Spilt Sauce; Chapter Two
By Silver Vaporeon
Well, we're getting closer to the main plot now. We have ourselves a battle scene here, folks! *ooh ahh*.
Thoughts are in italics and ***'s signify a scene change. And did I mention that Ranma ½ or its characters do not belong to me at all? Be glad that it doesn't. Lord knows how screwed up I'd make it…
****
The hands of the two teenagers clutched at their long hair in conditioned reflex.
"Yes, dat's right, keikis! Youse two gets da buzzcut!" The principal lunged at Ukyo first and would have sliced her hair in one go if Ranma didn't rush in front of her and give their principal a kick to the face. Ukyo blushed slightly. She was never one to enjoy being the damsel in distress but the thought of her darling "Ran-chan" protecting her was enough to make her heart skip a beat.
"Is that palm tree screwed on too tight or somethin', ya loony? Ukyo is a g-" Ranma started to say before Ukyo jabbed him in the ribs. Ranma doubled over and clutched his stomach, giving Ukyo an angry look before remembering that the chestnut-haired girl had registered at the school as a boy and that the punishment for impersonating another person was expulsion from the insane asylum known as Furinkun High School. All the students might have known that she was indeed, female, but the head of the school did not. All he knew that on the days that when a girl by the same name showed up at school, the boy Ukyo Kuonji was absent and vice versa. They might have the same name, but they were of completely different genders in the school registration records. Principal Kuno rubbed at the offending sting on his cheek and jabbed at Ranma who dodged and ducked every attack. Ukyo removed her large battling spatula from her bandolier again and swung at the man, which distracted him for a moment.
"Ran-chan! We'd better run!" Ukyo grabbed Ranma by his pigtail and took off, running as fast as her sneakered feet would take her. Her ponytail smacked her in the face as she glanced back to see Principal Kuno chasing after them with mouth curled back into in insane smile and his tongue hanging out and flapping around like the tongue of an extremely hyper dog sticking his head out of a moving car.
Well, at least Miki is safe…but what about us? Ukyo thought as she rounded the corner of the main building.
"Hey! Ow! Ucchan! Can you let me go now? HEY!" Ranma tried desperately to gain Ukyo's attention. His hair felt like it was going to be ripped out of his head. His fiancée released him at last when they had covered some distance. Ukyo, out of breath, leaned uneasily against her metal weapon. Ranma bit his lip. It was partially his fault that the Principal was after her as well as him and it was a martial artist's duty to protect women, not put them into danger. Ranma placed a strong hand on the girl's shoulder and she blushed what would have been a notable blush if she weren't red in the face already from all the running.
"Ucchan. Since you're tired, go hide behind those bushes over there," he said, pointing at a cluster of bushes under some trees. "I'll try to lure that psycho away."
"R-Ranma.." Ukyo tried to protest but her will was crumbling as her heart won over her rational mind's objections.
"Don't worry 'bout me, just do it!" Ranma picked Ukyo up and placed her in what he deemed a suitable hiding spot behind the foliage. Ukyo, being too stunned by Ranma's actions, sat down looking back at him like a small child. Ranma winked. "I'll be fine." He took off again and Ukyo saw him taunting their school's headmaster as he finally rounded the school and saw Ranma. She gave a small sigh of relief as the two disappeared.
Ukyo felt the heat rising to her face. It was one of those things she loved about her fiancé. He was always so strong and thinking of other people in dangerous situations. He was to be her fine husband; a match made in heaven. They'd have fine children too….a girl and a boy would be nice though she'd love whatever children she and Ran-chan would create together with all her heart. Yes, it was a bright looking future.
"Ran….chan…" she murmured, smiling a bit with her eyes closed. Fantasizing about her and Ranma's future was one of her feminine pastimes. Surely one day he'd come up to her with a twinkling in his eye saying that he had pushed the others aside just for her. And then….
*BOOM*
"WHERE AM I?!"
