Last Time: What Ranma saw..
This Time: What Ranma's gonna do about it...

"WITHOUT RANMA" Part Six
By Shikoku and Steel

After the hot water finally reached the top of the Tendo's
bathtub, Ranma shut it off. He stared at the water,
longingly, knowing that it was REALLY going to hurt when he
tried to get in. But the water was tempting enough, so Ranma
dropped the towel covering his manly aspects, but couldn't
quite cover the scratches and bruises and welts and other
pretty painful things that covered his body and stepped into
the tub.

Hissing to himself as the hot water sloshed into his
injuries, Ranma thought back on the events that had brought
to where he was at this moment in time..

Cue Funky Flashback Effects

On the ground below Ukyo's window, Ranma lay, looking almost
dead. He groaned to himself in pain, before opening one eye.
What he saw, was a blurry fuzzball..

It took him a couple seconds to realize that it was a cat.
Once he had, however, all thoughts vanished and the only
thing in his head was pure, unadulterated FEAR. And what did he

do about it?

He screamed like a girl, started running around in little
circles and almost fell into a dumpster.

But something was different this time. When he got up the
cat stayed with him instead of slipping off his chest. If
his brain had been working he would have known that the cat
was somehow tied to him.. instead, all he knew was that he
couldn't shake the cat off..

The cat wasn't too happy about this either. The tom let this
be known by scratching and clawing at Ranma which only made
Ranma more frantic..

And he screamed more and ran around in more circles.

If he hadn't been half crazed with fear, he would've
realized that three certain young women were laughing their
guts out at him.

But nope, Ranma was already gone.. and he started
merowing...

"Duck and cover!" Akane yelled, tackling both Shampoo and
Ukyo to the ground.. and she stayed on top of them.. to
protect them, yeah, that's it...

And if you believe that, we have a tower in downtown Tokyo
to sell you..

Anyway, Ranma went down on all fours, merowing and hissing.
The ally cat took a flying lesson. He turned toward where
the girls were laying with his pig-tail sticking straight
out. "Rrrrrrooooowwwwwrrr!" he stated.

"Here kitty, kitty, kitty.." Akane called, holding out her
hand to him..

At the sound of that voice, Ranma-cat perked up. "Merow!" he
said happily and started scampering toward Akane.

Akane sat up and Ranma plopped into her lap, purring in
contentment. Akane made a face. "How revolting.." she
muttered.

"Hurry up and get it over with, A-chan.." said Ukyo, who had
her arms crossed and didn't look happy to watch this..

"Yes, this making us too too jealous.." added Shampoo who
also didn't seem to like this..

"Ok ok, gimme a minute. This doesn't happen instantaneously
you know." Akane replied. She then started scratching
Ranma's head as if he was nothing more than a common house
cat. The purring increased in volume and he started doing
'Happy Claws'..

The other two girls watched Ranma being pampered by Akane,
enviously. They both wanted the cat treatment next.

Akane yawned. Gads this was boring. There were TONS of
things she could think of that were FAR more.. Interesting.
"Geez he's heavy.." she grumbled to no one in particular.
"My legs are numb.."

"Didn't you use to like doing that?" Shampoo asked, out of
curiosity.

The short haired martial artist thought about it. "I don't
think I liked doing THIS particular thing, I think it was
that I just liked having him near me.." she answered,
scratching behind one of Ranma's ears.

"You did?" Ukyo asked, slightly surprised. It was hard to
remember that she once had been madly in love with Ranma,
too.

Akane shrugged. "Used to." she said. "Now I can barely
remember why I even liked him.. He's nothing more than an
obnoxious jerk now."

Ukyo and Shampoo took in a sigh of relief as one. Neither
really wanted to lose Akane to Ranma..

Akane looked to the two of them with a slightly amused
expression. "Don't worry guys," she said. "You have NO
competition from Ranma what-so-ever. He had his chance and
he blew it, I'm sticking with you guys for a long time." She
grinned.

"Good, cause you ain't getting rid of us that easy, A-chan."
Ukyo grinned down at her.

"Yes, friends help each other when they in trouble. We happy
to help you A-chan," Shampoo smiled slyly at both her and
Ukyo, giving them a hint on what her idea of 'helping' would
be..

Akane laughed. "Yeah, I'll bet you are." she said, a rather
hentai gleam in her eye.

And they laughed.

