Nabiki: The following is a fan-written parody. Ranma ½ is property of Rumiko Takahashi, Studio Deen, Shogakukan, Viz Media, and Madman Entertainment. Please support the official release, Host Clubs aren't cheap.
The Key to a Successful Interview is a Good First Impression!
Tatewaki Kuno is stupid
Throw punches at him!
[2.]
"What kind of dork wears a shirt with his name on it, anyway?" Akane playfully teased as she gathered her things up into her book bag the next day. That's all it was, since given the opportunity–namely no one else being on Earth or she being invisible–she'd be ogling Ranma like it was no one's business, which it was. He may have been the same age as all the other boys in her grade, but he was definitely built like a man.
Relaxing after a wake up spar with his Father, Ranma looked back at Akane and smiled back to her. "Try not to get jumped by another sci-fi convention, okay?"
"See you later, Ranma." As Akane headed for the door behind Nabiki, however, Genma raised his hand.
"Actually, the boy can walk with you today. I took the courtesy to enroll Ranma in school before we arrived here," he explained to her.
Ranma grew surprised, it had been years since he'd been to a school that didn't teach by means that would be considered abhorrent child abuse in a third world country. "School, huh?"
"We are going to be here for a while, at least until you and Akane get married." Genma put emphasis on the marriage part, sparking protest from both children.
"Will you get off that?" Akane turned to Ranma. "Hurry up and get dressed or we'll be late, okay?"
For the briefest second, she forgot that she was talking as she watched Ranma all but rip off his emblazoned tank-top for a plain white one and a Chinese shirt. She recovered in time to notice that Nabiki, who had stopped to witness the commotion, was much more engrossed in the sight of Ranma topless.
Dressed and ready Ranma tapped her on her forehead. "Yo, Akane, let's get going."
Right, they were going to be late if the dawdled anymore. Bidding farewell to Genma and Kasumi in the kitchen, Ranma and Akane left a short distance behind Nabiki. As they walked along, Ranma slipped his hands into his pockets, he looked at Akane who was a few paces ahead of him, and watched her long, tied off hair swish from side to side. He kind of liked it, he noted to himself.
"So, why were those nerds after you yesterday?"
She raised her shoulders and dropped them as she let out a sigh. "I guess I should tell you before we get there, but there's this stupid challenge or bounty or whatever you want to call it going on. According to the boys at school, if any of them manage to beat me, I'll go on a date with them."
Ranma raised a single eyebrow. "That's retarded, who came up with that?"
Akane liked his response. "An upperclassman named Tatewaki Kuno, he's really strong too. He'd probably crush you in a single hit so it's good that you're fast like you are."
"Uh-huh, so are you going to honor that little bet?" Ranma asked.
"I don't really have a choice." Akane grew a bit terse. "I never agreed to it, but Kuno's practically the word of God at school. If he decrees it then it must be policy, in the last three weeks… I've done nothing but fight off perverts at the start of school, between classes, during lunch, and on my way home."
Amazement and a bit of pity set in. "Well, on the bright side, it's good training, right?"
"Not really. You know how you'll never get stronger after a certain point with fifty pound weights?"
Ranma nodded.
"I'm at fifty pound weights, and those boys are two pound weights."
Now Ranma really felt bad for her. From one martial artist to another, letting your skills stagnate was one of the worst things you could let happen. Going by Akane's evidence, she was a starving man on a desert island with nothing to eat but gruel. Sure it was filling, but you'd die anyway because it gave you nothing by way of nutrition.
"As a result, I really hate boys." The school was in sight, and Akane picked up her pace, Ranma hopping off the fence to keep up with her.
"I'm not…" Ranma looked ahead and his eyes bugged out when he saw a crowd of at least fifty students, all male, dressed in everything from sports equipment to samurai armor waiting at the gate and likewise sporting all matter of weapon save the projectile variety–no wait there was a kid with a crossbow of some sort. "… Okay that is pretty bullshit."
