The characters of the Ranma 1/2 universe are the creation
and possession of the brilliant Rumiko Takahashi. They belong to
Rumiko Takahashi and her licensees (Shogakukan Inc., Kitty-Fuji
TV, Viz Communications Inc.)
     No copyright infringement is intended.

=====

Chapter Three: Thoughtless Words and Wordless Thoughts

=====

Monday, Akane returned home from her early morning jog. She loved
the crisp cool morning air, which is why she had started running
earlier and not because she wanted to watch that jerk and his
father spar over the backyard.

On her way to the furo she noted that she couldn't hear Uncle
Saotome moving about, which meant that he and her father must
have been out late again. Therefore she would have to get that
baka up for breakfast this morning.

Sliding the door open to the changing room, she was surprised to
find Ranma standing there, staring at the calendar that hung on
the wall.

"Excuse me," Akane barked, as she moved past Ranma. "There are
others who'd like to clean up this morning, you know." She was
still slightly miffed with Ranma. The jerk avoided her all day
yesterday.

"A year ago, today," was Ranma's only response.

"Huh?"

"Nothin'," Ranma said while shaking his head then left the room.

"What do you mean, nothing?!" Akane half-screamed, but he didn't
respond.

=====

The bell sounded for lunch. Students of classroom 2-F jumped up
and dashed for their destinations. Most wanted to enjoy the nice
day outside. Others where attempting to get to the juice and milk
machines before the line was too long.

Hiroshi stopped at the door. He looked back, shocked to see Ranma
hadn't left his desk. Akane and Sayuri were standing at the front
of the classroom waiting for Yuka to join them. Yuka hadn't even
attempted to get up yet.

"Hey, man. That was the lunch bell you just slept through,"
Hiroshi called to Ranma with a grin.

"Come on Yuka, we need to talk," Sayuri barked, ignoring Ranma
and Hiroshi.

Ranma took a deep breath and sighed. Yuka just stared at her
desk.

"I'll catch up to you guys later," Yuka wavered.

"Come on, Yuka. You don't have to stay here with him," Sayuri
huffed. Akane moved to sit down in one of the desks. "Not you
to."

Ranma plopped his head on to his desktop. "Go ahead and go with
your friends, Yuka," his muffled voice reverberated off the
wooden desk.

Hiroshi blinked.

"You're my friend to," Yuka countered.

"How can you say that after what he did to you!" Sayuri shouted,
taking Hiroshi by surprise.

"He didn't do anything!" Yuka cried.

"She's right, Yuka." Everyone boggled at Ranma. "I can't let you
lose your mother or friends because of me."

Hiroshi blinked again. Apparently he had missed a lot this
weekend.

"I don't abandon my friends. And I'll say it again: You. Are. My.
Friend."

"You can't be serious!" Sayuri replied incredulously.

"You have no idea what it's like to live without a mother or
friends!" Ranma shouted, jumping up from his seat. "I'm not gonna
let you give all that up."

"Your not the one making me give anything up. They are."

Ranma walked over to one of the windows and looked down into the
school yard.

"Come on, Yuka. Let's go talk this over," Sayuri attempted.

"Fine. We can talk here." Yuka glared at Sayuri.

After a long pause, Hiroshi spoke up. "Just what happened this
weekend?"

"We had a slumber party and." Yuka began.

"And Ranma went? Cool, you sly dog! Why didn't you tell us?"
Hiroshi interrupted only to find himself on the receiving end of
four very cold stares. "Uh, right. Don't mind me." Silently he
thanked his ancestors that looks couldn't kill.

"It's not like I wanted to go," Ranma said, breaking the moment.

"Ranma. You need to try to understand more what it's like to be a
girl," Akane replied.

"Maybe I don't wanna understand," Ranma shot back.

"And what's wrong with being a girl?" Akane huffed.

"You have no idea what it's like, and you never tried! All you do
is run to your friends and tell them how bad you've got it being
engaged to some sex changing pervert!" Ranma took a deep breath
before continuing. "Who do I have? No one! 'tween you and your
sister, you've turned this entire school against me! You at least
got to grow up with a normal life, with normal friends. All I
have is a group of people who either try to kill me ever time
they see me or try to ra- force themselves on me, like I'm some
kinda' prize or something, anything but a person."

