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Akane poked at her breakfast, savoring the few moments of peace that the house was going to have before Ranma and Mister Saotome started their morning spar. Usually once that started, any hope of actual peace was long gone as all that anybody was going to be able to hear was the two yelling at each other and the sound of blows glancing off each other. She looked at her watch– any second now…
“Aghhh!”
Akane didn’t even have a second to register that the source of the sound wasn’t her jerk of a fiancé, as the koi pond exploded upwards in a cloud of fine mist. The giant furry mass of Saotome-panda rose up with an irritated growl, which was definitely not what she expected.
Usually, on a typical morning, it was Ranma taking an impromptu cold bath in the koi pond. His furious growling not abating, Mister Saotome sprinted back into the house, sliding around the door to the garden and disappearing down the corridor. She could hear his heavy panda-steps moving up the stairs.
No doubt to punish Ranma for not… participating in the morning spar, she guessed? For throwing him out of the window like Mister Saotome did to him all the time? What she did not expect was Mister Saotome crashing back down to Earth again, splashing once more into the koi pond. This time, however, Mister Saotome only made it a few feet from the koi pond before he collapsed face-first into the grass.
“Oh my,” Kasumi said, worriedly. “Do you think he’s alright?”
“I’m sure he’s fine, right?” Nabiki questioned, looking up from her breakfast only briefly before shrugging and going back to eating. “He seems like he’s pretty resilient, being a martial artist and all.”
Dad rose from the table and walked over to Mister Saotome, poking him a few times with his finger. “He’s breathing,” Dad said, clearing his throat. “I think he’ll definitely be okay. He probably just needs to sleep it off.”
“Is Ranma alright? He’s usually rather… eager to spar with his father each morning,” Kasumi said worriedly. “I wonder if he’s sick…?”
“Akane, you should go check on him,” Nabiki said, having moved on to slurping her tea. She seemed to be in fine form this morning, if the smirk on her face was any indication.
Akane cut her sister an unimpressed glare. “Why me?” she demanded.
“Fiancé,” Nabiki sing-songed. “He’s your responsibility, isn’t he?”
Akane sighed. Of course. This was always a fight she was going to lose now, wasn’t it? They betrothed her with… this… jerkass, and now she was his keeper all the time? She had problems of her own, and her sisters didn’t make it any easier by dumping the aquatranssexual of the year on her, either.
Not that his proclivity to change sexes with a drop of water is entirely his fault…
“Your sister is right, Akane,” Dad chimed in, much as Akane wished he’d just shut up. It was his fault she was in this position to begin with. “The mark of a good, healthy marriage–”
“Father,” Kasumi said suddenly, rising to her feet. Well, at least someone in this family is sort of, kind of looking out for me. Even if she did help dump Ranma on me… “Would you mind helping me get some of the bamboo we’ve been storing for Mister Saotome? He might want some when he wakes up.”
Dad blinked. “Oh, of course, Kasumi,” he said, standing up and following her elder sister out of the room.
Akane sighed, rising to her feet as well. Ignoring the smug look on Nabiki’s face– because she didn’t hit people without provocation, she didn’t, she wasn’t one of those assholes from Furinkan who used their strength against others, for fuck’s sake–she made her way to the staircase and up the steps. She didn’t care if Ranma was sick or not… she just wanted to know if he was going to go to school today, that way she didn’t have to wait for him. It wasn’t because she cared. Honestly, it wasn’t.
Okay, maybe it was a bit.
Life in 1-F was incredibly bland without Ranma around, and… she’d gotten used to having him and his self-satisfied face hanging around like a bad habit. She huffed irritably, and reached the room he shared with Mister Saotome and knocked on the door twice.
“Ranma? Are you alright in there?”
There was no response.
“Ranma?” she asked again. “Come on, dummy. Wake up! We’re going to be late for school! I’m going to leave in five minutes without you!”
Still no response.
The least this idiot could do is at least tell me to go away– or call me uncute, or something! Honestly! The audacity of him to ignore me!
