Sendai
By M. Zephyr
Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is a trademark of Rumiko Takahashi and VIZ Communications, and its characters have been borrowed without permission. This story was written for non-commercial purposes only.
Ranma x Akane. See the bottom of Chapter 1 for an author's note dealing with the entirety of this story.
Chapter 13. Second Term
The second term of school started, and Akane and Ranma were both nervously on continuous alert, wondering when a certain purple-haired Amazon might make an appearance. At the same time, they were also putting up with a certain amount of good-natured ribbing about the engagement, as Akane's ring had been instantly spotted on the first day of classes.
Despite their caution, Ranma suspected nothing when, on the third day of the term right at the end of the school day, a teacher stopped him in the hallway. He had been on his way to the front of the school to meet Akane, but the teacher informed him that there was a telephone call for him in the school office. Ranma shrugged and headed there, figuring that he'd meet up with Akane a few minutes later than expected. However, he became suspicious when he reached the office and discovered that the caller had hung up shortly after the teacher had gone in search of him.
Meanwhile outside, in front of the school, totally oblivious to the guys gazing appreciatively at her, Shampoo stood intently watching the front doors, for all the world like a cat watching a particularly interesting mousehole. Although she was, as usual, scantily and provocatively clad, none of the drooling youths approached the beautiful Chinese girl. Either the two large maces which she was carrying, or the cold, murderous look in her eyes, persuaded them to do their ogling from a safe distance.
‹Great-grandmother, why did you make me wait so long before coming here? As soon as you discovered what school they were attending, I could have come to this city and found them. Why wait for them to come back to school? Your excuse about needing me at the restaurant makes no sense to me. My only reason for being in Japan is to bring my airen back to our village, not to turn a profit from our café.›
‹And why did you refuse to come with me? Yes, I must do this on my own, but why should I have no support from you whatsoever? It feels like you have given up, that you are allowing me to make one last grand gesture before we surrender. But I will not surrender! Ranma is mine, not the kitchen-destroyer's, and I will have him! I am going to show him how weak the violent-girl is, and then he will choose me.›
Shampoo's eyes narrowed, as the face of her hated rival emerged from the school's doors. The girl was laughing while walking beside a couple of friends, seemingly without a care in the world, while Shampoo had spent months without so much as a glimpse of her husband and enduring the knowledge that he was living with this girl.
"Akane Tendo! You die now!"
Akane's friends gasped, as did other students nearby, but Akane merely narrowed her own eyes, and handed her schoolbag to one of her friends, and her bento to the other. Empty handed, she stepped forward, leaving them behind and hopefully out of the danger zone.
"Hello Shampoo. You might as well give up this madness and go home. Ranma is going to marry me, and nothing you can do will change that."
"Airen not marry dead girl!" With that defiance, Shampoo charged.
Akane rushed to meet her so that the clash would not take place near anyone else. At the last moment she leapt into the air, and kicked one of the bonborri out of Shampoo's hand, shattering it. The Chinese girl swung back with the other bonborri, but only managed to take some skin off of Akane's thigh.
The two now circled one another warily, with the Japanese girl mostly dodging the occasional strikes made by the other, while watching for an opening. A corner of her brain noted Ranma's emergence from the school, but she ignored that as irrelevant to the task at hand. Ranma halted where he was, realizing that they were committed to the challenge, and that his fiancée would resent any interference in the battle. With fear rising like a fog to choke him, he resolved to stay out of it unless it looked like Akane's life was in danger, and then to hope that he could get there in time to save her.
Without consciously realizing that she had seen it, Akane spotted an opening and leaped in. Faster than Shampoo could believe possible, the other girl was inside her guard and striking outward. Her suddenly numb hand released the other bonborri, which was quickly picked up and thrown a great distance away by the girl who was once more out of her reach.
"Kitchen-destroyer get better, but not good enough to beat Shampoo!"
Akane didn't deign to respond. The match was now entirely hand-to-hand, and they started exchanging blows and blocks, stepping together for brief exchanges before separating again. They were both taking considerable damage now, with numerous bruises and small lacerations. As Shampoo found herself having trouble breathing, she realized that a couple of her ribs were almost certainly cracked.
