Chapter 10

The next few days passed by uneventfully, at least as far as Akane was concerned. Not only hadn't she gotten into a fight with one of the other candidates, but there hadn't been any martial arts challenges, aspiring kidnappers, the slighted vengeful, new love interests or fiancées, or a certain practitioner of kendo who shall not be named for fear that it would summon him from his respite at Tofu's clinic. All and all, things had been rather quiet.

Perhaps a little too quiet.

It may have been due to that — the lack of distractions, as it were — that she had been able to recognize Ranma's recent change in behavior as being suspicious. She may not have normally thought too much of it several weeks ago, but it was difficult to not consider the possible implications when in recent weeks she had not been the only one to experience such changes.

Granted, it was a nice change for Ranma, and she had really enjoyed her second outing with him yesterday, but if Hestia were involved then it could ruin everything. Even now she was rankled by thoughts of the past, due to a girl who appeared to have everything handed to her on a silver platter yet had seemingly spited her peers by showing no interest toward any of it, as if they had been beneath her. Not only had Hestia been in a favorable position with the Golden Kingdom's royalty because her mother had come from one of its highly-esteemed noble families, but she had secured an engagement to said kingdom's prince in addition to being an eligible candidate among those who could become the Earth's sailor senshi. The absolute last thing that she wanted was for Ranma to be pulling out Hestia's "I'm all nice and innocent" act, as if nothing of consequence were happening, only to rub it in her face should he become the Earth's sailor senshi without her ever having known him as being a candidate (until the very last second, at least).

She glanced over at Ranma, who appeared to be minding his own business as they made their way to school. She peered at him closely, as if to pierce through some form of deception (should it happen to exist), but nothing apparent came to light. Unfortunately, all her effort seemed to accomplish was the attraction of her target's unwanted attention.

Ranma regarded her with a mildly bemused expression. "What?"

"N-nothing!" Akane lied, as she looked away and sought frantically for a decent excuse for what she had been caught doing. "I was..." She brightened when an idea occurred to her, so she looked back and said, "I was just wondering why you weren't walking on the fence, that's all."

Ranma looked at her oddly for a moment, but — to her relief — he turned away, shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, I got to thinking, and it didn't feel right doing it while walking with a friend, y'know?"

"I suppose..." Akane half-heartedly agreed, her mind more focused on her excuse being bought than the reason that Ranma had given her in response to said excuse.

The rest of the way to their destination was spent in silence. On occasion they glanced at the other surreptitiously, trying to figure out what the other was thinking, and wondering whether or not they had anything to worry about. Only one of the two were aware of the other's secretive activity, and Ranma was beginning to think that — by trying to befriend Akane — he had made an error in judgement.

When they reached the school gate, they were disappointed when they saw Kuno running toward them. Akane — in particular — was less than pleased to see him heading in her direction, in specific.

When he drew near, he spread his arms out wide — as if to receive someone in an embrace — and declared, "Ah, my fierce tigress! I wish to—"

He found himself silenced when Akane's fist struck one side of his face while — at the same time — Ranma's foot landed a blow on the other side.

After taking a step back and recovering from being repulsed, he regarded Ranma with a look of confusion and asked, "What was that for?"

Ranma simply looked at him as if the answer should have been obvious.

Akane released a sigh, figuring that she should get their encounter with Kuno over and done with. "What do you want, Kuno?"

"Ah, that's right!" Kuno exclaimed in realization, as if he had suddenly remembered something that he had forgotten only seconds ago. Then his countenance swiftly became solemn. "As much as I'd rather have another excuse for speaking with you, I came to see you so that I might ask you a question of the utmost importance."

"Could have fooled me," Ranma and Akane thought to themselves, before the latter patiently asked, "Ask me what?"

"Where might I find my pigtailed angel?" Kuno implored.

"'Pigtailed angel?'" Akane wondered to herself, who failed to notice how Ranma's body had stiffened while she considered the new form of address. Wanting an answer for it, she looked at Kuno inquisitively and replied with a question of her own. "Why do you want to see her?"

With a look of concern on his face, Kuno said, "Now, don't be jealous—"

"Who's jealous! ?" Akane retorted.

"But," Kuno continued, as if he hadn't been interrupted, "it is to my understanding that my life had been saved the other day. My only wish is to impart my gratitude to the one responsible." His eyes suddenly lost focus. "Ah, to think that — in a life or death struggle — one of my beloveds had been able to escape Saotome's control and show the world the true power of our love..."

