A/N: Thanks for all the reviews! I'm going to try to write this story as quickly as I can manage around my classes because I have a couple other story ideas I wanna write. *sigh* The downside of being a writer - constantly having things you want to write. Enjoy the chapter!


Akane tugged on the arm of Mousse's robe as she trailed around the edge of her family's house. She didn't want to take the chance that Kasumi was home and would catch her. While Uncle Saotome didn't care and her father would allow her this lapse after that horrible spectacle of a wedding, this was an area about which her oldest sister could be quite strict.

Obviously catching on to her stealthy insistence, Mousse continued alongside her, careful to make as little noise as possible. "What are we doing?" he whispered softly, the sound no more than a breath that drifted near her ear.

Akane sighed, angling the air out of her mouth to blow aside her bangs, and glanced pointedly at the bookbag in her hands that now held nothing more than a few scraps of what had been her veil. "I want to change and I have some money saved up."

His brow scrunched up in confusion. "What for?"

She rolled her eyes and stopping as they came to the area behind the house just under the window to her room. "I'm going to show you how to have fun in Tokyo," she answered simply, her eye gauging the distance to the roof. Even though she could still weakness in her body from the events in China, she was pretty sure she could make the lower roof.

"I have fun," the Chinese male responded defensively.

Akane arched an eyebrow at him. "Constantly working or fighting Ranma does not make for times of fun," she asserted mildly. "Just wait here. I'll be back." Taking a deep breath, she took a running jump at the house and smiled when her hands caught the edge of the roof. She used her arms to pull herself up in a way that didn't also accidentally flash her underwear at the Amazon male, choosing to ignore the slight tremor in her muscles.

Once on the roof, it was easy to pad to her window and slide it open. Her room was dark and silent, her only sanctuary in the world. She slipped inside and began to shed her school uniform, moving to her closet to stare down her choices. Because of her internal need to be more feminine, she often wore dresses but today required something a little more casual and trendy. After a few moments of indecision, she finally pulled out the items she wanted to wear and donned them quickly.

Her idea was to take Mousse to Shibuya Ward, which actually had a couple different shopping districts. Since the moment he had made that stupid pledge to make up for whatever it was he thought he'd done, she decided she just needed to get her mind off recent events. As it was, she hadn't gone shopping in almost six months, meaning she had quite a lot of yen hiding in a false bottom in one of her desk drawers.

She grabbed it and some silver wrist bangles that Kasumi had given her for her birthday the year before. With a final glance around her room, she grabbed the window frame and slid fluidly out of her room. She closed the window and finally hopped off the roof, glad that getting down was so much easier than climbing up.

Mousse's eyes widened comically when he took in her appearance. "You look… different."

Pressing her lips together, Akane looked down at her outfit: a pair of shimmery jeans and a pale blue Hello Kitty t-shirt. "Ugly?" she asked disconsolately.

"No," he said hurriedly. "It's just… I've never seen you in something that wasn't a dress."

Smiling in relief, Akane pulled on Mousse's sleeve again. "Come on. We need to go to the Nekohanten before we can catch the train."

"Huh?" he replied in confusion. She waited for the recognition of everything she'd said. "What? Why?"


"I believe I made it quite clear that you were not to return until this afternoon," Cologne declared as soon as he walked into the restaurant.

Mousse cringed and bowed before the matriarch purely out of habit and respect rather than any sort of actual fear. "I beg your pardon, Elder Cologne."

Snorting softly, Akane nudged him with an elbow and pushed him forward gently. "Just ask. If we don't hurry, we'll be waiting at the station for an hour."

It was just before the brunch rush, meaning that there were customers but they were few. With their concentration on the gnarled matriarch, Mousse and Akane didn't notice Shampoo until she erupted from the kitchen, carrying a bowl of specialty ramen to be deposited before one of the customers. "What Violent Girl want with Mousse?" the purple-haired girl demanded.

To Mousse, Shampoo merely sounded angry, as she so often was with him, but Akane apparently found something else in her tone, because she just smiled knowingly. He was a little unnerved by the expression – where was the anger that she always seemed to have when it came to Shampoo?

Shaking his head clear of questions with no answers, he focused on Cologne again. "I came to request the remainder of the day off."

The Amazon elder narrowed her eyes at them, darting her focus between Mousse and Akane. "You may be required for the dinner rush," she admitted after a long moment.

"Fine," Akane said immediately. She wound her arm around one of Mousse's and proceeded to guide him out of the ramen shop. He could feel heat rush of his face, not because of any romantic yearning for Akane but more because he had very little contact with females… ever. "We'll be back by then."

