Atmung

A Rozen Maiden fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts of Rozen Maiden are owned by Peach Pit, not me. This story is based on the anime, not the manga.

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Chapter 9: What Are Obstacles For?

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For the fifth time in as many minutes, the door to the Furinkan rooftop cracked open. The latest student to do this peered through the gap, spotted the blanket and the three girls sitting on it, gave a sigh of disappointment, closed the door, and trudged back down the stairwell. Just like all the others.

"I knew the academic standards here were somewhat hit-and-miss," Shinku said, "but are there really so many students who don't know how to read?"

Ukyo blinked. "Huh?"

"I put a note saying 'Do Not Disturb' on the other side of that door." Shinku grimaced. "And I hope it wasn't presumptuous of me, but I even stated who it was that did not want to be disturbed."

"Well... no offense, Sugar, but that was a little presumptuous. You've only been here a couple of weeks. That's not enough time to build a rep that'd make people back off from reading your name on the note."

Shinku said nothing in response, but did wince ever so slightly.

"That was not what you mean, was it," Shampoo asked, giving the Fifth Doll a shrewd glance. "You wrote that you were eating lunch with Ukyo and me."

Shinku inclined her head. Two weeks might not have been enough time to build a towering reputation at Furinkan, but it had been long enough for her to witness what these girls were capable of. "As I said, I hope it was not presuming too much to drop your names like that."

"Not at all," Ukyo said. "We were the ones who invited you to lunch, right? Heck, I even told you that part of that was so you'd have a nice, peaceful break from the chaos."

"The problem is that you wrote the note your own self," Shampoo explained, getting to her feet. "If Ukyo or I had, we would not have stupid uninvited guests sticking their noses in." She strode over to the door, opened it, whipped out her trademark scimitar, and drove it through the door just below Shinku's note. The Amazon closed the door, walked calmly back to the blanket, and sat down again. "They see that, and they will know it isn't just some silly freshman lying to get privacy."

Shinku smiled. "Thank you."

Everyone was quiet for a few moments after that, enjoying the superb tea Shinku had brought for her contribution to the lunch. After two years of 'suggestions' from Shinku, Nori's brewing capabilities had risen remarkably high.

"I've noticed you eating lunch with several freshman girls over the past two weeks," Shinku said, refilling her empty cup as Shampoo began serving the first course of the meal. "Is this something like Ranma's task to show Jun and those others around? A kindness to help newcomers adjust?"

Ukyo shrugged. "Kind of, except we decided on our own rather than the Powers That Be telling us we ought to."

"And we pick the ones we think need it the most," Shampoo added. "OW! Why you poke me so hard, Spatula Girl?!"

"You're not supposed to say it flat-out like that, you Byankhala barbarian! We're trying to be friendly here, not insult people!"

"Is NOT insult! If you had pay attention last week instead of spend whole time focusing on silly new okonomiyaki recipe, you would know she had real trouble with stupid teacher Hinako!"

"How DARE you call my Miso Ostrich Okonomiyaki silly?!"

Shinku sipped calmly at her tea, watching as the two girls shot to their feet and glared daggers at each other. She was well aware that a calming word from her at this moment would have disrupted (or at least, delayed) the confrontation, but two weeks had taught her more about Furinkan's two Alpha Females than just their power level.

Ten minutes later, the rooftop had sustained mild-to-medium damage and the air was heavy with discharged chi. Both Shampoo and Ukyo were flat on their backs staring up at the sky, sweating, breathing heavily, and smiling. "Call it a draw, you purple-haired bimbo?"

"Sound good to me, you okonomiyaki obsessive."

The two girls pulled themselves back to their feet and returned to the blanket, smiling appreciatively when they saw Shinku had used the interlude to serve up all the remaining food.

"That was impressive," the Fifth Doll said after the first few minutes of silent eating/recovery had passed. "I was sure you wouldn't let your battle destroy our meal, but it was still inspiring to watch."

"You think so?" The smile faded from Shampoo's face, leaving her looking vaguely haunted. "We have been through training that teach way more control than that."

Ukyo winked. "If you thought this was something, you should see Ranchan in action. He could have fought like that while eating his lunch with one hand." Her statement brought Shampoo's smile back and widened Shinku's.

"I don't mean to brag, but so could Jun," Shinku bragged. "And he hasn't been training since he was literally the size of a grasshopper."

"Yeah, well, don't think Ranma honey is gonna hold off forever on challenging him to spar," Ukyo replied. In the next instant the chopsticks that had been in her right hand were nowhere to be seen, replaced by the metallic blur of a mini-spatula spinning blindingly fast. The move was barely enough to shield her from the tea Shinku spit out in shock.

Cough Hack "W-What was that?" the Fifth Doll repeated feebly. "He... he would?"

"Now who is not picking her words right?" Shampoo sniped at her fellow Saotome. "Not like that, Shinku. It would just be for fun and to give each of them new ideas on how to grow. Ranma would not hurt your Airen."