With a yank, she very nearly ripped the door off its tracks as she slid it open. The bedroom was as spartan as it always was– the Saotomes had never bothered buying much in the way of furniture. It was almost as if Mister Saotome insisted that he and his son live like some romanticized version of old ronin. Martial arts was fraught with perils, sure, but the first person who tried to make her sleep on a tatami mat instead of a proper mattress was getting drop-kicked into the next prefecture.
She spotted a lump of person underneath a bunched up pile of blankets, and stomped her way over.
“Ranma!” she growled. “Quit ignoring me!”
Now that she was close enough, she could see that the lump of a cute– fuck, no, more like irritating jerk wasn’t actually silent. Rather, he was making some strangled groaning noise.
“Ranma?” she asked curiously, nudging the pile of blankets with her foot. “What’s wrong?”
“Go ’way…” Ranma grumbled. “L’ve me h’re to die…”
“You’re probably not dying, you big baby,” Akane said flatly, grabbing at the blankets and tugging them away from Ranma. She was met with a shock of pink hair– girl mode, then– and… was not prepared for the sight of Ranma in an almost fetal position, arms wrapped around his midsection. It didn’t take having a degree in rocket science to figure out what might be bothering him.
“Ranma, are you… having period cramps?” she asked, completely bewildered. She slowly moved around to the side he was facing and crouched down to get a better look at him.
Ranma let out another painful noise, and looked up at her. His wide, pink eyes betrayed just how much pain he was in at the moment. The thing Akane felt in the deepest part of her chest wasn’t sympathy, it was… something else. Something that wasn’t sympathy, definitely not. No way. Nuh-uh.
“Whatever the heck it is, it sucks. This has never happened… argh… before,” he complained, letting out another pained whine.
“You’ve… you and your Dad got here two weeks ago… you were in China two weeks before that… so… you’ve had your curse for a month,” Akane said quietly. “Oh, Ranma… you’re having your first period.”
“My first? This is going to happen again!?” Ranma exclaimed in horror. “Akane, please tell me you’re– agh– kiddin’!”
Akane winced. “Unfortunately, I’m not,” she admitted. “When girls get to a certain age, they start to have… well, they’re called menstrual cycles. It makes us… bleed from certain areas, and have cramps and bloating and mood-swings…”
“Being a girl sucks,” Ranma bemoaned.
Akane laughed. “You say that,” she said with a smile. “But you’re always the first to turn on the girly charm to beg for free samples and extra scoops of ice cream. Being a girl isn’t that bad. Besides, there’s stuff you… well, there’s stuff that girls take to regulate it, maybe make it suck less. I don’t know if you can take them or not, since you switch between boy and girl all the time.”
Ranma let out another frustrated noise. “How do I deal with this? When will it stop?”
Akane patted him on the shoulder… ugh, sympathetically. “It depends from person to person,” she explained gently. “A few days, probably.”
“A few days?! Oh, no… I’m going to bleed out before then.”
“You’re not going to bleed out, but… you’ve definitely ruined that pair of pants and your sleeping bag,” Akane said with a wince. It was bad, but then again… how was Ranma supposed to know? She hadn’t thought that he could have periods, and… it wasn’t as if Mister Saotome was going to explain something like that to his son. Ugh, this Jusenkyo stuff was just confusing and dumb. “Do you want me to get Kasumi? She can explain to you all the stuff you’ll need to know about tampons and pads and stuff.”
“No! Not Kasumi– I don’t– please, it’s embarrassing enough.”
Point. Nabiki would hold it over Ranma for the rest of his life. Kasumi would probably help and be sympathetic but… Ranma was vulnerable enough. He didn’t need people making his life worse right now by being jerks.
“Okay, okay. Sheesh,” Akane muttered. “Alright, how about I help you?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, of course,” Akane said placatively. “No sense in having you bleed all over everything. Besides, I remember my first time, and while Kasumi helped me out a lot, it was horribly mortifying and embarrassing. I can only imagine how much worse it is for you as a boy.”
“Yeah…” Ranma muttered.
“Can you stand up?”
“Yeah, I can. It’s just not fun,” Ranma muttered.
Akane offered a hand and helped Ranma up onto his feet. She grabbed his bath towel and basket from the corner of the room and tossed it his way.
“A bath?”
“Yeah, while I get the rest of the stuff put together, it’ll at least soothe your cramps.”
