Secrets

A torturingly incomplete fanfiction by Kuno-Baby

Chapter Dos

This chapter is dedicated to the letter 7 and the number Q, and to Fire for bringing me into fanfiction. May you rest in peace.

This chapter is also dedicated to everyone but Slacker, out of spite.

"Talking"

'Thinking'

/comments/

("Soun Tendo yelling at Dr. Tofu /in case you were confused about what these were/")

losers>French /losers>

!#$&()Telepathy()&$#!

Scene Transition, plus a small tip for you, bartender+

And so it begins... again...+

"So... It's true, Ranma." Akane stared regretfully at the larger, more black-haired form of the one of which she spoke. "I thought we could be friends... and that you'd teach me things, and everything would be alright, but..."

"B-but why? Why can't we still be friends? I still want to teach you things! I still want everything to be alright!" Ranma gesticulated wildly as he tried to figure out just what went wrong.

"You're a boy. A boy! I... I don't want you to be a boy, Ranma, why couldn't you just be the girl I thought you were? Now, you're going to be just like them... I don't want you to be like them!" Akane was panicking, being caught in a bathroom with, she realized, a boy...

"No, I'll... We can... ah..." Ranma was like a deer in the headlights, watching Sports Car Akane's Breakdown bearing down on him. He tried to take her hand, but she knocked his arm away, into the glass of cold water Ranma had prepared ahead of time.

"I'll... be a girl for you, Akane." Ranma said, eyes down and hair matching her face's red.

Akane began to calm instantly as soon as the threat of a brawl over dating was passed. 'He'll, she'll do that for me?'

"Come on, it's getting late. You're our guest, right? I'll set up the room for you and your father." Akane turned away to hide her own facial expression, too much relief and too much of something else written plain as day and clear as glass in her eyes and on her lips.

"Wait... please." Ranma lightly tapped Akane's hand. "Don't tell anyone, please? I can at least pretend to be a normal girl, hot water isn't as hard to avoid..."

"All right, Ranma. I'll do that... for you." Akane turned back to the door and led Ranma once more into the slightly more spacious hallway.

"P-pops!" Ranma exclaimed dramatically as he exited the bathing room, slightly fearful as to his father's reaction to his foolish attempts at trickery... 'Who could ever believe that his own child was a different sex?' He thought with much nervousness.

"I- I see you're getting along with Akane, my d-daughter." Genma stuttered out, hand behind his head and faking quite well a cheerful attitude. "Well, why don't you sleep in her room for this night? It wouldn't be proper for a teenaged girl to sleep in the same room as her father, would it? Heh heh ehe?" He lightly tapped his way into the guest room and soon the dull sounds of thunking and insane chuckling could be heard ringing throughout the building.

"He's up to something." Ranma turned to Akane again.

"Well... you'll have to sleep here, I guess," Akane said too readily, pointing to a duck shaped nameplate on a very ordinary door.

This scene can kiss it's butt goodbye.+

"Well, now that we're here, I'll set myself up." Ranma sat down slowly on the floor and began unpacking a few torn, thin blankets from his pack and arranging them half-hazardly on the floor, being careful not to accidentally make his bed on top of a dumbbell.

"No, I can't let you sleep on the floor. I'm the host. You take my bed." Akane said this with force and a little bit of longing.

"B-but I'm not going to let you sleep on the floor!" Ranma was forgetting, for a moment, that it is difficult to be manly when one is not a man. "You are going to be comfortable in that bed tonight!"

Both of them stared at the bed wonderingly.

Transitionation Completazord+

"Ranma! Ranma! Are you still in there?" A voice he had not heard before accompanied by the fanfare of door-banging greeting Ranma's ears quite harshly in the early morning. Ranma began to rise and figure out what was going on when he heard a light moaning beside him.

"Kasumi, what's wrong?" Akane mumbled as she sat up, rubbing her eye with one hand while subconsciously and protectively draping an arm over Ranma's shoulder.

A tall, brown-haired lady of nineteen strolled worriedly into the room. "Oh!" She then strolled quickly out. "Nabiki did tell me this was going to happen. Please, come downstairs when you both are presentable."

"Both?" Akane muttered to herself, before refocusing on the form beside her. "Ah!" She exclaimed upon remembering, and then reddened as she removed her arm from the redhead's shoulders. "That Nabiki, sometimes..." Akane put her hand on Ranma's upper arm before turning around and standing out of her bed to rummage through the closet for clothes.

"I have something to wear already." Ranma said, partly to herself and partly to Akane.

