed backfist that crossed his
eyes.
The sight of the goalie's crossed and watering eyes
amused Nabiki so much she replayed the scene several times. A
huge gout of blood from his nose came several seconds later.
A pretty good sign that Akane had broken the bone high up
above the mass of cartilage making up the lower part of a
person's nose. Nabiki laughed out loud.
"Son-of-a-bitch, that hurt!" She said in English as
she shook her head. English was a much better language when
you really wanted to curse.
But Akane had saved the best for last in her ninety
second bout with the Brigade. The second camera had been
farther away from the action. Realizing that she would not be
able to capture much of the action well, the cameraman had
focused upon Akane's face. Her quick thinking was rewarded by
catching Akane's last and most dramatic move of the battle.
She had thrown a poisonous stare at Kuno. Not an ordinary
glare, mind you. This look would have set paper on fire ten
meters away. Nabiki was certain that this had been an
unintentional ki attack on Kuno by Akane. The look on her
face went beyond mere anger. It was the same sort of look she
had seen on the other ki adepts she knew.
Not that the camera captured a visible manifestation
of ki. The only way an aura had ever been captured on film,
or was suspected of having been captured on film, was by
surrounding the subject with an intense, high-voltage
electric field; a technique known as Kirlian photography.
Ordinary video cameras could not operate in such an
environment; high-voltage fields disrupted their circuitry.
Physicists argue that such photography does not catch a
person's aura at all, but that such photographs are the
product of an effect known to electrical engineers as coronal
leakage. The air around living things always carries a
significant amount of moisture. The high-voltage field used
by cameras designed to photograph an aura is conducted by the
moisture, allowing it to ionize the air surrounding the
subject; the ionized gasses then give off the light recorded
by the camera or film.
Nabiki was certain that the physicists had only a
partial answer to the question. They might well be right
about the technique of Kirlian photography, but their
explanation only eliminated Kirlian photography as a detector
of ki, not the reality of the ki phenomenon itself. The
physicists are quick to point out that Kirlian Photography
does not work in a vacuum, but martial artists had claimed
for centuries that breathing was central to the use of one's
ki. One may, for good or ill, breath any number of gasses,
but no one could breath a vacuum. It looked to her as though
both might have a partially accurate assessment of the facts.
Certainly there was such a thing as people capable of
using their ki to do amazing things. She had seen it done on
more than one occasion by more than one person and knew that
perfect control of one's ki was still the Holy Grail of all
serious Martial Artists. The still frame she was looking at,
was at best, only circumstantial evidence that Akane had used
her ki to attack Kuno, but it was enough for Nabiki, given
her experience with martial artists. The great masters of the
Art were reputed to have the ability to stop an opponent's
attack with a mere look or shout. To Nabiki, this single
frame from camera two suggested that Akane had used her ki in
the way spoken of by martial artists for centuries. She had
felled an opponent with a hard stare. Nabiki would mark this
moment as her baby sister's first known use of a pure ki
attack.
It was the look on Akane's face that convinced Nabiki
her younger sister had launched an inadvertent ki attack on
Kuno, that and the fact that Kuno had dropped from what
appeared to be heat exhaustion. She had gotten word that
their local reservoir of delusional fantasy had been up all
night pacing the grounds of his estate. Nabiki had no reason
to doubt her source's word on the matter. It had been proven
correct too many times to doubt without good reason. More
than one of her informants had told her that Kuno had worked
through several extra kata with unusual vigor before
delivering his sermon on the evils of Saotome this morning.
It was entirely possible that Kuno had simply overdone it
this morning, and it only caught up with him at the end of
Akane's counterassault of the Hentai Brigade, but Nabiki
doubted it. She suspected that Kuno had done what many
athletes and martial artists often do; he had pushed his
limits this morning. Perhaps he had pushed them a little too
hard, leaving him vulnerable to an uncontrolled,
unintentional and unfocused burst of ki.
Then of course, Kuno was probably on the verge of
hyperventilation by the time Akane launched her ki attack.
Nabiki had deduced a dirty little secret about Kuno that she
had mentioned to no one. She knew all too well why he
orchestrated these morning bouts for her sister. Watching
Akane fight turned him on. For Kuno, three minutes of
watching Akane struggle with the Hentai Brigade was better
than four hours of pornographic film. Nabiki had few doubts
on the matter because she herself got the same sort of thrill
from watching Ranma fight. He had ruined the Sumo matches for
her the day he had arrived in Nerima. Damn those blue eyes of
his! Her interest in Sumo withered and died within a week of
his arrival.
Thinking about Ranma made her shiver. No, that was not
what made her shiver. A cat had somehow gotten into the
school building and was now stropping her ankles. She looked
down. There was no cat. Chills ran up her back, then to her
greater consternation, she felt Ranma's presence in the room.
"Ranma?" Nabiki asked, looking around room.
Nabiki got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach
as she sneezed. He wouldn't be able to do this if there
wasn't some sort of bond between us, she thought. And I have
done everything imaginable to make sure there was never any
such bond. Yet there was no mistaking what she was
experiencing at this very moment, Ranma wanted her attention
and was getting it even though he was nowhere near the
school.
"Oh, all right. Whatever it is...Atchoo!...I'll help,
okay?"
Nabiki took a deep breath as she felt Ranma's presence
fade. She turned her attention back to the video monitor and
cocked an eyebrow at it.
"Well, baby sister! Your dancing in the dojo with him
has paid off quite nicely," Nabiki said aloud to monitor,
"Had we dyed your hair red last night, you would have passed
for the Pigtailed Kami out there this morning."
----------
-
Tofu Ono had treated Ranma Saotome for numerous
injuries. The overwhelming majority of them had been minor,
and sports related--that is, assuming that the Martial Arts
might rightly be considered a sport. These injuries, however,
were different. No single injury the boy suffered this time
was any more serious than the injuries Tofu had treated in
the past; the frightening difference was their overall
number. Happosai had never been on Tofu's list of favorite
people, but now the old man was on the very short list of
people for whom Tofu Ono bore genuine anger. It was time
someone taught the callous old fool a lesson. He would have a
word with Soun and Genma.
Ranma's alarm over Akane's welfare had confirmed
something he had already come to fear about his observations
of the young man's mental condition. The boy was showing
every sign of suffering from a classic case of combat
fatigue. Tofu had gone to the trouble of bringing the
tranquilizer gun as a sop to Ranma's fears, but now, as he
walked towards Furinkan, he began to wonder if he might not
have also taken a wise precaution. While it was true that
victims of combat fatigue sometimes suffered from
unreasonable fears, they always had good reason for their
paranoia. This young man's life had been terribly stressful
since arriving in Nerima, and, by all the accounts he knew
of, it had not been a picnic the ten years prior. If Ranma's
fears were well founded, it made matters worse for his young
patient, not better. It merely confirmed the validity of his
diagnosis and worsened the prognosis.
The bad thing was, simply treating Ranma at the clinic
would not effect a permanent cure. He would very quickly
begin to deteriorate again once he returned home because the
day to day stresses underlying the problem would still be
there waiting for him upon his release. Sooner or later,
something would happen to push Ranma over the edge, and as
powerful as his techniques were, that would spell disaster
for himself and half of Tokyo. Tofu Ono realized that he was
in the ticklish position of a man disarming a fast fission
device, equipped with only a poorly translated manual and a
crescent wrench. He knew quite a bit about Ranma, but he
would need to know more before he could cure him.
Once at the school, Tofu merely informed the principal
of his intentions, rather than asking permission. The
principal complained, but Tofu stared him down. As far as
Tofu was concerned, this irresponsible boob was a major
problem for several of his patients. He brooked no argument
from the fool. He learned from the janitor that Nabiki helped
out at the nursing station during this period.
"Nabiki Tendou, volunteering to help without getting
paid?" He asked the woman incredulously.
"Compensation comes in many forms, my good Doctor,"
the janitor said with a raised eyebrow. "I'm sure Tendo-san
has her reasons for volunteering. She always has reason for
everything else she does."
"I see."
"No, Doctor. You only think you see," the janitor said
in dire tones. "Pray you never see it all."
Tofu had Nabiki's largesse figured out by the time he
had reached the nurses station. He could not imagine a better
place to gather more information on more people in the school
than actually being on the faculty, and perhaps not even
being on the faculty would be better for Nabiki's purposes.
"Nabiki-san?"
"Hello, Tofu-sensei. What brings you here?"
"It's a long story and I haven't much time, but Ranma
Saotome asks that you come by and see him sometime after
school today."
"I _knew_ he wanted to see me," Nabiki said, sounding
vaguely worried. "Did he say what about?"
"No, he didn't. How did you know..."
Nabiki cut him off with a smug grin and casual wave of
the hand.
"It's a long story and you probably don't have the
time."
"Touche, Tendo-san! Touche! This evening then?"
"Ciao!" Nabiki said with a nod of the head.
A short time later he got Akane out of class and found
himself helping her carry books and papers. Doubtless, she
and Ranma both had a ton of schoolwork to catch up.
"Dr. Tofu?" Akane asked as they left the school
grounds.
"Yes, Akane?"
"How bad is Ranma? He isn't going to..."
"I expect him to physically recover very quickly,
Akane," Tofu said tiredly, "but his mental condition is
fragile and will worsen rapidly if immediate changes are not
made. I need you to stay with him for a little while so that
he will calm down. He became deeply concerned about you as
soon as he woke up this afternoon."
Akane stared straight ahead as they walked along the
street saying nothing, nearly oblivious to her surroundings.
Tofu noticed her apparent lack of concern for her own safety
as he scanned the area for potential threats.
"I knew Ranma was worried about me before you got
here," Akane said with a sigh. "I felt him touch me a little
while ago."
"He touched you?" Tofu said, feeling a bit taken
aback.
"Mm-hmm," Akane noised as she nodded her head. "He
does that sometimes. It always makes me sneeze."
