Well, here you go, people. Not much to say, though my pre-reader warned me that this chapter seemed kinda filler-ish. Note also that he hasn't had a chance to go over it yet, so you can't blame him for the errors until later.
Anyhow, on with the show!
Chapter 34, Don't Drink and Train.
Akane looked at the sign on the door, uncertain. Checking the paper again, she read the words that were written in Nabiki's neat, straight edged hand writing. "Go to the Peeking Duck in the Juuban District." The note read. She had found the note, along with a ticket for the train, in her shirt pocket this morning, and was relatively sure that Nabiki had given it to her. The question was, 'why?'
Pushing open the door to the little restaurant, the youngest Tendo Daughter blinked in surprise as she saw that Mousse was standing behind the counter, Cologne hopping from table to table and serving bowls of Ramen.
"Oh, hello Mizuno-san!" Mousse called out, happily, as he waved at Akane.
Cologne turned towards the door for a second, then pogoed towards the blind boy and whapped him upside the head. "Put your glasses on, boy." She grumbled. "That is Akane Tendo."
Akane looked cautiously around the room, wondering where Shampoo was, before stepping up to the counter. "Hi." She said, nervously, sitting down. "Nabiki told me to come here." She started, uncertainly.
Cologne nodded. "Yes, she called me yesterday and told me of your problem." The old woman said. "Mousse, could you serve the tables while I talk to Miss Tendo?"
Mousse looked confused, but nodded. 'I thought I was running this place?' He thought, but had the good sense not to say it as he scooped up several bowls of Ramen in his hands and began to distribute them.
"So you know why she wanted me to come here?" Akane asked, hopefully, blinking as Mousse set one of the bowls in front of her before continuing.
"Yes." The former elder said, nodding. "You have challenged your father for control of your Dojo, correct?"
"Yeah." Akane said, nervously.
"It seams your sister wants me to help you train for the battle." Cologne said, before snorting. "I don't see why, given that Tendo is so out of practice." She grumbled, just low enough for Akane to miss.
"You're going to train me?" Akane asked, her eyes widening. Getting training from Cologne was, if not at the top of her list of things she wanted to do, at least pretty high. Then, her mind caught up with her enthusiasm. "What's the catch?"
The old woman smiled wickedly. "Well, this place is getting more busy lately." She said, simply. "I believe that Mousse needs a new waitress."
At the old woman's evil smile, the youngest Tendo gulped nervously, but after a few moments of thinking, she nodded. "I'll do it." She said, not realizing the world of pain she'd just prepared herself for.
HR.
"Are you ready to tell me what happened?" Setsuna asked, sitting on a stool next to Nodoka as the older looking woman took another small sip from a glass of clear liquid that wasn't water. She hoped she didn't sound impatient, even though she was, as Nodoka really did need someone to talk to at the moment.
"Have you… have you ever had everything you ever believed in revealed as an impossible task?" The auburn haired woman asked, softly.
Setsuna wanted to respond with a resounding yes, but was pretty sure that she couldn't tell the story of how the time gates had suddenly stopped working without sounding completely insane, so merely stayed silent, waiting for her companion to keep going.
"I spent my entire life attempting to live up to my family's standards, even though I'd married someone they considered 'below my station.'" Nodoka said, angrily. "Now, I find out that it was all a test… that no matter how well I did in living up to their ideals, I would have never succeeded."
"So… you're upset at them for putting you through the test." Setsuna hazarded, taking a sip on her own drink, her second as opposed to Nodoka's fourth. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a little voice was telling her that taking Nodoka out drinking to make her less depressed had been one of the less inspired decisions she'd made in the last few hundred years, but she dismissed that voice rather easily.
"No…. Yes…." Nodoka said, shaking her head slightly. "I am angry at them, but… I understand what they were thinking." She said, quietly. "That's the part that bothers me so much. I understand why they did it."
Setsuna raised an eyebrow. "And why's that?" She asked, genuinely curious.
"Do you know why I pushed the Seppuku promise so hard when I was living at the Tendo home?" Nodoka asked, seeming to push things off course.