"Yes, I suppose you're right," Shinku admitted. "But I would prefer it if he waited longer. A lot longer." Then she blinked. Suddenly neither Ukyo nor Shampoo were paying any attention to her; Ukyo had turned to Shampoo with a glare and was now speaking in what was presumably the Chinese girl's native language.

" Thought we agree we not going to talk about that! " the chef growled.

" No, you agreed you wouldn't, and that was what I agreed too. That way 'we' wouldn't, " Shampoo retorted.

" Why Shampoo so stubborn about this?! We should not push! Let her find out on her own, in her own time! It going to happen as she spend more time here, listen to more stories about the early days. She is not ready for this now! "

" The hell she isn't. You wouldn't say that if you'd watched her and Jun deal with demon-witch-brat Hinako last week, instead of spending all your time working on the perfect ratio of miso to ostrich. I'm not putting this off any longer. "

" I do not mean to be rude, " Shinku said coolly, in Mandarin considerably more fluent than Ukyo's, " but I think I need to be included in this conversation. "

That little ploy was as effective as she could wish in gaining the other girls' attention. Their heads whipped around quickly enough to pull several hairs loose from their bindings, strands which toinged humorously outward. They stared wide-eyed at her for a few moments, before Shampoo shook her head, smoothed down her hair, and regained most of her composure. "Told you so, Ukyo. Even fate agrees with me."

"Oh, come on! You of all people ought to know better than to say something's wrong, just because there's coincidences and twists of fate that fight against it!"

Shampoo opened and closed her mouth several times. "Um, okay, good point," she said at last. "But I'm still going to tell her."

Ukyo threw her hands up in the air. "Fine, whatever, charge right ahead. It's not like pushing to get what you wanted right away never bit you on the ass," she continued under her breath as she got to her feet, stalked off to the side, set up her portable grill, and began cooking okonomiyaki to settle her nerves.

"And what do you want, Shampoo?" Shinku asked, staring steadily into the girl's strange red eyes.

"That was not what she meant," the Amazon replied. "Not that I want something from you. She is worried that if we have this talk, is like I am pushing you to make same mistakes she and I both made with Ranma, with Jun."

"Ah... I don't understand what you mean by that," Shinko confessed, wariness giving way to bewilderment.

"Stupid Japanese language, makes it too hard to say things plainly," Shampoo groused. "Never mind stories about the early days with Ranma. Too many to tell, we'd be up here for a year. What I trying to say is that you love Jun, yes?"

"Yes, that is right," Shinku said, wariness beginning to creep back into her voice. There was certainly no difficulty in admitting she cared deeply for him... but she was beginning to get a little concerned by the repeated references to Shampoo's relationship with her husband. If the Amazon was trying to draw some kind of parallel... well, that was simply absurd. Really, it was ridiculous enough that she shouldn't even be thinking about it.

"Good to hear you admit it when someone asks you straight out," Shampoo said with a smirk. "Instead of just not protesting when I called him 'your Airen'."

Shinku's mouth dropped open. "Th-That is not what I meant!"

"Mm-hm. Not as far as you meant to say out loud, maybe."

With supreme effort, Shinku bit back the first few responses that came to mind. "Shampoo," she said with exaggerated patience, "I know that in a place like this, Jun and I are not all that strange. But that does not make us—or rather, me—just like everyone else. Yes, I love Jun very much. His compassion, his determination, the courage I watched him learn over the first months of our partnership..." She paused, and ran a hand over the dress she was wearing, a deep blue that matched her eyes perfectly. Life at Furinkan was far too strenuous for her to wear her old crimson gown, and so Jun spent much of his free time making new garments for her. "And his skill and grace at repairing damaged things and creating beautiful new ones," she murmured.

Then she looked up, her eyes as determined as Jun's ever were. Loosening the dress at one cuff, she drew it up until the joint at her elbow was exposed. "As a Rozen Maiden, I love him. So do Suisei Seki and Hina Ichigo, and even Sousei Seki cares for him enough that it could probably be called 'love'. But we are not human, Shampoo. We are dolls, and the love dolls can give is very different from what you are talking about."

She paused, gathering her strength, then continued, "The closest any of us could ever come to that, would be what I have done with Jun. I have... taken certain actions... that would help him be more courageous with girls in general. More ready to someday find someone who can love him like you mean. Perhaps you saw and misunderstood some of those actions."

"That's your story and you're sticking to it, hmm?" Shampoo asked, sounding remarkably unphased by Shinku's declaration. "Never mind how I watched you scare ten different girls away from him, some of who were pretty nice." She winced at the glare Shinku sent in response to this. "Well, maybe Ukyo is right. Maybe I was pushing you to do something you're not ready for."

"It is not a question of being ready!" Shinku snapped, her patience beginning to wear dangerously thin. "What part of 'I'm a doll, not a human' was unclear just now?"