The loudly-posed question that had followed the equally loud otamatapiea snapped Ukyo (quite unpleasantly) from her reverie. She whipped around and saw that the person who had interrupted her thoughts was none other than the direction-less Ryoga Hibiki. He brushed back his mussed hair which looked as if it had not been washed in weeks. His trademark exhausted scowl was etched into his face as he looked at the generic forest scene around him. He hadn't seen the annoyed girl that was sitting a few feet away from him yet and he pulled himself from the hole he had created with his bakusai tenketsu technique. Apparently, the boy had lost his way again to who-knows-where and had resorted to tunneling miles through the rocky soil.
"What are you doing here?" Ukyo asked in a rather annoyed fashion with narrowed eyes accompanying her voice. Ryoga whirled around with umbrella in hand and thrust it forward ready to attack, the tip of it only inches away from the non-flinching girl's throat. It wasn't often he had come across attackers but they did pop up now and then. When his eyes met Ukyo's, he relaxed and replaced the heavy weapon back onto his backpack.
"Oh. It's just you," Ryoga stated. The girl he was speaking with narrowed her eyes further. She was not pleased that the bandanna-ed boy crouched in front of her had disturbed her from her flowery dream sequence at all; not to mention being referred to as "just you".
"What do you mean, 'just you'?" Ukyo demanded. "And you still didn't answer my question!"
Ryoga turned his head away. "…I am looking for the Tendo Dojo."
Ukyo was half-tempted to bash the boy silly with her own heavy choice of weaponry but instead, she groaned and smacked her forehead with her hand. It figured that the boy would get lost and end up at Furinkun on the one day that Ranma actually paid some special attention to her. Ryoga, being tired and hungry from his hundred-mile trek across the country of Japan in search of the dojo, scowled. He was defiantly not in the mood to be reminded of his sense of direction…or his lack of, in any case. His sensitive nose detected the lingering scent of cooking okonomiaki on Ukyo's clothing and his stomach was doing crazy gymnastics in its fervor. He bit his lip with his right canine tooth peaking out.
"…do you happen to have anything to eat?" he asked, trying to sound polite. He had found out that people usually gave him food when he asked in a nice and calm fashion, rather than when he grabbed them by the hem of their shirts, begging for food when his stores ran out. The attempt brought no sympathy from the okonomiaki cook who only glared at him some more.
"No, I don't, you moron," Ukyo turned the other cheek. The jackass actually had the audacity to disturb her and then ask her for food! Ryoga sighed.
"…then can you at least show me where the Tendo Dojo is?" he asked again in the same tone. Ukyo gave him a look of pure disgust as if he had done something outlandishly stupid.
"Right before I have to go back to class, Ryoga? Geez, you really know how to pick the times to annoy people!"
"You don't have to be so rude," Ryoga replied, equally irritated. It was hard to be nice to girls and it was very hard to remember that Ukyo Kuonji was in fact a 100% girl. One that bound her chest with sarashi, yes, but a girl nevertheless. For a moment, the two teenagers glared at each other without an exchange of words. It had only been a few months since the whole "Tunnel of Love" fiasco had occurred and the two were still constantly arguing about whose fault it was that the supposed flawless plan flopped. Forgetting her predicament, Ukyo stood up and climbed over the bushes. She didn't want to even spend another minute with the bull-headed boy.
"See you later, Ryoga," she said as she walked away.
"Hey! HEY!" Ryoga called out, remembering that Akane went to Furinkun High School as well. "Show me where Akane is at least!"
"Don't follow me around, you jackass!"
*****
Akane Tendo was at her desk eating lunch when Miki burst into the room, panting with his hair in a tangled mess and his glasses askew. She glanced at him with puzzlement. Miki was not the athletic nor easily-excited type and yet he could have been mistaken as either or both in the state he was in.
"What's going on, Miki?" she asked. Miki opened his mouth to reply when the rest of the classroom boys burst in and hid under their desks covering their heads with shaking arms. Akane raised an eyebrow and looked to Miki again. Perhaps it was another earthquake drill.
"P-Principal Kuno," Miki managed to get out and pointed shakingly at his unkempt hair. "I had grown my hair a bit longer these last few months and I sorta forgot about his rule about long hair on boys. Guy chased me around the whole school."