"You were saying?" Akane asked before she leaped ahead. "Now stay back! I'll handle this!"
The group of boys waiting in front of her immediately broke into a charge. Letting out an annoyed sound, she fell upon the ground and immediately disappeared into it. A moment later, young men were tumbling backward, being hurled throw the air, or being dropped where they stood by the nearly effortless hits Akane was laying on them.
"Go on a date with me, Akane!" a boy from the boxing club yelled as he attempted to use a Dempsey Roll to get in close, Akane kicked him in the dick then in the chin, launching him in the air.
"Akane, I love you!" another boy yelled as he desperately attacked with a hockey stick before he was clocked and sent tumbling through the crowd, bowling over more opponents.
Arriving at her classroom window, Nabiki watched the slaughter with her classmates. "Oh look, she has a weapon now."
With the hockey stick in hand, Akane thrashed enough of the boys to create a circle of breathing room bordered by the bodies of the stunned and injured boys she had dispatched. The group encircled her, leery-eyed boys trying to plead with her or propose.
"Akane, go on a date with me!" one boy called out.
"This could all stop if you went out with me!" shouted another boy from the kendo club.
Akane slammed the hockey stick on the ground. "Like hell I'd go out with any of you!"
The mob came in at her from all sides again, and Akane felled them all two, three at a time with the hockey stick like a scythe through wheat, before the impromptu weapon broke. It didn't slow her down however, and her attackers continued to fall.
Ranma was impressed, but at the same time fully grasped the gravity of the situation now. Not only was Akane being accosted by these jerks but they weren't even putting up a challenge! This was no environment for a martial artist to live in, no way.
"Jeez Akane, I had no idea." He slipped down from the wall where he'd watched the one-sided beating from, and walked over to her side as the last student fell.
"It's like this every morning," Akane lamented.
A noble-accented voice spoke up over the groans of defeated Y-Chromosome bearers, prompting both Akane and Ranma to look over. "Truly they are a boorish lot; they will stop at nothing to defeat you so they may take you out on a date."
The pretty boy in the kendogi and brandishing a rose like he were Mashmyre Cello raised a flag, this must that Kuno guy he heard about. Ranma looked to Akane; yep she looked pretty damn annoyed now. "Hello, Kuno-senpai, and good morning."
"Now then, Akane Tendo." He threw the rose to her. "May we fight so that I may collect my reward?"
Ranma snorted. "He's pretty confident in himself."
"Stay out of this, okay?" Akane asked. Kuno immediately raised his bokken and pointed it straight for Ranma.
"You there, you're being rather familiar with Akane. Who are you, boor?"
Ranma lifted an eyebrow. "Did you just call me a pig?"
"Oh, that's what he said? I thought he called you boring, and I was like 'Why would he call him that, he just met him?'" Both Akane and Ranma laughed, and Kuno grew more incensed.
"I demanded your name, it is only customary to give one's own name before all else." When Ranma opened his mouth to introduce himself, Kuno continued. "Fine, if you must be taught how to introduce yourself, I shall be more than willing to school you!"
Ranma looked from the still smiling Akane to Kuno. "Uh, okay if you want."
"Here he goes," Akane mumbled as more students in the building began to oversee the fiasco, Nabiki in her classroom among them.
Striking a pose, meant to give off his good, noble, inner tormented side off to Ranma, he began. "Undefeated new star of the High School fencing world, Captain of the Kendo Club, Junior Year Student and Class Representative of Group E, I am Tatewaki Kuno. But to my beloved peers and mortal foes, I am known better as the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High School!"
"So it's Blue Thunder this week?" Nabiki said to her classmates as thunder rumbled overhead.
Akane was holding the same sentiment. "Oh brother, last week he was the 'Sword that Cleaves Evil,' and before that he was 'Walking the path of heaven, he who will rule everything.'"
"How can thunder be blue? It's a sound." Ranma asked, earning a chuckle from Akane.
Kuno spoke up. "Well then! Introduce yourself, mongrel!"
