Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and its characters don't and never will belong to me.
AN: Thank you so much to everyone who came back to read this story and review!
No more pussyfooting around: a Ranma ½ fanfic
By Indygodusk
Chapter 36: The Hot Spring and the Kata
Loping at a steady pace across Nerima, Ranma couldn't wait to see Akane again. It had been almost a month, much longer than he'd intended. The separation had felt both painful and frustrating. Ranma hadn't been able to sense her precise location in weeks, just a vague sensation of her in the south.
In contrast, Akane seemed to be learning how to strum the string of ki connecting their souls. Ranma wished he knew if it was intentional. Her teasing touches when he least expected it had kept him on his toes and given him several very vivid dreams. He looked forward to seeing if she'd be as bold with her touches in person. There hadn't been many of them, but he'd memorized each gossamer contact.
Unable to stop the excitement pulling up the corners of his mouth, Ranma jumped over the wall of the Tendo's yard and trotted up to the door. Letting himself in, he heard cheerful conversation coming from around the corner and smelled Kasumi's delicious cooking. He'd timed his return perfectly.
"Tadaima," he called, letting Akane, and the rest of them, know that he'd returned home. Placing his pack against the wall, he removed his dusty shoes and stepped into his still waiting house slippers. Then he strode into the dining room, anticipation putting a spring into his step.
"Welcome back," Kasumi greeted him. Mouth full and face flashing with calculation, Nabiki lifted her fingers in a brisk salute. He hadn't seen the middle Tendo sister since the winter holidays, when she'd told them all she wasn't planning on staying home for the summer. He wondered what had changed. In front of the tv sat Mr. Tendo, huddled in a blanket and clutching a bowl of rice to his chest as he watched a raucous game show. He lifted red-rimmed eyes to Ranma for a moment and tipped his head in greeting, like a turtle coming out of his shell, before retreated back into his blanket and the lure of the TV.
The loud program had made Ranma expect a fuller room. Also Akane. He wanted to see Akane.
Ranma must have looked a little lost, because Kasumi offered, "Your father was here for most of the day, but he had to go back to your mother's house for the evening."
In a moment of vertigo, Ranma wondered if they'd moved him out while he'd been gone. Was this no longer his home? Was he expected to sleep at his mother's house now instead of the Tendo's?
Even more pressing than his own place of residence, however, was the whereabouts of his missing fiancee. "Is Akane upstairs?" he demanded.
Putting her chopsticks down with a click, Nabiki folded her arms. "She's gone, left a couple of weeks ago."
Ranma felt his knees go weak and his vision flash white with terror. Akane had promised not to return to Okinawa without him. She'd promised not to leave without telling him - full stop.
Had the demon forced her to leave or had she run off voluntarily? He hadn't been able to pinpoint her location since he'd left, but he'd assumed that had to do with distance and how the demon had weakened their connection. Something blocked him even now from sensing her. Was it because she was in Okinawa? What if her touches hadn't been flirtation, but instead a plea for help?
Stupid Akane, why did you ignore your promise to stay here? Terror warred with anger and guilt.
Throttling down his emotions, Ranma forced himself to focus. "Where is Akane," he growled at Nabiki, his breath short and his body deceptively relaxed. He didn't have any interest in being more polite.
"Why do you care?" Nabiki asked flippantly, leaning forward to prop her chin on her hands.
"Nabiki," Kasumi chided. Mr. Tendo didn't bother turning around from the tv, not even noticing the tension in the room.
Raising an eyebrow, Nabiki didn't bother looking away from Ranma's face. "Well? Cat got your tongue?" she smirked.
Suppressing the urge to either slap her across the face or snarl viciously, Ranma instead stalked forward and stared her down, not bothering to hide his violent thoughts or the aura flaring along his skin. "Where. Is. Akane."
Nabiki swallowed hard and looked away. "She's my sister," she answered weakly.
"And she's my fiancee," Ranma bit out, on the verge of doing something that seemed a logical response to his one, most precious person being in danger and the information about it being withheld, but that Akane would probably think inappropriate, especially when used on her sister.