“Oh…”
Sheesh. He really did always have that stray puppy look about him, didn’t he? Whenever he ran into something that put him out of his comfort zone– he went from cocky, self-assured jock to… someone who actually had an emotional side to him. It was almost enough to tug at Akane’s heart strings… almost. She definitely did not find this more vulnerable, lost-looking Ranma cute. Absolutely not. Never in a thousand years. She was just being a good… friend– housemate. It was unsanitary to leave him to his own devices, and besides, it was like Nabiki said. This idiot was her responsibility, wasn’t he?
“Wait here for a second,” Akane said once they’d reached the door of the room. She glanced back at her nervous friend and gave him a reassuring hand squeeze. “I’ll make sure nobody’s going to ask you questions, okay?”
“Sure…” Ranma murmured nervously, his hands tightening around his towel nervously.
Akane slipped out of the room and went back downstairs– Nabiki was gone, thankfully– but her father was still there, reading the paper. She slipped past him with a frown, heading into the kitchen where Kasumi was in the midst of cleaning breakfast away.
“Hey, Kasumi,” she said, fiddling with her hair. It was a nervous tic she’d picked up and couldn’t shake, much to her irritation. Even after it got sliced off by Ryoga. Ugh, jerk. “Could you do me a huge favor?”
Kasumi glanced back at her. “Sure, Akane, what do you need?”
“Can you… take Dad shopping with you today? Or something like that?” she asked. “I… Ranma’s got a problem, and I don’t… really want anybody to get up in his business, you know? Dad in particular.”
“He has a problem?” Kasumi questioned. “Is he sick?”
How do I explain this… in a way that doesn’t sound absolutely unhinged?
“Sort of, it’s…” Akane said, trailing off and grimacing. “He’s… oh… he’s having a day.”
“I don’t follow,” Kasumi said, furrowing her eyebrows.
“It’s that, Kasumi. You know…”
Kasumi’s expression didn’t change.
“Ranma’s got guests.”
“He has guests? I’ll have to make more food for lunch, then…”
“No, not that way, Kasumi,” Akane said, shaking her head. “Please don’t make me say it out loud. It’s already embarrassing enough.”
“Akane, I don’t quite understand what you mean– what’s wrong with Ranma?”
“He’s on his period, Kasumi!” Akane whispered hotly. “And it’s his first, and he’s got it really bad. He’s scared and unsettled and even if he’s a massive jerk, I don’t want him more embarrassed by having to explain it to Dad, okay? You know how Dad is about this kind of stuff, can you imagine how bad it would be with Mister Saotome piling on top of that, too? Ranma’s got enough to deal with right now, you know?”
“Oh… oh my,” Kasumi said, her eyes widening. “Of course, Akane. I understand completely. I– oh my… I’ll help as much as I can.”
“I can handle most of it… just please make sure that Dad and Mister Saotome don’t bother him for a while.”
“Maybe Father could take Mister Saotome to Doctor Tofu’s,” Kasumi said thoughtfully. “He is his oldest friend, after all…”
…
Akane poked her head back into Ranma’s room. “Okay, the coast is clear. I had Kasumi drag our Dads off to the clinic to get your Dad’s head looked at. With Doctor Tofu’s little problem with Kasumi, it should be a few hours– maybe longer, probably– before they’re back. You know you might’ve given him a concussion throwing him down into the pond like that?”
“I didn’t care where he landed, he was just bugging me,” Ranma defended, fiddling with his little pigtail.
Akane couldn’t help but giggle a bit at the look on Ranma’s face. “I suppose that’s as good of a reason as any,” she said reassuringly. “Now, go on, dummy. Go take a nice long soak in the furo. I’ll come check on you in about twenty minutes, okay?”
Ranma gave her a half-lidded look before nodding his head a couple times, picking up his bath supplies and shuffling out of the room. Akane watched as his pink pigtail disappeared through the door and blew out a breath. Well– alright. Now what? As if the answer wasn’t obvious and horrendously silly. She was going to have to teach her fiancé about how to use a tampon.
She let out another dry laugh, before shaking her head. Whichever kami she pissed off, she was glad she wasn’t dealing with worse.
