Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma or Inu yasha.
Chapter 16Ucchan's was a perfectly average looking restaurant. However, looks can be deceiving. The Okanamiyaki certainly wasn't average, for one thing. And neither was the owner, or the two customers coming in the door and the one that was already in a booth waiting for them.
Ranma hadn't really planned on coming with Akane to meet Rin, but she had invited him to come and he wasn't going to pass up an excuse to get away from Nodoka. He didn't like the way his mother always seemed to be watching him, or the way she slipped difficult questions into any conversation he had with her, or the way she had seemed amused, pleased even, at his and Akane's attempts to argue her into letting him stay at the Tendo's. Ranma sighed inwardly as he greeted Rin and sat down next to Akane.
He knew Akane enjoyed living in a house where she wouldn't have to pretend to be human, but she seemed as worried as he was about his curse. They had been staying as far from Nodoka as possible, and even carried around thermoses of hot water when they could, but wasn't it only a matter of time before his mother found out? He couldn't keep this from her forever.
"Hey, what can I get for you three?"
Ranma glanced up at Ukyo before ordering. She was as cheerful as ever. He and Akane had talked to her at school about her 'other job', and she told them that she didn't mix business with pleasure. Ever. So, this Ukyo was their good friend and the best okonomiyaki chef in Nerima, and the Ukyo that directed them to Sesshomarou was a complete stranger to everyone she met. Weird…but that's probably the best way to be, in a business like hers. Ukyo finished taking their orders and disappeared behind the grill.
"So," Rin smiled at them, "I understand your living with Nodoka?"
"You know her?" Ranma asked in surprise. Rin raised an eyebrow, and there was an uncomfortable pause.
"I've heard of her," she said shortly. Then Ukyo brought out their orders and Rin directed the conversation elsewhere, but Ranma's thoughts stayed on the same topic, and he was fairly sure Akane's did as well.
"Well, what do you think?" Ranma asked as soon as they had left Ucchan's behind. Akane took a short glace at him, and turned back to the sidewalk thoughtfully.
"I think she knows your mother somehow," she said. Ranma rolled his eyes.
"How'd you guess?"
"Shut up! I wasn't done yet," Akane growled. "Rin didn't seem to care if you knew that she had met your mother when she asked if we were living with her. After you spoke, though, she seemed surprised, and then she wouldn't admit anything."
Ranma sighed. That was the same conclusion he had come to. "So… in other words, we don't know enough to even guess if this is significant."
"Basically. Maybe it really doesn't matter," said Akane, sliding her gaze sideways to meet his. He let a smile play upon his lips.
"And maybe Shampoo will stop trying to kill us and marry Mousse," he said.
"Hah, I wish," Akane smiled. "Actually, Shampoo hasn't been around for a while, has she?" Ranma turned his eyes skyward in contemplation.
"I guess she hasn't," he shrugged. "Maybe she really did give up."
Of course, as soon as he finished that sentence the wind changed direction and wafted Shampoo's scent beneath their noses. It brought a variety of other scents as well, one of which belonged to Mousse, and as the wind blew by them and carried their scents with it their curiosity was peaked and they wandered stealthily in the direction that it came from. Neither of them noticed the sky begin to cloud.
There was a large, empty lot somewhere between Furinkan high and the Tendo shrine. No one had ever known it to be filled with anything but dirt and rubbish. Its only inhabitants were weeds, bugs, and – currently – Mousse and Shampoo. The two of them moved around the lot at a steady pace, Shampoo was wielding her bonbori, and Mousse would sometimes send a weapon at her, but none of the bladed ones. It made for a rather uninteresting fight, in Ranma's opinion.
They were actually moving nowhere near their top speeds, which told him they were either testing each other or… sparring. If only she would move that slowly when fighting me…Ranma frowned and shifted on the roof of a building some distance from the match. Neither he nor Akane wanted to alert the pair of their presence, so they had elected to watch from afar. He glanced at Akane, who looked about as bored and puzzled as he was, and turned his attention to the street. That was when he noticed something far more pressing than the fight between Mousse and Shampoo: Nodoka.
She looked as serene as always, her katana resting over one shoulder – he had noticed that she never seemed to put the thing down. Probably in case she caught him doing something that was not manly. He tugged Akane's sleeve and pointed to his mother, watching the slow widening of her eyes as she glanced from him to his mother and back. And then she glanced from him to the tiny old woman pointing an arrow at his mother and back.
At that moment, it didn't matter to Ranma that his mother had the ability to kill him without a passing thought. He leapt off the roof, with Akane close behind and snatched the bow from the diminutive, old miko, breaking it in half like a twig.
The woman looked shocked for all of a half-second, before glaring at him forcefully. Ranma could feel his mother's eyes on his back and Akane's presence next to him as Shampoo showed up, with no trace of Mousse, and the sky opened, and dumped its contents on the crowd below it.
Ranma's eye twitched, whether it was because of her awful luck with water, or the smell of wet cat in the air, didn't matter. Because Nodoka's eyes, glinting like her katana, were on her, and they shoved all thoughts from her mind except one: run!
And then she was a red blur across the rooftops of Nerima with Akane close behind and Nodoka even closer. Ranma didn't know that the old miko was following them until she reached the Tendo shrine and an arrow lodged itself into the side of the house beside her head. After that, she whirled to face her mother – only briefly wondering where the old woman had gotten a new bow – and her eyes were colder than she had yet seen them. Akane stood by Ranma, and three gazes locked for a moment before an arrow flew between them and they leapt apart.
"Who are you?" Nodoka asked, her voice was as sharp as her blade as her piercing gaze met the old miko's.
"I am Kho Lon, elder of the Joketsuzoku," she hissed, her glaring eyes betraying anger and disgust. "And you are a demon." With that she flew at Nodoka, whose brows had risen just slightly at the woman's introduction.
Ranma was not as close to Nodokas as Akane, and that was why it was Akane that shoved her out of Kho Lon's range. The miko whipped out an arrow, and jabbed Akane's hip with the butt of it while she passed. Akane's eyes widened as her legs folded beneath her and she fell to the ground, clutching her hip. A smirk appeared on Kho Lon's aged face and she knocked the same arrow, aiming it at Akane.
Ranma could have sworn that the next few seconds lasted for ages because, for her, time seemed to slow as the sealing arrow crawled towards Akane. A million things ran through her mind, and were pushed aside in the instant it took Ranma to form her plan. The house didn't exist, the shrine didn't exist, Nodoka didn't exist, Kho Lon didn't exist. It was only Akane and the arrow, and Ranma – who knocked shoulders with Akane and wondered if it was the last time she would touch her.
The arrow that was heading for Akane's chest wormed its way through Ranma's stomach, and she was shoved against the shrine gate and pinned there. Ranma only felt hell for an instant before she was called into deep, blissful, merciful slumber.
A/N: Sorry for the short chapter. Ok, if I spelled Cologne's name wrong, sorry, but I wanted to use the more chinese-sounding version. I am sort of going for a Kikyo/Naraku-ish relationship with Shampoo and Mousse, but a little different. Yes, Shampoo is cursed to become a cat, but Mousse is not a duck… yet. Maybe he will be, not sure. Yes, Ukyo works for Sessh and Rin. This chap. takes place a few days after the last one, in case you couldn't tell. Oh, and… ummm… please review, ok? I love reviews! Alright, thanks and bye.