While Ranma looked disgusted at whatever imagery had come to mind, Akane regarded Kuno with a half-lidded stare and sarcastically said, "Yes, I'm sure that carrying you to a doctor is the greatest expression of love that anyone could have given."

"Nay!" Kuno strongly disagreed, both loudly and suddenly, which made some nearby heads turn to investigate what was going on (if they hadn't been watching already). "Not only did the pigtailed angel deliver me to a place of refuge, but she had also—"

He was suddenly soaring into the distance, courtesy of Ranma's foot. The owner of said foot had been afraid of being implicated as the healer instead of doctor Tofu, and hadn't had much time to think of a better solution. And as his mind began to catch up with what he had just done in a blind panic, he quickly composed himself and prepared himself for some damage control.

"What was that for?" Akane questioned him sharply, a bit of confusion showing on her face. While she didn't particularly care for Kuno's presence, his ejection by Ranma had been both unexpected and seemingly unprovoked.

Ranma did his best to act cool as he turned his back on her, so he was now facing the school. "As if I'm going to stand here and risk being late to class by listening to him drone on and on — about every little detail — until it sounds like I'd done everything myself, instead of giving credit where credit is due."

He managed to contain a grin of satisfaction, since he was rather proud of his wording despite having been put on the spot. Then he began to walk toward the school, as if the matter had been closed.

Akane followed after him, but the matter had not been closed with her — not completely. While she respected doctor Tofu (and thus understood why he should receive the credit due to him), the same couldn't be said for Ranma. Her trust in him was rather limited, and what he had done to Kuno — despite his reasoning — began to gnaw at her, making her suspicion from earlier come back with a vengeance.

She had to be sure that he wasn't hiding anything.

Akane hadn't been able to wait until the end of the school day to see Kuno, so she had decided to see him at the earliest and most convenient opportunity: during lunch break. Kuno had decided the same thing for a different reason, which was fortunate for her because they were able to meet in the hallway, away from Nabiki. The last thing that she wanted to do was to go through the trouble of fabricating a believable reason for why she would want to see Kuno, seeing as how her sister might otherwise decide to start a spurious rumor despite her experience with being cursed. In order to prevent others from doing the same thing, she had instructed Kuno to meet her clandestinely after they had gone their separate ways, so that prying eyes wouldn't see them together beyond their initial meeting.

Their meeting place was behind the gymnasium's storage shed. Much to Akane's annoyance, Kuno had gotten the wrong idea regarding the motive behind their secret rendezvous, and she had to punch him in the face in order to ward off an unwelcome embrace.

"Look," Akane huffed impatiently, "I just wanted to ask you a question."

"Ah," Kuno voiced, as if he had just learned some profound truth. He tucked his hands into his sleeves and said, "I will try not to disappoint you with my answer, then."

"I hope so, too," Akane thought to herself, before she collected her thoughts and said, "I was wondering what you were going to say earlier this morning, before you had been so rudely interrupted."

"Indeed!" Kuno exclaimed, as he raised a shaking fist in righteous fury. "What manner of man not only interrupts another while speaking, but strikes without first announcing oneself? Saotome's impoliteness surely knows no bounds!"

Akane regarded him with a half-lidded stare as she made an effort to remain patient. "So? What were you going to say before that?"

Kuno coughed into his fist and composed himself before answering. "I do believe that I had assured you of there being no need for jealousy."

"After that," Akane ground out, her patience waning.

Kuno crossed his arms and tilted his head to the side in thought. A moment later he righted his head and pounded the fist of one hand into the palm of the other in realization. "Oh! You must mean my account of the pigtailed angel's show of love, a love so deep that Saotome's hold over her couldn't prevent her from acting upon her feelings for me."

Akane didn't trust herself enough to speak, so she simply nodded her head.

Kuno developed a faraway look in his eyes as he recalled his experience, unaware that his state of mind at the time — in addition to his rampant romanticism — had distorted what he had actually seen. "Yes... After she delivered me to a safe haven, she revealed her wings of light to me and carried me off to Heaven."

Akane's brow furrowed as she considered the possibility of his account being a delusion. However, she decided that she could spare some time getting him to elaborate — just in case. "What do you mean?"