"There must be a very powerful bond between the two of
you," Tofu said, as much to get Akane's reaction as anything
else. He needed to know for Ranma's sake how Akane really
felt about the boy. Tofu had already inferred an answer, but
wanted confirmation from Akane herself. Nothing beat an open
admission in his business.
"There is," Akane said sheepishly , "but neither of us
has a clue as to what to do about it."
Tofu could not suppress a chuckle.
"Why don't you try doing what comes naturally?"
"Because neither of us is ready to have children," she
said emphatically.
Tofu had not expected quite so frank an admission.
"Well you needn't let things go that far, Akane!" he
said as he nodded at a passerby.
"I...I..." Akane stammered and wiped at the sudden
tears burning her eyes without even realizing they were
welling up at the corners of her eyes, "We live in the same
house. We eat at the same table. We see each other every
morning of nearly every day. If we were to...I don't think I
could stop myself if we ever let a romance start, Dr. Tofu.
The temptation would become too great."
"I'm certain Ranma has more than enough self-
discipline to avoid trouble," Tofu said in a soothing tone,
"And I think he probably would, Akane."
"That pervert?" Akane sounded incredulous. "Stop
something like that? No way! You didn't see what he did the
first day I met him."
Tofu suppressed a laugh as he continued to check for
threats.
"I think I've heard this story! You walked in on him
in the bath, right?"
"Yes," Akane said with clinched teeth, "I did. I
thought he was a girl and I wasn't wearing any clothes."
"Let me guess. He became erect, didn't he?" Tofu asked
as though he already knew the answer.
Akane's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as
she nodded her head in agreement. They walked on in silence
for a few steps while Tofu did his best to contain a
screaming fit of laughter. Young people were so funny
sometimes. It was not their fault of course. Ignorance and
hormones had combined to make a volatile mixture for eons.
They would go on doing so for as long as humanity existed.
"He couldn't help it, you know," Tofu said with a grin
in his voice.
"What do you mean, he couldn't help it?"
"He couldn't help feeling what he felt anymore than
you did at the time."
An ominous red glow began to form around Akane, but
Tofu ignored it. The time for these two to face themselves
had come and gone long ago.
"You see, the trouble with us men, is that we can
almost never hide what we feel in that sort of situation,
even if we try thinking of something quite different. As you
no doubt noticed, our plumbing is a little revealing."
The glow around Akane dissipated. She nodded her head
again and giggled.
"I'll say it's revealing! It scared the hell out of
me."
"Oh, really? Why?"
"Because...because..."
"Because you felt a brand new form of very intense
excitement when you saw it, right?"
Akane began to turn several shades of red. Tofu smiled
to himself.
"You needn't answer that, Akane. Just listen to me for
a moment, okay?"
Akane nodded silently, blinking back a new flood of
tears. Tofu gave her a handkerchief.
"There was nothing perverted about happened to the two
of you that day. Ranma was and is a very healthy young male.
You are a very healthy young female. Reacting that way is
perfectly natural and healthy. So long as the two of you
maintain a little self-control, you shouldn't feel ashamed of
feeling that way about him anymore than he should feel guilty
about feeling that way about you. After all, the race must go
on, you know." Tofu flashed a smile at her and was gratified
as Akane seemed to relax a little, but then she tensed up
again.
"But what if...what if I feel that way about him while
he's female?"
Aha! Tofu thought, to himself. I thought there must be
more here than what meets the eye. The poor girl is wrestling
with her own hormones so much she's afraid to look inside and
see what she might find out about herself.
"Is it just Onna-Ranma you feel that way about?"
"Mostly," Akane said and then hesitated for a moment,
"other girls only excite me when my mind is really on Ranma.
Well...Oh! I never felt that way about anyone before until
he, I mean she..."
Tofu wanted very badly to laugh, but suppressed it.
People were taught such foolish things as they grew up. All
he could do was his best to help them sort matters out on
their own. He could not really do anymore than that. He waved
at Yamakami-san as they passed her house. She was out working
on her flagstones as usual. Tofu had first worried that she
might be obsessive-compulsive when he first met her.
"When did you first start feeling an attraction to his
female form?" Tofu asked Akane.
"Not long after I met, him actually," Akane said in a
distant voice. "He had gotten splashed during a fight. When
he got worried that I might get hurt, he took me into his
arms and jumped to a rooftop so I would be safe. It made me
tingle all over."
"Onna-Ranma picked you up and jumped to a rooftop?"
Tofu was impressed. There were any number of martial artists
in Nerima capable of jumping to a rooftop, Tofu himself among
them, but Akane was half of a head taller than Onna-Ranma and
probably outweighed her by a couple of kilograms. Such a leap
was phenomenal. He wondered if Ranma had taken time to notice
which form he was in at the time.
"Being carried to safety made you tingle all over, or
was it the physical contact with Onna-Ranma that did it?"
"Both, I think. I got...I got very excited that day
and I've had trouble with it ever since."
"Akane, there is nothing inherently wrong about any of
this," Tofu said with a sigh, "your attraction to Ranma,
whether male or female, is perfectly natural. Neither of you
are perverts."
"How can you say that, Dr. Tofu? It isn't natural?"
"Oh, really? Throughout history Akane, a fraction of
the human population has been homosexual. The percentage has
remained steady, despite the often drastic disapproval of the
heterosexual majority. To me, it suggests that homosexuality
is not inherently wrong. It is, simply put, just another
potential source of release nature has given us."
Akane stared at Tofu suddenly looking horrified.
"I am not saying you are homosexual. In your case,
feeling a sexual attraction for Ranma is not the least bit
questionable or abnormal, given Ranma's unique condition.
Which form of him attracts you the most?"
"Sexually? Definitely his male form, but...but his
girl half..."
"You, my dear girl, whether you want to admit it to
yourself or not, are very much in love with Ranma
Saotome...both halves of him."
They walked on silence for a few steps before Tofu
thought of another question.
"How long has he been able to touch you from a
distance?"
"Oh..." Akane hesitated as she tried to remember. "I
think it must have been right after he learned the Umisen-
ken."
"Umisen-ken?"
"Mmm!" Akane nodded her head. "It's a secret technique
Uncle Saotome taught him. Ranma can disappear from sight
right in front of you."
"Ninjutsu?"
"No, I think it's a special ki technique," Akane said,
then grinned. "But the big jerk messed up."
"How?"
"To practice, he started coming into my room late at
night and replacing my things with things from the kitchen. I
found out that if I think about him, I can feel his
presence."
"Does he know?"
Akane shook her head. "I'm saving that for a
surprise."
Tofu grinned even though he was beginning to tire.
Counselling a patient while watching for unknown threats was
strenuous. He took a deep breath and continued.
"On the whole Akane, I'd say you are one of the most
fortunate people I've ever met."
"How so?" Akane asked, sounding slightly alarmed.
"For starters, you are engaged to a man who, as he
gets older, will come to understand more about being a human
being than anyone else on earth."
Akane glanced up at Tofu and he was fairly sure he saw
the sparks of realization flashing in her eyes.
"And if you have the good sense to marry him, you will
no doubt have the best sex life a person could ever hope to
have."
"Now you are beginning to sound like Nabiki, Dr.
Tofu!"
"Thank you, Akane! Nabiki has an exceptionally good
head on her shoulders about some things."
"He owes me some things, first," Akane said grimly.
"Such as?" Tofu asked.
"Respect, mainly," Akane said with a sigh. Then, in a
more menacing tone she added, "He especially owes me more
respect as a student of the art."
Tofu smiled to himself. Rivalry between spouses was
not necessarily a bad thing, especially if it gave both an
incentive to improve. In this case, a mutual love of their
art could easily result in a mutual love of one another for a
century. Neither of them was likely to suffer the ills the
majority of his patients suffered from. Either or both could
die in an accident or a fight, but heart disease or lung
disease or any of the most common killers of people were
pretty much ruled out for this pair.
"I think Ranma respects you a great deal as a person
already, Akane," Tofu said, "but when it comes to the art, I
think you need to be sure of two things."
"What's that, Doctor?"
"Be sure you understand his training methods, and be
doubly sure to earn his respect in the dojo."
"How can earn his respect? All he does is pick at me
and dodge my strikes. He never even bothers to block!"
"What bothers you the worst? His teasing or his
dodging?"
"The teasing. He only does it to make me mad."
"Well, I think you just figured out how to earn his
respect, Akane."
"Huh!" Akane noised, the consternation she felt was
plainly written upon her face.
"Think about it."
"You think Ranma has good reason to worry about me,"
she said with a gasp as she looked up at his face, "Don't
you, Dr. Tofu."
"He may. Why do you ask?"
"Because you are watching everywhere at once as though
you were expecting an attack."
"Ranma is suffering from what can best be described as
combat fatigue, Akane. Victims of this condition usually have
good reason to worry. In this case, Ranma's fears may be
nothing more than a symptom, but until we know for sure..."
"I understand," Akane said, as she too became watchful
and they quietly walked the rest of the way to the clinic.
Akane dropped her books on the couch in the lobby and
kept going until she reached the room Ranma was in.
"Ranma, you dummy! What's the big idea having me
pulled out of school?"
"Nothin' harder than fists! Okay, tomboy?"
"Okay, but only so long as you don't do anything
perverted."
Tofu grinned to himself in the lobby as he locked the
entrance and hung up his closed sign. So far so good. The
fractious pair were dealing with one another in their usual
fashion. In some ways this would actually help his patient,
but he made a mental note to talk with Akane about the name
calling. As comforting as it could be for both of them, the
proper course of treatment called for greatly reducing the
stress in Ranma's life.
"Okay, we gotta deal then. Where's Doc Tofu?"
"Right here, Ranma," Tofu said as he entered the
treatment room. "Now, how about telling us what's going on,
and why you are so worried."
"Xian Pu," Ranma said simply as though he had
explained life, the universe and everything in it with a
single word. Akane turned livid with fury, then paled with
fear.
"Xian Pu?" Tofu asked, "Maybe you had better elaborate
a little, Ranma. I'm not sure I understand."
"She's gonna try to kill Akane sometime soon."