As if she was under a compulsion to jab verbally with her rival, Shampoo called out to Akane before they exited. "Hammer Girl make it too too easy to take Airen back to village!" When the Japanese girl laughed in response, he knew that they heard the sound within.

Even as they ran to the train station to a destination he still wasn't quite sure on, he gave her a peculiar look. "Do you know something I don't?"

"She was jealous," Akane answered simply with a shrug of her shoulders.

Mousse stumbled to a stop, narrowly missing a fall to the ground by pulling on Akane's hand to stop her as well. "Well, maybe I should…" He trailed off, not exactly knowing what he was going to say or do. He felt torn.

For her part, Akane began to drag him in the direction of the train station but he managed to catch a flash of pity cross her face. "Come on, Gung Ho. Let's get away from here for a little while."

Irrationally angered by her expression, he ripped his hand loose from hers and glared into her brown eyes. "What do you know about anything of this, anyway? You can't even get married properly!" Even as the words left his mouth, he could feel his throat shrivel and close. How could he even say that to her? Was he… Was he turning into Ranma?

Tears immediately began to brim in Akane's eyes and she sniffled very softly, as if she was trying very hard not to make the sound. She opened her mouth but then shook her head and closed her mouth with a decisive click.

"I'm sorry, Akane," Mousse apologized, the words stumbling over each other in an effort to escape him. "I didn't mean it. I don't even know why I said that."

She nodded, the force of the movement causing a single tear to slide out of each eye. She began moving toward the station again, not even seeming to notice if he followed or not. He did, keeping a step behind and resolving to keep quiet until she spoke to him again.

One thing that very few people realized about Mousse's character was that his emotions were quite intense, though that particular characteristic was quite clear in his love of Shampoo. However, because the opinions of males were worth less than the dirt on which they trod, he had learned early in his life that there were few women with which his opinions could be trusted. His mother was one such person.

It scared him a little that, inside of an hour, he had begun to trust Akane to the point that he'd released such an outburst. It was stupid and the absolute wrong thing to say to her and he wanted most of all to know why he had even said it. It was so unlike him.

They were seated on the train before he finally figured it out. "You looked at me with pity," he said softly, wanting to spark a conversation but unwilling to bother her if she wanted it left alone.

When she looked up at him, her eyes were dry but full of that sadness that made him feel a sudden urge to throw many heavy projectiles at Saotome. "I didn't. It was… sympathy. They can get confused, I guess." She laughed but the sound was short and forced. "I'm sorry it made you mad."

"You don't need to apologize. I'm just frustrated."

Akane smiled, the curve of her lips more genuine than her laughter had been. "I know the feeling."

He stared at her, trying to figure her out once more, and let the silence settle around her. Placing his intent focus on someone other than Shampoo was like filtering out the rose-colored lenses and replacing them with a clear microscope. He had been around Ranma and the entourage of fiancées and rivals that seemed to congregate on him for long enough that he realized something.

She was different. Something about Akane herself had changed. In the entire time since they returned from China, he had not witnessed the excessive violence that had seemed so integral to her character. It was like a skin that had sloughed off but he wondered if it hadn't also taken something else with it, like her passion or her will.

"What happened?"

Akane arched a delicate eyebrow at him. "What makes you think something happened?" She was being evasive and they both knew it.

"You're different now, ever since Jusendo," he remarked simply. "Something changed."

Her face twisted into a rueful smirk. "Dying changes everything," she told him.

Mousse jerked with the jolt that those three words caused in him. Dying…? Flashes of the incident in China ran across his mind's eye – Akane shrinking from dehydration, Ranma breaking the faucet that returned her to normal size and somehow caused the springs to overflow, Ranma sitting on a bank and hitting himself in the face for saying something hurtful to Akane, Shampoo quietly asserting that Ranma would be all hers now. It occurred to him now that they'd all just assumed that Akane had been unconscious but otherwise fine. Oh, how could they have been so wrong?

"Dead?" Mousse finally inquired in a weak voice.

Akane nodded and a readjustment with his glasses revealed that she was staring off into a memory he couldn't see. "But I came back. For him. When I was… wherever it is that I was, I heard him say he loved me. You know, however it is that you hear there. With my soul, maybe. Only Kami knows."

"That's good, right?" He was confused by the desolate tone of her voice. It was so obvious that Ranma and Akane loved each other intensely, no matter what their bickering said about them. And if Ranma admitted his love to Akane, then he would reject his hold over Shampoo. "Isn't it?"