"Hey, thanks a lot" Hiroshi called from the door way before Akane
could bring up her retort.

"It's not that I don't mind you and Dai, and I know you try."
Ranma spoke in a mush softer tone. "But do you know how it makes
me feel whenever we go out and I get splashed? I can't bare to
look at ya when I'm like that, cause I know I'm gonna catch both
of ya taking a peek at me." Ranma gestured to his chest for
effect.

"Well, if you wouldn't pick on everybody, maybe they wouldn't
want to fight you all the time!" Akane called out. She flinched
at the hurt expression that crossed his face. She immediately
wanted to take it back, to apologize; but like always, words
abandoned her when she needed them most.

Ranma caught the pained expression on Akane's face. One he had
felt on himself many times in the past. Genma had never been able
to express his love with words. Indeed, Genma had never been very
good expressing anything positive with words, but Ranma had long
learned to seek out those hidden expressions. You couldn't get to
Ranma's level without some ability to read people. He just had
never learned how to apply what he knew.

He wasn't sure when Akane's unspoken feelings had started to mean
more to him than his father's. But there was just too much that
needed to be said. He never wanted to hurt anyone. Now the chaos
that was his life was spreading too far, hurting even more
people. He wanted nothing more than to set things right, but like
always he had no clue how to do that. He needed to get away and
think.

After the breathless pause between the two, Ranma turned and left
the classroom. He didn't even look at Nabiki who had been
standing next to the doorway.

No one moved or said anything in the classroom for several
minutes.

=====

After school, Akane found a panting and slightly disheveled
looking onna-Ranma under a certain bridge. She hadn't been able
to find him at lunch, once she went to look. And he hadn't return
to class afterwards either. Unfortunately, by that time the
teacher had walked in and she couldn't come up with a good excuse
to go look for him.

"Ranma?" She called tentatively. Here and the roof where some of
the few places they would both sometimes let down their guard.
She was still slightly angry for earlier, especially when he just
ran off; however, this had become a kind of special neutral
ground, and she didn't want to lose that.

"Schools out already?" Ranma-chan called back, not even turning
to face Akane.

"What's wrong?"

"W- who said anything was wrong?"

"Ranma, you're a lousy liar and after what happened earlier."

"I'm sorry," Ranma said tersely.

"Now I know something's wrong."

"Ha ha."

"Please Ranma. You can talk to me."

Ranma-chan turned around, her mouth open as if to say something.

Akane watched as too many emotions to read played across the
delicate face of her iinazuke. For a moment, Ranma's eyes flashed
with such a depth of pain that Akane felt her chest tighten. It
was the same look held by a certain red-head when she was dropped
off by a panda almost a year ago. Then it was gone.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Ranma." Akane failed to keep her voice from growling. She was a
hairs breath away from beating whatever it was out of the
neo-girl when her stomach took that moment to growl.

"You're right, we should be getting back. Maybe Kasumi has
something out we can snack on!" Ranma gave her confidant
everything-is-okay smirk and took off, practically dragging Akane
behind.

Akane sighed. 'Okay, skipping lunch looking for this idiot wasn't
such a good idea. Once a Saotome gets food on the brain.' Akane
left off with that thought.

=====

That night, Akane tossed and turned in her bed. For some reason,
sleep just did not seem to want to find her. She rolled over onto
her back and stared at the ceiling.

Dinner had gone normally, at least for this family. Akane thought
back over the day and how Ranma had been acting lately. Not that
she was concerned for the idiot.

Akane got out of bed and slowly crept up to the Saotome's room.
For awhile there, it felt like they were getting closer despite
their parents and all his iinazuke.

Carefully peeking inside, she saw Ranma's futon empty. Several
months ago, Ranma had started backing off from her. When he
suddenly announced he needed to go off to train against some
technique Ryouga had discovered, she knew he was lying but didn't
say anything.

Two months after that, he returned and things almost went back to
normal. Only, she felt there was something off with her errant
iinazuke. When she discovered him missing one night, she
confronted him. That only led to a flattened Ranma. A few nights
later, she again found him missing. She had considered going to
uncle Saotome about this, but couldn't for some reason.