Tofu quickly put his hand on Akane's shoulder, hoping
she would take it as a cue to remain silent. Much to his
relief, she did.
"What makes you say that?" Tofu asked.
"What she said during our attempt at marriage
yesterday. And the things she threatened to do to Akane and
me while we were in China."
Akane buried her face in both hands, remembering all
that had happened in just the last month. Much of it had not
been pleasant.
"What did she say at the wedding, Ranma?" Tofu asked.
"She threw some pretty heavy bombs at the wedding
yesterday, Doc. Just before they went off in my face, I heard
her say she was aiming at Akane instead of me."
"I see," Tofu said speculatively, "but didn't Ukyo
throw some as well? That's what I was told."
"Yeah, but she was throwin' her stuff at me because
she meant to hit me, not Akane. Her argument is with me and
she knows it. I didn't mind that too much. I can understand
her bein' mad at me. Shampoo was aimin' for Akane. That was
just plain spiteful."
"But it was never your fault, Ranma!" Akane cried. "It
was your dad that caused all the trouble engaging her to you
after you were already engaged to me! Ukyo has no right to
take it out on you, anymore than Xian Pu has a right to hurt
me!"
"Yeah, but I owe Ukyo, Akane. Me or Pop, neither one
has done anything to make things right with her!" Ranma said,
"Trouble is, I'm not at all sure of what to do for her. How
can I pay her back for everything she's been through?"
Tofu sighed and asked questions until he understood
about Ukyo. He had known about the loss of her dowry, but the
subsequent treatment of her by her family was news to him. He
had to bite his tongue in anger at the behavior of Ukyo's
father. It was necessary for him to put the matter aside for
now. He would look into that issue later. Chances were good
that there would be little that he could do to help the poor
girl, but he would try.
The truly disturbing news was what he learned of Xian
Pu's behavior. Most people would consider a person like Xian
Pu to be completely insane. Tofu knew better. The girl had
been raised in a society held together by harsh rules. She
was simply doing what she considered to be both legal and
morally necessary. This made her far more dangerous than a
person suffering from mental illness, because she had full
control of her mental faculties. Xian Pu could and most
likely would make full use of her intelligence to serve her
purposes. He looked at Akane as she stared at Ranma and
realized that Nerima might soon be embroiled in a feud little
different from that between the Taira and the Minamoto. Come
to think of it, a feud between the Tendos and the Joketsuzoku
might actually be far worse. The Taira and Minamoto led to a
civil war in Japan. A fight between the Tendos and the
Joketsuzoku might lead to a war between Japan and China,
given Nerima's infamous weirdness index. Tofu broke from his
reverie with a shudder, only to find Ranma staring at him
with a fevered gaze.
"Runnin' won't work, Doc," Ranma said grimly, "Xian Pu
followed me here all the way from Qing Hai. I know she didn't
know where we were going in advance because even I didn't
know until after we got here ...my old man is one of the
world's best at coverin' his tracks. Now that she thinks she
might be losin' me, Xian Pu will find Akane no matter where
she goes."
Tofu swallowed back the sour taste in his mouth and
asked, "Won't Ukyo be at considerable risk as well?"
"Only after Akane is out of the picture," Ranma said,
"but you're right. Xian Pu would probably go after Ukyo next,
just to be safe if nothin' else."
Tofu searched around the room and found another chair.
Pulling it over close to Ranma's bed, he sat down heavily,
struggling to banish the vision of introducing Genma to some
of the more refined techniques of ubijutsu. Then he had to
struggle with the pity he felt for the two youngsters now in
his care. Pitiable though they were, pity was not what they
needed at the moment. He needed to think clearly. After a
moment, he hit upon what he thought might be a good solution
for the interim. At least it would buy them so more time.
"What if you were to announce that you and Akane were
no longer engaged, Ranma?" Tofu asked. The suggestion caused
both of the young people to blanch visibly. He could tell
that neither of them liked the idea. The funny thing was,
they were both looking at him and not each other.
"What is announced, need not necessarily be true,"
Tofu added quickly.
"I thought about it, Doc," Ranma said in a quiet
voice. This caused Akane to give Ranma a very hurt look, but
much to her credit, she allowed Ranma to finish his thoughts
aloud. "It would never work. The only thing that has held
Xian Pu back is the knowledge that I have feelings for Akane
and Ukyo. Her fear of offending me is the only thing that has
kept either of them alive. If she thinks she is about to
lose, she'll attack. If she thinks she's gonna win, she'll
want to close the back door."
"Ranma," Akane asked in a small voice, "How long have
you known that Xian Pu was this serious?"
"From day one really, but after the Cat's Tongue
thing, I thought for a while that maybe she had changed. Now
I know better. After what happened at Jusendo and at the dojo
yesterday, I'm sure she is as dangerous as ever.
The silence which then pervaded the room was profound
and long lasting. It was Ranma that finally broke it.
"After you left to go get Akane, Doc, I started
thinkin' maybe I'm down to two choices. I can marry Xian Pu,
or I can kill her. I ain't very happy with either option."
Tofu studied Ranma's face and did not like the lines
of growing tension he saw there. Even worse was the horrible
conflict of emotions running across Akane's face. Now he
would have to separate them long enough for Akane to recover.
Otherwise, Ranma would begin suffering from even more stress.
"I think I'll make us some tea," he said trying to
sound hopeful, "Akane, could you give me a hand with the
dishes and tray?"
Akane said nothing but merely rose from her chair to
signal her acquiescence, the obediently followed Tofu into
his kitchenette.
"Akane, what do you think of all this?"
"I am not sure. I know he's right about Ukyo, but Xian
Pu..."
"So you think he may have valid cause for concern?"
"I don't know for certain," Akane said, as tears began
to run down her face in a solid stream, "All I can tell you
for sure is that Ranma doesn't scare easily, but he hasn't
acted as though he were worried about what Xian Pu might do
for a long time now. It's...it's hard for me to believe, but
Ranma..."
Tofu placed a calming hand on her shoulder.
"Would you mind staying here with Ranma overnight?"
Tofu asked. "I know it must seem to be a rather unusual
request, but I'm afraid Ranma won't rest unless you are
nearby. Try to keep him thinking about some other subject.
His mental condition is quite fragile at the moment."
"How long will he be like this, Dr. Tofu?"
"Hmm, well combat fatigue is very similar to other
stress related illnesses. Provided it is diagnosed and
treated early, it usually fades quite rapidly if the source
of the stress is removed. If we do not do something about it
now, Ranma could easily end up like your father."
"Dad has had combat fatigue all these years?" Akane
asked in shock.
"His condition is not combat fatigue _per se_, but his
symptoms are almost the same. Your father's condition arose
from prolonged exposure to a great deal of emotional stress.
Your father suffered from it for so long, he has never been
able to fully recover."
Tofu paused to marvel at the look of revelation on
Akane's face. Now you see, don't you, my dear girl? Tofu
thought to himself. Your father is worthy of a little more
credit than you've been giving him all these years.
"Ranma's condition is not that bad yet, Akane. He will
improve rapidly, provided he gets some rest from the things
that are bothering him. Without a respite, he cannot recover.
He will become increasingly irascible and find it
increasingly difficult to maintain his self-control."
The thought of an out of control Ranma Saotome
frightened Tofu. The aftermath of a major earthquake would be
far easier to deal with on an emotional level than the havoc
a Ranma could wreak while in the grip of an all consuming
rage. Tofu thought about some of the things that happened in
the Pacific during WWII and shuddered.
"Poor Ranma!" Akane said, almost in a wail. "We can't
ever let his mother see him like this."
"His mother?" Tofu asked, sounding shocked, "What..."
Akane quickly explained about Nodoka and the agreement
Genma had made with her regarding Ranma's manliness. Tofu
felt his face begin to turn red and had to fight down a wave
of nausea as he realized that he would have to act
immediately on the behalf of his patient, even if it meant
going to the authorities. He would avoid having Genma, and
Nodoka declared incompetent parents if he could. The
authorities disliked doing such a thing and Genma Saotome was
still a hero in the minds of older Nerimians. They still
remembered the days when Soun and Genma were instrumental in
ridding the town of ne'er-do-wells. Disgracing Genma, and by
extension, Soun Tendo, would hurt Ranma's prospects as a
teacher of his Art. It would also be certain to harm Tofu's
own practice, but all such considerations were irrelevant.
Tofu had a patient at risk, and he resolved to do what he
must.
He took a clean teacup down from the shelf and walked
over to the refrigerator. He opened a plastic container full
of small, odd looking fruit. He took one of them out and put
the lid back on the container. After closing the refrigerator
he returned to the counter and squeezed juice from the small
fruit into the teacup. He rolled the cup around so that the
clear juice coated the interior surfaces of the cup.
"Akane?"
"Yes, Dr. Tofu?"
"Make sure Ranma drinks his tea from this cup."
"Yes, Doctor."
"After the two of you finish your tea, I want you to
be sure and clean this cup very, very thoroughly with soap
and very hot water, okay?"
"Okay, what are you putting in it."
"It's the fruit of a cactus, _lophocereus ono_," Tofu
said with a little pride in his voice, "It's an extremely
rare, slow growing plant I found while I was away on my
research trip. The juice of the fruit isn't exactly a
narcotic, but it does help a person relax and maintain their
self-confidence and self-control."
"Help with self-confidence? Ranma needs help with his
self-confidence?"
"Yes, for the moment. He has very little control over
his own life right now, in case you have not noticed. It has
eroded his self-confidence a great deal. This is one of the
major causes of combat fatigue. A lack of control over one's
own life and circumstances can destroy the strongest of men
from the inside out."
Akane inhaled sharply, as though experiencing a sudden
revelation.
"Much of Ranma's behavior has been overcompensation
for this lack of personal control in his life. He has borne
up quite well, all said and done."
"That's why he's always so happy in a fight!" Akane
exclaimed, "He feels as though he's in control."
Tofu nodded as he thoroughly washed his hands. "And he
usually is if half of what I hear is true."