"Oh," Akane stated, remembering the last few skirmishes between Ranma and the school's principal about his pigtail. "Where is he now?"
"Chasing Ranma. He and Ukyo saved my hide," the boy replied. Akane stood up.
"Ukyo was with Ranma?" she asked, a bit too excitedly. Miki nodded. Akane bit her lip. She didn't know why it would make any difference if Ranma were dancing around naked with a deranged octopus instead. Okay, so that image would be disturbing and all but still. Any mention of Ranma's other fiancées would send Akane into a state of absolute fury and she had no idea why. Of course, Akane wouldn't know why but everyone else knew. Akane nearly choked as a pair of powerful arms came up from behind and hugged her tightly and the irritating feel of hair rubbing against neck sent chills down her spine.
"Akane Tendo! Worry not about that scoundrel you've been forced to call your fiancé! Seek comfort in these faithful arms of mine, my angelic beauty!" Gaining her senses a second later, her right fist shot up and connected with Tatewaki Kuno's chin. He let go and fell over onto the other desk in a slight daze. The other boys got up and gathered around, gawking at the sight and prodding at the fallen kendoist with the backs of their pencils, rulers, etc.
"Kuno! Why are you in this room?!" Akane demanded. Kuno blinked and sat up, fully recovered. He ran a large hand through his hair, chuckling. The act would have caused many a maiden to melt into a puddle of warm romantic goo on the floor but of course, Akane was no such maiden and thus was unaffected by Kuno's manly charm.
"But to see my fair Akane, of course!" he replied. Standing up, he spread his arms out wide. "Come and let us embrace, my love!" He moved towards her but was stopped by the usual foot in his face. His hands continued to attempt to touch his love in vain, snatching at empty air.
"Not right now, Kuno. Not now, not ever," Akane furrowed her eyebrows, emphasizing on the "ever".
" 'ey! Ranma an' the principal are still runnin' around down there!" a boy in the class announced from the window and instantly, the boys in the room had their faces plastered to the glass to watch. Indeed, the Chinese-clothed boy was continuing to lead the headmaster around the school courtyard in a twisting and turning fashion. Akane removed her foot from her stalker's face and clambered over heads and under legs until she reached the glass.
"Ranma!" she exclaimed. She threw open the window, nearly sending the tightly-knit group falling out onto the field like a barrelful of monkeys. She called his name again without getting his attention.
"Why if it isn't the old man! And Ranma Saotome!" Kuno observed, neglecting to speak in his usual Shakespearian prose. He wrinkled his brow in thought. Two of the people he hated most in the world…conveniently in the same spot and distracted in their own little squabble and making the loudest ruckus in the history of Nerima…
"I, Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Thunder of Furinkun High, shall fly into the battle and bring you both to your knees for disrupting the peace!" he jumped out the third story window and landed neatly on the soft grass in a crouched position. He then stood at full height. With bokken in hand, he stood his ground, looking very intimidating. The kendoist held out his sword and shifted his position as to stand sideways with his back leg supporting the majority of his body weight.
"Hold, varmints! You have disrupted the peace of our beloved institution of education as we partake in our midday meal! I, Tatewaki-UMPH!" he didn't get to finish his sentence as a Chinese slipper got intimate with his face as the owner ran over rather than past him. The Blue Thunder fell over in a daze before the wind got knocked out of him as his father trampled him. Nabiki Tendo walked by and looked at the pathetic-looking man that lay before her decorated with various footprints.
"Kuno-baby, you really have to find a better place to sleep," she said with a rather large slice of sarcasm.
******
"I said LEAVE * ME * ALONE!"
"Just let me see her!"
Ukyo Kuonji reached her own breaking point and removed her large spatula from her bandolier. With terrifying ease, she brought it around in a large arch and then swung it backwards with a single hand where it made contact with the Lost Boy's face before he even realized her previously clenched hand had left her side. Ryoga Hibiki's body twitched in pain before he fell away from the metal surface and landed dazed onto the walkway with an awkward KOed expression on his face. Ukyo replaced her weapon and glared at Ryoga angrily. She tossed back her hair and gave a small huff of irritation.