"Of course that is obstacle," Shampoo said. "But once you're here long enough, you see that living in Nerima is all about beating those."

Shinku stood up and brushed imaginary dust off her dress. "Thank you for the lunch," she said as politely as she could manage. "But I really must be going now."

"Before you do, at least listen to one story. Okay?" Shampoo asked.

"Shampoo, I really do not think..." Shinku's voice trailed off as she got a good look at the expression on the lavender-haired girl's face. She exhaled heavily and sat back down, reminding herself that despite what the Amazon was actually accomplishing, Shampoo was only trying to help. "All right. One story. If you agree to persuade Ranma not to challenge Jun during this term."

"Okay, sure." Shampoo paused to collect her thoughts, then began.

"Once there was a boy, strong and brave and kind. He was a fighter, a very good one. He had a few weaknesses, just like everyone, but the biggest of them wasn't his fault.

"He had a bad training accident when he was little. It made him terrified of cats, more afraid of them than anything. And it was a fear he could never beat, never get rid of... because there was a cat's soul tied up inside him, trapped somewhere it shouldn't ever have been and terrified, unable to get out.

"It was a really, really bad training accident.

"Many years after that, the boy met a girl. She understood the important things about him, or at least she didn't take very long to see them. But he couldn't see those things about her, because he couldn't get close enough. Because a little after meeting him, the girl got the worst curse anyone who loved the boy could ever get. She got cursed to turn into a cat whenever cold water splashed on her, and only hot water would turn her back.

"The girl didn't know what to do about it, that she had a curse that was so horrible for the boy. Sometimes she tried to make him get used to her cat-body, sometimes she tried to show him how his own curse didn't matter at all to her. Most of the time, she just didn't think about it."

"Was she cured eventually?" Shinku interjected, drawn into the tale despite herself. She could see the emotions shining in Shampoo's eyes, and had a pretty good idea of who 'the boy' and 'the girl' were.

"Y-Yes," Shampoo answered, knocked out of her carefully rehearsed speech.

"After a long, hazardous quest where she faced terrible trials and great obstacles?" Shinku guessed further, with the faintest of bittersweet smiles on her face. No matter how inspiring the tale of Shampoo's triumph over her curse might be, there were precious few parallels to her own situation. "It's a nice story, Shampoo."

"Actually, her great-grandmother bailed her butt out," Ukyo interjected.

"Who is telling this story, Ukyo?" Shampoo asked irritably. "You or me?"

"Look, you can't expect me to just sit quietly while you make this epic saga out of your journey. I'll see your year-and-a-half struggle and raise you a decade."

Meanwhile, Shinku was still blinking bewilderedly. "What about your great-grandmother? I have heard a few students mention her, but nothing very specific."

"Whole story is way too long to tell," Shampoo said. "And doesn't matter anyway. What I was getting at is how Ranma and I solve that big, bad problem I told you about. Great-Grandmother is very old, very wise—"

"Not to mention powerful enough to scare the spit out of you," Ukyo muttered. "I still can't believe she and Happosai kept those masks on for so long."

"A-HEM!" Shampoo said, clearing her throat forcefully enough to make Shinku's ears ring. "Even as good as Great-Grandmother is, she didn't understand about the cat spirit in Ranma for a long time. When she did, problem was like one of those silly knots that disappear when you pull them tight. She sat me and Ranma down, and switched our curses, and then put his cat-body curse together with the cat spirit in him, pulled them both out of him to set—"

"Wait, what?" It was Shinku's turn to interrupt the Amazon, who glanced disparagingly at Ukyo and muttered something about setting a bad example for the impressionable little freshmen. "You said earlier that Ranma had a curse, but I thought you were talking about how there was a cat soul inside him. That was not it?"

"No." Shampoo gave a grin very remniscent of the curse she'd once borne, and wondered why Shinku was struggling not to flinch back. "Ranma was cursed a little earlier at the same place I was. Got a different curse but it worked the same: cold water to splash him, to turn him into his other body, and only hot water would change him back to his old self. That is how pools of sorrow Jusenkyo works—when you fall in a spring, you get the shape of whatever drowned there." She smiled all the wider, pulled out a carefully-labeled map of the cursed training ground, and handed it to Shinku. "Guess what spring Ranma fell into."

An idea was already stirring at the back of Shinku's mind. Though it was little more than a wild surmise, that was still enough to make her fingers tremble as she accepted the map from Shampoo... and to make them spasm open as one name sprang off it straight for her heart.

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Author's Notes

If ten minutes seems like far too short a time for Shampoo and Ukyo to battle to near-exhaustion, then I wasn't clear enough in what I was trying to imply. Just so it is clear, they were throwing around energy levels that dwarf any fight either of them participated in during the original series (unless you count it as Shampoo 'participating' in the final battle between Ranma and Cologne over the Phoenix Pill).