Akane giggled in spite of herself. "I'm sure you
haven't heard the half of it."
Tofu involuntarily shuddered. How much more could have
possibly been happening to this young man, he thought. He
poured the treated cup full of green tea, then filled another
cup for Akane.
"Here, go have tea with Ranma. I'm going to be gone
for a while. I am going to lock the outer doors. You are not
to allow anyone else into the clinic until I return."
"Okay, Dr. Tofu."
"I may be gone for several hours, so don't be alarmed.
You'll find a cot in the hall closet if it gets to be too
late."
"Where are you going, Dr. Tofu?"
"I am going to go have a little talk with Ranma's
parents and a few other folks. Be sure to rinse that cup in
hot water before you touch the inside of it!" Tofu said over
his shoulder as he hurried towards the lobby. The last thing
he wanted at the moment was an argument from Akane. He was
going to need that energy to deal with other matters.
Akane watched Tofu's departing back through the glass
doors of the clinic. Much to her shock, he was emanating a
battle aura. I wonder if he is going to beat up Mr. Saotome,
she thought, more power to him if he does. Remembering her
assigned duties she fetched the tray and carried it into
Ranma's room. His eyes were closed, and for the very first
time, Akane saw something in Ranma's face she had never
noticed before. Perhaps the reason she had never seen it was
because worry engraves a person's face slowly, and no one
notices it until something breaks. Akane sadly shook her
head. The seams in Ranma's face were so obvious now it was
hard for her to believe she had missed them. She was still
studying his face when he noted her presence and opened his
eyes.
"I brought you some tea."
"Where's Dr. Tofu?"
"He had a few errands to run," Akane said as she
helped him raise his head. Rather than simply hand him the
cup, she held it to his lips. "Drink this."
"What is it?" Ranma whispered in hoarse voice.
"Tea and a little something to make you feel better."
"It isn't going to knock me out is it?" Ranma asked
suspiciously.
"Dr. Tofu said it would ease your pain and make you
relax. He didn't say anything about sleep."
Ranma did not refuse the tea. She did not think he
would. He never refused anything from her when she really
wanted him to take it.
"Aw, man!" Ranma said as he laid back against the
pillows, "That hit the spot!"
Akane smiled. Some small part of her mind warned her
that she was letting her true feelings for Ranma show. She
told it to go to hell. Even beat and bandaged, the classic
lines of his god-like body thrilled her. Being held by him
was like being caressed by a bronze statue, but one that was
warm and alive--Oh, so very, very much alive! Ranma looked
back at her, his eyes shining in a way she had not seen
before. She got lost in their ocean blue depths.
"Ranma, I..."
She did not get to finish because he wrapped his arms
around her and kissed her. This was not a platonic peck on
the cheek, nor was it a gentle brush of his lips on hers.
This was a full blown, fully passionate, R-rated, let's go
make babies together type kiss. He did not let her come up
for air for a very, very long time. Akane was so shocked she
almost did not take time to enjoy it until the very end. She
sat down heavily in the nearby chair the instant he let her
go. Her legs were too weak for her to remain standing.
"Akane...I'm...I'm sorry. I...I've been wanting to do
that since the first day I met you...I would have too,
but...but I was a girl at the time. I won't let it happen
again! I promise!" Ranma said, then passed out as though some
unseen hand had pressed his off button.
Akane dropped the teacup and it shattered unnoticed
upon the immaculately polished tiles of the clinic floor. She
began giggling, then she laughed so hard her ribs hurt.
"Ranma Saotome, you big dummy!" Akane said, blinking
back unbidden tears, "I love you! How could you not know that
by now?"
Ranma snored obliviously as the lines of worry in his
face showed signs of fading. Akane took his hand and clutched
it to her breast.
"Oh, Ranma," she whispered. "Whatever will we do?"
----------
-
By the time Tofu reached the Tendo home, the tiny
quantity of drug that had soaked through his skin while
preparing Ranma's dose took its full effect upon him. It was
not very much, but he was thankful for it just the same.
Kasumi answered the door.
"Oh, my! Good evening, Dr. Tofu!"
"Good evening, Nurse," Tofu said, "Is Saotome-san
here? I need to speak with him."
Kasumi blinked at his calling her nurse. Tofu hated
being so impersonal with her, but now was not the time for
him to lose control of himself. He had a patient in need of
care and that came above all else. Thinking of Kasumi as a
fellow professional helped.
"Why yes, he is. This way if you please, Doctor,"
Kasumi said as she led Tofu into the living room. Tofu was
grateful that she caught his cue and recovered so quickly. As
usual, Soun and Genma were sitting in the engawa, engrossed
in another shogi match.
"Mr. Saotome?" Kasumi said cheerfully as ever, "You
have a visitor."
Both Genma and Soun looked up at Tofu, then stared at
him in shock for a second. They got up quickly and bowed.
"Good evening, Sensei," Soun said as he bowed.
"Is Ranma all right?" Genma asked as he straightened
up and looked concerned.
Tofu studied Genma's physique carefully as he began to
think, If I try to explain this straight out, he is simply
going to scoff and say the boy will recover the same way he
always has before. I have to do something to make him realize
the seriousness of this situation. Much of Ranma's trouble
comes from that damnable Nekko-ken training. Genma's a good-
hearted soul, it's just that he is entirely too rough and
doesn't listen very well. Aha! That old trick will work on
him.
What Tofu had in mind would not work on everyone, but
he could now see that Genma was among the few susceptible to
the particular treatment he had in mind. The technique was
commonly used as a prank on new trainees, just beginning to
learn the rudiments of ubijutsu. Sensei often used it on new
students who needed a lesson in paying attention to
instruction. Experienced students paid very, very careful
attention to their instructors in ubijutsu.
Taking full advantage of his lanky frame and deceptive
movements, Tofu quickly closed on Genma and rubbed Genma's
neck and shoulders. He was of course, applying judicious
amounts of pressure to specific parts of Genma's body.
"Now you should be able to hear a gnat land a hundred
meters away, Genma-kun," Tofu said in a voice so low he
should not have been heard by anyone.
Genma quickly covered his ears with both hands as his
eyes grew wide with shock.
"Don't worry," Tofu subvocalized, "It will only last a
few hours."
"Why don't you have a seat at the table?" Tofu asked
in a normal voice. "We need to talk."
Genma winced as though Tofu had shouted into a large,
powerful public address system, then nodded his head.
"Nurse?"
"Yes, Doctor?" Kasumi said.
"I think Saotome-san needs some aspirin."
"Right away, Doctor," Kasumi said. Tofu noted that she
seemed quietly amused. Maybe she likes being called "Nurse,"
Tofu thought.
Soun Tendo stared at Tofu too shocked to cry, but
looked as though he might start. Tofu reached over with his
left hand and pinched Soun's right shoulder. Soun collapsed
to his knees. The ubijutsu technique was not quite as
effective as those suggested by science fiction movies, but
it worked well enough under these rather more mundane
circumstances. Soun was not unconscious, just very, very
calm. Hearing a faint noise behind him, Tofu raised his left
hand into the air without turning around.
"Don't go anywhere just yet, Nabiki! "Tofu said
grimly, "This involves you just about as much as it does
anyone else here tonight."
Nabiki first froze in her tracks, then quietly walked
over to the table and sat down. The sound of her steps
suggested she was more than a little apprehensive. Good! Tofu
thought to himself, she should be.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tofu could see Genma
pressing his hands against his ears, and holding his mouth
open. Good! Tofu thought. Now you cannot help but hear what
needs to be heard. You won't miss a thing, Genma-kun! Even if
you do cover your ears. And, going panda will only make
matters worse.
Tofu was about to ask about Nodoka when she came down
the stairs.
"Good evening, Sensei," Nodoka said, to Tofu.
Genma winced.
"Good evening, Saotome-san. Please excuse me for
intruding upon you this evening, but we need to discuss the
matter of your son's health and future well being."
Tears came into Genma's eyes. Tofu smiled inwardly at
this. Genma was only just beginning to feel the technique's
full effect.
"Of course, Sensei. Would you care for tea?"
Kasumi returned with a bottle of aspirin and a glass
of water, setting them on the table in front of Genma. He
blinked and drew back as though she had just entered the room
astraddle a large frontloader and dumped a load of gravel on
the table.
"That would be very nice," Tofu said with short bow,
"Thank you very much."
Genma again covered his ears with both hands and
moaned as Tofu spoke. Clearly he regretted the latter action,
stopping in mid-moan with a little squeak that was almost
equally devastating.
Kasumi pried the adult proof cap off the aspirin
bottle. It opened with a faint pop, causing Genma to dive for
cover. This action of course caused several noises which
Genma seemed to immediately regret. He returned to an upright
position, moving as though he were preparing to go into the
Umisen-ken. Just as he got straightened out, Kasumi shook two
aspirin out of the small, plastic bottle. Tofu knew for a
fact that Genma was bald, but he could have sworn the man's
hair stood straight up as Genma tried to shield his face from
what was obviously an exploding aspirin bottle.
Nodoka began setting the table. The noise she made
caused Genma to vibrate as though he were caught in a paint
shaker. He reached for the aspirin bottle.
"I wouldn't take any more of those for an hour or so,
Genma-kun," Tofu subvocalized, "They might make your ears
ring."
Such a prospect obviously terrified Genma. Tears
welled up in his eyes, whereupon he promptly put on a show of
trying to locate the loud noises coming from his tear ducts.
Tofu recalled that the tear ducts made a dreadful, squishing
sound when they pumped tears, as though one were being
stalked by an evil, gelatinous monster from a popular horror
flick. Tofu smiled.
By the time the tea was served, Genma had begun to
adjust to his new condition, that is until Soun sipped his
tea. Genma shivered from head to foot and stared at his old
friend as though he were some kind of horrible movie monster.
"Tendo Soun, what is your opinion of Saotome Ranma's
manliness?" Tofu asked, nearly choking on the question. He
watched as shock registered in everyone but Nabiki's face.
