Author's notes: The reviews have pleased my ego. Now, as for Ranma being too powerful to be held back by mere chains… not really. He got knocked out in a surprise attack and woke up hanging in midair, shackled to the point where he couldn't even turn his head.
Sympathies for the sentiment aside, there will be no unmanly girl-on-girl sex.
---
When he woke up he was back at Furinkan. The sun had not yet begun to set, but the school day had clearly come to an end.
Now why had the old bat returned him here? The cat café was about as close to the school as to the Tendo household, but they lay in completely different directions.
He stretched a little, to alleviate the faint but still uncomfortable pain from having spent half the day tied up in the basement of the cat café. Wait a second. If he had only been knocked out for an hour the first time, how come it was this late in the afternoon?
He felt for the lumps on his head. There were three of them. The heck!?
Fine. Whatever. He didn't know what the shrivelled up warrior monkey was hoping to accomplish, but she'd let him go, at least.
He set off over the rooftops, heading home. What was she hoping to accomplish? Yeah, he'd wondered sometimes why she hadn't just knocked him over the head at some point and carried him off to a life in Joketsuzoku. He wasn't complaining, but that sure seemed like the logical thing to do, considering what would await him if he ever gave in.
Anyway, he'd have to demand an explanation from Shampoo the next time she came soaring from above on her vehicle of pain during one of her deliveries. Come to think of it, though, it had been a while since she did that. He hadn't seen any of the amazons in weeks; not even Mousse. He frowned. And sighed. Okay, so this was what they had planned, whatever it was. And it somehow included knocking him over the head once in a while and letting Cologne have a chat with him.
He gritted his teeth.
---
When he came back to the Tendo dojo, he was greeted, for once, by a perfectly peaceful atmosphere. All was quiet, in fact. He didn't even hear the TV. He paused, and mulled that over. No one in the dojo, either… no sounds at all. Right. He slowly backed out of the hallway, and went around the house, peering in through the windows as he went. Seeing nothing obviously suspicious, but not very relieved just yet, he entered very carefully through the window to what had been his and pop's bedroom until mom's house had been razed. (His parents now had that room, and he now found himself assigned to what looked like a hastily cleared out and rather shabby storage room, no doubt to encourage him to seek shelter elsewhere.) He snuck in, quietly as he could, and opened the door. No one in the living room. No one on the stairs. He peered into the kitchen, and saw a small note in Kasumi's elegant handwriting.
Dear Ranma/Akane,
Soun and Genma are out drinking. Nabiki and Nodoka are out as well. I have gone to do some shopping, but if you are hungry there are some leftovers in the fridge.
He breathed a sigh of relief. No traps, today.
Just as he opened the fridge he heard the front door open. "I can't find him, Kasumi!" Survival instincts kicked in, and he consumed all the leftovers he could find in the brief time it took Akane to take off her shoes and come into the kitchen.
"You're a pig," she said.
He looked down on his clothes. Okay, so he had had to substitute accuracy for speed. "At least I'm full."
"And what am I supposed to eat?"
"Why don't you just cook something?"
The tension rose, but, remembering his 'chat' with Cologne, Ranma decided that Akane wasn't the enemy right now. "Sorry," he hurried.
The effect wasn't quite what he had expected. "Sorry for what?" she asked, with an eerie resemblance to the honey coating in Cologne's voice earlier.
"Um… for…" he tried to think quickly. "For eating the food!" he came up with.
"More like playing with it," Akane grumbled, but the worst of the danger appeared to have passed. Then she met his eyes, and she was glaring again. "So what have you been up to all day?"
"Nothing," he lied.
"Yeah?"
"Nothing much."
"Nothing much to do with Shampoo?"
He hesitated for the briefest moment. "I ain't seen her today."
"You sure about that?"
He did wonder how she could come so close on the first guess, but there was no time to consider that now.
"'Course I am."
"That's strange, then."
"…yeah?"
"I said that's strange, because Kuno told the whole school over the intercom that you left the school with Cologne!"
Warning signs were beginning to flash in the back of his mind. "Well I didn't see Shampoo!"
Battle aura…. Check. Oh dear.
"Look, she just wanted to talk! She knocked me out with a surprise attack and carried me to the cat café!"
"Ranma…" Akane whispered. "Just… how… stupid… do you think I am?"
As casually as he could, he picked up an onion ring that had attached itself to his clothes, and put it into his mouth. He sighed, savouring the taste for a moment. Then the pain came.