Setsuna shrugged, thankful for the fact that her powers gave her an accurate time keeper in her head so she didn't look at a watch. "Why?" She finally asked, after Nodoka had been silent for a few moments.
"I.. wanted to make Ranma a better person." She laughed, bitterly. "I knew that Genma had done damage to my son's character while he was making him such a good martial artist, and I used the threat of the Seppuku contract to try and make him improve." She stopped for a moment, and then whispered. "Parents always know what's best for their children, right?" Before sobbing quietly over her glass.
Setsuna sighed again. She would have to deal with Ranma and Haruka later. This was obviously more important for the moment. "It's all right." She said, quietly, patting Nodoka on the shoulder.
"Hello ladies, I couldn't help but notice…" A rather disreputable looking man who had just sidled up to the bar started, before stepping back at Setsuna's icy glare. "I… I'm sorry, Ma'am. I'll just leave you two alone, then."
'Didn't even have to say a word. Still got it.' The guardian of time thought, before turning back to the crying other woman and continuing to comfort her.
HR.
"Hey, will you get back here?!" Sailor Uranus called, as Neptune leapt across a busy street, from one rooftop to another.
"What, can't you catch me?" The redhead smirked, looking back at her fiancée.
"You know I can't jump roofs." Uranus grumbled, glaring.
"Oh? Then how'd you get up here?" Neptune returned, gesturing to the roof, that of the track's main registration building, where Uranus was standing. "Now hurry up, we've got to find somewhere to change back."
Uranus gaped, walking to the edge of the roof and looking down to see the ground a couple stories below. Gulping nervously, she propelled herself into the air, astonished as her feet carried her much higher than they should have. As she was on the descending side of her arc, she let the sensation of the world flying past around her and the wind blowing in her short hair register. "Wow…" She said, landing next to Neptune on the roof across the street. "That was… amazing!"
Neptune grinned. "I know. First time I did it, pop was chasing after me with a whip, but I still found it fun." She said. "Wanna try some more?"
"Well, I…" Uranus started, before the other Senshi took off. "Hey, get back here!" She called, indignantly, charging after and leaping the gap between this roof and the next without thinking about it. To her surprise and annoyance, Neptune kept going, leading her on a merry chase across the city. Still, it was so much fun that driving her bike down a track paled in comparison.
Much to her surprise, the blonde actually found herself slowly closing the gap with the redhead, even though she saw that the other girl was going at full speed and cutting corners wherever she could.
Within about ten minutes, the trailing girl had caught up with the other, grabbing her. "Got'cha!" She laughed, swinging the other around quickly.
Neptune laughed. "Dang, guess not havin my Chi to use slows me down a lot." She admitted, grudgingly.
"Don't talk like that, you know I beat you fair and square." Uranus said, squeezing Neptune more tightly. "Now let's get changed and go back to the track so we can go home."
"Don't have ta worry about goin to get your bike." Neptune said, pointing across the street from the small apartment block they now stood on top of.
"Gwah?" Uranus asked, seeing that Setsuna's house was right in front of them. "How did we make that run in ten minutes?"
The redhead shrugged. "Didn't have to worry about traffic." She explained, shortly, before leaping down the side of the building and into an alley. Dumbly, Uranus followed, and once she'd landed she triggered the transformation back to civilian form. "
You know…" She said, as the two headed out of the alley. "If that's part of being a Senshi, maybe I can put up with the clothes."
Ranma laughed. "I can teach ya how ta do that without transforming." She said, off-hand.
"Really?" Haruka asked, skeptically. Ranma simply nodded, digging around in her pocket for her key to the house.
"Yeah." The redhead explained. "But first I gotta go through all of Happosai's old stuff to see what's there." She grimaced in distaste. The door swung open, and Haruka didn't ask any further questions as they entered the house.
HR.
"Gotta get it, gotta get it…" Akane mumbled, sliding under the spinning form of yet another bowl of Ramen and sighing in relief as it settled on her left hand. Slowly, she stood up and carried the bowl over to its designated table. There was polite, if slightly astonished applause as she set it down, and she turned to see Cologne looking at her with a very small smile.
"I did it!" She said, happily. "That wasn't so hard!"