"Not your only fiancee," Nabiki tossed out with a bit more spirit, her mouth firming.
Taking one, deliberate step closer, Ranma loomed over Nabiki menacingly. "Yes, she is. Akane is my one and only for everything. She knows that. Now tell me or so help me, Nabiki, I will make you."
Closing her gaping mouth with a click, Kasumi turned from Ranma to look at her sister fearfully. "Nabiki," Kasumi fretted, "just tell him."
"Oh, fine," Nabiki sprawled back onto her cushion and looked away with forced nonchalance. "I suppose he passed the test."
"What test?" Ranma spit out, still on high alert.
"To see if you'd admit that you cared about her to the rest of us," Nabiki drawled after a quick look at her dad. "To see if you deserved to see her again after the things you did. She finally told us, you know, how you forced her, deceived her, and made this whole situation worse."
Her words hit squarely and Ranma almost flinched, suddenly on the defensive. Flicking his eyes over to where Mr. Tendo had started to snore in front of the tv, he tilted his head in inquiry. Nabiki rolled her eyes, pursed her lips in disgust, and shook her head negatively.
Nodding in relief at not having to deal with their fathers' drama, Ranma circled back to his most pressing concern. "Where is Akane? Is she safe?"
"She's fine," Kasumi soothed, piling a plate high with food and placing it in front of him on the table. Then she added sotto voce, "Or at least no worse."
"Then why isn't she here?" Ranma demanded with frustration.
Flicking her hair behind her ear, Nabiki waved a hand in the air. "Sit down, stop looming, and eat some dinner while we explain."
Lowering himself to his heels, Ranma took a begrudging bite of rice. Then he stared at her with eyebrows raised. "So," he prompted.
"Oh, fine," Nabiki said. "Akane is safe and sound, loverboy. I saw her a few days ago."
"But why isn't she here?" Ranma clenched his fist.
Nabiki skewered him with a glare. "If you'd let me finish, I'd tell you."
Frustrated, Ranma shoved a hunk of fish into his mouth and chewed, though he couldn't taste anything through his worry.
"While you were gone, we suffered an infestation of rats. They particularly liked invading Akane's room," Nabiki explained. "You can imagine how that might have caused Akane some difficulty." Ranma swallowed painfully.
Nabiki continued, "It got so bad that we all had to leave and fumigate the house. Dad stayed with your parents while the rest of us made other accommodations. Despite her promise to you, Akane couldn't stay here any longer. She was wasting away. Even Daddy was on the verge of noticing." At Ranma's begrudging nod, she added, "I sent Akane to stay in my friend's isolated cabin up in the woods. No one but me knows she's up there. She's been training ever since, says she finds it more restful. She's even regained a bit of color in her cheeks."
Blowing out a breath, Ranma chewed a glob of rice to give himself time to calm down. He put down his chopsticks decisively. "I need to see her. Where is this cabin located?"
"In the middle of the woods. It'll be easier to just show you," Nabiki said. "I'll take you over tomorrow."
"I'm ready to go now," Ranma pushed.
Nabiki snorted. "Well, I'm not. We'll go up tomorrow. If we leave now, we'll end up stuck overnight in some train station. Plus we have to rent a car to get to the cabin itself and nothing is open that late. Even if by some miracle we don't have any problems with our transportation, we'd still get there obscenely early in the morning and end up waking Akane. She isn't sleeping well as is. I'd rather not bother her unless it's necessary."
Suddenly Kasumi gasped and leaned forward. "Wait, did you find her a cure, Ranma? She wouldn't mind being woken up for that." Nabiki's face became young and hopeful. Both sisters looked at Ranma trustingly, expecting good news. Their expressions reminded him so much of Akane at that moment that it made his chest ache.
"Not a cure," he admitted through the gravel in his throat. The words tasted bitter on his tongue. Their hopeful expressions fell to despair. Ranma rushed to add, "But I did find something to hopefully slow it down and give us more time to fix this."
