Watermelon Girl
by Chaos Orchid ← Ron Dow75
The Cure for Foot-in-Mouth
Ranma woke up as a girl, her back against a wall, knees on a tatami mat, looking up at his* baggy boxers. "Huh?"
"Oh, you're finally awake," Kasumi pleasantly greeted her. She had just started buttoning her blouse. Her lightly embroidered bra and panties were disappearing from sight.
Ranma moved her thigh so s/he didn't see them. "What happened? Why'm I like this?"
"Akane and you were fighting last night."
"We did not! We fell asleep in each other's arms. I remember it!" It was a first.
"And little sister used your arm to judo throw you across the room."
"But–" Ranma had a memory of Ryōga telling (jealous) him* that even though Akane adored P-chan as a pet and took it to bed with her, the animal would still get abused by her dream-fighting. "Aw, man. And Akane has no problem hittin' me even when I'm awake."
"That will have to change, now that you are with child," Kasumi said. "As soon as I can, I will purchase some home pregnancy tests."
"But I already've been told I am. Hot water don't give me back my body."
Kasumi said, "You may look now, Ranma." When s/he peeked, s/he saw that the tall beauty had finished tucking her blouse into the skirt and was, leisurely, ready to button its hidden, elastic belt. "Yes. I believe the woman you told me about said she was a qualified nurse, so you probably are expecting."
Ranma frowned, "She's also the Shintō priestess who gave that love potion to Kunō!"
Kasumi sought to calm her by being calm herself, "The home pregnancy tests are to see if you remain pregnant."
"Hunh?"
"While the baby is at the embryonic stage, it is quite possible for it be lost. Many women do not even know they had one if that happens before they miss their period."
"I could lose it? No, fault of my own?(!)" The redhead didn't know whether s/he should smile or not.
"The more violent the action, the more likely it will happen. And that is why Akane isn't here now."
"Not here…." Ranma finally looked at the rest of the inn's room. Nabiki was still under the covers, a pillow over her head, trying to block out the morning light and their sounds. But Akane…. "She went out for a jog?"
"She left feeling guilty and scared. You need to talk to her. Try to reassure her."
The redhead muttered, "Who's gonna reassure me?"
"I will, onna-Ranma-kun," Kasumi said.
Nabiki finally spoke up, "Go after the hothead, already and let me sleep-in! This still a vacation and I don't have to be up scheming anything!"
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The girl went out in his* tank top and boxers, thinking that his* boxers looked enough like swim trunks that s/he could wear them out onto the beach.
S/he found Akane sitting on the edge of a wasen fishing boat brought ashore. She was still in her pjs. When she noticed her, she turned her head away in shame. Ranma knew, then, how serious her issue was. She felt she had not only lost her own face, but the pigtailed girl's as well. The mother-who-might-not-be.
"It wasn't your fault, Akane. It would've happened, even if I weren't…you know."
"You're right. I shouldn't be near you. I shouldn't be able to hear you so I can't get mad at you. That's the only way I can protect the, the baby."
"And even if you did that, stuff'll happen to me, 'cuz stuff's always happenin' to me. Without me bein' forced to be around an uncute girl–"
Akane's glare snapped around and focused on the greatest jerk she had ever met!
The redhead was smiling. S/he dared her to stop gripping the gunwale and punch her. "...reminding I have to be more careful because of her baby, I could lose you both."
Akane kicked…sand. She didn't exactly turn away. She just looked away, and at a new thought. "When did you lose your foot-in-mouth disease?"
"I did? How about that. I guess it's because we're no long a so-called couple. Like it or not, we're stuck together as long as we're gonna be…you know."
"You're stuck more than me," she said rather glumly.
"For 9 months, I'm told."
"More, you idiot!" Akane was back to glaring! "Being a mother is a life-time commitment!"
"What about the father?"
"Ours are the exception, I guess. But they haven't exactly been good at being dads!"
"Mine stinks, alright. Yours can't be worse. That's what you gotta learn from."
"But will I?!" She wasn't yelling as loudly now. "I never seem to learn those lessons! I have a short fuse! And when I can't get angry, I go into denial! Just look at P-chan!"
"You, you know about P-chan!?(!)"
"I know I attack the poor thing when I'm asleep. That's why he keeps running away from me! And he stays away from me for days– weeks !
"It's a wonder he loves me so much that he comes back to me. It makes me want to love him even more."
"Gah! Love(?)" Ranma wanted to deny s/he heard that and forget about the vision s/he had where P-chan was replaced by Ryōga.
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The Three Days and Two Nights Prize did not include free meals. But they did get discounts. And a boardwalk uminoya that opened earlier than it normally did. It did bring out, bistro-style, tables and chairs. That was where the Are-a-Couple met everybody but Nabiki. "Sit down, Ranma, Akane," Kasumi said. "Breakfast is on Nabiki."
"Nabiki!?" they were surprised.
Kasumi's smile may have actually gained a wicked tint, "In exchange for breakfast-in-bed. Much later."
His* pop was the next to speak, "About that thing that is supposedly growing inside you."
To Ranma's and everybody else's wonder, one of the peaches on her table rolled towards her.