The only reaction she gave was a slight cock of the right
eyebrow. Soun seemed completely baffled. Nodoka's face began
to reflect genuine concern as Kasumi eventually smiled.
Genma winced and jammed a finger in each ear, then
looked down at his chest. Uh-huh, Tofu thought to himself.
When you do that your heartbeat drives you nuts, and the
sounds from outside get through anyway.
"I have no worries about Ranma's manliness, just his
indecisiveness," Soun finally said.
"Ranma has good reason for some of his indecisiveness,
Tendo-san. I think perhaps we should discuss that topic on
some later date. What is your opinion of him as a martial
artist?"
Genma was beginning to look like a middle-aged man
trapped in the mosh pit at a metal concert.
"Gifted, is the only word that describes him. He has a
great deal yet to learn, but he is already better than all
but a handful of martial artists that I know about. I do
believe, however, that he should spend a bit more time in
meditation, and he has neglected serious study in the use of
weapons."
"Saotome Genma, what is your opinion?
"I agree with Tendo-kun for the most part. I do not
doubt my son's manliness." Genma said in a soft, tiny voice.
He paused to allow what Tofu knew sounded like the echoes in
a vast cavern to die down.
"Of his skill in the art, I think he will soon be a
match for Happosai, if he isn't already. I suspect he
sometimes holds back to avoid embarrassing or hurting the
master."
Much to Tofu's surprise, Soun nodded his head in
agreement at Genma's last statement. Genma seemed about to
succumb to exhaustion, until he noticed that Nabiki had been
watching him out of the corner of one eye and now looked as
though she might erupt into hysterics. Genma stared at her
with a pleading look.
"Tendo Nabiki," Tofu asked, "What is your opinion of
Saotome Ranma's manliness?"
Nabiki's face held its usual, cool and calm demeanor,
but her eyes were shining with pride, "You mean when he's a
guy or while he is cursed?"
Tofu worked very hard at not appearing to be
flustered.
"In both his forms, please."
"He is very much a guy. He's even worse when he's a
girl," Nabiki said with a smirk, "He is especially bad when
he is a girl and it is that time of the month."
This took Tofu Ono back considerably. How had the boy
endured this many problems and remained essentially sane?
Anyone else I know would have turned homicidal long before
now. Aw, nuts! Tofu thought. Now I've got to explain to him
about visiting a gynecologist. That won't be any fun. Do I
have any lady gynecologists on my reference list? Only
Takahashi-sensei. That means I'll have to go with Ranma
across town to see her. The change of scene would do him some
good, but it wouldn't do to let him wander about Tokyo on his
own right now. Tofu let out an involuntary sigh. At least,
Takahashi-san specialized in strange cases.
"It has only happened the one time, Doctor," Kasumi
said, "A long time ago. When Ko Lon gave him the Whole Body
Cat's Tongue."
Tofu noted that Genma was beginning to calm down
considerably. Must be the aspirin kicking in, he thought. He
checked his watch. Yep, it's the aspirin.
"Oh, I see! So it is an irregular occurrence. I wonder
why he never..." Tofu cut himself off as he eyed Nodoka
warily. Her face was as serene as ever, but she was beginning
to shake. Time to change the subject, Tofu old buddy!
"Thank the kami it's irregular!" Nabiki said, "He was
as mean as Uncle Saotome with a hangover while that went on."
This proved exactly the right thing to say at exactly
the right moment. Everyone in the room, including Nodoka,
laughed about it. Genma of course, visibly regretted it all.
Tofu worried about what might happen now that Ranma could
deliver ki attacks. It would not be too terribly worrisome
had he grown up as a girl, but he had not grown up as a girl.
Menstruation could easily cause him serious trouble with his
self-control. He would have to remember to discuss it with
Ranma later.
"I happen to know that you make book on Ranma's
fights, Nabiki-san," Tofu said quickly, "What is your opinion
of him has a martial artist?"
"I never take even bets against Ranma in a straight up
fight, unless his opponent is someone of extraordinary
ability, like Happosai, or someone who is engaging Ranma in a
competition for which he lacks the requisite skills. Even
then, I never take the bet without very good odds in my
favor. Since this last trip to China, I am not so sure that I
would take even bets against him if he were fighting Pansuto
Tarou." Tofu noted that Soun and Genma both shuddered at the
mention of Tarou.
"Thank you, Nabiki," Tofu said.
"Tendo Kasumi, what is your opinion?
"I think he is a very manly man, indeed," Kasumi said,
"but I think he could be much, much more than he is. He is
not allowed to be everything he could be."
"How so, Kasumi-san?" Tofu silently thanked all the
kami of Japan for his recent exposure to the confidence drug.
Kasumi's presence would have otherwise turned him into a
gibbering idiot.
"Please excuse me for I mean no offense. I love Ranma
dearly. He is like a brother to me, but Ranma is almost too
manly. He is fiercely protective of those he loves, but he
does not know how to show love. When he tries to encourage
someone else, he insults them because he knows nothing of
nurturing. He knows next to nothing about manners, " Kasumi
said, then paused to let her words sink in.
"You forgot to mention that Ranma's promises are as
good as gold, Kasumi," Nabiki said. Kasumi nodded her head in
agreement, then spoke again.
"I think Ranma is like this because he grew up without
his mother. We learn most of the things Ranma does not know
from our mothers. I had mother's journals and did a lot of
reading to learn for myself, and to teach my sisters, but
poor Ranma has never had any such help. His life is out of
balance. I have never met anyone like him. He is completely
masculine despite his curse. He has not been around women
enough to know how to talk to one, let alone be like one.
Personally, I think it is time for Ranma to begin teaching. I
believe that in teaching his art to others, he will find it
necessary to face up to his shortcomings and correct them. I
think he will learn to show love and how to nurture once he
begins to teach, because a great teacher must know how to do
those things."
Tofu noted that everyone but Genma was staring at
Kasumi in shock. He decided to let this go on for a bit. He
knew from observation that they seldom gave Kasumi credit for
her real genius. The people of Nerima treated her with a good
deal more respect than her own family did. She had, over the
years, become Nerima's version of Solomon the Wise. Whenever
neighbors got into a dispute, especially if it was one man
arguing with another over something, it was almost always
Kasumi they turned to as an objective arbiter. She
specialized in untangling complicated knots with a gentle tug
upon a single strand, in making the crooked straight, and in
making the obscure plainly seen. In a way, her family's
ignorance of the role she played in Nerima was not surprising
to him. When you are very close to something, it is often
difficult to see all of it. Stay too close too long, and you
will forget everything but what you can see day to day.
Genma, for his part, had been staring down at the
floor. Sometimes gentle little Kasumi's words could tear at a
man's soul like thousands of raking claws, and Genma had just
heard every little nuance in her voice. Tofu shuddered. He
had not meant to be quite so cruel to the elder Saotome, but
there was little help for it now. Genma's boulder like frame
was beginning to sag visibly.
It was Nodoka that broke the silence first. "I am very
pleased to hear many of the things everyone has to say about
my son, but I still worry about him in one respect. He seems
to lack a manly interest in girls." Nodoka's face was as
serene and cool as a mountain lake on a calm day, but Tofu
could see tears building up in the corners of her eyes.
Genma, whose posture was now suggestive of a slumping
pile of human goo, stared at Nodoka as though she might be
the gelatinous movie monster. He's listening to her tear
ducts, Tofu thought. Poor bastard.
"You mistake Ranma's innate nobility for a lack of
manliness, Auntie Nodoka!" Kasumi said, "Thanks to the
attractiveness of his cursed form, Ranma has a profound
understanding about some of the terrible things women endure.
"That's true, Kasumi, but have you ever noticed what his
nipples do when he looks at Akane in his girl form?"
Kasumi gave Nabiki a rather hard stare over this, but
much to Tofu's relief, he could see the light of revelation
dawn in Nodoka's tear glazed eyes. Finally! Now maybe I can
get to the point. This seppuku business must stop
immediately, he thought. Time to speak up, Ono!
"With the respect that is due to all of you, I have a
rather higher opinion of Saotome Ranma. I see a great many
different people suffering from a great many different
ailments. Ranma is the only person I know capable of enduring
what he has endured without breaking. Everyone else I know
would have run away, or become insane, or become a criminal.
Ranma has done none of these things. Most of his flaws stem
from undervaluing things he shouldn't."
Tofu paused to see if he still had their attention.
Satisfied on this point, he continued.
"I do not question Ranma's manliness, I envy it.
Courage and self-control such as his are rare, even among the
highly trained. However, this is not the main reason for my
being here this evening. I have come to you because despite
Ranma's prodigious durability, he is human and, like all
humans, he has his limits. Those limits were reached
yesterday, perhaps sometime before yesterday."
This earned Tofu a round of concerned stares and
everyone looked as though they were about to speak at the
same time, so he held his hand up for silence and hurriedly
continued with what he had to say.
"I treat a great many people who suffer from stress-
related illnesses. It is a very, very common problem in
modern day Japan. Ranma, however, has a rather unique,
stress-related illness. One that no Japanese person that I
know of has had in many years."
Tofu fell silent and waited for someone to ask, mainly
because he wanted to see who felt themselves most qualified
to help. As he expected, it was Soun Tendo who spoke up
first.
"What is so unique about Ranma's problem, Sensei?"
Soun asked.
"He suffers from combat fatigue."
Tofu's highly trained ears told him that every heart
in the room but his had just stopped beating for a second.
Here it comes, he thought.
"Combat fatigue!" The family chorused, all but Nabiki
that is. She nodded her head, looking not the least bit
surprised. Cool, Tofu thought. She is always so very
goddamned cool. She's basically a warrior at heart, but I'll
bet she falls to pieces while she is alone in her room at
night. I'll have to keep an eye on her. Tofu waited until the
flurry of questions, claims, counterclaims, conjectures and
accusations faded away before trying to speak. Sometimes it
was best to let a group of people vent their emotions. It
helped them clear their minds. The noise greatly increased
Genma's rate of liquefaction.