A worry line creased the warrior's forehead. ‹When did she get so good?›
Shampoo yelled out, "Admit you much better than before, but can you handle this?"
Suddenly a ball of light formed around the Amazon's hands, and shot out toward the other. Akane leaped and twisted in the air, avoiding the strike, and responded with her own chi blast. Shampoo was taken completely by surprise and sent flying backward through the air, tripping over a bench as she landed. She painfully climbed back to her feet, muttering a few Mongolian curse words dealing with animal excrement.
‹Ankle definitely twisted. Little bit dizzy and nauseous, probably a slight concussion. I'd better find a way to end this quickly; no more words. I'm an Amazon warrior! I cannot lose!›
The two came together once more, and even the untrained eyes in the schoolyard could see the increased level of savagery. Ranma started running toward them, hoping he would be in time. Every ear there heard the sickening snap of a breaking bone, followed by another. Suddenly the purple-haired girl was flying through the air to crash into a tree, where she slid down to the ground and lay still. Akane was cradling her left arm in her right, sinking to her knees in the grass.
"Akane! How bad is it?" Ranma cried out as he fell to his knees beside her, not daring to take her into his arms until he knew the extent of her injuries.
The girl looked up at him through tears of pain, her right eye rapidly swelling. "My ... my arm is broken," she managed to gasp out. "I think that's the worst of it," she continued quietly, "at least, I don't feel anything else as serious."
Ranma ran his hands over her quickly, checking her injuries, not caring if it looked hentai to anybody.
"Ranma!" Daiki called out as he ran up. "Kenji is calling for ambulances. They should be here pretty quickly."
"Thanks, man. Okay, Akane, I think you're right and the broken arm is the most serious thing you got. I need to check Shampoo. You gonna be okay?"
She nodded carefully, trying not to move too much. Ranma got up and went over to give Shampoo a quick examination. The Chinese girl was still out cold. After a few minutes he came back.
"Broken leg, cracked ribs, dislocated shoulder, badly twisted ankle swelling up pretty rapidly, at least a mild concussion. Hard to say what else without her awake to tell us where it hurts, although the most likely answer she'd give would be 'everywhere'."
Akane giggled, rather disconcertingly. "I feel the same way, myself."
The ambulances arrived a few minutes later, and the paramedics went to work on Shampoo first. After a while they came over to give Akane a quick examination, put a splint on her arm, and give her a painkiller. The police arrived during this process and started taking statements. Ranma told them in a no-nonsense tone that he would give his statement to the same person who took Akane's, since he would be riding to the hospital with his fiancée.
He and Akane did in fact give their statements at the hospital while Akane's arm was being set and the cast applied. The doctor told them that while she didn't appear to have any serious internal injuries, he wanted to keep her overnight for observation just in case. After getting her settled into her room, Ranma went out to call Tofu and Kasumi, as well as his and Akane's employers, to let them know what had happened. Then he went in search of Shampoo.
He found her room with only a little hunting, and went in to find her awake although looking very banged up. She had a cast on one leg and stitches on the other, an ice pack on her ankle, bindings around her chest, and an IV in one arm. Additionally he could see a split lip, a black eye, and numerous bruises and lacerations covering the exposed parts of her body.
"Shampoo," he said, in a voice that could freeze nitrogen.
Shampoo wouldn't look at him. She looked down, plucking weakly at a fold in the blanket, ashamed that she had lost a fight to Akane Tendo. It was particularly humiliating to have Ranma looking at her right now, knowing that he knew that she had lost to her rival.
In a small, broken voice, very much at odds with her usual manner, she begged, "Ranma. Shampoo love you. Please come back."
"I am sorry that you feel that way, for I do not want your love, now or ever. I've told you before, I do not love you, I cannot love you. I will never be your husband or return to China with you. And if there was ever a time when I could have almost liked you, that time has long since passed."
He walked over to her bedside, then leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Even then, she hoped. She looked up to see him draw back and look deep into her eyes, with the coldest look she had ever seen. Shampoo felt her soul draw back from what she saw in his eyes.
