Something Surprising This Way Comes
They still needed something to get the second part of their plan in action: get Akane to spend more time with Ryoga without making it seem too obvious. The last part became ever more crucial since Ranma was already suspicious and hence, had been sticking to Ryoga like glue whenever he had the chance.
They were often spotted together almost as much as Ukyo was with Ryoga. No one said much about it, thinking that they were friends. Unfortunately, however other than any one on ones with Akane, Ryoga found being alone with Ranma to be the hardest at keeping his actual self at bay. He found his palms always itching around the pig-tailed boy, his eagerness to punch him barely on the surface whenever the other party made a stupid remark or taunted him.
Ukyo had tried at first to be near him as much as possible but found that it was harder to do as the days went by. She had homework, classes, and had to do stuff for the restaurant like advertising or checking her ledger and pinching Ryoga every time Ranma got within 10ft of him was turning into a full time job.
Ukyo frown, lost in thought in the middle of their calculus class, her pen just hovering over the problem the teacher had asked them to solve. She wasn't paying attention. Instead she was half watching Ranma flick a piece of paper folded into a triangle across his desk and half thinking how for some reason, all the tricks she and Ryoga had practiced on just barely worked when it came to Ranma and Akane. Thinking a bit more on it though, she realized it shouldn't have surprised her.
She watched as Ranma placed a finger on one of the triangle's points and turned slightly to face Ryoga, who sat diagonally in front of him to the right and aimed. He flicked the triangle and it hit the back of Ryoga's head. Ukyo's eye brow rose as she watched, fascinated by the immediate tensing of Ryoga's body and the clenching of his fists. Ryoga turned back sharply to look at Ranma but Ranma was back to facing the front of the class, his expression returning to the bored look he had sported just moments ago.
Ukyo turned back in her seat to face the teacher, a stern looking young woman, just as she called out, "Mr. Hibiki, if you could please demonstrate the solution to the problem up on the board."
Uh oh! Ukyo knew Ryoga hadn't done the problem yet as his page to the problem [limt-infinity (ln(3t)/t2)] was still blank. She felt uncomfortable for him. If he didn't get the problem right or didn't know how to do the problem, will this blow his new cover? She hadn't even thought of how to actually handle academics and Ryoga hadn't been in school for 2 or so years! Suddenly she realized too that she had never actually seen Ryoga study. Oh no! He'll look like an idiot!
"Ah well done, Mr. Hibiki."
Huh? Ukyo looked up sharply to see Ryoga step away from the black board, his work and answer clearly visible in white chalk. [Solution = 0]. Ukyo looked down at her own work and her brows scrunched together. How'd he get that?
"If you could care to explain, Mr. Hibiki, how you arrived at your answer?"
"Uh, sure."
Oh no! Is this it? He's going to blow his cover!
Ryoga pointed to the board. "The limit of the equation, as it stands, leads to a nonsolution where both denominator and numerator are going to infinity. However, this particular equation allows for the derivative of both sections because of the result I explained. This is called L'Hospital's Rule. Deriving the upper and bottom formulas lead to, once simplified, [1/2t2] and then the limit of this as t goes to infinity is zero."
"Well done, Mr. Hibiki. You certainly know your numbers. Considering that we hadn't even covered L'Hospital's Rule yet, I must say that I am impressed."
Ukyo watched as Ryoga gave the teacher a small smile and headed back to his desk. It was then that she noticed that her heart had been beating wildly out of nervousness. What just happened? How did Ryoga know how to do the problem and explain it so well? She turned back slightly for a quick look at Ranma and Akane's faces and saw the expression she assumed was on her own. Their eyes were wide and their jaws were hanging open.
--ssssssss--
"Hey, sugar, care to explain what happened in Sato's class?" said Ukyo as she walked up to Ryoga as soon as she spotted him in the library.
"Huh?" Ryoga looked up from his book. "Oh, Ukyo. Hey, sit here for a second and listen to this:
It's enviable.
The gracefulness of
The cat's love.
Ukyo's eyes met his in confusion and Ryoga blushed, realizing that she may thought he had read her a love poem, and let out a soft laugh.
"It's by Ochi Etsujin," Ryoga explained. He scratched his head. "It kind of reminds me of Ranma but in the wrong way." He laughed again, "The poem is supposed to reveal a man's lingering mind but when Ranma is near a cat, his mind just stops. I'm not very good at poems but—"
Ukyo's eyes widened in surprise. The boy was well read.
"How—" but she couldn't finish her question.
Ryoga looked up, "hmm? Oh." He put down his book, suddenly looking shy. "Well no one knows this but, uh, I uh…" and proceeded to explain to her an incredulous situation.
"You what??" She scratched her head, she just couldn't believe that Ryoga Mr. constantly lost, Mr. gullible and naive, Mr. head over heals gaga googoo had actually been part of a prestigious boys program growing up. "But you went to school with Ranchan and I know that he's not the brightest star in the sky."
Ryoga shot her a shy grin, "We only went to school together for a year and while I was just about to push ahead, Ranma and I started to develop a rivalry." He shrugged, "I had never planned to be anything but a martial artist anyways so after Ranma left, I skipped a few grades so that my parents would let me go after him..."
"You graduated early? So that explains why you're not in school now." She was still looking at him with a funny expression, "Sorry if I'm a little baffled here, honey but you just don't strike me as that kind of guy even after that display."
He shrugged again, still looking sheepish. "It's not like I'm a genius or anything," he said quietly. "It's just that when I was born, my mom worried that I wouldn't get an education due to the Habiki family's problem of getting lost so she got me tutors and accelerated my education at an early age."
"Then how is it that Ranma almost always beats you? I mean, he's not he brightest bulb like I said."
Ryoga blushed a deep red.
Then her mind conjured up images of every time Ryoga had fought Ranma. Every single time without fail, he had been angry. "Of course," she said, more to herself than him, "those emotions of yours." She shook her head, if there was one thing the lost boy had plenty of it was emotions, unstable emotions to be exact. Now this partially explained his awkwardness. A naïve awkward boy growing up with classmates years older than him. He hadn't had a chance at being normal.
Ukyo stood up abruptly, a genius idea coming into her head. "Ryoga! We could use this to our advantage!"
--ssssssss--
Writer's Notes: So I think this chapter might have surprised you guys as much as it surprised me. But take a moment and kind of think about it. Ryoga was never dumb; in fact, the story had always portrayed him to be a deeply thoughtful boy, with loads of anxieties and profound emotions, which is often correlative characteristics many smart people display. Plus, Ryoga was self-taught in martial arts unlike Ranma and he is almost as good as the latter! Personally, I think this was just another hint that our awkward black pig was smarter than everyone possibly thought he'd be! And like he said, he's not a genius, he's just smart so please don't let this change your perception of the Ryoga I depict here!