"Well, at least that's something," Kasumi said with strained optimism. "Why don't you finish your food and then tell us about it."
"I can't tell you much until I talk to Akane. Some of it's private," Ranma said, feeling weary and heartsore.
Rubbing her forehead as if trying to forestall a headache, Nabiki looked at him sideways. "Just tell us whatever you can."
The next day passed in a blur. It took way longer than expected to reach the cabin because of mechanical difficulties with their train. Ranma felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin with impatience. Finally they reached the cabin in the woods around dinnertime.
As the rental car rolled to a stop, the cabin's front door opened. Akane looked out with a wary expression. Her cheekbones looked more prominent than he liked, but otherwise she looked good, great, beautiful. Their eyes met and Akane's expression transformed, curving up into a smile. Heart flipping over, Ranma fell for her all over again.
Akane hadn't expected visitors. When she saw that her sister had come early and brought Ranma, she couldn't contain her joy. Ranma jumped out of the car and bounced over. He looked like he was about to sweep her up into a hug, but at the last moment he jerked back awkwardly and cleared his throat. "Hi." He scratched the back of his head uncertainly.
"Hi. I missed you," Akane blurted out. It wasn't what she'd meant to say, but from his surprised and pleased expression, maybe it was the right thing.
Akane helped them move their stuff into the small cabin and answered Ranma's spate of questions about how she spent her days, what she ate to keep from poisoning herself with her own cooking, and about the forest and trails around the cabin. She showed him where to find things in the small cabin and what not to touch, like the tarp-covered dirt bike in the shed. After her tour, they had dinner together. Ranma and Nabiki kept up such a steady stream of general pleasantries and inane questions that it took her a while to notice the tense lines of their bodies beneath the artificial smiles.
Impatient and suspicious, she finally interrupted them to talk about the most important issue. "Did you find a cure for me, Ranma? Up there in the mountains?" She didn't want to exchange pleasantries anymore or pretend she wasn't dying. For too long, she'd been stuck waiting. Akane felt impatient for answers.
For a split second Ranma dropped his eyes, his lips tilting down at the corners. Then he pasted a confident smile on his face and leaned forward. "I certainly found something. It was crazy up there. Let me tell you all about it. Not even Nabiki's heard the full story yet."
As Ranma began his daring tale of adventure, travelling up to a remote mountain village and tricking people into showing him all their secret techniques, Akane found his words disappearing beneath the ringing in her ears. It wasn't fair. To keep herself from drowning in despair, she'd piled the fragile vestiges of her hope on the life raft of Ranma's training trip . He'd been so confident that he'd find her a cure. She'd trusted Ranma to fix her. She'd believed in him.
But that initial falter in Ranma's face told her the truth. He'd failed. There was no cure. The walls began to close in on her and it became hard to breathe. Akane's panic and despair slid over well-worn grooves into anger. It wasn't fair. How dare Ranma mess this up? It was her life, didn't he get that? Did he want her to die?
All too soon, her wave of anger collapsed, replaced by a rising tide of fear. Fear made her feet and fingers go numb as the feeling seeped up across her chest and lapped at her chin, splashing across her stinging nose and threatening to drown her. The demon had won. She really was going to die.
On the heels of that thought came bitterness. As Ranma continued his story, with the occasional question from Nabiki, Akane struggled not to lash out at them so they could understand, even if just for a moment, the pain she was going through. Akane wanted to hurt someone. But wouldn't that make her just as evil as the demon? The demon who was killing her to give birth to his spawn. Soon she'd die giving birth and then her offspring would go on to kill others. Even dying of cancer was better than that. It looked like her mother had been the lucky one after all.
Standing abruptly, Akane tried to hide the pounding of her heart and heaving of her stomach. Ranma's voice cut off and Nabiki said something sharp. "Excuse me," Akane gasped out. She had to move, to get out and away. She was drowning. If she had to hurt someone, better to turn the cruelty on herself than the people she loved. She had to get out. Akane kept her stride level until she reached the front door, but she couldn't help but let it slam behind her as soon as she saw the open sky.
