Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma or Inu yasha.
Chapter 13The subtle sounds of pounding feet and moving bodies stifled the imperceptible whispers that passed between Akane and Ranma as they flew around the room, locked in battle. Instead of coming through the front door and announcing their presence, they had agreed to go straight to the dojo. Neither one of them knew quite why, it was only a slight sense of detachment from their families that kept them away. Akane ducked a fist and tried to go for Ranma's legs, but he leapt over her, and nearly knocked her down. She managed to dodge most of his assault.
"I think I keep too many secrets from them," Akane said, while he blocked her punch. Ranma probably would have shrugged if he hadn't been trying to dodge a shower of blows.
"It can't really be helped, though."
"I don't think you understand. You don't keep anything from your family," said Akane, blocking and dodging his counterattack. She frowned in frustration, with both Ranma and the fight. She knew his casual remark didn't really mean anything, but he could try to be a little more sensitive.
"Family?" Ranma snorted. "My old man hardly counts. It's not like we're close or anything. And if you think I don't keep things from him, you're wrong." He sent a fist to her middle, and she swerved to the side of it. "Pops doesn't understand a thing! He's a fool, but I can't say I hate him."
"I guess I can understand," Akane sighed, blocking an axe-kick. "If it was only me and Daddy, I think I would feel that way, too." Ranma looked as if he would have shaken his head sadly, had they not been in the middle of a sparring session.
"It's not just that. If I hadn't been a hanyou, I would have been engaged to Ukyo, and you. And only because the old fool was hungry! He brought me to Jusenkyou, too! I wonder sometimes just how stupid he really is…" Ranma trailed off and his brows drew together in a frown of more than just concentration. Akane moved away from his assault, and tried to get past his guard with a series of blows.
"What stopped him? From engaging you again?"
"I did," said Ranma. He dodged most of her strikes, but she managed to get pretty close. "I overheard his conversation with Ukyo's pop. If I was a human, I wouldn't have heard it or understood it, so I guess I'm just lucky that my mother has such bad taste in men."
"Where's your mother now?" Akane asked. Although she was genuinely curious, she was inwardly cursing the fact that she still hadn't managed to land a blow on him.
"I don't know… but you can't distract me that easily."
Akane growled slightly, but there wasn't much anger behind it. Ranma grinned and stuck his tongue out while leaping over a kick.
"Why can't you hold still!" she got out between breaths. She was starting to sweat, and her muscles were burning. She was far from exhaustion, but it was becoming harder to keep going.
"It's not my fault that a slow chick like you can't keep up," Ranma smirked, and continued to dodge her attacks. Yes, Akane was frustrated, and yes, she did want to hit him badly, but there was little anger in her. A short time ago she would have been fuming, but after sparring with him a few times she had come to realize that his taunts were taunts and nothing more. She was sure that even if she succeeded in becoming as fast as Ranma, he would still call her slow. And even if he succeeded in becoming the most sensitive guy in the world, she would still call him a jerk. That was the way things were; in the dojo they were fighters in every sense of the word, at the shrine they were the closest friends, and everywhere else they were somewhere in between. Or somewhere beyond that entirely.
"You jerk!" Akane shouted as she tried to smack Ranma across the face with her fist. He grinned and looked as if he were about to say something, when his face fell, and he was all seriousness in an instant. Akane stopped moving and looked at him questioningly. He nodded towards the entrance of the dojo, and then Akane could discern the sound of slow breathing from the regular evening noises and she knew it was Nabiki.
"Nabiki!" Akane said, and stomped over to the door, fully intending to open it, when Nabiki did it herself instead. Akane frowned at her sister. "You were spying on me!"
"Akane," Nabiki sighed. "You forget, that if I want to spy on you, I don't have to come down and do it myself."
"Then, would you care to explain just why you were standing outside the door?" Akane asked skeptically. Nabiki crossed her arms and stepped into the dojo, closing the door behind her.
"No. But maybe you would care to explain a few things to me."
Maybe it was the way Nabiki looked just then, her arms folded across her stomach, and her eyes cold and detached, or maybe it was the icy, determined set of her features, but something about her made Akane feel weak inside. She felt Ranma come up next to her, and hoped that she was only being foolish.
"What is it, Nabiki?" Ranma asked, he was all but growling and his voice held warning. He's protecting me…Akane took a deep breath and stood straighter, trying to look just as threatening as Nabiki did at that moment. It didn't seem to have much of an effect.
"You can start with what happened at school, and go from there."
"That's not something you should be looking into," Ranma really did growl this time, and looked as if he were readying an attack. Akane caught his eye for a moment, and he seemed to realize what he was doing. He stood back a little, and Akane turned her eyes from him to her sister.
"Nabiki, I don't want to argue with you, but it's really none of your business," Akane stated firmly. Nabiki didn't look impressed.
"I think it is my business, when my sister has been lying – not only to me – but to our whole family, and probably plenty of other… humans." Akane winced. "I'm not offended by that, I'm just proving my point."
"Why do you even want to know about this?" asked Akane. Nabiki's lips curled up slightly; it was not quite a smile, but not a smirk either.