---
A few not strictly necessary but quite pleasant helpings of okonomiyaki later, Ranma returned to the Tendo household to find all the females returned home for the evening. He was very happy that he got to live with his mother now; that he was able to talk to her every day. But it was difficult not to notice that she was still carrying that katana around everywhere. Now, unlike the fathers she did not seem all that upset about the wedding, and as she had made clear on more than one occasion that was mostly because it had been crashed by beautiful young women who wanted a piece of the cake. So to speak. Her mood had actually been very pleasant the first few weeks after that, but as both Shampoo and Ukyo had completely stopped surprise attacking her son after the incident her cheerfulness had gradually worn off, and when she had at last been forced to concede that Kodachi might not make a good mistress (courtesy of some unusually potent poison which had left half the household paralysed for the better part of the day) she had become downright grumpy. She was in a better mood than usual tonight, but she still spent most of the dinner asking Ranma if the new sleeping arrangements didn't bother him, and pointing out just how much larger all the other bedrooms were, and if-only-there-was-somewhere-else-he-could-sleep.
It became too much. "Look, mom, I'm not sneaking in to sleep with Akane, okay? I know you guys bought her a new bed twice as large as her old one, but there's no way I'm doing that."
Nodoka dropped the pleasantries. "It's not right for a virile young man to sleep alone."
Akane put down her chopsticks. "Can we please not talk about this now?"
Nodoka considered her prospective daughter-in-law. "Don't think I haven't noticed you never sneek into his room, either."
"Like I would ever-!"
"Like I'd let her in!" Ranma cut off.
"And just what's that supposed to mean?" Akane demanded.
Supressing the first three replies that came to mind, he said "Er… futon's… too small?"
"Pervert!" she bellowed.
"Now, now," his mother chided. "Please be quiet, both of you. Ranma is quite right; his temporary accommodation is far too cramped for him to receive any lovers in there."
Ranma blushed furiously, refusing to meet the eyes of either of the two women.
Nodoka continued. "I would have hoped he was manly enough to sneak into your room, Akane, and I can hardly blame you for not visiting his room. But our house will soon be repaired, and then you will be free to come to him without shame."
Both seventeen year olds stuttered in protest, but Nodoka pressed on. "But I should warn you, Akane. All the other fiancées know where our house is," the briefest of frown flickered across her face, "and they have showed themselves to be a lot more forward than you."
"No they haven't!" Ranma exclaimed. "Not lately! The only one who's tried anything the last month is Kodachi!"
Nodoka sighed. "Yes… never the less. I am hoping they will return with vigour when you are back in your own room with a window."
"But… he's lying," Akane said. "He met Shampoo today!"
"Did he?" Nodoka lit up in pleasant surprise.
"No I didn't!" Ranma protested. "I only saw the mummy, and we only talked!"
His mother slumped a little. "Well, what did you talk about? Did she say why her great-granddaughter hasn't stopped by for over a month?"
"Um… well, no…"
"What was it, then?" Akane demanded.
"Er…" His eyes flicked over to Nodoka, then back to Akane. "That… wouldn't interest you."
Attention redoubled.
His mother inclined her head.
"Look, she just… um…" When the Abrupt Silence technique would not avail him, he turned to the Technically-True gambit: "Um, she wanted to know if I have any training trips lined up, that kind of stuff."
Nodoka sighed, and looked a little relieved. "I see. Well, that explains things."
"It does?"
"Yes, yes…" Nodoka got a dreamy glaze in her eyes. "She has obviously been pushing Shampoo to train hard, the poor thing, so she could master a few new techniques."
"…right?" he asked.
"And now she wants you to go on a trip with her great-granddaughter. It's very clever."
"Er…"
"Well, it's not very subtle, but I suppose if you come back within a week or two it should be okay."
"Now wait just a minute-" Akane tried to inject.
Nodoka continued as if uninterrupted. "But try to learn the techniques, too, all right? You need to maintain plausible deniability."
"M- mom!" Ranma squealed.
"Did she say when she wanted you to leave? There aren't any holidays coming up, but I suppose we can have miss a week or two of school, just the once."
"I'm not going on a training trip with Shampoo!" Ranma pleaded, "I don't even know if she's still in Japan!"
His mother blinked. "Of course she is. Honestly, from what your father has told me this is the most realistic plan elder Cologne has come up with yet. Just wear a condom, you hear? Shampoo might not want you to, but she won't hold out on you for two weeks if you insist, and we can't have you have your first child out of wedlock-"
"Ranma…"
Any other day, Ranma would have fled as fast as he could, but tired and manhandled as he was, he found himself too paralysed with fear to even protest his innocence at this stage.
Nodoka noticed the change in temperature, and turned to the youngest Tendo. "Now, Akane, you are just going to have to stand back and wait your-"
And for Ranma, there was mallet.
---
What a pleasant thing it is to discover I got five reviews in under a day. You do your thing, I do mine.