"Order's up!" The old woman called, throwing yet another bowl… wait, there were two.
"Hey, what?!" Akane called, desperately running to catch the two bowls. She managed to catch one in her hand again, but the other one bounced off of the fingers of the other hand, flipping slightly and landing on her head as the Ramen inside of it spilled down the Chinese dress Cologne had insisted she wear. In an instant, her often lamented clumsiness came into effect, and she slipped on the spill. "Oof." She gasped, landing on her posterior with the bowl of Ramen still on her head.
"Are you all right, Akane Tendo?" Came Mousse's voice, as the boy plucked the empty Ramen bowl off of the blushing girl's head.
"Yeah, thanks Mousse." She said, accepting his hand as he pulled her up. "I guess I need a little more work."
Mousse nodded evenly, pulling a small hand towel out of his hidden weapons space and handing it to the girl. Unknown to either of them, there was a slightly younger brown haired girl standing at the entrance to the store.
Makoto Kino groaned to herself. "No, not another one." She grumbled, turning away. She'd been coming here every day since the place had opened, and had really gotten attached to the owner. Now, he was being so nice to that other girl, and she was so much older and prettier.
'No.' She thought, clenching her teeth. She would not lose another perspective boyfriend, not again! "I won't let you get away!" She cried, not realizing that she was speaking out loud until the restaurant's noise level dropped noticeably.
Looking around, she laughed nervously. "Erm, it's a… a really nice day!" She said, hopefully. Several people gave her odd looks, but turned back to their ramen.
On the other side of the Restaurant, where she was trying to clean herself up, Akane turned her attention away from the rather odd brown haired girl who'd just left. "I'm never going to do this." She grumbled, picking several noodles off of the front of her dress. "I bet dad's having a lot more luck training than I am."
HR.
"Tendo, you know that this isn't exactly what you should be doing right now." Genma Saotome grumbled, as he stood behind his best friend.
"Be quiet Saotome." Soun snapped, the river of tears that was going down his face ceasing for a moment as he turned to glare at the bald man. "I am going to be required to fight my youngest daughter in only six days. This is very important."
Genma sighed. "Perhaps you are forgetting that Akane has been training with Ranma for several years, and you haven't been training at all." He grunted. He'd always had a problem with his old friend's slacking in his art, but had previously thought that Ranma would take over the Dojo, making Soun's weakness a moot issue.
Now, however, as Soun continued the several hour long prayer of forgiveness to his wife's shrine, Genma was seriously questioning his sanity.
HR.
She stood on the challenge log, a steady stream of sweat dripping off of her forehead as she squared off against yet another warrior. Shampoo had demanded the right to explain herself, and the council had given it, but only if she could fight her way through every warrior in the village, back up to her former spot of champion.
The problem came when one considered that there were forty six warriors in the village, and they had had her fighting ten of them every day. Fortunately for her stamina and her life, this was the last. She was a towering woman by the name of Dowell, the one she'd beaten two years ago for the title of village's champion before the outsider had come and taken it away from her so easily.
Shampoo smirked, even as some more of the sweat dripped into her eyes, causing them to flinch shut. What Dowell didn't know was that being in Nerima for so long had toughened the purple haired woman up quite a bit. Leaping forward, she delivered a strong blow across the other woman's fat head with her Bonbori, staggering her. Before the mass of muscle could re-align herself, Shampoo's other mace had swept her feet, sending her crashing off of the log in a very painful looking manor.
Jumping off herself, Shampoo bowed to the elders who were watching. "I have proven myself, correct?" She asked, in formal Chinese.
The women conferred amongst themselves for a moment, before the leader nodded. "Yes, Xian Pu, you have. You may speak, but if we do not approve of what you have to say…" She said, warningly.
"I understand, honored elder." The purple haired girl said, bowing. "I merely wish to gain that which is rightfully mine." The elders nodded, escorting her back to the village's main meeting hut.
HR.
"Hmm, this one actually doesn't look all that bad." Ranma said, reading over a scroll. To his left, there was a massive pile of other scrolls, tiny trinkets, and dusty old manuals. To his right were two other piles, one much smaller than the other.