After he blinked his eyes and returned to the present, Kuno took a moment to consider how to describe what he had seen. "The wings were not made of feather and flesh, as one might assume. Nor had they emerged from her back. Rather, they came into being from her hands, as if drawn."

"As if... drawn?" Akane inquired quietly, which sounded hollow to her ears as the blood in her face began to be drawn away from its surface.

Kuno nodded his head in confirmation before continuing, her reaction to his words going unnoticed. "And then I found myself entering a cloud, where I found blessed relief. What other explanation can there be for this, if not that the pigtailed girl is indeed an angel who carried me off to Heaven in order to administer a divine remedy?"

"Yeah," Akane muttered distractedly, her mind somewhere else, "what else could it be..."

Misinterpreting her response as one given by someone in low spirits, Kuno extended an arm across Akane's shoulders and pulled her to his side. "Do not feel inadequate, fair Akane! You may not be an angel in fact, but what does it matter when you are one in all the ways that matter? It is thus that my love for you wanes not!"

Having been angered by her personal space and person being violated while she had been distracted, Akane spared nothing behind the uppercut that sent Kuno flying into the distance. She had even added a bit of wind magic to it, in order to propel him even farther away than usual.

After she had calmed down, she bit down on her bottom lip and became absorbed in her thoughts once more. It had bothered her to hear that the "wings of light" had been drawn by hand, which had been a method used by Hestia to perform intricate spellwork. It all but guaranteed that Hestia had been awakened in Ranma. There was really only one way to know for sure at that point, though it probably wouldn't hurt to ask doctor Tofu about it first...

It was early in the evening when Ranma's mother informed him that Akane was waiting for him in the dojo, though his fiancée hadn't told his mother the reason for why. As he made his way there, he wondered if it had anything to do with her behavior in school. She had tried to hide it, but she had obviously been distracted by something. He only hoped that it hadn't been caused by anything related to a certain incident.

It was with a glimmer of optimism that he stepped into the dojo and approached Akane, whose back was turned toward him. "You wanted to see me?"

"Not you," Akane replied in a controlled tone, which had confused Ranma long enough to leave him unprepared for when Akane whirled around and launched a bucket's worth of water into his — now her — face with a spell. "You're the one I wanted to see... Hestia."

Ranma calmly stared back at Akane's glaring eyes and angry visage, feigning a look of confusion. "What in the world are you talking—"

"Don't play dumb with me!" Akane hissed, as wisps of fire began to swirl around her fists. "Kuno was more than willing to share the rest of his story, about how his so-called 'pigtailed angel' saved him. And while doctor Tofu would only say that you had been helpful, he's not exactly perfect at hiding the effect of his thoughts." With a pointed look, she added, "Just like someone I used to know."

Silence followed her words, and for a moment they did nothing more than stare at each other. Finally, Ranma came to a mental decision and — as a result — sighed in resignation. It was a shame that her secret had only lasted five days, but she really hadn't expected it to last very long anyway, despite hoping against her secret ever coming to light at all.

"Fine, you got me," she admitted, as she crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow. "So what?"

"'So what?'" Akane echoed, her voice rising. "'So what! ?' You know what!"

Ranma grinned cheekily. "Nope, sorry. It's been so long that I can scarcely remember whatever it is you're referring to."

She tilted her head to the right a split-second before a small fireball passed over her left shoulder, which she snuffed out with a gust of wind — that she had summoned and directed with a hand gesture — before it could hit anything behind her and catch fire.

Her expression hardened as she moved her head back to its natural position and lowered her now-uncrossed arms to her sides. "Speaking of people I used to know, what's it going to be this time? Whose life are you going to hold over my head in order to get what you want?"

Akane looked equal parts insulted and disgusted. "I'm not like Juno. How could you even think that?"

"Oh, I dunno," came Ranma's sarcastic reply. "Maybe it's because you're treating me as if I'm no different from being Hestia?"

Akane crossed her arms imperiously and retorted, "Well, you're not."

Ranma rolled her eyes. "Right. I've always wanted to be female, a princess and a sailor senshi. Guilty as charged."

"You can't fool me," Akane replied, her eyes narrowed. "Hestia had always been sneaky, and what do I find out? You're doing the same thing: pretending that you haven't changed!"

"Gee, I wonder why?" Ranma remarked.

"Not only that," Akane continued, undeterred, "but you've had the opportunity to get rid of your curse and you haven't. I know you can do it, so what other reason could you have — to not do it — unless you were trying to do the whole 'I'm not really interested' act that Hestia had done?"

