Secrets
A new, and yet torturous incomplete fanfiction by Kuno-Baby
This story is dedicated to the creator of Tendo-Saotome Anything Goes, Kirinin, for taking too long to finish. This story is also dedicated to the number 64 and the letter D-, and to Fire for bringing Destiny's Child to me and bringing me to fanfiction. May you be happy wherever dead authors lie... To one day return to the living with renewed creativity.
I'm sorry for taking your pain away, but it never really was yours, was it? Shut up, Slacker. This story is dedicated to everyone who isn't like you, just out of spite.
"Speech or thought. Pick it up from context, dumbfaces."
Scene Change. I will leave a silly note, if you are in luck and lucky+
I got nothing.
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"Genma." Soun said, with returned insistence.
"Tendo, it's not what it looks like." Genma backed up a step, staring not as his onetime companion but instead at his... child...
"Genma. She has no 'curse." Soun reiterated. Genma began to open his mouth and close it. Had he dreamed it up, to cover his shame at not having a son? Had he done such tough training to a daughter? He couldn't be sure. He never could be sure.
"Damnit!" Genma sat down once more, staring at the wet spot on the floor before him, now free of the red-haired girl he had brought to the Tendo Dojo in search of an arranged marriage.
Scene-like Transition+
It had started with a day at the Tendo dojo, not normal, in fact, but quite strange. Akane, who would normally have been smashing bricks in the usual manner, was silently in her own room, a girly affair complete with flower wallpaper and little wooden duck nameplate, but slightly marred completely by the stack of heavy dumbbells and assorted weights in the far corner from the door, positioned for easy grab-and-throw for use against the casual intruder. Nabiki, who would have been in her room, typing away at her computer and calculating odds and such, was instead off at the bank, depositing a particularly large and particularly ill-gained sum of yen, dollars, and exotic appliances. Kasumi, normally cleaning steadily away, was off on a date ("You better not hurt my little girl, Tofu, you scoundrel!"), and could not be reached by telephone, pager, or smoke-signal.
It was a perfect time, Genma thought, to barge inside with a red-haired girl and a hungry belly. Well, not perfect, so much as right now.
"Akane!" Soun rapped twice, harder, on the door. "Akane, I just received note that friends of mine will be arriving soon. Please come downstairs to meet them." Soun sighed as she did not answer. "Very well," he thought. "I will meet them on my own. They will just have to stay until Kasumi and Nabiki return. Well, not Kasumi. She's already got a boyfriend, I guess, even if I don't like him that much ("Turn my head back to normal, Tofu! You scoundrel!")"
When he returned, Genma was just finishing his barge. "Oh, Tendo! Long time no see. This is my son, Ranma."
"Um." Soun said, thoughtfully.
"Ranma, say hello. Say, Tendo, that reminds me. Where are your daughters? We have to finish the plans, you know?" Genma was nervously looking around.
"Son, Genma?" Soun was extremely perplexed and not a little thirsty. Maybe, he thought, maybe after tea everything would make sense.
Scene-ish Changeling+
Akane, having lethargically dressed, dripped lazily down the stairs, matching precisely the drip of the tea kettle as Ranma was aquatically abused. "Oh, Akane, you're just in time. Show Ranma here to the Dojo while Genma and I have a little talk. Oh, and can you refill this tea kettle on your way? Just put it back on the hot burner please."
Akane led Ranma to the kitchen, and slowly refilled the kettle from the sink, not taking her eyes off the insecure young girl before her. "And yet, she is so pretty," Akane thought, "If I looked like her I'd never be nervous." She tried to quit thinking about it, but could not. "So cute," Akane let out, in a whisper.
"Huh?" Ranma replied intelligently, "What was that?"
"Um, nothing. Let's go." Akane checked the burners, even feeling all of them, but not a one was more than stone-cold. She turned one on, put the kettle on top, and led Ranma to the Dojo by hand.
Scenerific+
"So, you do martial arts, at all?" Ranma timidly asked? S/he was bored, and still thinking about what he could do with his new situation.
"I..." Akane refocused her eyes after drifting into thought. "I can't. Not anymore. (Not since Kuno-Baby stole this plot hook!) ("Damn you Tofu! You defiler! You Scoundrel!")"
Ranma blinked. In surprise, no less. "You, you don't?" Ranma could not understand it. Who wouldn't want to?
"I have to tell someone, sometime. I guess." Akane continued, unsure of her words and of her emotions. "There's this guy..."
"And he told you not to fight?" Ranma was less confused.
"No. I beat him." Akane started to raise her voice, just a little, above the sad whisper it had become.
"" Ranma was more confused.
"I beat him until he stopped breathing. I couldn't control myself, he made me so mad. I wanted to kill him, and I almost killed him. They told me a lesser man would have died... he only held on to life by a thread." Akane was breathing heavily, and Ranma could not help but notice the rise and fall of her not unimpressive attributes. Akane, looking ashamedly at the floor, did not notice, and would not have cared too much except for noting that it was entirely inappropriate given the circumstances.
"You... you did?" Ranma was shocked. How could this make you want to give up the Art?
"Now you'll be afraid of me too!" Akane began to cry ("You've made one too many tears fall, Tofu! You bastard! You scoundrel!").
"N... No!" Ranma was desperate to stop the flow of sadness from those amazing eyes.
"What?" Akane stopped, for a moment.
"I, I want to help you! You just need to learn control!" Ranma was excited. A student! Perfect for teaching skill and teaching himself teaching skill!
"Con... trol..." Akane knew she would like this new friend of hers. She wiped a stray drop of something away from her eye and forgot, for a moment, that sadness really ever existed.
"I have a secret too." Ranma confessed, too quickly.
"What?"
"I have a secret too." Ranma confessed, more slowly. "I have a secret and I hope you'll forgive me."
"What?"
"I'm... I'm a man." Ranma looked down herself.
Akane had never been madder before in her life. Well, technically, she had, but that's neither here nor there. She ripped the shirt from Ranma's chest, expecting balloons, or socks, or something other than the pair of full breasts and feminine curve she found hiding rather badly underneath the now ruined silk.
She looked away, red-faced and slightly more embarrassed than one would expect.
"I thought you said you were a man!" Akane shouted, eyes closed.
"I am!" Ranma yelled back, still not believing she had been unshirted.
"Then what are these?" Akane shouted once more, and turned to open her eyes and grab firmly but gently the two large, round orbs situated conveniently on Ranma's chest.
Ranma began to blush as well.
At that moment, the door slid slowly open, revealing a girl slightly taller than Akane, with a much shorter haircut.
"Really hitting it off with the new girl, I see. Well, good luck tonight, Akane." Nabiki slyly and fairly sarcastically spoke, one eye on Akane and one eye on the cleavage. With the click of a camera, she was gone.
"Eep!" Akane eeped, pulling back and leaving Ranma even more red-faced than she.
"I'm serious," Ranma said, returning to a nigh-forgotten point in the conversation, "I'm a man. I have... a curse, I guess. Hot water makes me a man. Cold water makes me a girl. I was born a man, you know!" Looking sincerely into Akane's eyes, he noted that she was still fixated on his breasts ("You've made another one into a man hater, Tofu, you cad! You scoundrel!").
"I have to see proof, you know." Akane said, softly. "I'd thought you would be my friend, but now I have to know..."
"Give me back my shirt, please?" Ranma said, marginally demandingly, "Thanks. Now, I'll show you something that you won't believe!" They stalked off towards the bath-room, to use the powers of thermodynamics much maligned.
Farewell, my love.+