"Well then, King of Heroes-" Ooh, Kuno liked that one."-I'm staying at the Tendo Dojo, and–whoa!"
The "whoa" was for when Kuno came at him, swinging his sword. "What did you say? You're living under the same roof as Akane?"
Oh that was it, he swung on a nigga. In mid-flip, he threw his bag to Akane. "Hold this while I end him!"
Akane caught it. "Ranma, we don't have the time."
Landing on his feet, Ranma adopted a stance. "I'm the heir to the Saotome School of Indiscriminate Grappling, I am Ranma Saotome and I accept your challenge."
With a sneer, Kuno readied his blade underneath a darkening sky. He may have been a goober, but boy did he know how to summon up some atmosphere. Ignoring the clamor from the onlookers, Ranma limbered up as the blowhard continued to spew greenhouse emissions. "So you scoundrel, hounding Akane are you? I, The Blue Thunder, shall bring you to justice."
"He's only staying with us, senpai," Akane pleaded, and went unheard.
"Yeah, so who's hounding who, hypocrite?" Ranma added, and went ignored before he narrowly jumped to evade a devastating slash that parted the wall. Okay, maniac with a wooden sword who can cut through concrete.
Landing behind Kuno, Ranma folded his arms. When the young kendo expert whirled around to strike, Ranma was suddenly inside his reach and in his face. "Telling everyone that if they beat her she'll be obligated to go out with them, what the hell is wrong with you, jackass? Knock it off, or else."
"Or else you'll do what?" Kuno unleashed a surprisingly speedy strike, which Ranma evaded for an aerial assault. "From above…?!"
Dropping like a rock, Ranma struck towards Kuno's face with a flick of his wrist as he thrust up with the sword past his neck… and the next thing he knew a downpour started and he, or rather she was tucked under the arms of Genma, rushing him inside with a kettle of hot water in his other paw.
Behind the two, Akane looked down at the knocked out Upperclassman, and leaned over him to look at his face. Bringing her hand up to her lips to stifle her laugh, she turned and headed inside after them. Written on Kuno's face was the world "FAIL".
Ranma was kind of cool.
"I have got to admit, being able to bruise your forehead to create letters with his fingertips? Pretty damn impressive. And in English, too! I am so regretting not jumping on that ship while it was still in port."
Kuno grimaced and growled at Nabiki, as he examined the words written on his forehead. "Tell me everything you know about that wretch."
"Let's see, he's sixteen years old, 167cm tall, weighs about 52kg. Exceptionally skilled in hand to hand combat…" Nabiki hummed.
"That doesn't tell me anything, that's not important at all!"
"Oh, you want information that's relevant. Well that don't come cheap." 5000 yen was promptly deposited into her hand. She scowled at it then back at his graffito-tagged face. "I said that don't come cheap."
Kuno growled and stuffed another ten thousand yen into her palm. "His Dad and mine used to train under an Evil Martial arts master, and they vowed that they would wed their kids to join their respective schools. Fast forward to today, and Akane Tendo has accepted the engagement to Ranma Saotome."
"WHAT?!" Kuno roared, leaping from his seat–as did every other boy in the classroom
"Tell me, does Rakane or Akanma sound like a decent ship name? For the life of me, I'm hopelessly stuck on it," she asked.
"THEY'RE ENGAGED?!" Kuno yelled.
Nabiki rested a finger on her chin. "Should I just go with Red Horse?"
Kuno slammed his palms on the desk so hard that it buckled, barely missing her knees as it collapsed. "I OBJECT!"
Nabiki looked down at her ruined desk. "And then you broke my desk. Superb."
"I swear by the end of this day, I will break every bone in Ranma Saotome's body! God as my witness! He will rue the misfortune of his birth!" Kuno yelled.
"And you will rue interrupting my class, Tatewaki-kun. Fill up some buckets and get out," the teacher ordered
"Capital idea!" Kuno yelled as he marched out of the room to change back into his more regal attire and break his bokken off in a miscreant.