"I've already told you that I am BUSY right now so do me a favor and don't talk to me," The okonomiaki chef continued walking towards the area she had demonstrated her "martial arts cooking". The thought of leaving her supplies in the open for people to steal was not a good one at all. A thundering of feet drew her attention and she lifted her head to see Ranma and the Principal running straight towards her.
Ukyo mentally slapped herself; she had forgotten about Ran-chan telling her to stay in the bushes. Damn that jackass! She thought as she turned on her heels and ran in Ryoga's direction. The Lost Boy had regained some consciousness and saw two girls in boy school uniforms running towards him. Then he shook his head and confirmed that there was only ONE girl in a boy's school uniform running in his direction.
"Hey! Did you change your-" he started before Ukyo ran passed him, followed by Ranma and a psychopathic principal with a palm tree growing out of his head. Ranma's eyes widened as he turned his attention to the front and saw his spatula'ed friend running in front of him with her ponytail flouncing from one side to another as she ran. The small strand of white fabric she used to tie her hair back had come loose and slid down a little below her shoulders but the girl didn't take notice as there were much more important things on her mind.
"I thought I told you to stay in the bushes!" Ranma panted as he caught up with his fiancée. Ukyo bit her lip. It would have been stupid to say that she had FORGOTTEN to stay in the foliage so she opted for the next best thing: lie.
"I couldn't leave you alone to fight this psycho, Ran-chan!" she cried.
"I can handle him myself! Just get somewhere where you won't get hurt!"
"Ran-chan!" Ukyo objected. "You know I can't do that! And besides, it will be harder for him to choose who to go for if we stay together!" Ranma shook his head at Ukyo's last statement and pointed towards the bushes at the edge of the school.
"This is no time for arguing! Go stay in the b-" he was interrupted by a man clad in yellow who had caught up with the two. Ryoga turned to Ukyo, determination still burning strong in his eyes. He grabbed onto her shoulder as they ran.
"Please! Tell me where Akane is!" he pushed the question forward again. His heart was close to exploding from the anticipation. He hadn't seen Akane for three weeks and oh how he wanted to see her again, not to mention sleeping with her again as P-chan and taking in her warmth….
"Go away, you stupid jackass! This is all your fault!" Ukyo's sharp voice cut through his thoughts. She batted his large hand away and pulled forward with a burst of energy.
"My fault?! I don't even know what is going on!" he argued. Ranma was supposed to be the designated scapegoat of the series, not him.
"Then get lost!"
"I am ALREADY lost!"
Ukyo growled in frustration, her patience wearing thinner than tissue paper. This was supposed to be a special day for her and now Ryoga was spoiling her once pristine mood.
"I be taking da first move!" a heavily accented voice rang out behind them. The three teenagers leapt and scattered three ways as a barrage of sheers and razors whizzed through the air, which became embedded in the concrete. Ranma rolled over back onto his feet quickly and launched himself into the air. He extended his strong right leg out which connected with Principal Kuno's jaw. He then flipped himself back lithely and landed neatly on his feet. Only slightly dazed by the blow, his opponent jabbed at him with his sharp instruments of battle. Forced to dance around the blades of doom, Ranma could not execute his special attack, the Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken. The inevitable trip occurred and Ranma found himself on the ground. He took the opportunity of the disadvantage to shift his weight to one side and swing his free leg around to knock the tanned man off balance.
"Take that!" Ranma yelled as he heaved himself from the ground to meet the Principal eye-to-eye who had just gotten his balance back. He was about to execute his attack of lightning-speed punches when a familiar loud battle cry broke through.
"Saotome! Prepare to die!" Tatewaki Kuno, aged seventeen
joined in the fray, swinging his wooden bokken at the pig-tailed martial
artist. Ranma let out a moan reminiscent
of a child's who had discovered he had extra homework to complete. Taking care
of one Kuno family member was more than enough for what he considered his
sanity to take.
