Finally! Sorry, but everyday work got in the way of my writing... Again, thanks to all that has reviewed this story, I'm positively glowing with all the sweet words I recieve!

To the Hentai who wondered; I haven't planned a lemon chapter in this story, but I don't know if I can stop myself writing lemon-scented episodes or hintings...

So, enjoy!

The Seventh Night

His head was pounding, his back ached, several scratches itched, and he had a slight limp on his left leg. He felt extremely sorry for himself as he carefully made his way back to his room from the bathroom, irritation lying just under the surface.

#I should have known… Trust Shampoo and Ukyo to start interrogating me and fighting each other, and dragging me into the middle of it. With Mousse feeling me up, thinking I was Shampoo, my day sure poured quickly down the drain….#

He almost hissed as his bruised ribs stung, holding his side where Kuno had managed to get in a hit on him as Ranma had tried to flee. He'd just managed to break loose from Mousse and run off with Shampoo and Ukyo in hot pursuit, and had crashed into Kuno as he streaked around a corner.

#Well, I guess I should be thankful that I didn't also run into Kodachi and Ryoga… And that Akane went easy on me…#

Grinning at the thought, he remembered how she'd smacked him into orbit when she'd discovered him covered in the other girls. Her eyes had had a calculating look in them, assessing the situation, and he even recognised a fleeting look of compassion. She'd screamed her trademark 'Ranma no baka!', and smacked him with her mallet, but for some reason it didn't hurt as much as usual, and he even believed that she'd planned for him to land in the pond at the Tendo Dojo, sparing him more injuries.

Stepping into his room, he growled at his snoring father. Genma had been after him all day long, nagging about Ranma making a move on Akane, until finally Ranma had had enough and said loudly 'Do you really think that Akane is fat?' to him, knowing she was coming just around the corner. The trashing Genma had received from her was almost worth all the nagging.

Ranma didn't have time to lie down on his mat again before Akane peaked into the room, smiling brightly and waving him over to her. Trying not to show how sore he really was, he stiffly made his way over to her, and promptly was pulled painfully out of the room and after her down towards the living room.

"Hey, could you be a bit less brutal, please!" he hissed at her back.

"Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot that you're not feeling well…"

The teasing grin she gave him made him growl menacingly again, but she did slow down her pace.

"Tell you what, Ranma, why don't you go and sit outside, and I'll just go get us some snacks first…?"

Brightening at the prospect of some late night snacks, Ranma grinned happily as he almost skipped out and sat down on the bench on the porch. He stared out into the night, missing the sight of the clear stars that you seldom could see clearly in the city, but still enjoyed the chilly air and the relative silence surrounding him.

"Here, I made these earlier today when you were busy… dodging people… Heh…"

Akane walked over to him with a blanket in one hand and a plate of crisp cookies in her other hand, placing the things next to him. She quickly disappeared back inside, and returned with two glasses of lemonade, and soon she'd made herself comfortable beside him underneath the blanket, and even threw some of it to cover Ranma's feet too, offering to share the warmth it gave. Ranma accepted one of the cool glasses, and one of the golden, crisp looking cookies.

"Go on, try it..! It's really good!" Akane chirped brightly, watching him with soft eyes as he popped the cookie into his mouth.

"Mmmf… 's good…!" Ranma said with a full mouth, muffling his speech.

Akane flashed him a smile, and happily crunched on her own cookie, staring out into the neon-bright night surrounding them.

"You won't believe how much of a pain in the butt my father has been today…" Akane said conversationally. "He went on and on about how well we were getting along all of a sudden, and how we should use the opportunity it gave us to marry straight away…"

"Humpf… Pops too was nagging me about marrying you… They just won't let us be, do they…?"

For a while they both were in agreement about the total idiots their fathers were, but then they heard a rustle in some bushes nearby, and P-Chan came trotting out. Akane squealed his name, and snapped him up before the confused pig realised where he was.

"P-Chan! I haven't seen you in ages! Where have you been, baby?" she gushed over him, getting back to her seat with P-Chan placed securely in her lap.

#Oh no… Ryoga! He'll discover Akane's secret if I don't do anything to get him out of here! …And, get Akane's attention back on me…# Ranma sweat-dropped as he received a fierce glare from the pig, and didn't realise immediately that Akane was still talking.

"…surprised Nabiki hasn't tried to pump me for information yet. I guess that her guilt from the destroyed wedding is keeping her at bay for the moment, but I'm worried that she'll try to put some new bugs in my bedroom one of these days… I overheard her talking to Kasumi today about how she suspected that there was something mysterious going on between you and me."

Akane smiled at Ranma, and didn't notice the pig struggling in her arms to get free to bite Ranma. Ranma did notice though, and kept a vary eye at him, eating another cookie as he tried to keep up his end of the conversation so that Akane wouldn't get angry at him, and without giving anything away to Ryoga.

"Uhm… yeah… Your sisters have been way too quiet lately. I hope it's not a bad sign."

"We'd better be careful so they don't catch on to what we're doing during the nights. I'm having so much fun with you…" Akane blushed prettily, but her words made P-Chan trash violently, and launch himself angrily at Ranma, knocking over Ranma's lemonade.