Dropping her head, she ran. After several weeks, the forest trails had become familiar enough to run on even with sightless eyes. She skidded on a turn when her house slippers slipped on loose rocks, but she simply kicked them off and continued without them. Alone in the woods, she ran from her problems, her violent impulses, and her death.
It didn't work.
Grunting in rage, Akane stubbornly increased her speed.
That didn't work either.
Changing tactics, Akane focused on the burn of her muscles, the swing of her arms, and the rhythm of her breath. Although the demon had weakened her, she wasn't weak. Akane could still run. By focusing only on the state of her body, she finally achieved a fragile state of mindlessness.
Akane came back to awareness when she came out into the clearing next to the hot springs. Drenched with sweat and lungs heaving, she nevertheless felt a twist of pride when she wiped her face and found only sweat and not tears. She didn't want to cry again. She didn't want to give that rat bastard the satisfaction.
Literal rat. Her literal rat bastards.
Fragile peace shattered, she gave a wounded cry, unable to choke it back. Turning her trembling lips up into a snarl of rage, Akane paced around the clearing and tried to get her breathing under control. She hated feeling this way. Hated it!
Akane didn't want to just give up and die, but what else was there? No one had an answer to that. Taking a hard step onto uneven ground, Akane stumbled in sudden pain. She'd cut her feet up with that little stunt, running without shoes. It hadn't registered until now, but the sharp pain actually helped to ground her. Each stinging step tugged her out of the ocean of despair and onto solid ground. The almost imagined brush of fur against her legs as her spiritual feline companion paced with her slowly soothed her soul.
Finally stopping, Akane bent over with hands braced on her knees and stared down. Her ragged feet were covered with brown and tan dirt and dark red scratches, a sharp contrast to her clean hands with their neatly trimmed nails and shiny scars. Akane had strong hands. Her fingers were blunt, calloused, and strong. Perhaps not delicate like the feminine ideal, but they were hers and she liked them. They did good things. Despite the abuse they'd suffered over the years, they'd healed. Flexing them on her knees, Akane saw the scar tissue shift and turn orange with reflected light from the setting sun. Those wounds had healed. Her feet would eventually heal too.
Akane's mind settled. Maybe she wouldn't heal from this, maybe she would, but she had to go on. To be true to herself, Akane just had to keep going on. She couldn't control her destination, only her attitude on the journey. Fear would not control her. Anger would not control her. Akane would control herself.
From the corner of her eye, she saw steam rising from the hot spring and drifting up into the sky. Throwing back her head, she followed the shafts of steam as they rose. For a split second the glory of the setting sun gilded everything—the leaves in the trees, the clouds in the sky, and even the birds in flight—with rose gold light, as if the whole world had stripped down to pure, shining ki just for her. Broken black shadows stretched beneath the golden gleam, imperfection and perfection side by side. It was stunning. Then the light shifted and the effect ended. Brief, but beautiful. Wabi sabi.
If Akane could still recognize beauty, hope wasn't lost. She wasn't lost. She would not spend her final moments snivelling in fear. And if she hung on to that goal with only the tips of her neatly trimmed fingertips as she dangled over the abyss, well, it was good that she had such strong hands. Perhaps her life would be brief, but it had been beautiful and strong and good. The world would not soon forget Akane Tendo.
"You hear that! I'm still here!" she screamed defiantly at the distant island of Okinawa and its demon. Birds burst from the surrounding trees and shot into the sky. "You haven't won yet! I may be gone soon, but right now, I'm still here! I'm still fighting!" She felt fierce and vibrant. This wouldn't break her. She would not drown in despair. They could steal her lifeforce, but she would not let them take this from her. She would not give away beauty, wonder, and love. She would not give away herself.
Akane was in charge. Ranma wasn't responsible for her life or happiness. He wasn't to blame for what had gone wrong. She was forgiving him and forgiving herself. This hurt, unfairly dragging her down, but only she could chose to stop reaching for the sky. She may never fly free again like those birds, but she would not cringe facedown in the silt. If she was doomed to die, she would live on her terms. Raising her fists to the sky and going up on tiptoe, she threw back her head and gave a battlecry, pouring all her emotions into creating instead of destroying. In the ringing silence that followed, Akane felt fey and free.