It then shot its peachpit stone at her–hitting her solidly between the eyes!
Darkest Before the Dawn
Ranma left his* Old Man with an uncut grapefruit stuffed deep into his mouth. Too bad it was seedless. Maybe then its fertility kami would fertilize him!
"Naw, he'd just do to my brother what he's done to me," s/he scowled.
"It would only punish the woman." Akane in a sundress kept up with the girl with shorter legs.
"Yeah. She'd be punished even if she didn't get…. that way." Still fuming over her own punishment, the girl in baggy, kung fu silks fell into a low grumbling.
Even in urban Tokyo, mom-and-pop businesses typically opened at ten or eleven. The uminoya was an exception. But there were still people about. They were either going fishing or out to harvest the watermelons they should be infamous for. It was safe, now that the Great Watermelon god was defeated. And this being a village, they all heard the story from their grandmothers how it was defeated this year.
And it wasn't difficult to identify who was the festival's "1992 Watermelon Girl". Just how many blue-eyed, red-haired, pigtailed girls were there in Japan? None that came around these parts.
And since Akane was next to this year's celebrity, she felt eyes on her, too. By their whispered chatter, she knew she was being considered more of a freak than Ranma. About the only reason an outside woman had for coming to the village was to become pregnant. But how many had come and become a father?
She pulled at the smaller girl's arm, "Come, let's go back to the beach."
With nothing else on her mind but that way, s/he allowed herself to be pulled in whatever direction.
Akane tried to think of something that would help either of them get out of their moods, "I wonder if our homeroom teacher really is going to retire, like he's said he was, ever since headmaster Kunō came back."
No response.
"It's going to seem strange. Heiwaujigun-sensei has been my teacher since elementary school."
"He hasn't been mine. I never really had a homeroom, 'cuz I never had a home. I never had a mom."
"Of course you did!" And she tried to laugh, "You're not the reincarnation of Momotaro." (Peach Boy)
"I'm Suikachōjo." (Watermelon Girl) "And how'd I know I ain't reincarnated without a mom?"
"You must have some memories of your mom!"
"Only sort of. Pop made sure to put me to trainin' immediately and I had so many new stuff to remember, I sorta forgot the old stuff. Important stuff, now, I guess."
S/he stepped off of the boardwalk and dropped (jiggle) to the beach, "Maybe I don't really have them of mom, because there aren't none. It's like you said, being married to pop'd be a punishment. Maybe she left him."
Instead of walking any further, s/he sank onto the sand, "She didn't want me, 'cuz I'd be remindin' her of him."
In a sundress, Akane lowered herself into a squat. "It's possible. I would leave him."
Suddenly she paled. What if Ranma left her!? She was becoming painfully aware that she would be a bad…. Well, 'husband' wasn't what she would become. But she could certainly become a bad father of their child.
And unlike Aunt Saotome, Ranma probably wouldn't trust little Meron with her. She would take her to keep her safe from the abuse of her father, the woman. And she would be right to take her.
Akane was relieved to hear the mother of her child say, "I don't know nothin' about bein' no mom. Maybe I should let the poor kid be adopted or something."
"No!" Akane surprised even herself at the strength of her response. "Then you'd be like your mom! You'd, you'd be abandoning the child you gave birth to! You know, uh, 'Let it be somebody else's responsibility'. Even if they aren't the responsible type."
Ranma put her hands down on the sand and leaned back. "What was your mom like?"
Akane smiled. Up until her death, her memories of her mom were all good. "Wonderful. It was because of her I became interested in martial arts. I was too young to understand how good she was at it, but she must have been. She knew how to be the perfect housekeeper and how to budget expenses and invest money. Kasumi and Nabiki inherited those talents of her."
Her smile fell off her face. "I only inherited her martial arts interest. And I probably don't have her talent.
"I won't be a good mother. Better to have Kasumi be the mother!"
The redhead grunted, "Hmh! You'd be better than Nabiki. I'm sure she'd always be finding ways to get a profit off of the kid and ruin her childhood." S/he didn't know the history of child stars and the like, but s/he instinctively understood it. Or maybe not 'instinctively'. Besides busking, his* Old Man had used his* athletic talents to get him* admitted to schools in the middle of a school year. "School Pride" had made him a jock jerk.
"Man! Bad dads, no moms. We are stuck in the middle of an ocean without no…." It took her long enough to see the paddle.
In fact, s/he could see a power motor! "Kasumi! She knows how to be a mom!"
But Ranma was focused on the mothers who had brought their young kids to the beach.
Hope? Ranma had seen hope!? "Kasumi?" Akane then remembered. She had said it, but Ranma had seen it! "Wait for me!"
But the pigtailed girl wasn't going back to the inn or even the uminoya. "Where are we going!?"
S/he didn't answer. S/he left the beach with a look of determination.
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NOTE:
Chapter 365, "Incense of Spring Sleep" tells how Akane dream fights become real fights.
Again, Ranma and his mother have not seen each other for ten years. When he was six. In canon, they won't meet until months later. Ranma should have been, non-canonically, 17 at the time.