"What is it?" Haruka asked, leaning over wearily. Having seen the contents of the pile that Ranma had chosen to discard completely, she was thinking that Happosai was one sick puppy.
"A technique for removing clothing." Ranma murmured.
"A what?" Haruka asked, her eyebrow twitching.
"Huh? Oh, no, I don't want it for that!" Ranma said, hurriedly. "It'd just be useful if I could use it to remove armor or concealed weapons, that's all." He explained, as Haruka kept staring at him with a perfectly neutral expression.
"Right." The blonde said, sighing. "Is there any reason you can't just toss all of this stuff out?"
"I've already gone over this once." Ranma explained. "This is part of the anything goes, and I've got to see how much of it I can salvage." He grimaced as he looked over the contents of the next scroll. "Even if I'd rather burn it all."
"What was that one?" Haruka asked, reaching out for the scroll Ranma had just dropped in the discard pile.
"Trust me, don't look at it." He responded, shortly, before the sound of the house's front door opening reverberated through the front hall and into the kitchen. After a few moments of silence, he called out. "Who's out there?"
"It's only us, Ranma-chan!" Came Nodoka's voice, though she seemed far too cheerful.
"Hmm, I guess her visit with her parents went well." Haruka said, dryly, as the two got up and headed for the door. Her estimation swung sharply the other way as she saw Setsuna and Nodoka leaning on each other, grinning happily. The green haired woman looked much more sober than the auburn haired one, but that really wasn't saying much. "What the heck happened to you two?" She drawled, almost not believing what she was seeing.
"Aw, Setsuna-chan just took me out to have some fun, right?" Nodoka asked, her speech quite audibly slurred.
"Mom…?" Ranma said, forgetting himself in his astonishment. Quickly, he moved forward as she collapsed. "Ugh, your breath smells like the old man's after a night out with Mr. Tendo." He said, wrinkling his nose.
"I'm sorry." The older woman said, letting her head drop into Ranma's shoulder.
He was about to comment, when he felt her pass out. "Hmm, guess I know where I got my tolerance to alcohol from." He mused, carrying her upstairs to bed.
"You got her drunk?" Haruka asked, looking at Setsuna in disbelief.
The green haired woman shrugged. "It was one of those times when she needed it." She explained.
"Oh, is that what you say to the students you council?" The blonde asked, disbelieving.
"No, but she's not one of my students." Setsuna responded, shortly, before walking into the house and looking curiously at the pile of stuff on the kitchen table. "What's this?" She asked, pointing.
"Ranma brought it home. It's stuff that old guy, Happosai, owned." Haruka explained, wondering why Setsuna was so interested.
Setsuna didn't seem to hear her, as something in the larger pile of artifacts drew her attention. She reached in, past a mass of papers, and withdrew a small wooden mirror. "This…" She mumbled, astonished.
"What is it?" Haruka asked, curiously.
Setsuna jumped. "Oh, it's… it's nothing." She said, quickly, putting the mirror down on the table again, but continuing to look back at it in surprise. "I… should probably go upstairs and get to bed too."
Haruka raised an eyebrow as the older woman walked past her, all drunkenness seeming to vanish from her appearance and walk. Still, whatever had bothered Setsuna was probably none of her business.
HR.
In the darkness of Dr. Tomoe's lab, the aforementioned scientist sat at his desk, drinking a cup of tea. The Daimon that had been deployed today had done its job. True, it had been destroyed afterwards, but it had done its job.
For the moment, all he needed to do was to have peoples' heart crystals released. That would be all that would be required to determine if they were talismans or not. Yes, this variety of Daimon was perfectly capable of doing that much. "Eudial!" He called, loudly.
"Yes, professor?" A woman's voice asked, as a red haired woman, wearing a choker with a black star on it emerged from the darkness.
"The latest type of Daimon is sufficient for the start of our operation. Begin your search for pure hearted candidates immediately." The doctor said, simply.
"Yes, doctor." The girl said, fading back into the shadows as he began to laugh maniacally. Soft muttering about insane old fools could be heard, but the doctor deliberately ignored it.
END.