Ranma's body had gone stiff in light of the sensitive subject that had been touched upon, so she proceeded to bring her mental defenses to bear with a scowl and a look in her eyes that were meant to warn Akane of the dangers that would lie ahead should she proceed any further. Then, in a very clear, level and deliberate tone, she said, "Your assumptions aside, my reasons are personal, and none of your business."

It was more the look than the words that had given Akane cause to pause, but she continued on nonetheless (though more delicately since she had gotten the overall message). "And I'm supposed to believe you? Just like that?"

Ranma closed her eyes and released a sigh that carried off the tension in her body, leaving behind a sort of hollow feeling in its place. Then she looked Akane right in the eye and countered with, "Look, why don't you just tell me what I would need to do in order to convince you that I'm not interested in becoming a sailor senshi."

She already knew what the answer to that would likely be, which was the reason for why she had that hollow feeling inside. She tried to convince herself that it was what she wanted, regardless of what others wanted or expected, but she didn't have the heart to form the idea into words.

The hollow feeling also came from the fact that yet another decision was going to be made for her. Sure, she had a choice, but if she refused what Akane wanted: not only would she have to deal with the four "princesses," but in (most of) their minds it would put into question her masculinity. That would likely have unwanted repercussions that would reach beyond them, likely resulting in having to deal with her mother at the very least.

Would her capitulation be worth it? She really didn't know. All that she knew was that she was getting tired of it all, and it appeared to be the best way to find some peace (even if not happiness).

After the second it took to consider her response, Akane faked a friendly smile — much to Ranma's annoyance — and said, "Well, as you should know, only females can become sailor senshi. So, it stands to reason that I shouldn't have anything to worry about if you're not female, right?"

Even though Ranma had expected it, and had already formed her decision, she still found it hard to accept and go along with it. It took her a moment to respond, which had given her enough time to recall a matter that she had almost forgotten among all of the other things that had been on her mind.

"Under one condition," she petitioned.

Akane regarded her with a mix of curiosity, confusion and impatience. "And what would that be?"

"I recently changed someone's appearance with magic," Ranma informed her, "so that they can experience it and see if they like the changes or not." Seeing the coming question, she intercepted it by saying, "It's a private matter, so don't ask," before she picked up from where she had left off. "I'll need two objects with simple, catalytic enchantments on them: one to unravel the magic, and another to set it as their natural form."

"Catalytic, huh?" Akane muttered, who frowned as she thought about Ranma's condition, and who she might have changed.

Ranma smirked when she saw an opportunity to goad her. "You do know how to make a catalyst, right?"

"Of course I do!" Akane vehemently declared, looking scandalized.

"Fine," she grumbled a few seconds later, after she had recovered from her outburst, "I accept your condition."

Ranma simply nodded her head before getting to work. Jusenkyo curses had been meant for the purpose of training, not punishment, so they were easy enough to dispel if one knew how. As a result it had taken her no time at all to create a magical array to do just that, since it was small in size and simple in detail.

It was with some reluctance that she announced, "It's ready. You'll have to be the one to power it, though, since I'll lose my magic in the process."

Akane didn't even spare a gesture or word of acknowledgement as she reached her hand out and placed it in the middle of the magical array, which glowed brighter when she fed it her magic. She watched as it went to work, as Ranma's female body began to transition back into the one that he had been born with. The process only took a handful of seconds to complete.

She allowed a self-satisfied smile to grace her lips as she looked Ranma over, knowing that he was no longer prettier than her (not that she would ever admit it), no longer had access to magic, probably couldn't best her in a fight because she did have magic, couldn't lay any claim to once being royalty, and — above all else — wasn't qualified to become a sailor senshi.

"Well," she said perkily, "that certainly takes a load off my mind." She looked up into Ranma's stony visage, but she was too wrapped up in her own feelings of joy to notice that he wasn't feeling the same way. "Hestia's upbringing has probably toned down your shamelessness a bit, so I'll give you some privacy so you can celebrate being cured. Have fun!"

Ranma remained still while Akane navigated her way around him and left the dojo, her parting words still fresh in his mind. Before last Sunday she would have been right: getting cured would have been headline news, and he would have been so happy that he would have acted rather silly in expressing said happiness. But things had changed, lengthening and broadening his perspective in their wake, and being without the curse felt more like an announcement belonging to an obituary than a front page.