Watching him go, Nabiki hummed and then went to take Kuno's seat. "Eh, Ranma'll be all right."
"Stop! Nail time, can't touch this motherfucking gangster rhyme. He writes fail on your face with a flick of his wrist," Akane sang in the hallway of Furinkan High School as she held a pair of buckets filled to the brim with cold water in each hand.
"That's how I roll know this: I got lots of tricks," Ranma added, buckets held in his own hands.
Both then began bobbing their heads and rhyming together. "You can't fuck with this, 'cause we're dangerous, step up to the plate we'll rearrange your shit!"
"Indiscriminate Grappling, bringing you down to the ground, Akane and Ranma representing…" Akane called out.
"Quit messin' around!" Ranma interjected.
"Nuh-uh!" Akane shot back before both broke out together.
"Tatewaki Kuno going down tonight, fighting the male student body 'til everything's all right again-"
The teacher slammed open the door. "Hey! If you two don't keep it down out here, I'm sending the both of you home!"
Both Akane and Ranma immediately clammed up, and when the door closed both began snickering to each other. Ranma looked over to Akane. "Who does this anymore, anyway?"
"I've tried to appeal for something heavier than buckets of water, but what can you do?" Akane asked.
"Yeah, I'm sorry about making you late, by the way. It's just another inconvenience of the curse, I guess," Ranma said.
"I'm willing to call it even for embarrassing Kuno like that. But to warn you now, he doesn't take losing very well."
Ranma chuckled. "I never would've guessed, with that strategy of his."
Akane stared at Ranma in curiosity. "Huh?"
"Think about it, you've been fighting off groups of guys for the last few weeks, right?"
Akane nodded.
"Every time after, Kuno challenges you and you end up fighting him too."
Akane nodded again.
"Well, there you go. He's getting you into the groove of crowd fighting, which generally relies on dealing a quick disabling blow so you can move on to the next target, so that you'll be weaker in one-on-one."
She had always suspected those attempts had been to soften her up. "Well that won't work, I'm still better than him even in Kendo."
"Sure now you are, but what about a few months from now when you're full into the groove of crowd fighting? One day Kuno might decide to slip into the thick of it as you're thrashing them, and then when you go to deliver the one-hitter quitter-POW! You're face down in the dirt."
The imagery that Ranma's statement painted in Akane's head, of her face down in the school yard, surrounded by leering, drooling perverts, sent a cold fear through her.
"D-don't say things like that," she stammered, pale as a sheet.
Ranma shrugged his shoulders. "Once people get the hint, though, they'll back off."
"What, you mean the engagement? I doubt it. If the pummeling I've given them isn't enough to discourage them, I don't know what will."
"RANMA SAOTOME!"
Both looked down when they heard the yell through the floor, and then tracked with dread the footsteps thundering down the hallway, up the adjacent stairs, and to the door leading to the stairwell that Kuno kicked open with all of his might–a bokken strapped to his back and a bucket of water in each hand.
"Ranma Saotome, I will never accept your engagement to Akane!" Kuno declared, heroic determination burning from him like a magnificent aura.
"See?" Akane asked before the windows and classroom door opened and near every student in the room crowded them in amazement at this impromptu announcement.
"YOU'RE ENGAGED?!" all of them shouted.
"You wouldn't happen to be up for hugging this one out like civilized human beings, would you?" Ranma asked before jumping above a slash that cut through the buckets he carried. "Thought not."
His feet coming down onto the bokken, Ranma sprung himself over Kuno's head and broke into a run down the Hall. Last thing he wanted was to have to get the idiot's blood all over Akane; whatever made him this stupid had to be transmitted through contact with bodily fluids. Kuno was right on his heels.
"Stand your ground, coward!" Kuno called after him.
The only thing that would make smashing Kuno's face in more satisfying right now was if Ranma got paid for it! He needed someplace nice and in the open so he could have plenty of room to dodge that crazy stupid strength of his. Crazy stupid strength… why did that suddenly remind him of someone?
