Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and its characters do not belong to me.
AN: I haven't answered any reviews from the last chapter yet… but it was either do that tonight or update with a juicy scene. Your detailed reviews deserved the tantalizing scene more, but I promise to do double thank-yous after this!
No more pussyfooting around: a Ranma ½ fanfic
By Indygodusk
Chapter 10: Concerning Need & Serious Intentions
"I'm going to have to find the key." The hopeful expressions on their face fell. "I'll be back," she vowed. Briefly clasping the older woman's hand through the bars of the cage in promise, Akane ran back out into the hallway and began searching the unconscious bodies for keys.
Clots of fighting monks and soldiers began spilling into the hallway like refuse down a storm drain, occasionally banging into Akane as she searched for the keys. On the other side of the monks she saw more black and purple clad soldiers running in from the opposite direction. She needed to hurry.
Dodging a fist, Akane knocked out her attacker with an uppercut and moved farther down the corridor. The next two unconscious soldiers didn't have any keys either. As she frantically searched another body, Akane began to hear shrieks and a masculine yowl coming from around the corner.
A wave of relief surged through Akane's body, causing her to sway for a moment. That had to be Ranma. Akane just hoped the pigtailed boy's animal instincts didn't betray him into doing something stupid. Or at least not any stupider than Ranma could usually be.
Finally, she spotted the brassy sheen of a ring of keys. They hung on the belt of a stocky man sprawled on the ground at the end of the corridor. She hadn't noticed him before because a large, pewter statue of a crouching rat obscured his body.
Five parallel cuts sliced down his chin, across his chest, and over his pudgy belly: Ranma's work. Akane grabbed the key ring and yanked, but he'd strung the steel ring on his leather belt and nestled it between two thick belt loops for extra security. It wouldn't budge.
Grimacing, Akane crouched down and began unbuckling the man's belt. The leather was slippery with the blood seeping from his belly wounds. In her efforts to rush, she fumbled and accidentally pressed down against one of his slashes. The soldier jolted. His eyes popped open, rolling wildly, as he jerked away violently with a strangled gasp.
Akane flinched back in surprise. As she recoiled, one of his hands struck out and knocked into her shoulder, flinging her back hard into the decorative statue. Her wounded side ricocheted off the solid leg of the pewter rat.
Sound ceased to have meaning. Agony burrowed up and down her body like acidic worms. Akane's face contorted in pain. All she could do was writhe in anguish on the floor. Her paralyzed lungs refused to breathe. It seemed to go on forever.
Finally, the pain diminished enough to allow Akane to catch her breath. Sweet oxygen flooded her lungs. Taking several sobbing breaths, she wrapped one arm around her wounded side and pushed herself off the ground to rest against the wall. Salty sweat trickled into her mouth and stung her tearing eyes. She could feel warm blood seeping against her fingers, and knew the cut had reopened and was bleeding through the bandage.
Down the corridor, she saw the man with the keys gaining speed as he moved farther and farther away. Swallowing down another sob, Akane pushed herself to her feet and swayed drunkenly. She didn't think she'd be able to catch him before he disappeared into a room down the hallway. But those women in the cage needed her to get those keys. Digging deep, she found the discipline to mentally push down the pain and take a step forward.
"Ranma," Akane called weakly. Coughing, she began a stumbling jog after the clawed-up soldier.
"Ranma!" she yelled more strongly. "I need you!"
Akane was slowly gaining on the wounded soldier, hampered himself by the cuts crisscrossing his torso, but she was still fifteen feet away when he careened around the corner in front of her and disappeared. She was going to lose him! Skidding around the corner, Akane was forced to catch herself on the wall to keep from tripping.
Suddenly, something blurred out of a doorway and pounced on the fleeing man's back. The soldier crashed forward onto the ground with a terrified shriek. The blur sliding off his back resolved itself into Ranma. Growling, Ranma took the nape of the man's neck between his teeth and gave him a hard shake. The soldier gurgled and went limp. When Ranma dragged him over and laid him at Akane's feet, the man was once again unconscious. Hopefully this time, he'd stay that way.
"Good job, Ranma," Akane praised as she half-sat, half-fell down to kneel by the soldier's side in the middle of the corridor. For a second she just let herself rest in dazed relief.
Purring, Ranma pranced over and gently stropped his body affectionately against Akane's good side. Then he leaned into Akane's body. Sighing, she let her fingers trail down the outside of Ranma's forearm. Ranma's purring increased in volume as he allowed more weight to settle against her body. Then he reached up unexpectedly and licked the side of Akane's face, catching part of her chapped lips with his moist, pink tongue.
Akane gasped and snapped out of her daze, but not soon enough to prevent Ranma from giving her a second, tender lick. A tingling sensation oozed down her spine at the slow scrape of Ranma's hot tongue as it glided along the side of her chin, catching slightly on her top lip as he licked across the corner of her open mouth, before continuing on up her blushing cheek. Akane's eyelashes fluttered shut for a moment as Ranma's mouth ghosted across her cheekbone to nuzzle against her temple, the rasp of his facial stubble contrasting with the velvety softness of his lips, the warmth of his breath emphasizing the wet path taken by his tongue.
"Hey now," Akane protested, but without any of the angry heat she'd intended. Instead, her voice came out low and husky, "none of that."
I'm just tired, she told herself. And then, somehow, Akane's forceful shove changed between her mind and her fingertips into a gentle caress that slowly pushed Ranma's face away, allowing her to drag her thumb along the shadowy stubble edging his jaw. Ranma sat back leisurely, tilted his head, and blinked slowly at Akane, momentarily veiling those intense blue eyes with a sweep of his long black lashes. Akane gave a shuddering sigh.