"Not now, you idiot! YOW!" he cried before ducking to avoid the sharp tip of Tatewaki's sword that would have found its new home in his forehead. Principal Kuno mistook his son's aggressive jabs at the delinquent student as a form of allegiance to his father and joined in the lovely game of trying to impale Ranma with sword and shear.
"Ran-chan!" Ukyo turned around to see her beloved fiancé in danger of becoming the Japanese version of Swiss cheese. She then glared at Ryoga who came to stand by her to ask her more questions. She furrowed her eyebrows and grabbed ahold of Ryoga's yellow sweater, glaring.
"Make yourself useful, Ryoga!" she demanded and shook him angrily. Ryoga looked down at the shorter girl.
"Will you show me Akane?" he asked. Ukyo let out another exasperated sigh. Not only was he stupid and pitiful, he was unrelenting.
"Just shut up and maybe I will!" she said exasperatedly. "Now go help Ranma!" she booted him into the already confused battle. Ryoga nearly got scalped by the Principal's sheers and then had to backflip out of Kuno's attack range as he came between the kendoist and Ranma. Ryoga collected himself and took out his iron umbrella. He quickly opened it and hurled it into the fray. He succeeded in sending both Kuno and Ranma flying into a tree where they got tangled in the branches which greatly annoyed the already irritated Ukyo. She walked up to Ryoga and smacked him on the head with her large spatula which vibrated metallically. Ryoga didn't feel much pain but he got the idea that the girl was angry with him.
"You jackass! You weren't supposed to hit Ranma!" she cursed him. Ryoga shrugged.
"He's not in danger any more, is he?" he pointed at the tree. "He's safe and sound in that tree!"
"You are missing the point, you idiot!" she argued.
"I upheld my end of the deal," Ryoga was reaching his own breaking point. "Where is Akane?"
"Will you shut up about Akane already?!" Ukyo roared.
Ranma awoke first and opened his eyes. As they adjusted in a similar way that a telescope does, they saw a man in a blue Hawaiian shirt with sheer in hand silently (for once) approach the argumentative girl who was too absorbed in her squabbling with the bandannaed boy who had not noticed the man either. The armed hand came up….the weapon gleamed in the sunlight…
"Ukyo, look out!" Ranma shouted
With hardly any time for the girl to react, the razor came around, slicing at her head. Ukyo shrieked and whipped around to avoid the razor cutting her neck, only to have the same weapon slice quickly through her jacket, bandolier and sarashi in several areas as it continued on its downward path. The girl staggered back in slight shock, causing her shredded upper clothing to fall off in shreds. Ukyo felt the tightness around her chest suddenly loosen and realized a moment too late that her sarashi had fallen apart as well. Quickly, she covered her chest with her hands, trying to keep the tatters of the chest bindings from revealing the skin they once covered. The principal stopped in shock as he noticed the sudden change in the boy he thought he was up against.
"A-A-A wahine?!" he gasped as the guilty razor fell from his hands. "Da Big Kahuna has made terrible boo-boo!"
The girl bit her lip. Her secret was of no more. Now the head of the school knew her true gender as did the ignorant students of the school. It was impossible to hide anything as the proof was in plain view despite of her frantic attempts to hide evidence of her true gender. A crowd of murmuring students circumscribed the area. Ukyo wanted to die, to evaporate from the circle that the student body created around her. But she couldn't look away from the inquiring eyes, or break down and cry; she was a strong girl who had been pretending to be a man and she wasn't about to let go of her tough "unbreakable" image although her manly identity had been thoroughly shattered. She was vaguely aware that her head felt significantly lighter but emotions of fear and deep shame overshadowed her concerns of damages. Blue eyes locked with shocked or condescending mahogany ones. She finally looked down, unable to meet the gaze of her peers. She then saw long lengths of brown hair at her feet pitifully bound loosely together with a strand of white fabric. A cautious hand reached back to her ponytail. Or at least where it used to be. Her fingers found loose strands of short hair ending slightly below her jaw line. It hit her like a ton of cement: sixteen years' worth of hair had been cut away from her as well as her alter ego. She hugged the shredded material of her uniform and sarashi closer to her chest and tasted blood as she bit her tongue to keep from exploding into a fit of tears.
