Without You
I don't own Ranma ½ or the characters, however any OCs in here are mine!
Okay, so the every other weekend thing didn't work out, but guess what! Marching band is done with so now I'm free on the weekends to work on fan fics until my heart's content or until Monday comes around. I'll be updating more often now and hopefully begin to make a routine update soon, at least until Christmas time.
Thank you for your patience.
Dinner came and the Saotomes were still missing in action from the dojo.
Under most circumstances the Tendo family would have waited for their guests to return to the dojo before eating, but after years of living with the Saotome men the Tendos didn't bother with tradition. Instead, the Tendos began to eat the meal Kasumi presented for them.
Soun was the first to speak, "So Akane, what did your Uncle Shihiro send you? An early wedding present perhaps?" Soun added a wink at the end.
Akane looked up over her bowl of rice and glared at her father a bit. They just can't drop it, can they? And what's this "early wedding" assumption? Hasn't anyone figured it out yet, Ranma and I will probably never marry, Akane sighed as she put her bowl down.
"No, he just sent me a video he thought I would be interested in watching," corrected Akane with a hint of annoyance in her tone. It wasn't a lie; Uncle Shihiro did send her a tape that Akane had found interesting.
"Really," Nabiki piped up, she was obviously going to try to indirectly extract information from her baby sister. "What movie?"
Thinking quickly, Akane racked through her mind for a movie that Nabiki would not like to watch. The great thing about Nabiki was that she was picky when it came to the movies she watched. She liked current movies with romance, usually some moderate violence, it couldn't be a cutesy teen movie, and under no circumstance could it be a musical…
"He sent 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers'," Akane shrugged and Nabiki's face fell for, a moment. It fell then returned to normal but this time with a bit of suspicion.
"How was the movie?" Soun inquired as though he was interested. In reality though, he didn't think highly of television or movies; no, GO and mah jong were what he preferred at his age.
'It was great," Akane smiled, turning her eyes to Nabiki, "very cute with all the songs that they sang and the dancing was very well done." Truth be told, Akane had never once seen the movie, she only knew that it was a fairly old movie with singing and dancing.
"What was very well done?" questioned Ranma's voice as the teen entered the room with his panda father in tow.
"A movie," Akane replied, not even going to bother asking what happened. There were just so many events that could have led Genma to being transformed into his panda form, and many of those events included either one or more of Ranma's cute fiancées.
Sitting down beside Akane, Ranma quickly said grace then began to devour his food.
After a few minutes, Ranma stopped eating to ask, "What movie?"
"'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers'," answered Akane sipping her drink.
"Is that an action movie or something?" Ranma inquired after picking through his brain to find out if he knew the movie.
"No," Akane sighed, "it is a romance-musical."
Ranma made a face. "I would never have thought that a tomboy like you would ever watch those kinds of movies," he commented absently, oblivious to the fact that he called his fiancée a "tomboy".
Elbowing striking her fiancée, Akane turned back to her food with an air of bitterness.
"What was that for?!" Ranma cried, but Akane refused to say anything, instead she sat there eating with her eyes closed.
"So Ranma," Nabiki spoke up from across the table, "where were you this afternoon?"
After dinner, as promised, Nabiki lent Akane her video camera and a tripod to put the camera on. Excited to get started, Akane sprinted to the only place she could think of appropriate and private enough to do her interview, the dojo.
Akane's high hopes were crashed as she entered the dojo to find Ranma performing a kata.
Not breaking his movements, Ranma asked, "You wanna spar or something, Akane?"
Placing the camera and tripod beside the doors, Akane shook her head. There was a foreboding feeling in Akane that this was going to take a while as she approached Ranma.
"No, but I'm wondering if you mind getting out of here?"
There was a momentary pause in Ranma's movement, but the teen tried to act nonchalance. "What do you need the dojo for? If you're planning to practice then you better forget it, because you shouldn't bother to practice when I'm the one who always has to bail you out. Besides, we can share…"
"It's not that," interrupted Akane, sharply, "I need to tape something and I need to be alone to do it." It was a pathetic excuse but the problem was that it was the truth, or at least as much of the truth that she was willing to tell.
"Why do you need to be alone?" Ranma demanded. Is she taping something for that Shihiro guy? The martial artist could just picture it in his mind's eye, Akane telling the Shihiro that she was accepting his offer of…engagement…Stop thinking that! Ranma commanded, shaking his head.
Letting out a frustrated sigh, Akane began to explain her situation as though she was speaking to a seven year-old instead of an eighteen year-old. "I need to be alone so that nothing will happen to Nabiki's camera."
Ranma snorted, "With you, something is bound to happen to that thing, you'll end up dropping it or something."
Taking a deep breath and counting to ten, Akane gave her fiancée a cold glare. "Listen Ranma, you can go practice anywhere you want to but here, I need the dojo and I need to be alone to make this tape," she half-hissed.