She swallowed thickly and pinned him with those sad eyes again. "He took it back."

Suddenly, the train's intercom system came to life, crackling slightly before a firm voice declared the location. "Shibuya Station. Take care with doors in motion."

Though their conversation had been morbid and depressing, Akane's face brightened and she grinned. She stood and Mousse echoed her movements as they exited the train. He wondered idly at her mood swings before deciding that they weren't too bad.

"First things first," she told him. "We've got to do something about your eyes."


Ranma waited impatiently for the first break of the day. After the latest progress report before the sudden trip to China, Nodoka had made him promise that he wouldn't just leave school in the middle of class anymore. Apparently, the teacher severely marked down his grades for jumping up and leaving in the middle of a lecture.

Stupid Hinako-sensei…

He had started to feel uneasy when Akane hadn't followed him within a few minutes of entering the classrom. She had just been at the lockers. However, by the time it was obvious that he needed to look for her, class had begun. Miss Hinako merely remarked on Akane's absence and continued to teach. With every minute that she lectured the class on the English language and proper pronunciation, Ranma could feel something in his gut clench painfully.

Anything could have happened. She could be sick (and that was the mildest thing Ranma's mind came up with). She could have gotten kidnapped again, she could have lapsed into whatever state she'd been in while they were in China, she could be dead… For the sake of his own sanity, his mind danced away from that last option and he waited impatiently for the break that heralded the end of English and the beginning of Japanese Literature.

Promises had always been important to him. However, promises made to his mother seem to take on a new importance, like a precious piece of stone that was for his eyes only. Maybe it was because he'd lived so long without a mother or the pain he'd witnessed in the eyes of any one of the Tendo girls when they knelt before their mother's shrine but mothers always seemed painfully special somehow.

Before Miss Hinako could notice and even think about sapping his ki, Ranma bundled up his stuff and quickly exited the classroom, quickly throwing an excuse of his shoulder when the teacher put forth a weirdly high-pitched inquiry. Not knowing that he was doing as such, he followed the path that Akane had taken to exit the school. The side exit and a hop over the fence was the best way to leave with minimal interference.

He jumped up on the fence and began scanning his surroundings, looking for any clues as to his missing fiancée's location. Suddenly, as if he was compelled, he turned his attention to the river canal. The water flowed calmly, mocking him for the wild emotions that held him taut as a drum. Something was… important about the urge to look at the water but he knew instinctively that whatever clue it may have held was long gone now.

"Airen!"

Sighing, Ranma attempted to quash his anger at the sound of Shampoo's voice and turned to face her. His mind flashed to an image of the young Chinese girl and who he thought was his best friend in the entire world working together, using Ukyo's explosive okonomiyaki in an attempt to take out Akane at the failed wedding. He scowled for a moment but managed to finally school his expression. "What is it, Shampoo?"

"Airen take Shampoo on date after delivery?" She looked hopeful but there was something underneath the surface. It was something that made the boy wonder if someone had irritated her recently.

"Not right now. I'm looking for Akane." He cast another look toward the bridge, which meant that he wasn't looking at the young Amazon when a calculating smile flashed across her face.

"Oh? Shampoo know where Violent Girl is."

Ranma looked back at her quickly, his face disturbingly raw with his absolute need to know. "Where? Shampoo, you gotta tell me."

She sniffed softly, turning her nose up slightly. "Come with price," she warned.

He frowned and his expression turned dark, reminding the girl that he had recently killed a god of her country. Granted, it was a phoenix god of rebirth and thus hadn't actually died, per se, but that was beside the point. "Tell me." His voice was as dark, his tone low and dangerous.

In response, Shampoo pushed her feet at the pavement once, causing the bike to roll back a little and putting some distance between her and Ranma. "Akane with Mousse. They take train."

"Where?" he demanded, his scary countenance fading somewhat.

She shrugged and looked away. "Not know. Mousse be back by dinner, he say."

Ranma huffed. "Why would Akane be with that stupid duck-boy, anyway?"

As she didn't know the answer to that question and still felt a distinct need to put space between herself and her alleged husband, Shampoo left, ostensibly to deliver whatever was in the ramen box. Ranma barely registered her quick and efficient exit.

Darting across Nerima to the train station, he ruminated on his new problem. Putting aside that his fiancée was with Mousse, of all people, he had no clue where they had gone. He needed a plan and only one seemed suitable: to wait until they returned.