Disclaimer: Ramna and friends don't belong to me. I'm just taking them out to play in the woods for a while.

Ranma sprang up from his bed the moment Dr. Tofu proclaimed him fit to train again. The last week had been beyond boring. He felt fine, but the doctor wouldn't give him the okay to do anything. Ranma ended up laying, doing nothing at all, under his mother's quiet watch lest he try to get up before he had permission. Finally, he could get back into shape. A brief training trip was definitely in order. "Ranma, where are you going?" Nodoka asked as he ran around the room he shared with his father and loaded his pack.

"Training. I've gotta get back in shape, Mom."

"So dedicated!" Nodoka clasped her hands to her chest, a far-away expression on her face. "Take Akane with you. She can keep your campsite and cook for you."

"You have got to be kidding me!" Ranma turned his face into an expression of horrified disgust.

"I'm not that bad, Ranma!" Akane had just entered the room and stood, arms across her chest, one hip jutting to the side. "And you said I could come with you."

"Not to cook!"

"Just what's wrong with my cooking anyway, Ranma?" Akane protested. "I thought you said I'm getting better."

"Well ya couldn't get worse." Ranma laughed.

"Oh, my." Nodoka interrupted, beaming. "I'm not sure how Mr. Tendo will feel about you taking his daughter away on a trip without you marrying her first."

It would be really, really nice to get away from this business for a while. "I'm not marryin' Akane just so I can take her on a training trip, mom. That's dumb."

"Surely," said his mother, "If you're all alone with a young lady on a camping trip, things are bound to happen, Ranma. I'd expect no less of you. Akane's family has been very good to you. It would not do to dishonor her in that way."

Ranma felt his face getting hot. Lucky he was embarrassed and irritated enough by this turn of the conversation that his mouth didn't quite work. Before he could blurt out anything awful Akane stood straight up and said, "Auntie, I don't want to cast a shadow of a doubt on Ranma's manliness, but nothing is going to happen. It's just a training trip. I'm going to go pack." She spun and slammed the guest room door behind her, and the whole house shook for a moment.

Nodoka opened it again after a moment and headed down the stairs, presumably to help with dinner. Ranma listened to Akane slamming drawers in her room as he continued to fill his pack. He never did quite understand her desire to be good at domestic stuff. She didn't really like it, and she definitely wasn't cut out for it. Why the hell did she get so damned fussy about it?

That evening, Ranma sat down by where his dad and Mr. Tendo were playing shogi. "Excuse me, Pops, Mr. Tendo." Ranma bowed slightly. Both men looked at him, wary of the uncharacteristic politeness. "I'd like to take Akane on a training trip."

"Oh, Saotome!" Soun cried, "They're finally going to get together. I knew we'd see this day."

Ranma waited a moment while Mr. Tendo hugged his father. "This ain't about that. I want to train her. I think I'm ready to start teaching, and she could sure use the practice."

"What do you think, Tendo?" his pop asked waggling his eyebrows idiotically at Mr. Tendo "Do you think Ranma's ready to start teaching?"

"Akane's already within the school, we won't have to bother the master about this. And Ranma's already much better than I was when I started taking students."

"Alright then Ranma, my boy. Go ahead and teach Akane."

"Just don't you let my daughter get hurt Ranma!" Sound said, his ki head looming.

"No, sir" Ranma answer quickly.

As he trudged across the wood floor of the dojo, looking at his long shadow, he heard the two men quietly talking about their expectations that the trip would start out as training and blossom into a romantic trip in the wilderness. Seriously, would those guys ever quit? He wondered what the two of them would do once him and Akane actually did get married. Probably start after Akane to pop out half a dozen fat little babies with high martial arts potential. He shuddered to think of her reaction to that, though part of him thought that their kids would have to be pretty freakin' cute. He shuddered again at the thought of a pregnant, hormonal Akane. Chances were high that she would kill him. At least he could dodge in his sleep. 'Not that I need to worry about that any time soon.' He reminded himself.

Arriving in the dojo, Ranma headed into the dojo and ran through a series of exercises to assess just how weak he'd gotten from the injury and the three weeks off.

At breakfast, Akane sat beside Ranma and tried to ignore their fathers' exclamations over her studying with Ranma alone In the wilderness when Nodoka broke in "Genma darling, that wouldn't be proper at all. Akane is a charming young lady, and we must protect her reputation."

"As if I'd ever try anything on an uncute tomboy like her, Ma. Akane don't got nothing ta worry about." Ranma broke in.

"Like you'd have the guts!" Akane yelled, smacking him.

After the resultant argument had settled down, Akane smugly ignored her now-female fiance's challenging glare.

Kasumi turned to Nodoka sunnily and said, "Auntie, would you chaperone them? I think having some supervision might be wise."

"Isn't she the one who said an engaged couple can do anything they want?" Nabiki

"Certainly dear, " Nodoka smiled. Her pride in her son was practically oozing out her pores as she turned to face Akane. "I'll make sure that Ranma takes responsibility for any unplanned occurances."

"Genma!" Soun grabbed the panda and began to dance. "We're going to have grandchildren."