She made her way to her bedroom to dig out what else she thought she might need. Ranma might throw a fit about it, but it was better than the alternatives, let’s be honest. She opened her closet and looked around– memories of that one night where Nabiki and Kasumi had decided to use her clothes to tease Ranma came to mind, and she sighed.
He did look kinda cute in those overalls.
Honestly, talking him into wearing the shirt and overalls was going to be the easy part. The hard part was going to be the other thing she was going to ask him to wear. She wasn’t sure how all the mechanics worked with… that if you were wearing boxers. She didn’t wear them, and she didn’t know any girls who wore them regularly enough either. It was definitely not what she wanted either, but she at the very least had a couple clean pairs of underwear and even if he complained about hip size, it wasn’t like they were too far apart in size either…
She tucked the bundle of clothing under her arm and made her way downstairs to the furo, entering the outer room and closing the door behind her.
“Ranma?” she asked. “I’m here.”
“You may as well come in here, ’kane. It ain’t like I got anything you haven’t seen before,” Ranma called out from inside.
Akane rolled her eyes and opened the door to the inner bathing room. Ranma’s face was dusted with a light blush, and he seemed hunched over in the tub, trying to cover up his body. Akane felt this strange well of… disappointment? Ranma was always so proud of his body, both forms, and loved to flaunt that. She was almost getting… used to his exhibitionism.
“You alright?” Akane questioned, eyebrow raised.
“I’m alright, ’kane,” Ranma muttered. “It’s– it’s weird not being able to change back right now.”
“It’s weird to see you in girl-type mode and not able to change back in hot water.”
“Yeah, it’s really weird,” Ranma said worriedly. “What if I’m stuck this way?”
“You’re not stuck this way, well… I mean you are, but probably only as long as you’re on your period. Once it passes, you should be able to switch back, I think.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Ranma muttered, fussing with his pigtail again. “So, you get all the stuff you need?”
“I did,” Akane said, leaving the doorway and walking back to the sink. She opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed the small bottle of pain relievers that Kasumi always kept stocked, just in case one of them had a bad month. She set that on the counter, then knelt down and opened the cabinet door underneath and grabbed the two boxes sitting just inside, setting them up on the counter as well.
“Just let me know when you’re done, Ranma,” Akane said, poking her head in the inner furo room again.
Ranma sighed. “I guess I’m pretty much done,” he said quietly. “This is helping, but I don’t think I can just… sit here all day. I’d get all pruny if I did.”
“Only you would be worried about that,” Akane said with a giggle. “Go ahead and dry yourself off and I’ll be in the outer room. Hopefully this won’t take too long because I’m sure by the end of it, both of us are going to be completely traumatized.”
She turned around and left Ranma to his own devices, perching herself on the closed toilet lid, twiddling her thumbs. I hope we don’t end up arguing. I’m not in the mood for it today…
The door to the inner furo opened, and Ranma stepped out, towel wrapped around his waist. Akane blinked and rolled her eyes. She stood up, walked over to Ranma and yanked the towel from around his waist. The pink-haired boy froze in shock and wasn’t able to stop Akane from wrapping the towel around his chest, tying a bit of the excess to keep it knotted up at the back.
“Honestly, Ranma– none of us mind if you walk around with your boobs out,” Akane said. “But you should get in the habit of covering them up around our Dads.”
“Why? Who cares about feminine modesty?” Ranma asked with a cute scowl.
“It isn’t about modesty, dummy,” Akane admonished gently. “Our Dads are already weird enough about the fact you’ve got this curse. I’ve heard what your Dad says every time you spend more than a few hours like this a day. As it is, the reason we’re stuck together is because they all think I’m gay, just because I hate boys.”
“I don’t think you’re gay,” Ranma quipped. “You seem like you like men, if Doctor Tofu’s any indication, and even if you like girls too, who cares? I definitely don’t care.”
Akane gave him a slight smile. “Thanks, Ranma,” she said. “But either way, if it was just the four of us in this house, by ourselves? Honestly, I don’t think any of us would care. We’d probably join you because having to cover up all the time is kind of a pain in the butt, particularly in the summertime when it’s hot and the last thing I want to do is put on a bra. But since our Dads are here, let’s not give them heart attacks.”