" 'Knowledge is power'," she quipped. Akane glanced at Ranma, who looked angry, but in control, and had 'grudgingly defeated' written across his face.
"I guess we can tell you what you want to know," Akane sighed. It wouldn't be that bad, to have Nabiki know about her and Ranma's heritage… right? "But just because you have information, doesn't mean you have to act on it. Keep out of youkai business, and tell no one. That includes other demons, and especially daddy."
"I wouldn't dream of telling anyone," Nabiki said, with a satisfied smirk. Akane shook her head.
"You can dream about it all you want, we're asking you not to do it," said Ranma, voicing Akane's thoughts exactly. I was going to say that…
"Of course," said Nabiki, unfazed. She took a look at her watch, and turned to leave. "It's almost dinner time, come see me afterwards."
Then she was gone, and Ranma and Akane were left, defeated. It was a battle they couldn't have won, not against Nabiki. Akane looked around the dojo; at Ranma, at the training dummies, at the cinder blocks, and knew she had found weakness in her strength.
"I guess… we'll have to get stronger," she said, her voice floated from her lips and fell into the abysmal silence in the dojo, silence brought upon by utter defeat. Ranma only nodded, as if he were afraid to sacrifice his words to the quiet as well.
It was late at night when Ranma and Akane managed to escape Nabiki's interrogation. It escaped them both as to how Nabiki had managed to make them pay her when she was the one receiving information, but the entire ordeal made them acutely aware of their demon blood in even harsher tones. Neither of them felt they could use their beds after that, even if it was only for pretense. Humanity was as distant as it had ever been, and it felt wrong to try and imitate it. So they met at the shrine, with no prior agreement to do so, only a strong feeling, and sat on the top step, letting the moonlight bathe their furry ears, and cat-like eyes, and feral claws.
"What do you think?" Ranma asked, without preamble. Akane wasn't sure whether it mattered how she interpreted that question, and chose a topic far from Nabiki.
"I'm glad I could meet her. Rin has been a part of my life since I came to live here. I want to… stay on good terms with her, at least," said Akane thoughtfully. Her ears swiveled slightly towards Ranma, to catch his reply.
"How are you going to do that?" Another question. Akane guessed that Ranma probably didn't feel like opening up, or he had something on his mind. She would find out later.
"I guess I'll meet with her once and a while. It won't be easy, because I don't want her to meet Daddy…. He probably wouldn't recognize her anyway, but I don't want to take any chances. It would hurt him to have her choose a demon over him. And he might find out about me, if they met. I know that's kind of a selfish thing to say…" Akane trailed off and looked to the moon and wrinkled her nose distastefully. I'll be human in a few days…
"Are you sure she would choose to stay where she is?" Ranma's voice almost startled her. She turned to look at him.
"Aren't you?"
"Well, yeah…"
"I think she's lucky," Akane said, a small smile creeping onto her face. "I wish I had someone who…. Well… when is your night, Ranma?" Ranma didn't even raise an eyebrow at the quick change of subject, the heat in her cheeks, or the unfinished sentence the she was sure he knew the end of. He just sat back and looked at the moon a moment.
"Tomorrow," he sighed. "I think that's the thing I hate most about being half-demon. You already know you'll never be human, but life just has to rub it in." Akane bit her lip.
"Do you want to be human?" she asked, watching him. He seemed to be avoiding looking at her…
"No… not really. But, even though I know that we're not the only ones of our kind, I can't help feeling like we are. When I look at my old man, or Mr. Tendo, I – "
"Can't help noticing how different we are," Akane cut in, and they shared a glance that said a thousand things, but meant only understanding to both of them. Then Ranma nodded, a bare movement of his head. "It's really hard to think of them as equal, isn't it? Sometimes they seem so far above us, but then, when you try and figure out why, it seems impossible that we aren't the superior race."
"Humans are weak," Ranma said, in agreement. "They always rely on weapons to fight."
"They are scared of everything they don't understand," Akane added. Ranma gave her a sideways glance.
"They make judgments before they know anything," he continued. This time it was Akane who glanced at him.
"They consider themselves superior to everything else on the planet," she said.
"They develop too slowly."
"And too quickly."
"They can't tell when they stink."
"They won't take no for an answer."
"They're all morons, and they don't even know it."
"Ranma…?" Akane asked absently, after a short pause. Ranma had leaned back and was staring at the sky. He didn't turn to look at her.
"Yeah?"
"I wish all that were true," she sighed.
"Some of it is… but not enough…"
If it were true… was the thought that filled both their minds, maybe I could hate them.
A/N: I swear this story writes itself… maybe that's why it's so bad… Oh well… Anyway, they were kind of OOC in this chapter, but I'll try to do something about that. Nabiki is just getting information out of Ranma and Akane for now, but I'm not going to write everything they talk about because that would be boring for both of us. If you think Nabiki would have tried to blackmail them, well so do I, but she has just discovered a new species (kind of) I think she would want to be more informed before doing business. Ummm, not much else to say, except that stuff will happen next chapter, I promise! (note the references to Ranma's mother) So, please REVIEW! C ya next time.
One more thing: I need someone to pre-read my chapters, so if you want to, e-mail me at Whitearc@mail.com.