AN: Okay, so the title is provisional and I have no idea what I want to do with this yet. I'm working on something involving a re-emerging Saffron, though, and...who knows where it might lead? Let me know if anyone's interested, has any ideas...
You know, though I've been reading fanfiction since I was 13, I just can't get over how hard it is to put yourself in the authoring position. Strange, strange. Anyway, folks, please read and review!
Chapter 1: Purple
'I don't really like purple,' Akane thought, staring down at her lap and the cutesy print of the skirt that covered it. The fabric sported a pattern of purple penguins doing various un-penguin-y things - here one was riding a unicycle, there one was building an igloo, and by her left knee two were locked in an intense staring contest that was apparently love, since there were three little purple hearts suspended over their lovingly inclined purple penguin-heads. Feeling slightly embarrassed for wearing it now that she'd actually given it a look-over, Akane raised her head, re-entering the world of the Tendo-Saotome Extended Family Dining Out Disaster (and yes, she'd titled it. She'd been bored a while, okay? She only just noticed the penguins.). Staring out the window by the entrance at the evening (which makes a nice and poetic verb), Nabiki had apparently lost interest in the scene unfolding, too, and was finding her own inner distractions, safely assumed to be something other than lovelorn but handy-with-iceblocks purple penguins. Saotome Genma was notably human, but looking like he always did at mealtimes, panda or not - rabid. Kasumi and their father, on the other hand, were very much paying attention to what was happening at the table, wearing different but equally disapproving expressions on their faces. They were, of course, staring at Ranma. Or what could be seen of him around the wriggling, giggling, curvy body topped off with a mass of thick, lustrous purple hair. Purple hair that swung with its owner's bounces and gyrations, purple hair that crept along the pathways between their bowls of cooling ramen. Akane stared at it. It was distractingly gorgeous, catching the light from the paper lantern over the table when it wasn't reflecting the dying sunlight from the window they were seated by. 'No,' Akane thought dryly, 'Purple is most definitely not my color.'
"Ranma!" Soun bellowed, realizing his teary glare was rendered ineffectual by the back of Shampoo's head. "You're sitting next to Akane with another woman draped on your lap! How could you abuse my hospitality like this?!"
"Yes, Ranma-kun," Kasumi put in mildly, "It's not very proper to act like this in public, especially at the dinner table."
"What?!" Ranma yelled, his face finally emerging as Shampoo shifted to sit sideways on his lap, arms hooked behind his back with his chin resting in the crook of her left arm. "Is anyone actually seein' what's goin' on here? She's crawling all over me!" He glanced at Akane nervously, though, and seeing that she was staring at Shampoo with a weird look on her face said, "Shampoo! Get off! I'm beggin' ya!"
Sighing dramatically and leaning in for one last nuzzle, Shampoo detached herself and, casting a malicious and triumphant little wink at Akane, stood. The wink was lost on Akane, however, whose eyes were still glued to the Amazon's purple mane. Shampoo now stood in front of the window, and the fading sunlight cast a shimmering halo over the top of her head from behind, seeping down the curling trails of hair where they, in league with her form-fitting Chinese-style silk dress, accentuated her full breasts and sloping abdomen. She towered over their table, the sunlight outlining her, with her hands braced on her hips and her red eyes shining bright in her o'ershadowed face. Akane had to admit, Shampoo cut an imposingly beautiful and powerful figure. "What Akane looking?" Shampoo asked with her usual sly haughtiness.
Akane's mouth snapped shut - when had it gaped? - and she said, without really thinking, "I was just looking at your hair. It's beautiful."
Shampoo stared, clearly not expecting that reply, and every eye at the table turned to Akane, even Genma's, and she felt herself turning as red as her name. "I mean, you know, her hair's pretty. It's purple."
Ranma, who was staring at Akane wide-eyed, noodles hanging from his mouth, slurped, gulped, and asked, "Are you feeling alright?"