Panting, she lowered her eyes to see a wide-eyed female Ranma. The redhead stood in the dappled shadows beneath the trees. Akane felt no surprise. Of course Ranma had followed her. Of course. He must have splashed through one of the few puddles leftover from the morning's rain. The curse always found water somehow.
Still feeling fey, Akane boldly met the redhead's eyes. She would not be embarrassed or ashamed of her shouting. Ranko took a step forward, but then stopped and crossed her arms uneasily, looking down. It might be discomfort at Akane's show of emotion, guilt, or even annoyance. However, Akane would have to figure it out later. Fixing herself was hard enough right now. She couldn't fix Ranma too. Akane was patched, but one good hit could still break her.
Turning away, she walked to the hot spring. Easing herself down, she swung her legs over the edge and dipped her feet into the water before she could second guess herself. Although she couldn't suppress the hiss of pain as her wounds hit the hot water, she managed to turn the accompanying whimpers into a single grunt.
"Stupid tomboy," Ranko whispered achingly as she slid fully clothed into the water without a splash. For a second, the water came up to just under the shorter girl's breasts. Then the hot water activated the curse and Ranma grew taller, flatter, and broader, until the water only lapped around his narrow hips.
Biting his lip and avoiding her eyes, Ranma gently cupped one of her feet in his hands and proceeded to carefully and thoroughly wash away the dirt and grime. When his fingers slid across a deep cut, Akane caught her breath and Ranma flinched, but his firm touch didn't falter until both feet were clean. Then he stopped. Akane expected him to finally say something, but Ranma just stared in silence at her small, wounded feet cradled in his palms beneath the water.
"Ranma?" Akane finally prompted.
Lifting her feet out of the water, Ranma kissed the top of each one with aching softness. As he lowered them back into the water, she almost resisted, not wanting the water to wash away his kisses.
"I'm sorry I didn't find you a cure. I'm sorry I'm useless to you," Ranma rasped in a broken voice, eyes hidden behind his dark hair.
"Ranma you idiot," Akane rubbed her face, "it's not your job to be useful."
"But-" he raised his head stubbornly, but she reached out and covered his mouth with her fingers. His quick intake of breath tickled her skin.
"No." Akane met his eyes firmly. "This isn't about being useful or useless." He opened his lips beneath her fingers to argue, but she pressed harder, muffling his words. "No."
Ranma jerked back in the water out of reach, forcing her to drop her hand, determined to have his say. "I know you don't need me the way I need you, Akane, that you haven't forgiven me, but I tried my best. I'm so sorry I failed, but I swear I am trying." He threw his hands up helplessly, flinging water droplets up into the air. They flickered like fireflies in the sunset. As they pattered onto the surface of the water, Ranma turned his face away.
Akane pushing herself off the ledge and into the water with a splash. She lunged forward and grabbed Ranma's arm. Wrenching him around to face her, she opened her mouth, but for once her mind went blank. He waited for her words with tension singing through his limbs and a stubborn twist to his lips.
"Ranma, you drive me crazy," Akane finally growled. "Sometimes, you are useless." Ranma flinched and turned away away, tugging sharply at his arm, but Akane tightened her grip until his bones creaked in protest, refusing to let him go. She raised her voice insistently, "And sometimes you're extremely useful. Sometimes you're a complete jerk that I want to strangle and sometimes you're so sweet I can barely keep myself from kissing you, but Ranma, Ranma look at me," she demanded with frustration, shaking him, splashing them both with the force until he finally met her eyes with exasperation. "Listen to me, Ranma! You are my best friend. I know you are trying your best. I know you are a good man."
Ranma took a quick breath as if to speak, but she released his arm and placed her hand at the base of his throat in a plea instead of a demand for silence. This time, he paused. Exhaling hard, he closed his eyes and swallowed. She felt the movement beneath her palm. Opening his eyes, he brought his hands out of the water to alight on her waist. When she met his uncertain look calmly, Ranma's light grip firmed on the swell of her hips.