"That set of clothing? But you wore it yesterday!" Akane quit her furious sorting to burn a glare into the black pants and red shirt Ranma had extracted from her pack.

"Hey! It's a different shirt!" Ranma stated, defensively.

"And boxers and an undershirt? Such strange things for a girl to wear." Akane said, laughing.

"Hey, don't rub it in!" Ranma sighed and prepared to have another strange day, the twentieth in a row since the advent of his dip in a little spring in backwoods China.

Go fetch, boy! Good dog+

"What's up?" Akane announced her presence and concern with two words as she showed Ranma to the table and sat, making sure Ranma sat down close beside her.

Soun was out of control. "It's... It's Genma!" He managed to bawl out before bursting again into tears. ("Not another drop of sadness, Tofu! I will make you pay! You scoundrel!")

"He wasn't there this morning." Kasumi said matter-of-factly, "I looked in his room, but all there was was this note."

Kasumi handed Ranma the nigh-illegibly scrawled letter and he began to read it.

To Ranma, my... child,

I have been horrible to you, I now know. Nothing can reduce the shame of a parent who knows not what he is doing. I should never have brought you with me, but pride is a terrible thing. I am leaving to fix my mistakes. Goodbye, my... daughter...

Love or whatever

Saotome Genma

"He's really gone." Ranma said, disbelievingly.

"Well, I did say I checked his room." Kasumi said, obliviously.

"No, he's left me here. Alone." Ranma slowly started to stand, but Akane held her hand.

"You're not alone." Akane smiled at Ranma, and pulled her gently back down, to engulf her in a hug with shirt-busting power. "You can stay with us, anyway, right dad?" Akane gave Soun Tendo a glare so powerful that, paradoxically, his kids could feel it.

"Uh..." Soun Tendo reaffirmed his answer by wetting himself. "Yes, sure! Goodbye!" He whisked himself up before embarrassments could be made and left the lower floor entirely.

The careless resounding click of a camera announced the arrival of Nabiki. "Ah, young love," she said, causing a chain reaction to occur, the end result being Akane and Ranma both sitting on their hands instead of in each others' arms.

"None of your business, Nabiki!" Akane said hotly, leveling yet another leveling glare.

"Actually, exactly my business." Nabiki snidely returned, postage due.

"Oh my!" Kasumi was heard to cliché, "You're going to be late to school!"

"That's right!" Akane did thusly exclaim, "C'mon, Ranma, I'll show you the way!" But her later actions proved her a liar, as she did not show the way but rather drag.

Enter the Dragon. Er, I mean Moron+

Akane raced through the street, Ranma metaphorically flapping in the wind behind her, when she suddenly stopped, almost but not quite sending Ranma flying into the schoolyard. "It's him." Akane said, and then began to cry, softly.

"Who?" Ranma was frantic to stop the crying.

"The guy... The guy I beat up. Kuno Tatewaki..." Akane said, a little louder than necessary.

"Yes, me, Blue Thunder, age seventeen, whatnot." The previously mentioned Tatewaki flippantly responded to a statement not actually made to him. His apparent unconcerned attitude was betrayed by the cast on his arm and on his leg, and the blackish purple mark on his eye.

"Don't tell me you think you can fight me like that! After... what I did to you..." Akane trailed off, and Ranma looked back at her before sending rays of angry stare at the kendoist /not that Ranma knows he's a kendoist yet/.

"Actually, I do think I could fight you in this condition, but today mine noble business lies with your sister. These marks do speak for my pitying, do they not?" Kuno was speaking a strange mix of gibberish and Japanese, unlike his normal pure version of the former.

"You look terrible!" Akane yelled, more angry than guilty at this point in the paragraph.

"Good. They are fake, you know." Kuno straightened to no longer favor his 'uninjured' leg for standing on.

"What?" was all Akane could say before the bell rang and she had to lead Ranma to class.

Kuno is back! Back again! Baby back! Ribs are tasty+

"Miss Tendo."

"Kuno."

"You know, I did actually prefer my erstwhile nickname."

"Very well, Kuno-Baby, what was it you wanted to discuss?"

"Apparently, Miss Tendo, it wears off."

"What?"

"I win, Miss Tendo. If you would kindly pay me the agreed upon sum? Oh, and keep the spare change you got from me while our little game was in effect. The winnings should be enough to more than replace it."

"What? It can't have worn off! You'd need to die!"

"Thank your sister for me, by the way. You can take 1000 yen off what you owe me, for that."

"Agh!" Nabiki Tendo was not actually, having a nice day, thank you very much.

End+

Of chapter, not story. Dumbface.+