"As I said before, I treat a great many patients with
stress-related problems. Most of them are salarymen, who by
the way, are often very manly. Because stress-related
illnesses are so common, I have studied them a great deal
over the past few years. Combat fatigue, though it is a
stress related illness, has unique symptoms and unique
causes. The primary cause is the victim's constant fear of
dying. The other sometimes unrecognized cause is..."
"The dread of having to kill others," Nabiki said,
interrupting Tofu.
"That is correct, Nabiki."
Nodoka stared down at the table in morose silence.
Tofu could see that she was struggling to hold back a flood
of tears. Genma, still slip-sliding into a viscous puddle of
utterly boneless humanity, fixed his large, staring eyes upon
Nodoka as though she were the one about to change shape.
"Fortunately, the cure for Ranma's condition is quite
simple. All he needs is rest. A refuge from the source of his
stress. What would be better though, would be to completely
eliminate the stress or as many sources of it as possible."
The silence was now smothering. Tofu watched as Nabiki
and Kasumi exchanged quick glances with one another and their
father. Genma and Nodoka continued to stare at the table as
three pairs of Tendo eyes settled upon Nodoka. Tofu let it go
on for a minute or so, but it seemed a century came and went.
He could tell that Nodoka was not going to mention the
contract she and Genma had made with Ranma, as he had hoped.
Probably too embarrassed, Tofu thought. Had it been any other
patient with most any other family he would have allowed
matters to stand as they were and hoped that the family would
have done what was necessary to help their son, but this was
no ordinary family. They were proud and strong and both those
traits were hindering them now. Suddenly, a potential face-
saving solution occurred to him.
"I am curious about something and have long wanted to
ask Ranma this question, but I have not wanted to risk
embarrassing him. I should like to ask it now and I will
apologize if it causes anyone here any discomfort or
concern."
During another, prolonged silence, Genma some how
pulled himself back into something resembling a semi-human
shape and responded.
"Please ask your question, Sensei. We will do our best
to answer it honestly."
"Isn't Ranma qualified to carry a sword, by now? I
should think he is more than worthy to be a protector of the
Saotome Clan by now."
No one said anything, but Nodoka nodded.
"I am glad to hear that my estimate of him is
accurate," Tofu said with his sunniest smile, "I do admire
him very much." Tofu realized that he may as well have used a
cat 'o nine tails on the Saotomes. He winced inwardly. He
really wanted to get the contract away from Nodoka and burn
it right here on the table with their assent, but that would
be asking too much of them too quickly. He would wait and
hope Nodoka would think of it on her own.
"I have given Ranma a special sedative. I expect he
will wake up just before noon tomorrow. I would imagine that
he will be ravenous when he does. Perhaps you should all come
to the clinic then and try to cheer him up."
Even Nabiki smiled and nodded at this. Tears were
running down Nodoka's face in small rivulets, but she smiled
and nodded her head vigorously.
"Good! I should be getting back to my patients," Tofu
said in his most cheerful voice, "Oh, by the way. I have
asked Akane to stay at the clinic. One of Ranma's symptoms is
a profound fear that something will happen to her. He is much
calmer in her presence. I hope you don't mind, Tendo-san."
Soun began to blubber, "If it will help Ranma, I have
no objections Sensei."
Genma's head jerked around to face his best friend as
he stared at Soun in wide eyed horror. Good, Tofu thought.
You need to listen to the tears you cause, Genma Saotome.
Perhaps after tonight, you will become a little more human.
Tofu bowed, then said, "I must be going. I thank you
all for your attention and humbly request your forgiveness
for my intrusion."
Everyone began to protest that he had not intruded and
began asking him to stay for dinner as he stood up. Out of
the corner of his eye, Tofu caught the rapt admiration in
Kasumi's eyes and felt his self-control begin to slip. He
squeezed his eyes shut in frustration. Why, oh why can't I
get a grip on this? Fortunately for him, the ever patient
Kasumi seemed to understand.
"Nabiki, would you see the Doctor to the door for me?
I need to check on some things in the kitchen."
"Sure, Sis," Nabiki said cheerily, "Would you help
carry some things to the clinic for Ranma and Akane, Sensei?"
Tofu was relieved at this. He wanted to speak with
Nabiki before she spoke with Ranma, anyway.
Once outside the gates, Nabiki's curiosity got the
best of her. Her nimble mind had inferred a great deal, but
that only whetted her appetite for more facts to chew on. She
was not impelled by her intellect alone. Something had
touched her earlier in the day just before Tofu had come to
the nurse's station. She knew in the core of her soul that it
had been Ranma, but she could not understand how it had
happened. She had done everything she could think of to kill
the feelings that would make such a thing possible. Why were
they surfacing again? Why now?
"How bad off is Ranma, Ono-sensei?" She asked as she
took Tofu's right arm.
Tofu looked at Nabiki and raised an eyebrow before
answering. "Well, he hasn't got a case of the thousand-yard
stares just yet, but it could happen without warning. Given
Ranma's abilities, the results could be tragic."
"Thousand-yard stares?"
The lower edge of the sun, now a huge, flaming red
ball, touched the distant rooftops.
"A condition diagnosed by every major combatant during
WWII. It is hard to describe, but once you've seen the
pictures of someone afflicted with it you can never forget. A
man in that condition is deadly dangerous to everyone around
him, even his friends and allies. The technical term for it
is "hyper-arousal." Of the two terms, it is the more
descriptive of the two without showing a picture of a
victim."
"In other words, Ranma is ticking away like a bomb."
"More like an old fashioned bomb. The kind with a lit
fuse. The "bomb" if you will, is easily defused by giving him
some time away from the source of stress. Without that rest,
things could go tragically wrong--and with almost no more
warning than we have now. A sudden threat of any kind, real
or imagined by the victim, will trigger the worst of its
symptoms. It's not too terribly different from the Neko-ken
really, except that Ranma would be able to use his intellect
better."
Nabiki shivered at the thought of a Neko-Ranma gifted
with intelligence and some of his more advanced techniques.
The immediate destruction of several people she knew would be
a foregone conclusion.
"Do you think he might slip into the Nekoken without
warning?"
"No, this would be different. Quoting a military
officer's manual on the subject, the fact is that
overstressed human beings with loaded weapons are inherently
dangerous. Ranma, thanks to his extensive training, is a
loaded weapon in his own right. Unfortunately, he is also
overstressed. Have you read any of the old legends about the
berserkers or the amoks?"
Nabiki nodded.
"I am reasonably sure those were sufferers of combat
fatigue. The Nekoken training was a deliberate attempt to
create a berserk. It was abandoned because the majority of
the trainees became listless masses of quivering nerves.
Combat fatigue is much the same. The majority simply become
listless wrecks, but Ranma's Neko-ken is a kind of hyper-
arousal state. I don't want to take any chances with his
combat fatigue. He will most likely develop a classic hyper-
arousal state.
"How long have you been watching this develop, Ono-
sensei?"
"I've been worried about him since I learned about the
Neko-ken. The effects of psychological stress are cumulative.
The signs of stress related trouble have become a little
worse with every visit he has made to the clinic. I became
seriously worried about it just before this recent trip to
China," Tofu said.
"Why didn't you say something about it several months
ago?"
"Because I was not certain of my diagnosis and I was
fairly sure that neither of Ranma's parents would listen."
"You've got a point, Doc. I'm certain Panda-man would
have scoffed at you, especially if you had said anything in
front of Aunt Nodoka. I'm pretty sure Daddy would have
listened though."
"Perhaps I made a mistake, then," Tofu said, sounding
contrite.
"No, I don't think you can call it a mistake. You made
the best call you could based on what you knew at the time.
What do you need me to do?"
"I want you to make your sister's life a little
easier," Tofu said with a smile, "because I happen to know it
is well within your ability to do so."
Nabiki smirked at him. "Oh, you think making things
easier for Ranma would make Akane's life easier, right?"
Tofu nodded his head.
"What does Ranma want with me?"
"Anything I might tell you at this point would be a
guess, and I'm sure your guesses would be much better than
mine."
"I'll do everything I can do for Akane, Ono-san. Much
of what I've done so far has been to..."
"You needn't explain, Nabiki-chan. I know much about
your family from my other patients. The elderly ones who have
lived here for a long time love to tell stories. You'd be
surprised how many comment on how much like your mother you
are."
Nabiki felt the sting of tears at the back of her
eyes, but maintained her composure. She was not surprised by
this news. Since she had begun loaning money to the skilled
labor working in the shops and small factories on Forges
Street, she had heard that statement more than once.
Apparently, her mother could be a certifiable bitch when it
came to collecting debts. On the other hand, she also very
often heard how much like Kasumi her mother had been. It all
depended on who was telling the tale. Several even mentioned
how much like Akane her mother could be from time to time,
usually while rubbing some part of their anatomy in memory.
The thought of it made Nabiki smile.
"The stories about how nice my mom was I can
understand," Nabiki said, "What I have never understood is
the high regard so many have for my Dad and Saotome-san."
Tofu smiled at her, almost laughing, "Sometimes one
sort of demon is very much preferable to another sort."
"Even if the demons in question are Fiends of the
Happosai?"
"Especially, if they are friends of Happosai." Tofu
laughed.
"Ono-sensei?"
"Yes, Nabiki-san?"
"Can Ranma ever be cured of the Neko-ken?"
"I don't know for sure. Certainly he cannot be cured
without a lot of therapy, and unfortunately, the normal
course of treatment for such phobias is very risky in his
case."
Nabiki stopped walking, forcing Tofu to pause with
her. Somewhere in the distance, a nightingale sang. A gentle
breeze rustled their hair.
"Why?"
"Because the usual method of treatment is to expose
the victim to his or her fears until they become
desensitized. In Ranma's case, he enters a special kind of
hyper-arousal state that is dangerous to him and everyone
around him. It would not be so bad were it not for his
ability to use his ki so effectively."
"So, as Ranma becomes a better martial artist, the
more dangerous his Neko-ken becomes."
