Hi guys, I finally found the time to go on with this story. I appreciate all the reviews I get, I love you people! I won't waste any of your time any more, so there goes the next chapter of the story.
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"Of Loose Gi's and Lost Focuses"
Chapter 9
Shampoo was not the smartest of girls, yet she wasn't as dumb as she appeared either. She knew what she saw and she wanted to react to that. Not only she had seen them kissing, she had also been left behind by the two, tricked into running all over Nerima for nothing. That was an insult to her Amazon pride, so she was rather angry.
She looked at Ranma, waiting for an answer.
Ranma fidgeted, trying to come up with a solution that would buy him some time. Time to prepare for a serious fight.
"Look, Shampoo, can we talk about this some other time? I mean, we have school in a couple of minutes and I don't have time to explain everything to you now…" He was interrupted by the purple-haired Chinese.
"Airen no make excuses. Do airen love kitchen-destroyer? Shampoo need answer, so she knows what to do." Her eyes sparkled dangerously, moving from the boy to Akane.
Akane stared at Ranma, half scared half expectant about what he would say.
Ranma saw her expression and cursed inside. He didn't want to hurt her, he didn't want to lie any more ('not after yesterday', he thought), and he knew he couldn't just admit it to Shampoo, because she would attack Akane immediately. Of course he also knew Akane was in no shape to survive such a fight. He just stuttered, thinking about what to do.
"Ranma, prepare to die!"
The three figures turned towards the origin of the well-known phrase.
"Ryoga!" Ranma exclaimed. 'Boy, I have never been so glad to see him in my whole life', he thought while avoiding a bandanna. Ryoga came closer and started attacking Ranma in his usual furious manner. Ranma kept dodging his attacks, being careful to leap a little further from the two girls every time, but never letting them out of his sight. Who knew what Shampoo might try to do with Akane.
"Airen stop playing with bandanna boy and answer question!" Shampoo screamed.
Akane quickly understood what Ranma was doing and decided to flee the scene too.
"Ranma! It's late! We're going to be late again! I'm going to school, and you'd better come too if you don't want to spend the morning holding buckets!" she shouted in her famous angry tone, running towards Furinkan.
Before she knew it, Shampoo found herself in the middle of the street, alone. 'Oh, well', she thought, 'I'll have time for this later. I'd better do the delivery now. Akane won't run away, and I know where to find them both.' She smiled viciously, picking up her bicycle and continuing her trip.
Ranma lost Ryoga a couple of blocks away and roof-hopped to the school just in time to see Akane entering the building. He'd have to thank Ryoga for his help with Shampoo. Or rather not, he decided on second thought, Ryoga might want to know what was Shampoo so angry about and Ranma wasn't ready to tell him either.
He ran to his class and even managed to avoid punishment. Glancing at Akane, he noticed her looking back and half smiling at him. 'Thank kami, she isn't angry!'
School was boring as usual. At lunch time, Ranma and Akane behaved as they usually did, which meant they didn't try to be too close but they didn't avoid each other either. A couple of secret glances that they had managed to exchange had kept Akane happy and bubbly all through the classes, while Ranma pretended to sleep so that he could watch Akane without anyone noticing.
He was thinking about Shampoo's words. He knew there would be a fight, it was inevitable. And he also knew Akane would hate him if he interfered. Which left him with only one acceptable option: training her. Properly. And without anybody noticing it: if Cologne should find out, she would definitely try something funny to prevent her from learning. The only way he knew to keep such training from Cologne was not telling anybody. Not even Akane. The only safe secret is a secret no-one knows about, right?
On the way home, Ranma jumped on the fence again and Akane looked at him surprised.
"Are you going to be up there?" she asked.
"Yup. I gotta keep in shape. So should you, as a matter of fact," he added nonchalantly.
"Are you saying I'm out of shape?" she almost growled.
"I'd say so, yes. I bet I can get home running on the fences, go in the dojo and do fifty push-ups before you even get there."
She saw red.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah. And if I do, you have to do my homework for literature too," he smirked. He hoped his plan would work. Heck, he knew it would.
"Oh yeah?" she yelled even louder. "Ok, then, you've got a bet."
"Fine. Let's go." He said and started running, leaving her staring at him for a couple of seconds. Just as he had planned. She would have to do her best not to loose too badly. Of course she could never win against him, he thought, grinning.
"Hey, that's not fair!" she shouted at last, running after him with all she had. She was used to her morning jogs but she never ran too fast in the mornings, so she quickly found her self out of breath.
Ranma was way ahead, of course, but she wouldn't give up. Ok, he might come home before her – just because he had cheated, anyway – but she wouldn't let him do a single push-up. She would 'push' him up herself, with her mallet.