Akane set down her buckets and shook her head as she took after them, other students from her class following along. At her flanks were Sayuri and Yuka, her friends and among the rare normal students in the school.
Yuka was quick to the point. "Engaged, Akane? I thought you hated boys."
"I still do!" She immediately turned and dropped a boy who had opened his mouth to speak with a harsh glare alone. "It's just really complicated!"
Sayuri spoke up. "Try us."
"I really can't explain it right now because-" She saw Ranma was going for the window. "Ranma, don't jump out that window!"
Ranma looked back with a smile. "Please a fall like this is no–OH SHIT!"
Akane reached the window just as Kuno jumped out after Ranma, and Ranma realized that the pool was arranged perfectly underneath their fall. Stopping with her hand against the sill, she shook her head as both hit it with a large splash.
Perhaps she should've taken the time to warn him about the school's various (and oddly frequent) sources of water that served as a plumber's wet dream. But who knew, maybe there was some good to come of this. Maybe Kuno would drown.
Or not, there they went, Kuno surfacing trying to grab Ranma and dunk her under the water.
And then Ranma lifted him out of the water and slammed him into poolside with enough force to crack the concrete.
"Dang," Akane said after witnessing the feat of strength. As Ranma leaped from the water and fled around the building, she quickly turned and went to go find a kettle of water.
"Shit, when I said hug it out, I didn't mean that!" Ranma grumbled as wrung out her shirt in a tree. "Why is the female body have to be so damn sensitive? I'm going to be feeling that in my tits even as a guy!"
After checking for bruises where Kuno had accidentally groped her during their struggle–and subsequently earning the suplex onto the concrete–she precariously balanced herself on the tree branch hideout and wrung out her pants.
"Stupid female body, stupid perverted Kuno, stupid swimming pool…" She grumbled to herself before noticing Akane walk over with a kettle in hand. "Hey Akane, I'm up here."
"That was both really dumb and really mean," Akane said as she tossed the kettle up to her. "I bet you knew Kuno would follow you out, didn't you?"
Ranma caught it. "I was actually hoping to come out over the faculty parking lot or something. Maybe he'd land on the Vice-Principal's car or something."
Akane managed a smile. "You like GTO?"
"I collected bootlegs of it while backpacking through China." Ranma suddenly pointed at her. "You like GTO?"
"I love GTO," Akane said with a laugh.
Watching Akane laugh, Ranma couldn't help but hesitate in the middle of the task at hand. She had noticed it before, a few times since she arrived yesterday. She was even cuter when she smiled.
For being distracted by such a dazzling smile, she was surprised when Kuno came storming along, yelling at the top of his lungs for him to come out of hiding. The kettle slipped from her hands, she dove for it and caught it, managing only to overextend herself like a rod in the process.
"Not good!" she squeaked to Akane, who glanced up and noticed her predicament.
"How'd you drop it?" she mouthed back harshly. Before Ranma could reply Kuno was rushing their way. "Just try to get yourself together, I'll stall him!"
She turned to Kuno, stopping him by adopting a fighting stance. "Senpai, I challenge you!"
He had been in mid-tirade, spewing forth all manner of absurd olden-style variants of "Get out here so I can fist your face inside out", when Akane suddenly challenged him. He stopped and lowered his blade, his beloved Goddess wished to do battle with him? How riveting, the cowardly Saotome could wait!
"Beloved Akane, never did I foresee that you would challenge me to a duel. So be it!"
Kuno raised his sword. "If you win… I shall let you go out with me! Thus, I shall lose with all my might!"
Akane resisted rolling her eyes; it wasn't like Kuno needed to try that hard. She just hoped Ranma changed genders before she actually had to bury the twit. And on that note…
"En Garde, Akane!"
Like a machine, Akane clapped her hands together and captured Kuno's blade between them.
Wide-eyed, Kuno spoke before his brain could stop him. "Akane, receiving my blade with such ease… how lewd."