Akane felt the mood shifting as she watched her glistening fingers drag down his throat until her palm came to rest above his pounding heart. Her fingers left dark, wet lines across the red fabric of his shirt. Not like a wound, but maybe like a scar, one that had healed with time and attention.
Looking up into Ranma's blue eyes, she said, "I'm forgiving you." Ranma's body jerked beneath her fingers. His fingers tightened convulsively on her hips and his lips parted with an audible gasp of emotion. Akane continued. "I know you, Ranma. Despite your faults, you're still one of the best people I've ever known. If there's one thing that the years of our acquaintance have taught me, it's that no matter what you are or are not doing, or how useful I may or may not find you at any given moment," Akane licked her lips, lifting her dripping hand from the water to join the other in cupping his jaw, her fingers trembling with the strength of her emotions as the molten sun finally slid beneath the horizon, allowing the shadows to unfurl in the periphery like hovering moths,"I still I love you. Ranma, I choose you. No matter what happens, or how many mistakes we both make, I want you to know, right here and now, that I'll always love you."
Ranma's eyes went bright and wet, becoming a new sun in the deepening twilight. Voice deep and deadly serious, he promised, "You have my love, Akane. You have all of me. Forever."
Gently, almost reverently, they came together in the water, Ranma swaying down and Akane curling up until their lips met in a sweet, tender kiss. Sighing into his mouth, Akane slid her hands onto his broad shoulders and arched closer. Ranma gave a subvocal growl of pleasure that rumbled from his chest to hers as he kneaded his fingers along her hips. Warmth and light slid through her body, casting out the dark shadows and cold spaces.
That warmth sparked and built into a bonfire as the kiss went on and on. Moaning against her lips, Ranma slid his arms around Akane's back and pulled her up tighter against his body. He slanted his mouth over hers, trailing his lips back to her ear and then down her throat before returning to her parted lips. They kissed for endless moments. Akane slid back, nipping his lower lip teasingly when he tried to follow her retreat. She trailed kisses across his cheeks, over his brows and tickling eyelashes, and then pecked him on the tip of the nose twice, just because she could.
Ranma's teeth flashed in a happy grin. He licked his abused red lip enticingly before abruptly tipping her backwards. Clutching at him in surprise, Akane shrieked with laughter as water tickled the strands her hair and the back of her head. Ranma's answering chuckle melted across her tongue like dark chocolate as he swooped down to recapture her lips.
Sliding her foot back to regain some balance and control, Akane accidentally stumbled over a sharp rock, abrading her already injured sole. Unable to suppress a whimper at the unexpected pain, she flinched back from the kiss. Ranma immediately picked her up in his arms, glancing swiftly around before looking down at her injured feet. He sighed sympathetically. "Are you alright?"
"I stepped on a rock, sorry," Akane explained, dragging her fingers down the dark braid hanging over his shoulder and squeezing water from the dripping ends. She placed it back over his shoulder to hang down his back where it belonged, tracing her fingers down the furrow of his spine. He shivered at her touch. She wanted to keep touching him. To be honest, Akane was more annoyed that they'd stopped kissing then that she'd hurt herself.
"We should go back to the cabin and bandage these," Ranma murmured against the shell of her ear.
"We could," Akane answered with a catch in her voice as his lips dragged across her sensitive skin, "or we could stay here."
"And do what?" Ranma asked mischievously, nuzzling behind her ear very distractingly. "Nabiki will ask…" he trailed off as his lips began nibbling down her conveniently arched neck.
"We'll tell her you were showing me some moves," Akane sighed.
Ranma nipped her skin and then soothed it with his tongue. "I'll show you some moves, alright," he whispered wickedly.
Akane giggled and scrunched her neck. "Martial arts moves, you jerk. Like a kata for congruence, one of those math ones that sound pretentious."
At her words, Ranma jerked his head back and gave her wide grin. "You're a genius."