"P-Chan! Look what you've done! Don't worry, Ranma. I'll go get a towel or something…"

Ranma sat frozen in his girl-form, looking wide-eyed at an equally shocked P-Chan in his lap. Akane had just smacked her pig over the butt as she reprimanded him, and Ranma didn't know if he should be disturbed by the thought of Akane smacking Ryoga's naked behind, or if he should laugh out loud.

Before Ranma or P-Chan could submerge from their shock, Akane returned with a towel… and a hot-water kettle…

#OH SHIT!#

"Akane, don't!" Ranma croaked, watching the kettle tip over in slow-mo.

Hot water hit him, and he felt himself change back, growing in his clothes, and a heavy weight appeared on his now male lap. Lying across his thighs face-down, naked as the day he was born, Ryoga laid frozen from the double shock, with his mouth still biting down on Ranma's hand. Akane stood perfectly still, staring wide-eyed at the sight before her, her thoughts almost visible in her dark eyes as she tried to comprehend the situation. Starting to get his mobility back, Ranma was about to shout out that it wasn't his fault, as he suddenly noticed a bright red handprint on one of Ryoga's naked buttocks. Suddenly angry, Ranma threw the blanked around Ryoga to cover him up, and rolled him off of his lap, brutally snapping Ryoga out of his denial about the situation.

"A-akane! I can explain everything!" Ryoga stuttered, wrapping the blanket more securely around him as he stood. "It's all Ranma's fault!"

"Now just hold on for one freaking second! This isn't my fault! If you'd just gotten to our duel on time, or would have just admitted having a directional problem and given up on chasing after me all the way to China, none of this would've happened!" Ranma growled defensively.

"You bastard!" Ryoga yelled, ready to pound Ranma into the ground.

"Stop it." Akane whispered silently, and both of the boys froze as if their lives depended on it. "Both of you, just stop it! I… I can't deal with this right now…"

Turning around, she walked stiffly back into the house, leaving Ranma and Ryoga alone. Ranma turned to Ryoga with an angry glare, so intense that the lost boy actually stepped back from him.

"You are going to go now, and not breathe a word about this to anyone! Or, by all the gods, I will make sure you'll pay dearly for it!" Ranma whispered menacingly, pushing Ryoga towards the street, where he found Ryoga's backpack and umbrella lying near a leaking draining pipe. "Now get lost! I need to fix the mess you've caused…"

Without waiting for a reply from Ryoga, or to see if he made it all the way to his backpack and clothes, Ranma silently leaped over to the porch with a small grunt as his leg and ribs protested again. Quickly he cleaned up any indiscriminating evidence that might have been left behind, and grabbed the last cookies before he made his way up the stairs to Akane's room, trying to build up his courage for what he was about to do. Before his hand could reach out and touch her door, Akane opened it from the inside. Staring at him with a guarded expression, she stepped aside to let him inside. Ranma gulped nervously, and tried to give her a friendly and reassuring smile as he went to sit on her desk, putting down the cookies on the table before he unintentionally crushed them in his tight fists.

The silence stretched out between them, Akane not making a sound as she sat down on her bed. Ranma looked concernedly at her, but couldn't see any signs of tears or any kind of despair. Not able to take the silence any longer, Ranma hesitantly touched her arm in a comforting gesture.

"Yo, Akane… Are ya okay?"

Locking her eyes onto his own wide ones, she just sighed softly and deflated slowly.

"Ranma? What just happened?"

"Uhm… Well, you see… I didn't know about Ryoga also having a curse until you told me to bathe him the first time – remember that night? Anyway, I discovered his secret then, and giving my word as a martial-artist, I promised not to reveal his weakness to anyone… Five minutes later, you adopted him as P-Chan…"

"But… How could you not tell me? And how did he get his curse? Does it have something to do with him always wanting to beat you up? …how could you not tell me!"

"I just told you, I gave him my word… He… he followed me and pop to China, when I wasn't waiting for him after that bread-feud thing. He's told me that he followed us all the way to Jusenkyo, and got knocked into a spring by a raging girl chasing a panda…"

"Please don't tell me… You're feeling guilty about it." Akane grumbled, rubbing her forehead.

"Yeah… I'm sorry… I didn't mean for you to get into this mess… I even tried to give you clues, but-…" Ranma cut himself off, not wanting to accidentally ignite her anger by calling her stupid or anything like it.

"…oh, no… Shit. It all makes sense now. Your reactions, your taunting… Ryoga's mysterious knowledge, the similarities between him and P-Chan… The disappearances and reappearances…" Akane's voice died out, and she glared threateningly at the floor under her feet. "Ranma, could you leave me alone to think? I'm so confused right now… Angry at you, angry at Ryoga, angry at myself… Ohmygods! I've let Ryoga cuddle up to my…! The pig! The things I told him, the things he knows!" Her eyes filled with tears, and Ranma almost panicked.

"Please, don't cry… You can hit me if you want to! Just, don't cry…"

Akane looked up at him, a couple of tears hanging stubbornly to her dark eyelashes, and smiled painfully at him.

"No, Ranma. I'm not going to hit you, not now… I need to get it right this time. Go back to sleep, we'll talk tomorrow…"

Ushering him over to the door, she suddenly seized him from behind, and hugged him briefly before she pushed him roughly out the door, locking it behind him. Ranma rubbed his offended ribs, ignoring the jump his heart had made, and prayed that Akane wouldn't plan anything too painful as her revenge on him and Ryoga.