"It cannot become much more dangerous than it is now,"
Tofu said with as shrug as he led Nabiki towards the clinic,
"Everything has its limits, but a Ranma with the thousand
yard stares would be much, much worse. In his cat state, he
can be distracted. In a purely hyper-arousal state with his
intellect fairly intact, distraction would not work. He would
tend to destroy anything that moved without distinguishing
between friend or foe. Everything becomes a target to men in
that state."
"How come this has not been more of a problem in the
past?"
"In times of war it is very often a problem, but it is
seldom reported. Even so, cases like Ranma's are pretty rare.
Only about one case of combat fatigue in two-hundred
manifests these symptoms, and most of them die in combat
shortly thereafter."
"He is like this because of his parents," Nabiki said,
the words fighting their way past the lump in her throat,
"Isn't he?"
"You may well be right. Current research suggests that
upbringing is far more important than individual
personalities as predictors of who will, or will not suffer
from this malady. Almost all who suffer from it had an
unstable life at home while young, many lived with a great
deal of abuse, or harsh discipline, or simply had home lives
bereft of love and nurturing during early childhood."
"How likely is Ranma to become abusive of his own
family?"
"He may become quite abusive of his father in the near
term, but if you are asking about a wife or children, I'd say
the probability is quite low in Ranma's case."
A street light came on overhead as they walked beneath
it.
"Why?"
"What irritates Akane about him the most?"
"He doesn't take her training seriously enough,"
Nabiki said, then stopped in front of the clinic door and
stared at Tofu. "He's scared to death he might hurt her!"
Tofu smiled. "If he trains her, he will hurt her. It
is part of the process. Ranma cannot bring himself to do her
any harm, even though she very much wants and needs the
training." Tofu unlocked the door and the two of them went
inside.
Akane was still sitting in the chair next to Ranma's
bed, leaning forward to use the edge of the bed as a pillow
and clutching Ranma's left hand with both of her own. He was
awake.
"Doc?"
"Yes, Ranma?"
"You got a cot or somethin' for her?"
Tofu nodded his head.
"Would you mind setting it up? She's cutting the
circulation off in my hand."
"I'll get it," Nabiki said, "Hall closet, right?"
Tofu nodded yes, then noticed that Akane's teacup was
still full and saw the pieces of Ranma's cup lying on the
floor. Nabiki went to get the cot.
"Ranma, did Akane drink anything from your cup?"
"No, Doc. Why?"
"You didn't see her touch the inside of it or anything
did you?"
Ranma thought for a minute before answering. "Not that
I saw. I went to sleep for a while after drinking the tea.
Why? What's wrong?"
"Well the medicine in your cup is pretty potent and it
can be absorbed through the skin."
Ranma looked alarmed. "Will it hurt her?"
"No, but she may behave differently for a day or two."
"Doc, I uh...I uh...kissed her right after I drank the
tea."
Tofu stared at Ranma for a moment then burst out
laughing.
"What's so damned funny?" Ranma asked with a little
heat in his voice, "Is she going to be all right?"
Tofu composed himself then answered. "She'll be fine,
Ranma. She is going to be very cheerful and sweet for the
next couple of days, but it won't hurt her. It's my fault
anyway. I should have anticipated something like this."
Ranma blinked thoughtfully for a moment.
"Will it improve her cooking?"
"I can't say for sure. What's wrong with her cooking?"
Ranma looked down at Akane with a bemused look, mixed
with humor and affection. He reached out and stroked her hair
with his right hand.
"It's like everything else she does, Doc. She tries
too damned hard."
"Well, in that case, the drug might help a little."
Ranma's face lit up with a huge grin.
Nabiki came in and set up the cot for Akane. Tofu had
to use a pressure point to loosen her grip on Ranma's hand,
then he and Nabiki tucked her in.
"How's the hand, Ranma?"
"Starting to tingle. It'll be fine."
"I've got to go catch up on some paperwork, Nabiki-
san," Tofu said, "Don't keep him up too long."
Nabiki smiled at Tofu as he left, then turned to
Ranma. Her knees became unsteady as the memory of all those
nights she had fought off the urge to sneak into Ranma's bed
came rushing back in an unanticipated flood. You can't have
him, Nabiki! she silently admonished herself, he belongs to
Akane. You turned down your chance, fair and square. Besides,
you went to great lengths to make sure he wouldn't want
anything to do with you.
Working hard to wrap herself in that cloak of icy
composure she kept constantly at the ready, Nabiki managed to
speak without swallowing first.
"So, what did you need to see me about, Saotome?"
Ranma's stare was angry but affectionate. Nabiki
forced a smile away from her lips. Affection from Ranma was
nearly irresistable.
"What will you charge me to help Akane and me keep up
with our school work?"
Nabiki did not actually run the school; Principle
Kuno's secretary ran it as best she could with the senior
Kuno's interference and much help from Nabiki. She would not
even have to call in a favor to help Ranma and Akane out.
"No charge for that one, Ranma. What else?"
"I need your help dealing with Kodachi."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Whatever it takes. She showed up at Akane's wedding
wearing a...wearing..." Ranma was so angry he could not
continue.
"Okay, Ranma," Nabiki said as her eyes went flat,
"Consider her ass fried."
"Freebie, right?"
Nabiki nodded. "She insulted my little sister! She
suffers; her brother picks up the tab."
"She belongs in a nut ward, you know."
"When I'm through with her, she'll have herself
committed. Don't worry, Saotome. I know what you are after.
Now then, who else?"
"This one's dangerous, so I want you to think about
first. Okay?"
"Who?"
"I need you to put a tail on Xian Pu, around the clock
if you can swing it."
"Around the clock might be a little hard to do,"
Nabiki stopped speaking for a second as her face reflected
sudden horror. "You think she's going to go after Akane!
Don't you?"
Ranma nodded grimly. "I think we can just about count
on it."
The fires of hell suddenly flared in Nabiki Tendo's
eyes. Careful Nabiki! The more objective side of her mind
warned her. Both of you could easily be wrong. But what if
he's right? She questioned it. Xian Pu's deadly!
"Don't get carried away, Nabiki," Ranma said, "I've
got a plan for dealing with this, but I need your help
covering all the bases."
"What do you have in mind?" Nabiki's voice was grim.
Better to be cautious for the time being, she thought to
herself. Xian Pu might be plotting murder and she might not.
If we prepare and she does nothing, fine. If she does, we
make sure she can never try it again.
"I'm going to be in here for at least another week, so
I plan on keeping Akane here until Doc Tofu says I can go
home. After that, we can never leave her alone, no matter
where she goes, except around the house, got it?"
"Xian Pu may get desperate and kill Akane and anyone
else she thinks might be potential witnesses, Ranma."
"No she won't."
"How do you know that for sure, Ranma? This is my
little sister's life we are talking about here."
"She won't because we are going to give her another
option that's easier. We'll let her think we aren't guarding
Akane while she's in her room at night."
"Umisen-ken?" Nabiki asked. He's finally learning to
think ahead a little! she thought to herself. Damn! I should
have taken him when I had the chance. He's going to turn out
to be a first rate partner.
Ranma nodded.
"You aren't going to tell Akane, are you?"
"It's a case of what she knows might kill her, Nabiki.
Akane is like an open book, especially if she's angry about
something."
Nabiki regarded him with sly eyes for a moment. What I
wouldn't give to have you in my room all night, Ranma! She
thought. She tried, but failed, to suppress a shiver of
delight. Akane is such an idiot! Well, they're both idiots,
but they are getting better, and he is positively edible.
Better focus on business, girl.
"I don't think it makes sense to put a tail on Xian Pu
until you two are out of here," Nabiki said aloud.
"You might be right about that Big Sister, but I
would feel better knowing where she is and what she is up
to."
Now what would I prefer Xian Pu to be up to about now,
Nabiki asked herself. Sleeping would be nice. She's a very
nice girl while she's asleep.
"Oh, haven't you heard? The Nekohanten has the best
ramen in Nerima!" Nabiki said in a cheerful voice, "Their
take-out is even better than what they serve at their
tables!"
Ranma grinned, causing Nabiki to gasp at him. It was
an unpleasant sight. This was a side of Ranma she did not
know existed.
"You are my kind of evil, Nabiki."
Nabiki smiled back at Ranma and thought, No you aren't,
Ranma. You like this idea because you only inflict pain to
teach a lesson. I just like the idea of the bitch falling
down dead tired at the end of a long day.
"What about the rest of them, Saotome?"
"The rest of them belong to me," Ranma said in a voice
so cold it made Nabiki shudder. It was not just his voice, of
course. The room temperature dropped precipitously. The air
conditioning came on and Nabiki realized that it was
producing warm, not cold air.
"Ranma?" Tofu called from another part of the clinic.
"Sorry, Doc!" The air in the room began to warm up as
the central air unit quickly began to catch up with Ranma.
Nabiki's eyes widened with the realization of what had just
happened.
"Ranma did you just...?"
"Yeah, it was me," Ranma said with an irritable wave
of the hand, "I didn't meant to. I'll have it under control
in a couple of days. Don't let it bother you none."
Nabiki wanted very badly to say she was sorry, but
how? There was so much for her to apologize about, and there
was no way she dared explain why she had been so mean to him
all this time. She hated to think what he might do if she
told him the truth. I've been mean to you because I wanted to
jump your bones, Ranma. I was afraid I might fall in love
with you. I was afraid I might try to take you away from
Akane. I wanted to make sure you were never attracted to me.
Ranma broke her out of her reverie by touching her
arm.
"Big Sister?"
"Yes, Ranma-kun?"
"No picture sales for two-months."
Nabiki clamped down hard on the laughter that rose in
her throat. If only you knew how much I enjoyed those
pictures myself, she thought.
"You're going to let me off that easy?" Nabiki asked
aloud.
"I figure Akane will take care of you in her own way."
"Actually, it's Kasumi that has me worried."
Ranma managed to give her a bleak look, while somehow
still getting across a modicum of sympathy.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said.