"That is my Kiss of Death, Shampoo. If you ever try to hurt Akane again, then you have my promise that I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth and kill you. Good-bye."
He turned and walked out of the room. As he strode down the hall, he spoke once more, too quietly for the injured girl to hear, although he did not turn his head to look as he did so.
"Keep her away from us, old ghoul. I meant what I said."
From the shadows, a wizened old head nodded in silent assent.
With the passage of a few days to dampen the memories, Akane grew much more cheerful, despite the cast (and the itching skin underneath). She had defeated her oldest and most fearsome rival. With Kodachi and Tatewaki Kuno locked up, and Ukyo having apparently accepted matters as they stood, it appeared that there was no longer anyone to stand in the way of her marriage to Ranma. She was also pleased, at least at first, with the way that the other students gushed about her fight with Shampoo. She had been rather accustomed to Ranma being the one to get the spotlight in such matters.
That was the way things stood a few weeks later when Akane's friend Rinko walked up to her desk before class. Akane thought that it would be more of the same and was prepared for it, but Rinko surprised her.
"Hi, Akane, Ranma. I'm planning to have a party at my house Friday night, and I'd like both of you to come. Please say you will?"
Akane thought back to the one time she and Ranma had both tried to attend a party given by one of her friends back at Furinkan. Some guys had brought some sake with them, a lot of people had gotten a bit drunk, some sake had been poured over Ranma's head turning him into a sticky girl smelling of alcohol, Kuno had shown up trying to hug both Akane and Ranma, Ukyo had spent all night trying to drag Ranma back into one of the bedrooms and once Shampoo had crashed the party she had done the same. All told, it had just generally been a miserable night. She had to try to force herself to remember that this was not Furinkan.
She managed a smile, and turned to Ranma. "What do you think?"
Ranma's own thoughts had run in parallel to his fiancée's, and his mind shied from the thought of repeating the experience. On the other hand, he figured that Akane probably would like doing something as normal as going to a party given by a school friend, so finally nodded his head in agreement, although he didn't manage to speak. His head was full of thoughts about sacrificing himself for the woman he loved.
Akane suspected from his expression that Ranma was not too thrilled with the idea of attending this party, but there did not seem to be a way of getting out of it gracefully at this point. She turned to her friend and said, "Okay Rinko, we'd be glad to come."
"Great! It'll be fun, you'll see." She skipped off happily to her own desk.
Akane reached out surreptitiously, and squeezed her fiancé's hand. She whispered, "We'll survive it, Ranma."
"I just hope nobody spills anything on me this time," he whispered back.
The night of the party, Akane and Ranma were walking toward Rinko's house with arms linked. The evening air was cool, and she was wearing a sweater in addition to her shirt and jeans. Ranma had chosen to ignore the temperature rather than cater to it. The girl beside him noticed the tenseness of his muscles, and the way his eyes were darting around as if watching for danger.
"Please try to relax, Ranma. There won't be any other fiancées showing up at the party, this time. Kuno won't be there either."
"Yeah, but that won't necessarily stop people from sneaking in alcohol, or keep people from getting rowdy. It's such an obvious setting for an accident that will get me wet."
Akane grimaced sympathetically. "You know you haven't had too many accidents since you started spending time at home as a girl on purpose," she reminded him.
"Yeah, I know, but I'm still pretty nervous about it."
She squeezed his hand tighter as they turned off of the street and climbed the steps, their hair blowing in a sudden breeze. They could hear music and lots of voices inside as Ranma knocked loudly on the door. A moment later the door was flung open by a beaming Rinko.
"Boy, I'm glad you two could make it! We were so afraid that you'd chicken out and not come!"
"Well, it's not like you really needed us here for the party to be a success," Akane said. "Everyone seems to be having a good time already."
"Sorry, but you're wrong. We definitely needed you two to be here."
She was smiling broadly as she led them into the living room, where they could see a large banner on one wall. It read "Congratulations Akane and Ranma!" The couple stared dumbfounded while everybody cheered their appearance.