Akane lifted her eyes from her lap, where her fingers were cruelly twisting the penguin-lovers, and glared at him. "I'm feeling fine. I just noticed her hair, is all. Can't I say something nice?"
"To Shampoo?" he asked, looking over at the Amazon, who stood still staring at Akane.
"Yes, to Shampoo! What, I can't say something nice to her because she's one of your other fiancées? Am I supposed to be sulking and seething over here in my corner, eaten alive by jealousy? Would that satisfy your colossal ego, you pig?" Akane felt a headache coming on quick, and she desperately hoped he took the bait, changed the subject to enumerate her own less-flattering physical qualities, and distracted everyone within hearing distance from the strange thing she'd blurted at her rival. She also gave the penguins in her fist another good wrench, just for getting her started on the purple kick in the first place.
"Well, you always have before, tomboy!" Ranma said, placing his empty ramen bowl to the side and giving Akane the opportunity she'd been hoping for. Or it would have been that opportunity had Shampoo not chosen that moment to whack Ranma upside the head with her serving tray. Whatever she would have used as her excuse for doing so, however, was lost to the stunned dinner party because Colonge barked a sharp order from the kitchen in Chinese. With a last, lingering and unreadable glance at Akane, she turned heel and retreated through the steaming doorway that led to the back of the restaurant, leaving the Tendo-Saotome Extended Family to stare after her in silence.
"Ahem," said Genma, reaching for Nabiki's forgotten bowl of ramen, "That was different."
"I'll say," said Nabiki, looking to her younger sister. "Anything you wanna tell us, Akane-chan? Harboring some sort of sordid, burning passion for our prancing purple princess?"
"No, my alliterative and annoying adversary," groused Akane. "Drop it."
"Really, though, Akane," said Ranma, who was leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head, eyeing her quizzically. "You've been acting really weird. Quiet. Un-pissed off."
Kasumi glanced over at Ranma reprovingly from where she was rifling in her bag for tip money. "Really, Ranma-kun! It's been a stressful few weeks, and you agreed to coming here to eat dinner with us to show our Chinese friends that we bear them no ill-will for - for -"
"Ruining our dojo? Trying to blow up our little sister?" suggested Nabiki helpfully.
"Yes, thank you, Nabiki. What I'm trying to say is, maybe Akane is trying to show Shampoo that she's forgiven her for, well, what Nabiki said. I think we should all try to be a little nicer to them." Kasumi smiled encouraging over at Akane, who was really getting very sick of the way her elder sister had been treating her since they returned from Jusendo, since the failed sham of a wedding that had leveled, in one fell swoop, their dojo and the sense of finality and closure Ranma's confession had given her.
Instead of arguing, instead of saying no, she was still very, very angry about those things, about Shampoo and the others endangering their lives and happiness, instead of saying she had just been bored and staring at Shampoo's hair because it was purple and her penguins were purple, that she was just so very tired she wasn't thinking clearly - instead of that, she just nodded her head, and Kasumi smiled. Smiled, dropped a few bills on the table, and stood, signaling to the rest of the family that it was time to call their dinner slash show of no-hard-feelings slash offer of friendship to a close. With a bow to Mousse, who was the only Amazon in sight, Kasumi led the way out of the Nekohanten and into the gloaming toward home.
On the way out the door, Akane stopped to look back inside the restaurant, taking in the hazy, comfortable, softly lit anteroom. She was not looking forward to going home, not looking forward to bidding her family and fiance goodnight and shuffling off to her room, alone, to collapse tired but fearful onto her plush yellow comforter. Akane didn't want to go to sleep, because when she slept lately, she dreamt. Every night she dreamt of fire and thirst, falling and cold, and a strange, keening sounding from very far away. She dreamed about an enveloping, dense whiteness, after the fire and falling and water and cold, about her mother's face coming into focus, and she dreamed that, in the last moment, the far away sound rang out clear, and it was Ranma's ragged voice bellowing her name.