Nabiki smiled at him, then stood up by the bed and
bent over so that she could whisper in his ear.
"I'm sorry, Ranma-kun."
"You don't owe me an apology, Big Sister. You should
apologize to Akane."
Nabiki kissed his ear, then his cheek, then his lips,
taking great delight in the reaction she got from Ranma. She
slid the palm of her hand over the unbandaged parts of his
muscular chest. Ranma shivered. I thought so, Soatome! Nabiki
said silently to herself. I do turn you on a little.
"I'm not apologizing to you for the wedding, Ranma-
darling. I'm apologizing for what I didn't do when you first
came into our home."
Ranma's eyes grew wide with shock.
"It's too late now," Nabiki said with sigh as she
straightened up and stretched. Ranma vigorously nodded his
head in agreement, then winced at the eye-watering pain the
motion caused.
"I guess I'll just have to let Akane keep you."
Ranma's very wide open eyes became firmly fixed upon
the ceiling.
"Have I ever told you how handsome you are when you're
embarrassed?" Nabiki asked. Ranma, to her great delight,
became even more flustered. She brushed his bangs away from
his eyes with one hand, causing him to look her in the face.
Nabiki did not mind. She wanted to show him that he really
was loved.
"Boy! I never had a chance, did I?" Ranma asked.
Nabiki shook her head and smiled. "Never did. Never
will, Saotome. You are going to marry a Tendo," she said as
she continued to play with his bangs.
"I got lots of stuff to do first."
"I know, Ranma," Nabiki said, pausing to swallow back
a knot in her throat, "You both do. Just don't take too long,
okay?"
Tears began to swim around the edges of Ranma's eyes.
He nodded his head. "Nabiki I..."
"Doc Tofu says you need to rest, so rest now. I'll go
get Operation Rose Garden underway."
"What about Xian Pu, got a project name for her?"
"Nope. I'm gonna cover it all under one allocation for
expenditure," Nabiki said with one of her most predatory of
smiles, "Get some sleep, Little Brother."
Nabiki quit playing with Ranma's bangs and left. He
let out a sigh and thanked all the kami of Japan for Akane
Tendo. Then as an afterthought, he said a prayer for whoever
it was that Nabiki would eventually choose for a husband. The
poor sod would need divine intervention more than any other
man who had ever lived. It began to dawn on him then that
Akane's sisters regarded him as family. As he basked in this
new-found warmth, sleep crept up on him quietly, and took him
without a struggle.
A few moments later, Nabiki came back into the room
and cleaned up the remains of Ranma's shattered teacup.
Rather than throw the shards away, she tipped them into a
resealable, plastic bag. Nabiki held the bag up so that she
could see the pieces in the dim lighting and smiled.
"Nothing like a fire to fight a fire with," she
whispered to herself.
Nabiki Tendo rushed home. She needed some sleep for
tomorrow would be one of the busiest she had endured in a
long time. She smiled at the prospect of it. She loved
challenges.
----------
Nerima is subject to having a strange day on any given
day of the week, and usually does have. However, the
strangest days in Nerima usually occur between Friday and
Monday as may be logically expected, because even the
denizens of Nerima must strive to earn a living. The
district's strangeness index tends to go up on the weekends
when the majority of Nerimaens have a little more time on
their hands than what is entirely healthy for them. Such
circumstance do not, however, prevent Nerima from having a
very peculiar day arise during the week. This particular
Tuesday was one of those, not so rare exceptions.
Ko Lon suspected that the incoming tsunami of chaos
had actually begun to build up on Sunday, the day of Tendo's
attempt to wed his daughter to her son-in-law. She also
suspected that Xian Pu had something to do with germinating
the nascent strange attractor because she had dressed in her
finest clothes and was absent for most of that day. By the
time Ko Lon had gotten to the Tendo dojo, things had already
taken their predictable course. Questioning Xian Pu on the
details had proven fruitless.
Late that Sunday evening, something woke Ko Lon up.
This was not unusual in and of itself. Ko Lon had been
elderly for some three-hundred years and she, like many of
the elderly, needed little in the way of sleep, often had
trouble going to sleep, and was easily wakened. What was so
unusual was the nature of the event which disturbed her
sleep. It was a very peculiar surge of ki. The event was
nearby but faint. Unlike most faint surges of ki, this one
was steady, not staccato, and it did not taper off. It
stopped abruptly without a trailing tingle. She had felt it
again on Monday evening while in the bath, and it had wakened
her again shortly after going to bed on Monday night.
Still, such a surge was not in and of itself a
frightening thing. Nerima had more than its fair share of
accomplished martial artists. Ko Lon remembered experiencing
a similar event in her early youth. No, what had been
frightening was the voice she heard in the wee hours of this
Tuesday morning. It had made her sit up in bed with a start.
It had been Most Revered Grandmother using her ki voice,
speaking to Ko Lon from far off Qing Hai. "Beware the Cold
Dragon, Ko Lon," Ancient Mother had said. The sheer weight of
centuries had made the old woman's voice dry and dusty.
Hearing the message delivered in muffled tones, late at
night, born by a distant person's ki, made Ko Lon feel as
though someone had spoken to her from the grave.
Ko Lon had at first thought she had simply heard
Revered Grandmother's voice in a dream, but she knew better
after a mere second's worth of thought. No, Revered
Grandmother's ki signature was unmistakable. The voice had
not been a product of her sleep ridden imagination. Ko Lon
understood down to her very bones the terrible toll sending a
message in such a fashion took on Revered Grandmother's frail
body. She herself had been bedridden for two days the last
time she had accomplished such a feat, and Revered
Grandmother was twice Ko Lon's age. If Revered Grandmother
thought the matter important enough to run such a terrible
risk to her own health, then something important and probably
very dangerous was afoot.
Ko Lon immediately consulted the ancient texts she had
brought with her from China. After three hours of searching
she found the reference she needed. It had been written in a
text so old that Ko Lon found it difficult to follow. Another
hour of searching produced a list of names. Names of those
that had been given the gift of the Cold Dragon. Much to Ko
Lon's surprise, two of those names were from her own family
line, but from long, long ago. There had been talk at one
time of breeding a family line for this particular gift, but
nothing came of it. The ancient text was clear on why those
efforts would fail, "The Cold Dragon gifts only those who
winnow the coals of hell and live."
More reading warned of the signs and portents manifest
when the Cold Dragon woke. Ko Lon shuddered. There was no
longer any doubt in her mind about what she had felt for the
past two days, nor was there much doubt in her mind as to who
had received the Cold Dragon's gift. She carefully put the
tattered old scroll away, then looked at herself in the
mirror. She looked herself in the eye and considered all that
she had learned, all her accomplishments, all her failures,
her strengths and her shortcomings, then she wept. She wept
for Ranma Saotome. He was beyond her help. She could not help
him and she knew of no one who could. So she prayed to the
kami and asked them to show the boy a little mercy.
By the time she finished praying it was time to begin
work on a fresh batch of chicken stock. The only thing worse
than owning a restaurant is owning a dairy. Actually, no one
owns either sort of establishment. Those establishments own
the people holding their titles. One either enjoys the work
involved in running a restaurant, or gets out of the
business.
At nine in the morning Cologne began to get a feel for
just how strange an attractor had hit town. She had just
finished putting the vegetables into the soup, Mu Suu had
just finished washing the last of the dishes and Xian Pu was
gratefully taking a break having just finished with the
floors and tables when the telephone rang.
"Hello?" Cologne said into the infernal device.
"Yes, we do deliver takeout. Where and when, please?"
Cologne scribbled down the order and hung up the
telephone.
"Xian Pu?" Cologne said.
"Yes, Great-grandmother?"
"I want you to..."
She was cut off by another ring of the telephone.
"Nekohanten, may I help you?"
"Yes, of course! Where and when would you like it
delivered?"
"What's that? Oh, certainly we can have there right on
time. We do that all the time. Yes, of course! No problem.
Bye, bye!"
"Xian Pu I want you to..."
The telephone rang.
"Nekohanten, may I help you?"
"I see. Where and when would you like it delivered?"
Cologne wrote down the specifics for the third takeout
order of the day. It was long and complicated.
"Xian Pu I need you to..."
The telephone rang.
"Answer this damned thing so I can cook!" Ko Lon said
in a near howl of fury, "Mu Suu!"
"Yes, Honored Elder!" Mu Suu said, looking obeisant
with every fiber of his being.
"Check stock!" Ko Lon said, sounding for all the world
like a seasoned officer extricating her troops from an
ambush, "Have you fixed the tire on your bicycle yet?"
"Not yet, Honored Elder," Mu Suu said as he dove down
into the basement storage room.
"Hurry every chance you get! We are in for a busy
day."
The telephone rang.
"Nekohanten! What Xian Pu do to you today?"
"We're low on noodles and there isn't a shrimp in
sight!"
"What about pork?"
"Sure, I deliver plenty!"
"Okay on pork. Low on chicken though!"
"What you mean? Xian Pu not desert! Xian Pu delivery
person!"
"Go fix that tire then get in here and take care of
that bloody ring-a-ling thing!"
"Where that is? No way! Xian Pu no deliver that place!
Is love hotel!"
Xian Pu was not slow witted and she could do a
perfectly good job of receiving an order while getting it
right, but her telephone presence sometimes invited delay. It
was amusing on slow days, but this was not a slow day.
"How are we on vegetables, Mu Suu?"
"Is okay. Xian Pu deliver there, but you no behave you
be sorry!"
"Tons, still!"
The telephone rang again before Xian Pu could remove
her hand from the headset.
"I'll go fix the tire now," Mu Suu said, emerging from
the storeroom.
"Nekohanten! What Xian Pu do to you today?"
"Never mind the bicycle, Mu Suu! Just get your ass in
here and take care of this damned, ring-a-ling-a-thing!"
"Sure! Xian Pu deliver anytime, anywhere!" Xian Pu
said into the phone, followed by her chirping giggle.
"Whipped cream? What that for?"
----------
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