"One of these days," she told him softly, "you're going to do that as a human, and then we'll have a serious talk about your intentions towards me." Fingering her lips, she breathed, "Please have serious intentions."
Shaking her head sharply, Akane turned to the soldier in front of her and yanked his belt open with a grimace. She then ripped it out of his pants. In the quiet of the hallway, the friction of leather against leather sounded like a hissing snake. A moment later, the metal key ring slithered free and fell to the floor with a clatter. Firming her lips, Akane leaned over and picked them up. The metal felt cold and heavy in her hands.
Successfully getting the keys gave Akane a second wind, or was it fourth or fifth by now? It only took her a moment to stagger back to her feet. Then, with Ranma alertly prowling ahead and behind, she made her way back to the captives to unlock their cage.
Rounding the last corner, Akane saw a strange-looking man rushing towards them. His body seemed contorted as he ran on the tips of his toes and the knuckles of one hand. The other arm cradled clutched an ornate black velvet jewelry case studded with gold filigree and amethysts. It was beautiful, and Akane had trouble tearing her eyes away to continue evaluating their new foe.
The man's posture echoed the way Ranma ran in the catfist, but his proportions seemed off - his legs shorter and his joints strangely distended. For a few moments his neck stayed craned over his shoulder, as if watching for pursuit. He hadn't noticed them yet.
Ranma's vicious hiss changed that.
Shocked by the ferocity of the sound, harsher than she'd ever heard Ranma sound as a cat, Akane stumbled. Throwing out a hand, she barely caught her balance on the wall before falling on her face. Unsure of what Ranma saw that she didn't, Akane waited several feet behind her bristling fiancé and catalogued the scene. There had to be a reason Ranma sounded like that. Until she figured it out, she would hang back.
When Ranma hissed, the other man whipped around with feral yellow eyes and hissed back. Akane jumped when she saw that his pupils were slit like a cat's, with a matching elongated jaw full of sharp teeth perfect for biting and rending. Elongated and tufted ears sat on either side of his scarred face.
Akane had seen a lot of strange creatures in the last few years, but something about this man screamed wrongness. It was as if a child had tried to melt together a toy soldier and a cat, and then given up halfway - leaving behind strange bulges of flesh like dribbles of candle wax on the exposed skin. This is what she might have expected from some of the scarier legends of the catfist warrior if she'd never seen Ranma. It gave Akane chills. The look in the man's eyes wasn't sane either, as if the process had broken something in the mind of both man and cat.
Nevertheless, something seemed to be driving him. Barely slowing, the cat-man reared up and sent a claw-shaped ki attack down the hallway with a feline yowl. Akane bent her knees belatedly to swerve out of the way, but the attack was surprisingly weak. It luckily only traveled a few feet down the hallway.
Easily dodging, Ranma leapt forward and attacked. The weakness of the ki attack made him overconfident, as he managed to land only a glancing blow down the cat-man's side when his fleet foe nimbly twisted away. Almost missing threw off Ranma's balance, leaving him momentarily vulnerable. It was enough. The retaliatory spin-kick landed hard, sending Ranma arching backwards through the air to slam through the wall next to the kitchen with a ferocious crash.
As the dust settled, Akane heard the squeal of abused metal. A split second later, the pipe above the new hole in the wall burst, releasing a shower of water. Of course it would be water, Akane thought sardonically.
Silently Akane took a step forward in preparation to attacking the cat-man while his back was turned. However, she had hesitated too long in watching the pipes, and her moment of surprise was lost. The cat-man swung around and met her eyes.
Then a strange thing happened. He paused and tilted his head to the side as if listening to someone. Their eyes locked. At that moment, the cat-man's eyes softened, became almost worshipful. The hand clutching the ornate jewelry box to his chest loosened. Holding the box out flat on one hand, he offered it to Akane.
Panic froze Akane's breath. She suddenly wanted to take the jewelry box, to open it. It was a familiar feeling. She could guess at what the jewelry box contained, and that terrified her. Artificial peace wafted from the box like perfume and tried to drown her fears.
Resisting the flood of demon magic, for that is what it had to be, Akane envisioned herself as a tree. She pictured her feet rooting deep down into the floor of the hallway. A tree cared nothing for jewelry boxes or necklaces. As a tree, no matter how the streams of magically induced trust tugged at her limbs, she could not move forward and take the box.
Unfortunately, the cat-man was not pretending to be a tree, and therefore could move as much as he liked. He padded closer to Akane and lifted the box higher. Her fingertips tingled with the urge to take it.
Then from the kitchen came the sound of feminine swearing. "I dunno what's goin' on, but someone's gonna suffer for it!" shouted Ranko. "And where the hell is Akane?" the redhead demanded angrily as she emerged from the rubble of the kitchen.
[To be continued]
AN: So originally, Ranma never got to be a boy in this chapter and there was no yummy licking. But then Rebel Sage and a few others kept expressing concern in reviews about the lack of male Ranma getting any romantic moments with Akane, which I started to stew over. My male Ranma muse then started projecting citrusy scenes into my head that had no relation to the current plot as I tried to fall asleep. Thus, we reached this little compromise so I could get some sleep. He also got a steamy, steamy, STEAMY future chapter that you'll get to read eventually too, when we get to that point in the plot (there are at least 3-4 chapters that have to happen first though). Well, I think it's gonna be steamy, but then again I have the full color picture streaming through my head. I'll be interested in your opinions when we get there (Indygodusk chortles to herself). Please leave me a review to let me know what you think, what you want, and what you expect will happen next. Thanks!