"You see, this is actually a party to celebrate your engagement. So it would have been a bit of a letdown if you hadn't shown up."
Hands reached out to grab the frozen pair, and pulled them forward to join the throng.
A little later, Akane and Ranma were slow-dancing as were several other couples around them, enjoying the feeling of holding onto each other, though a little embarrassed to be doing so in front of the people they knew from school. As the music ended they were herded over to sit down on a couch with everybody else gathered around on chairs or on the floor.
"So, why don't you tell us how you two met?" one of their friends asked. "I don't think I've ever heard that story."
The engaged couple turned and looked at each other, both swallowing heavily and trying to communicate with their eyes. They were trying to ask each other an obvious question, "The truth? Or make something up?" Finally, Ranma gave a small, almost invisible, nod and Akane replied in kind. As they turned back to face the group, everyone could see that they looked rather nervous.
Akane started. "It was well into the first term of my first year in high school. I'd been having some trouble with the boys there, which had left me rather fed up with the male species at the time. Then one Sunday my father called my two sisters and myself together to announce that an old friend of his, Genma Saotome, and his son Ranma were coming to visit."
She took a deep breath.
"He told us that there was an arrangement between the families that this boy Ranma was to marry one of the three of us, to unite the Tendo and Saotome schools of martial arts and to secure the legacy of the Tendo dojo."
There was a universal gasp of shock. "It was an arranged marriage?" Rinko wanted to know. "But I thought he only just proposed to you this summer?"
Akane continued. "Remember, I didn't have much of an opinion of boys at the time. When he arrived, my sisters conspired to see that I got stuck with the engagement, which I really resented. As a result, Ranma and I got off to a really bad start, fighting all of the time, and not accepting the engagement."
Ranma now stepped in. "Just like with Akane, my pop waited until that day to tell me about the arrangement, in fact he told me while we were walking to their home. I started to run the other way, and he actually knocked me out and carried me in over his shoulder."
There were titters from the audience.
"Like Akane, I was pretty upset at suddenly finding myself engaged against my will, and some of the things she said to me didn't help. Of course, I turned around and said some pretty bad things myself. So we spent most of the next two years loudly denying that we were engaged to anyone who would listen. And all that time, we were starting to fall in love, though both of us refused to believe it."
There were romantic sighs from the females in the audience, and eye rolling from the males.
"It didn't help that our fathers tried all sorts of really stupid schemes to get the two of us together, which generally ended up achieving the opposite. Also there were a number of people around who were trying to come between the two of us; a lot of you saw one of them, that girl Shampoo who fought with Akane, she was determined that she was going to marry me instead."
"It also didn't help matters when we sort of got pretty jealous, too," Akane put in. "I would usually blame Ranma whenever Shampoo, or Ukyo, or Kodachi put the moves on him, and take it all out on him. He'd turn into the most incredible jerk whenever he got jealous about Ryoga or Shinnosuke or some other boy following me. Although I don't think he was ever jealous of Tatewaki's proclamations of love for me."
"Nope, your attitude toward him was pretty clear," Ranma said and then grinned, "and I'm glad you didn't get jealous about his proclamations of love for me, either."
The other students stared in shock at this statement, while Akane just pursed her lips and shook her head in a scolding fashion.
"Anyway," Ranma went on, slowly, considering his words carefully, "in the last term of our second year, Akane was kidnapped and taken to China. I eventually was able to rescue her, well, in a sense we rescued each other, though it was a pretty near thing. I came close to being killed, and Akane actually did die for a moment."
Everyone was now staring in wonderment and awe. Rinko whispered, "You died, Akane?"
"Briefly," she confirmed, "and then I heard Ranma telling me that he loved me, and I opened my eyes to find myself in his arms."
"Um, yeah," Ranma moved on. "So we were sort of able to start admitting our feelings, at least to ourselves, though bad habits reared their head again pretty quickly. Then to completely screw things up, our fathers tried to force us into a wedding ceremony as soon as we got back to Japan. It was, to put it very bluntly, a complete disaster."