Sensing that if he didn't move quickly that the wonderfully dreadful mallet would suddenly appear from behind Akane's back. That was one thing Ranma didn't need at that moment, to be hit because, truth be told, it did hurt if Akane hit him in the right spot.
"Fine," Ranma scoffed, leaving the dojo for the qui pond.
With Ranma gone, Akane began setting up the camera on the tripod. Bending over the camera, Akane tried to figure out how to make the blasted device worked, but she was failing miserably.
"This thing is impossible!" Akane grunted in frustration. She had to mentally restrain herself from slamming the electronic device into the floor. "Stupid thing!"
"Akane?" Startled, Akane turned around thinking to find Nabiki there ready to scold her and then try to recover information about the package from their uncle. Instead it Kasumi who the voice belonged to.
With a sigh of relief, Akane shook her head before looking up to smile at her older sister.
"Hey Kasumi, did you need my help with something?" Akane offered, starting to stand up.
"No," Kasumi quickly assured her younger sister. Noticing the camera, Kasumi gave Akane a questioning look. "What are you doing with Nabiki's camera, Akane?"
Glancing at the camera for a second, Akane quickly decided to tell Kasumi the truth, after all, Kasumi already knew what was in the package. "I'm trying to make an interview tape for Uncle Shihiro to give to the college, but this…thing is not cooperating with me." Akane let out another frustrated grunt. "Stupid thing! Work!"
Calmly, Kasumi went up to the camera and inspected it for a moment before offering, "Why don't you let me handle the camera Akane, then all you have to worry about is your interview."
"Are you sure?" Akane asked with a look of relief. There was no way that Akane was going to force her sister into doing anything that might be a burden upon her.
"Yes," smiled Kasumi as she opened the tape holder. "But you need to find a blank tape to use."
Looking inside the camera, Akane saw that her sister was right. There was no tape in the camera for use.
I should have added in a blank tape when I asked for the camera, Akane sighed as she shook her head. "I think I know where one is," she told her sister, dashing out of the dojo and up to her room.
Entering her room, Akane went straight for her closet and began digging through everything, tossing items left and right while in search of a tape. Not finding it was making Akane even more frustrated.
"Come on, I know that there was one in here. Ranma and I made that tape last year for history…Damn it!" cursed Akane, slapping aside various items of clothing and books. Kneeling on the floor Akane thought for a moment of where else she could get a blank tape. "Nabiki has one!"
Quietly, Akane exited her mess of a room and crept to her other sister's door and stopped before the duck sign.
Should I knock? she wondered, biting her lower lip. Well, I can knock softly so that when I enter and if she's there telling me to knock next time then I can just say that I did.
Decided, Akane knocked softly before entering her sister's room, only to find it empty.
"Phew." Akane was relieved since she didn't particularly want to ask her sister face to face if she could use a blank tape that would have led to either more modeling or to telling Nabiki what Uncle Shihiro had sent.
Going over to a shelf of tapes, Akane scanned the spines for a blank one. She found one at the end of the shelf, no writing on it whatsoever; it wasn't even opened from its wrapping.
"Ah-ha!"
Snatching the tape off the shelf, Akane quietly, but hurriedly, made her way back to the dojo. Waving the tape about, Akane entered the dojo only to find a chair awaiting her in front of the one wall with almost no damage. Then there was Kasumi off to the side trying to read the interview questions.
Knowing that her sister had almost no knowledge of the English language, Akane offered, "Would you like me to translate them and then you could ask them?" It would definitely make the interview a bit more professional since Akane would not be looking between the questionnaire and the camera.
Looking up, Kasumi smiled a bit bashfully as a light blush spread across her cheeks.
"I thought that I might be able to help, but I guess I should have paid more attention to my English classes," Kasumi explained, handing Akane the questions and in return Kasumi took the blank tape.
Akane just shrugged, "I don't mind re-writing these questions for you."
"Okay."
Sitting on the floor with the questions and a pen, provided by Kasumi, Akane began to rewrite the questions on the back. It was a bit difficult as Akane's mind had to change from English to Japanese then back to English.
Once all the questions had been translated, Akane handed Kasumi the sheet and took her seat in the lone chair.
"Ready?" Kasumi inquired, standing behind the camera with the questions in front of her to read.
With her heart thumping against her chest so fast, Akane took a breath to calm down. It didn't help but she knew that if she didn't get the interview over with at that moment it was never going to be done with.
"I'm ready," Akane nodded and Kasumi pressed the record button.
"Hello," Akane's English sounded a bit uncertain but controlled, "my name is Akane Tendo…"
Thank you to: The Liz, Hououza, Livvy22, cherrybloss9, Key, Jennyroseangel, WillLeung, Miko Kagome Archer, SurfAngel, and Inda