"Oh brother," Ranma said, his face bright red, "I'm taking her with me because I'm interested in her fighting skills and that's all."

Akane glared daggers at him. Akane wasn't sure what made her more mad. The assumption that she was Ranma's for the taking just like the rest his annoying little harem or his unhesitant disavowal of any interest.

"Mom, I'd love to have you along," Ranma said, "but I'm going to be pushing Akane pretty hard. I don't want to force you to keep up with us." Ranma was saying.

"Nonsense, darling. I'm fit as a fiddle." Nodoka smiled. "I'll pack right away and we can leave in half an hour. Genma, dear, would you please let Ranma and Akane's school know they'll be out for a few weeks?"

Genma held up a sign that said "Yep."
A little while later, the three of them were heading out the door, and after several hours of walking, they left the city behind completely and found themselves hiking up a heavily wooded hillside, Ranma took the lead with Akane close behind. Nodoka kept pace, but stayed a bit farther back. Akane didn't doubt that she was still within earshot.

"Yo, Akane!" Ranma flipped in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. "You still never gonna forgive me if I hit you?"

Akane shook her head, bemused. How could he train her without hitting her at least a little?

"I'm gonna try an' be a nicer teacher than my old man, but I gotta push you if you wanna get better. So – whatever I do, it's not because of anything other than I'm trying to make you into a better martial artist. Try not to take it personal, okay?"

Akane nodded, meeting Ranma's gaze, surprised by his seriousness.

Satisfied, he turned around and kept walking. They didn't talk much other than some polite conversation with Nodoka when they stopped for lunch. The sun was just starting to get low on the horizon when Ranma dodged off to the trail and hopped over a high stone ridge. Akane followed him, not quite as gracefully, and sank down, astounded by one of the most beautiful places she had ever seen.

Trees, older and taller than any she'd even dreamed of stretched up toward the sky, their branches thick as the trunks of normal trees, spreading across the whole sky, vines, some flowering in every shade imaginable canopied across the branches. Exotic-looking bushes covered much of the lower ground. Akane took a deep breath and held it in. The whole place smelled like moist, rich soil and plants growing. The air felt alive. "Wow," she said, "this is really pretty."

"It's my favorite place to train." As he leaned down over the ridge to help his mother across, Ranma flashed her his cockiest smile, the one sparked something in her that made her proud and shaky and too hot and that simultaneously made her want to slap him for being so damned full of himself.

They set up camp without incident until Nodoka talked Akane into making dinner. She had been prepared for that, though. At least she could pull off curry now. Ranma took a tentative bite, shrugged, and kept eating. Disaster avoided. She wondered how many nights in a row it would be reasonable to make curry. There were a few other dishes she'd been working hard on, but they barely made it into the range of 'almost tolerable, if one is extremely hungry.'

At dawn Ramna woke up and stretched. He was generally glad to have a roof over his head, but when the weather was nice, nothing beat the great outdoors. This was one of the places his pop had taken him for training when he was quite young, probably seven or eight. He'd always thought there was something magical about it. He bounded up through the tree branches, as near to the top of a particularly tall tree as he could get, startling a family of birds who dove and pecked at him until he got well clear of their nest. As the sun lit above the horizon, he sprinted through the canopy, flipping from one tree limb to another. This would be just right for Akane. Her actual moves were pretty good, really, and her strength was as he'd often mentioned, gorilla like. The biggest weakness he could see was that she acted in most cases like the ground was the only surface to move across. She didn't perceive the whole three dimensional space around her and all the objects in it as potential "ground" to move against.

He was just starting to feel really good about this whole thing when Akane's shriek of terror cut through the early morning air. Ranma dove out of the tree where he had been perched flipping around branches here or there just enough to get closer to their camp site and slow himself down enough that he could roll out of the controlled fall into a dead run. When he arrived back at camp, he didn't notice much out of place. A couple of pots sat on a burning cooking stove. Nodoka was holding the door flap of the tent she and Akane had shared between two fingers, and stood back at arms length, looking in wide eyed. Akane's scream had become more of a distressed squeeking.

Steeling himself for whatever enemy he might find, Ranma darted into the tent, looking for the threat. At first he only saw Akane, huddled in the corner, alone and seemingly unharmed. Then, he looked where she was pointing and saw a very large spider hanging out on her pillow.

"Ramna!" She pleaded "That spider was on my face. Get it out of here."

Ranma didn't really want to touch the thing himself, so he grabbed one of Akane's notebooks, scooped up the spider and ran to set it free a little ways off from camp. When he returned, Akane had stepped outside, and Nodoka was tending breakfast.

"Is it gone?" Akane asked.

"Yeah." He couldn't help smiling. Akane freaking out over a spider was surprisingly girly and kind of cute. Much better than all the possible situations that had been running through his mind.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." He cocked a smile at her. "Ranma Saotome, martial arts genius, destroyer of demi-gods, remover of spiders at your service" He gave a little half bow and saw that she was laughing a little. "Come on," he said, "Looks like Mom's got breakfast just about ready."