"We really don't want to talk about that," Akane said firmly, "it's a very painful memory. Suffice it to say that we weren't too happy about our fathers' high-handed treatment, and the people who had been trying to interfere in our relationship came there to do anything possible to put a stop to the wedding. They succeeded."
"Later that day, Akane and I got to talking, and decided we'd never be able to straighten things out between us so long as we were living there in Nerima with all of the people who were making our life crazy. So we got in touch with an old friend who was living here in Sendai and made arrangements to move here, very carefully not telling any of the nutcases where we were going."
"And, well, you pretty much know the story from there," Akane finished. "With a bit of peace and quiet we were finally able to acknowledge that we really did love one another. The engagement that had been forced on us by our parents never felt real to us since we had fought it for so long, but since Ranma proposed to me we now feel like we're engaged for real."
"Wow, that's like something out of a romance novel," one of the girls proclaimed.
"Are you sure you're not making some of that up?" asked one of the boys.
Ranma snorted. "Actually, we cut out a whole lot of what happened. Trust me, the complete story would have sounded a whole lot more unbelievable."
Rinko hopped up excitedly. "Okay, now that we've had the story, it's time for the gifts!"
The two teens on the couch looked decidedly less than enthusiastic, but resigned. Rinko ran back in with some packages, and handed the first one to Akane. With a little trepidation, she tore the wrapping and pulled out a book. Ranma leaned over and saw that it was titled "Cooking for Two" and let out a groan of horror. His fiancée shot him a quelling look, held it up for everyone to see the title, and then set it aside.
The next box was handed to Ranma, and after removing the wrapping paper he pulled the lid off of the thin cardboard box as Akane watched. Inside was a pair of white boxers covered with red hearts, and the message "Bride's Best Friend" printed across the front. Both teens blushed and Ranma tried to slam the lid back on, but one of the other guys managed to grab it and hold it up for everyone to see. There was much giggling and chuckling while the couple continued to blush.
Another thin package was then handed to Akane, which was light enough to also be clothing. ‹Do I really want to open this?› she thought to herself. Sighing, she did so, but lifted the lid only enough to barely peek inside without giving anyone else a look. As she had suspected, she saw something yellow, and lacy, and very sheer. She tried to push the lid back down without anyone else seeing what was inside, but Rinko grabbed the box and the two of them fought over it. The other girl didn't really stand a chance of getting it away, being nowhere near as strong as Akane and laughing besides, but the box suddenly tore open and spilled the negligee out onto Akane's lap for everyone to see. Ranma quickly grabbed it and stuffed it into the box with his new boxers, while Akane hid her bright red face in her hands.
There was one package left, which was handed to Ranma. He was glad that at least it was too heavy to be clothing, but still ...
"I think that Akane and I will wait until we're home before opening this one."
"Hey, no fair! Come on, Ranma, you can't spoil our fun like that!"
"Yeah, come on! We threw this whole party for you! You can survive a little embarrassment! Or are you too shy? Or maybe just chicken?"
Akane shook her head, knowing that her hope of the gift remaining unopened had just been lost. Ranma tore off the wrapping, but when he started to open the box the weight of the book inside caused it to fall out onto the couch. The cover was face up, showing the title.
"Kama Sutra?" There was a querying note in Ranma's voice. "What's it about?"
"Never mind, Ranma!" Akane hissed, grabbing both the book and the box and hiding it away. "You can look at it and find out later."
Her puzzled fiancé just shrugged his shoulders and nodded. Since that had been the last of the gifts, someone turned the music back on again, and the dancing resumed.
At one point that evening, a rather wet, red-haired girl with a pigtail walked out of the kitchen and down the hall and into the bathroom.
"Hey, Rinko. Who's that girl? I don't recognize her, does she go to our school?"
"Huh, I don't recognize her either. She probably came with one of the boys."
Neither one noticed when Ranma emerged from the bathroom, his hair a bit damp but apparently having been dried somewhat with a towel. He was thinking to himself that he had been lucky that nobody else had been in the kitchen at the moment when he had gone to get some more ice for his drink, and had tripped.
Rinko was a little puzzled after everyone left that she had not had a second glimpse all night of the cute redhead, but shrugged it off.