Rage, enough to make a Red Lantern say "Dude, chill out", caused Akane to black out for a second before she rolled back, bringing Kuno down with her, and kicked him up into the tree–just as Ranma had finally brought herself back towards the branch to douse herself with warm water. The impact of a very hard head hitting a very cast iron kettle shook the tree with such force that Ranma's pants fell to the ground, or more specifically onto Akane's head.
Ranma looked at Kuno, her left eye twitching as she watched the water leak from it and all over his embedded head and past it to fall to the grass below like rain. Oh how nice, now she was going to have to kick his ass without the benefit of pants.
Kuno stared at her. "You, you're that girl!"
Hold up. "I'm that… girl?"
"The one in the pool," Kuno clarified, confusing Ranma further. "Did you see a young man with a pigtail run through here?"
Sitting up with Ranma's pants on her head like a goofy hat, Akane looked up in disbelief at what she was hearing. Morbidly curious as to where Kuno was going with this, Ranma tempted fate and shook her head no.
What she got in response completely ensured that she would never, even for a second, take Tatewaki Kuno seriously as a legitimate threat for the rest of their lives.
"That coward ran away from our fight!" Kuno declared with a shaking fist. "No doubt he feared my prowess, but to take flight with such haste? He must possess no manhood whatsoever!"
Akane stepped back to avoid Kuno, kettle and all, smacking headfirst into the ground. Ranma dropped down a second later, prompting Akane to blush with embarrassment as the other girl's shirt fell back below the level of her hips. "You don't wear any underwear do you?"
"It is seriously bad enough that I can't keep my pants on when I change. You want me to trip around in my underwear, too?"
Akane blushed brightly at Ranma's frank admission of going commando all day and shoved her pants to her.. "Just put your pants on!".
"That hurt you know," Kuno stated as he sat up. His eyes, however, were drawn immediately to Ranma's tasty-looking legs.
Ranma cracked her knuckles; she was going to make him bleed for that shot at her manhood. "I'm going to enjoy this. Come on, dip-shit, I need to beat the crap out of you."
"Another lovely lady desiring to receive my blade, I see?" He took his bokken back from Akane, who recoiled in disgust. "Very well, if I win you may date me-!"
Kuno froze and stared in awe at his first real look at a woman's sex organs that didn't involve an intensely awkward moment in the bath with his sister. After that he got an intimately closer look at the bottom of Ranma's foot as it plowed into his nose, flipping him backward through the air dropping him on his stomach.
Landing, Ranma caught his bokken and looked at it before heaving back and throwing it into the pool. She then snatched her pants from Akane and stared down at Kuno, whose eyes were transfixed between her legs. "Get a good hard look, pervert, because you'll never see this again."
She shoved her shirt down to preserve her modesty and stepped back from Kuno, who gurgled. "That speed… power… just… just who are you?"
Akane looked from Kuno to Ranma, and buried her face in her palm. Really, was he that dumb? Ranma only smiled broadly to him. "I'm a student of the Saotome School of Indiscriminate Grappling, and Ranma Saotome is even better than me. Keep that in mind, you moron."
Turning around, Ranma began walking for the gate, her smile replaced with a sneer. "Okay, I think that's enough school for today. Let's head home."
"We didn't even get to sit down in class, you know." Nevertheless Akane fell in step with Ranma, as she whipped her pants up and down to shake out any excess water.
"Any education I got would've never been enough to make up for the brain cells that knowing that idiot back there exists killed today. I take back everything I said earlier about Kuno setting you up, that moron's too damn stupid to be a threat to anyone but himself," Ranma grumbled darkly as she stepped into her pants.
Still laying in the grass, Kuno watched with wide eyes the pigtailed girl bend over to put her pants on, admiring her long, slender legs and the pert, perfect butt that they led to. It was the most glorious sight the young man could recall to memory. He closed his eyes and buried his face into the grass before letting out painfully aroused sigh.
"That pigtailed wood nymph… I… I must have her…"
Words from the Author: Keys!