She had tried to follow him a couple of times, but following a
fast moving Ranma was just on this side of impossible.

With a heavy sigh, Akane did what she always did on the nights
she found him missing. She went downstairs to raid the ice-cream.

"Why me?" Akane thought aloud. "When did it become so easy to
blame everything on him?" She knew most of it wasn't his fault.
'Not that he really helps things, but it didn't always start out
as his fault,' she thought ruefully to herself.

Her life had always been filled with chaos. From getting lost in
Ryugenzawa to having most of the boys at school attack her every
morning for over a month and a half. If anything, Ranma had
brought a little stability into her life. Sure, she still got
kidnapped more than the average daughter of a wealthy tycoon in a
movie, but Ranma was always there to save her. 'And how do I
repay him?'

'Maybe if he had come before that mess started at school.' Akane
frowned. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Playing the
'What If' game. She had had her temper before high school and
still had her thoughts on the differences between boys and men..
But she hadn't had to face the endless nightmare that was to
become her morning routine.

No one had listened. No one had cared. Nothing she said got
though to those perverts. And they didn't even care about the
pain she handed out each morning either. There she was, attacked
by a mindless mob of hormones every morning, and everyone acted
like it was her fault. Most of the girls were upset with her for
'stealing' all the boys attention. The teachers were only upset
that she had trouble making it to class on time. Her own sister
merely timed how long the fights lasted.

She remembered wondering how they would react if she had ever
lost. Imagining the shouts of encouragement as the boys, heady
with their victory, would rip her cloths off. Oh, the stated
terms of victory was "permission to date her," but she had no
illusions about a group of boys that had decided that "no" meant
all they needed to do was beat her into saying "yes."

As it became clear they weren't going to stop, she channeled that
fear into a more comfortable emotion, anger. If they won, she
knew, having her at the disadvantage they would have no reason to
just stop there. And it was painfully obvious that no one from
the school would stop them. Everyone would probably just be happy
it was over.

Akane wiped at her tears that had started to form. She had tried
to put all of that behind her, but it still hurt her too deeply.
Coming home to Kasumi, who would chastise her for fighting in
school hadn't helped things at all. She knew Kasumi didn't know
all of the details, but it still felt like she was betrayed by
her family.

'Yeah,' she thought, 'I was just primed to meet my iinazuke.'

'Both of my sisters just pushing him on me was of no help. Being
a boy that had just seen me naked hadn't been the best start. Nor
did it help that he had already demonstrated that he could do
anything to me, and there wasn't a thing I could do to stop him.
Maybe I could have handled it better if he had let me think I at
least had a chance.' She shook her head. 'No, probably not.'

Thinking back over all the times he had come to her aid or fought
over her. Even when his pride made him claim to be other reasons
when pressed, she always knew he really came for her. She thought
back to the ice skating match. The reason he claimed for fighting
was to pay the jerk back for kissing him. Yet he was already
going to fight so she could get p-chan back, and he hated p-chan.

Yet she couldn't get that night out of her head. It was more of a
nightmare to her. Waking up only to find Ranma practically
pinning her to her bed. Akane shivered. She, of course, promptly
tossed the pervert out the window. That she was able to do so
didn't help her agitation at all. She felt he was just toying
with her. There was no way she could have really stopped him.

Akane's eyes narrowed as memories of the next day returned.
Instead of kicking them out of the house, her own father and
Ranma's had given him their blessings for trying that. She didn't
sleep a wink the next few nights out of fear that he would
return. His attempts to side step the issue, saying there was no
way he'd want to do anything like that with her were laughable at
best. Especially since he couldn't give her any other reason for
him to have been in her room.

'Still, he hadn't tried that again since.' She shook away the
slight feeling of disappointment that thought elicited. There was
no way she wanted him to sneak into her bed again.

With a sigh, Akane put her empty bowl in the sink and headed back
to bed. She was not going to get any answers tonight. Ranma just
confused her too much. She wished they could talk, but knew that
wasn't about to happen anytime soon. If only he would talk to
her. But he was too stubborn.

kit                 http://jeruind.i8.com/
=====================================
We the unwilling, led by the unknowing,
  are doing the impossible, for the ungrateful.
We have done so much, for so long, with so little
  we are now qualified to do anything with nothing


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