"Of course I am," Akane responded with grumpy confusion as he waded to the edge of the spring and jumped out. "But I didn't mean that the kissing had to stop."
Ranma laughed and pecked her on the lips. "Did you know that the congruence kata can be used to heal scrapes? And since part of my spirit is in your body, I'm pretty sure I can convince that part of me to heal your body instead of my own."
"Have you ever done this before?" she asked skeptically.
Shrugging, Ranma resettled her in his arms. "No, but I saw an old fart do it once. Let's try!"
Unable to resist his enthusiasm, or the throbbing of her feet in the night air, she curled her head down against his shoulder and smiled. "Sure, why not? Go for it, Ranma."
They dripped through Ranma's first three tries without much success. Then he switched her body so her head and heart rested against his left side instead of his right. Eyes going heavy lidded, Akane relaxed against Ranma's warm body.
Idly she reached out spiritually, observing the patterns of his ki as they moved. She could see the lines of his energy forming a smooth shell around them. The ties connecting them undulated, rising out from her neck and twining through her personal ki to form an oval field of energy under his direction. However, the closer to a sphere her energy got, the faster it vibrated, until it collapsed back to chaos. Undaunted, Ranma continued to repeat the kata movements over and over. She tried to force her energy into a sphere, but it outright refused and collapsed even quicker.
As Akane observed, she noticed that the thickest spiritual cord connecting her to Ranma swung back and forth from the anchor points in their cores from acute to obtuse angles as he tugged at it. It didn't seem very elegant or efficient. A perpendicular joist with flexibility farther out along the cord would work a lot better, in Akane's opinion.
Closing her eyes completely, Akane decided to try adjusting a few things. She'd been cutting out ties for over a month. Reinforcing and adjusting one shouldn't be that different. Starting with herself, she waited for the connection to swing from an acute angle wider and wider until she grabbed and braced it at a perfect ninety degrees. A little more work made the angle as permanent as she could get it. She let go and it stayed braced at the perpendicular. It felt good, similar to having a tight knot in a muscle suddenly give way during a massage. Ranma's surprise and pleasure echoed down the connection.
Turning her focus to Ranma, she pulled herself down the spiritual tie connecting them and waited for his side of the cord to swing up into a right angle. Once it did, she started bracing it the same way. It took longer, since she'd never worked on someone else's core like this before. It felt different, intimate. She perhaps could have gone faster, but she was enjoying the sensation too much. Slowing his kata down to a crawl to observe her work, Ranma abruptly took over, hardening the angle with almost a audible twang. Akane hid her pout against his shoulder.
Adjusting her body position slightly, Ranma hummed in satisfaction and swept into the kata again. His outward energy became a sphere. This time, Akane's energy obeyed his push, billowing out from oval to sphere as well. For a moment, she felt uncomfortably compressed, forced into Ranma's circular mold. Then Ranma somehow twisted and flipped the spheres. Akane felt a moment of disorientation. Seconds later it disappeared beneath a surge of peace and harmony.
When she finally blinked open her eyes again, they were standing still in the dusky clearing. Akane flexed her toes. They didn't hurt. Bending her leg, she squinted at the bottom of her food and found only smooth skin. Her skinned knee had healed too.
"You did it," she said in amazement.
Ranma grinned, "We did it together." Dropping a kiss on her forehead, Ranma turned and began walking down the trail back to the cabin. "Sadly, even the little pink bruise I sucked onto your neck has disappeared."
"I don't need a hickey, you brute," she complained. "Also, I can walk."
"That's how you got hurt in the first place. Just let me carry you. It's not that much of a hardship, is it? Letting the man who loves you carry you for a little bit?" Ranma gave her a squeeze.
"Oh fine, but don't think you'll get away with this the next time," Akane grumbled through a blush. Considering how long it had taken him to even say he liked her, Ranma had very quickly gotten comfortable with using the word "love." In fact, she seemed to have more trouble saying it than he did. What if he was just confused about his feeli—NO. No. She couldn't go down that road. She was going to trust Ranma. She had to.