She finally reached the Tendo residence and ran directly to the dojo.
"Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight…"
She saw him in the middle of the training hall, doing push-ups. 'Forty-eight?' she thought. 'He couldn't possibly have done all those push-ups already, I saw him right in front of me just seconds ago! He's cheating!'
"Hey", she yelled, trying to conceal her lack of breath. "You're cheating! You've just come, I saw you!"
"… forty-nine and fifty!" he finished, unconcerned with her outburst. He was expecting it. He was counting on it. He smiled inwardly. "There, you lost and I didn't cheat."
"Of course you did! You couldn't possibly have done all those push-ups in the few seconds you were here before me!" she pointed out angrily again, still standing at the door of the dojo.
"How would you know, you weren't even here! So I expect to get a very good mark for my literature homework…"
"What? You…" she charged, her lack of breath forgotten. "… cheater!" And she throw a series of punches toward him, missing him each time, as usual.
"What? Why are you angry anyway? You lost, I won, it was fair and square, so now you have to…" Ranma teased on, dodging her attacks in his usual way, making her just barely miss and thus infuriating her even more.
"I don't have to do anything!" she yelled between a kick and a punch. "You cheated from the beginning, running off without warning, and you cheated on the push-ups, too!"
She was getting angrier and angrier and so she was trying harder and harder to hit him at least once, as she always ended up doing. Her anger made her attacks clumsier and easier to avoid for Ranma. The only problem was she was still wearing her school uniform. Which meant she was wearing a skirt. All those kicks and jumps were doing nothing to conceal her beautiful legs from his view and he was getting rather hot. He didn't want to find himself in an embarrassing situation again, especially not when Akane was this angry, so he decided to end the session as quickly as possible.
Akane of course had no idea about what was going on in Ranma's mind. Her feelings for him were forgotten for the time being – after all, she had been hiding them for so long that knowing somewhere in her heart that he felt the same way wasn't really toning her anger down a bit. She attacked again and again, with all her clumsy strength, not bothering with the fact that her skirt flew up every time she kicked toward Ranma's head, nor was she aware that her blouse had been pulled out of her skirt and that a couple of buttons had come undone. She was so furious with her fiancé that the rest of the world disappeared. In fact, at a certain point, everything disappeared. Even Ranma.
She stopped in mid-punch and looked at the spot he had been half a second before. Where the hell…?
She felt her legs swept from under her and fell hardly on the floor, with a body pinning her down.
How…?
She was breathing hard, but so was he. He was glad she was too upset to notice it, though. He grinned at her.
"Tired?"
She tried to move, but couldn't do anything.
"Get off me, you pervert!" she yelled.
"Hush!" he said, quietly, "you wouldn't want the whole house to come in and see us now, would you?"
Akane gasped, thinking about their position. After the suspicious glances everybody had given them that morning, they would be in deep trouble.
That morning… Everything came back to her. Her feelings submerged her and the anger momentarily vanished.
Ranma noticed the change in her expression but wasn't sure what it meant.
"Ranma…" Akane said, softly, looking into his eyes. "Why?"
"Why what?" he asked, defensively, still pinning her to the floor.
"Why are you teasing me this way? I thought…" she looked away sadly.
Ranma gulped loudly. 'Damn', he thought, 'I need to train her, but I don't want to hurt her feelings like this…'
"Come on", he said out loud. "You know how I feel about you. I told you I … love you." I was still kind of hard to say, though it got easier every time, he thought inwardly.
Akane blushed, looking at him again, suddenly aware of his body practically lying on top of hers.
"Then why?" she repeated.
"Because it's fun ," he said simply. He lowered his head and kissed her.
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I know, I know, don't kill me. It's sort of a cliff hanger and with the frequency of my updates, I know I might receive death threats. Bear with me, please…
I also know the mood is all different in most of the chapter. I know the sparing scenes suck and I admit I can't write them any better. Then again, I don't really think it matters that much. If you are an action lover, insert your own description at the right point, I won't mind.
Oh, and if you love Shampoo, I'm sorry, I don't really hate her but I don't love her either. In this story she can't really have a nice role, so you'd better find something else to read… Oops, am I telling the plot ahead? Nah. Don't believe me too much because I don't have the details figured out yet so even I don't know yet!
Anything else? Oh, perhaps you'd like to know Ukyo is coming in next chapter. And we haven't seen all from Ryoga in this fic yet. Hope I got you curious, so you'll come back for more.
Ok, I'd better stop now, since I'm just being silly anyway. Forgive me. Review if you feel like it. Either way, I'm happy you read the story. And if you want your opinion to matter, write it down. ~_~
See you all soon!
PS
Yay, I must have been really tired not to notice such a banal error. Thanks to Minakane for telling me about it! Muah!