Ranma, still in 'cat-land' finally drifted off to sleep.
Upon doing so, his body relaxed out of it's curled up and he
took on a more human look. Akane noticed this. "Oh good,
he's asleep." she said. "Now get off my lap you pervert!"
And she punted him over the skyline. He soared like a bird
through the air, then fell like a rock through a grove of
trees. After which he rolled into an empty canal.

His head still swirling from the unexpected trip, he failed
to notice he had company. As (bad) luck would have it, Ryoga
just happened to be camped out under a near-by bridge,
having gotten lost (of course) in his search for Akane.
Seeing Ranma, he, naturally, attacked.

Which is how Ranma got so injured and that brings us back to
the present.

cue funky flashforeward effects

"Stupid Ryoga.. Stupid Akane.. Stupid cat.." Ranma had now
generated down to simple-name calling. He had had a rotten
day and he blamed everyone else in Nerema for it, except for
himself.

Fortunantly his day was almost over, and he DID survive..
somehow.. but just barely.. And for some reason he had this
image fixed in his brain, which he couldn't figure out how
it got there, but he couldn't get rid of..

That of Akane, Ukyo, and Shampoo.. all naked and in bed
together.. doing stuff that made Ranma want to blush, throw
up.. and just stare at in perverted wonder.. Not necessarily
in that order..

Shaking his head, he pushed the image to the back of his
mind where he could ignore it and where it wouldn't 'bother'
his body, I mean him.

Anyway, while doing that DID allow his conscious mind to
ignore it, two deep parts of his mind that he either
ignored, or didn't know existed, commented on the image.

"Whoooooooooo-weeeeeee! What a picture!" exclaimed the
first part that referred to itself as 'Ace'. It drooled and
marveled at the wonders of whip cream..

The second part of his mind whapped the first. "Hentai."
This side called itself 'Spade'. "That picture is
disgusting. I can't believe you could possibly find
enjoyment out of it."

If Ace had had a leg, it would've been shaking. "The
question is, bucko, how can you NOT get enjoyment out of it.
Rowr!" He started panting and making wolf calls.

Spade sniffed arrogantly. "I, sir, am not amused by
perversity of this caliber. Especially when the subject in
question is that of all the ladies thatare supposed to be
MY fiancées, in bed together, without me. Don't you see a
problem with that picture?"

Ace took on a sly look. "Oooooohhhh! I get it! You want IN
on the action!" He danced around Spade. "C'mon c'mon! ADMIT
it! You WANT to be right smack in the middle of all those
lovely, lithe, slick little bodies as they writhe, moan
and.." He howled again and drooled some more.

Spade looked positively shocked at the turn this
conversation was going. "Oh my.. I will admit nothing of the
sort." he stated, raising his nose up in the air and trying
to ignore Ace. "But women in a bed without a man.. is just
not done. Think of the scandal involved if anyone were to
find out? All I want is to restore things to their proper
order. I'm doing it for the sake of the ladies involved."

Ace snorted. "You want in and you know it! You say you wanna
'restore things to their proper order', in other words, you
want our harem back!" He grinned hugely. "I KNEW you were
like me! I knew it I knew it I knew it!" He danced around
some more in triumph.

Ace was really ruffling Spade's feathers now. "I do NOT!" he
shouted in all exasperation.

However Ace wasn't listening. He was too busy celebrating
having 'converted' Spade to his side..

Spade sighed and ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
Finally he couldn't take it anymore and grabbed Ace by the
back of his shirt. "Look here, are we going to decide what
to do about this situation, or aren't we?"

"Ack! Ok ok! Sheesh! Don't have a cow!" Ace exclaimed. He
pulled his shirt away from Spade and smoothed it out. "What
do you think we should do?"

"Well.." Spade started. "I haven't a clue." He deflated
slightly at having to admit that.

"Darn.." Ace looked forlorn at that statement. Spade WAS the
one with the brains afterall, so if HE didn't know.. well,
then they were basically in trouble..

So Ace and Spade sat there just staring at each other in
confusion. This of course, didn't help Ranma but of course
by this time, he was used to it. The two parts of his
subconscious rarely DID agree on what he should do, so Ranma
rarely acted on one single idea, unless fighting was
involved. That was something Ace and Spade were good at..

Unfortunately this time they were useless, so Ranma didn't
have a clue what to do about that image in his mind.. Heck,
he still didn't know if the image had been true or not..

So the only conclusion they came up with was to just ignore
it for the time being.

To Be Continued...