"U-Uchan…" Ranma murmured in shock as he started to untangle himself from the tree branches. Tatewaki Kuno closed his eyes and turned his head away, ashamed of his father's doings.
Ryoga opened his mouth but lost his ability to speak as Ukyo glared at him accusingly. Fire burned within her eyes, marking the Lost Boy as her target. They told him clearly that forgiveness was beyond consideration. Ryoga stepped back. He had never seen a girl so angry before. The loud irate screaming and yelling he received because of several failed "break-Ranma-and-Akane-up" schemes were nothing compared with the silent ones she conveyed. He was not the man who had sliced her hair and clothes but he felt a pang of guilt shoot through him all the same. He finally looked away, unable to meet her accusing gaze.
"Hey, look! Ukyo actually has a chest!" a delinquent finally spoke up, jabbing his friend in the ribs. A howl of laughter and catcalls burst out from his equally delinquent group, attracting glares from others in the crowd who otherwise did nothing to stop their taunting. Ukyo grit her teeth. Tears of bitter shame threatened to burst through and she could only hope that the wall she had built around her emotions would hold.
"Man, I wonder why she hides it all the time," his friend chimed in loudly. More hoots and hollers followed, hammering away at the weakening defensive wall within her. Utterly humiliated, she silently burst through the crowd, knocking many students out of her way and ran off the school grounds and disappeared quickly into the residential streets.
The students remained silent, stunned by the whole incident except for the delinquents who continued laughing and making crude comments about the girl.
Ranma finally got out of the tree and punched the leader of the bullying group in the face. A bokken came hard upon the head of his accomplice and the two troublesome boys fell to the ground. The rest of the group became silent as Ranma and Kuno silently challenged them with serious expressions.
"You have some nerve laughing at her like that!" Ranma admonished them. "She had gone through enough today and you idiots had to make it worse!"
"Alas, I have been shown the days of chivalry are gone for you cowardly men have not shown a dishonored maiden proper courtesy and dare instead make such salacious comments about her body. Be gone with ye!" Kuno commanded and the members of the small group tripped over each other in trying to get away. Kuno then turned to his fellow students.
"I want all of you to return to your classrooms and not a word from any mouth!" he pointed with his bokken at the school building. The students began to leave. Ranma looked at Kuno, silently thanking him for one of his better actions as the kendoist marched the students back into the building. The pig-tailed martial artist then looked at Ryoga who had seated himself on the ground. He was looking at the ground in silent thought with the look of a puppy that knew that it had done something terribly wrong on his face. Ranma sighed and bent down to meet Ryoga's gaze.
"Ucchan's strong, don't worry 'bout what happened, Ryoga. I…I am sure she's gonna be alright," Ranma said, half believing himself. He searched around in his mind for anything else he could say to reassure them both. "She….she has that huge martial arts food-preparation exhibition to look forward to. I am sure she'd be able to pull herself together for that. You'll see, right after school, she'll be serving giant okonomiaki in the vacant lot as promised. But as for this guy…." Ranma pointed where the Principal used to be. Apparently he had disappeared when everyone was distracted by the delinquent students. Ranma growled angrily and snapped his fingers. It would be a long time before he would ever see the psycho again after an incident such as the one that had just occurred.
"And how do you suppose she'll make her 'giant okonomiaki' without spatulas?" Ryoga finally spoke. Ranma glanced where Ryoga was looking and saw that Ukyo had left her beloved battle spatula and sliced bandolier with her arsenal of spatulas behind along with her shorn hair.
END PART TWO
*****
yay….I got this chapter done (I liked writing the classroom scene. That was cool). You know I realized that the whole hair-cutting idea was nearly the same as Takashi's about three-fourths through the scene? Heh…so before you start screaming at me for major unoriginality…. no, I didn't intend it to be a rip-off of that but meh, there it is anyways. Now you know what a ding-dong bimbo I am. Har har. _-_
Reviews greatly appreciated as always. Share the love.
-SV