“Fair enough,” Ranma said. “So, you’re gonna show me how girls deal with… you know, bleeding down there?”
Akane sighed. “Yeah, alright. You might hate me a bit more after this, but let’s get started.”
She reached over and grabbed the first item and held it up for Ranma to look at. The look he was giving reminded Akane of the time Nabiki accidentally dropped a 500 yen piece into a storm drain. Like everything that encompassed the thing’s existence was the source of personal suffering. “This, Ranma, is a tampon.”
…
Akane gently poured a cup of tea for Ranma, whose face was still colored with an embarrassed blush. The pinkette seemed to be doing everything in his power to avoid looking her in the eye.
“Ranma,” she said, setting the teapot down. “You can’t just not look me in the eye forever. Yes, it was embarrassing, and yes, I got to see more of you than I would have wanted to see right now, but if we’re stuck together in this engagement, then I suppose it was kind of inevitable we’d see a lot of each other at some point, right?”
“I guess,” Ranma muttered. “I’m just really embarrassed. I don’t exactly feel very manly right now. I’m on my period, waiting for this stupid menstrual cramp painkiller to kick in, wearing my girlfriend’s underwear and clothes. I feel like such an okama right now.”
“Don’t call yourself that,” Akane said sharply. “Don’t you ever say that about yourself, Ranma. I don’t even want to know who’s called you that, or how you think you could call yourself that, but you’re not.”
“But you call me a pervert all the time!” Ranma shot back with a scowl.
Akane opened her mouth to retort– because you are, and stopped. No, he really isn’t. Is he?
Akane had to admit… that maybe she had been part of the problem here. She knew that Mister Saotome could often be very critical about his son’s activities when in girl-mode, and… other people didn’t exactly help, accusing him of being weird and perverted… and she was one of them. She had let one incident colour her entire perception of Ranma. Of course, he was still a jerkass whose mouth moved faster than his brain, but that was… rather endearing, actually.
“I’m sorry,” Akane said quietly. “You’re not a pervert, Ranma. I… I shouldn’t be calling you that. You’re not like the boys at Furinkan who go to such great lengths to try to harass women into dating them. You’ve never once done anything like that, and with what Upperclassman Kuno does… you’re more like one of us than one of them. I’m sorry, Ranma. I won’t call you that anymore.”
Akane sighed. “I was… horrified at meeting a random boy in my furo that I’d never seen before. Then I was angry that the girl I thought I could be really good friends with was a boy. I thought I’d finally met a girl who had the same interests as me, and didn’t care about boys… then, I don’t know. Things kind of escalated from there.”
“I’m sorry too. I’m not helping things by antagonizing you, am I?” Ranma asked.
Akane laughed. “We’re both awful, aren’t we? Like we’re both just colossal assholes?” she asked.
“Yeah, probably,” Ranma admitted.
“Well,” Akane said. “I guess there’s only one solution to that, and that’s… we start over.”
Akane offered a hand to Ranma. “I’m Akane,” she said with a slight smile. “Want to be friends?”
Ranma blinked at her owlishly before smiling and accepting her hand. “Yeah. I’d… like that, actually.”
…
Akane found herself dragging Ranma to the Vice Principal’s office the next day. She had sat up some of the night thinking about how to deal with Ranma’s curse and the prospect of being locked in it for a few days every month. The student body was nosy, that much was true– and she could only imagine how people were going to deal with Ranma needing to do what every other girl in school had to do from time to time.
“Saotome, you should have brought this to my attention,” Vice Principal Takeda said with a frown. “We can absolutely make arrangements to deal with this problem.”
“I don’t want to be an issue for other people,” Ranma insisted, only for the teacher to raise her hand to cut him off.
“Saotome, it’s alright. Your situation is rather unique, and while I can respect that you’ve spent quite some time trying to avoid causing any issues as a consequence of it, you're entitled to a degree of flexibility,” Takeda said plainly.
“He could be with the rest of the girls from our class for the phys-ed class,” Akane said. “I don’t trust the guys in our class to not try and get fresh with him when he’s stuck as a girl.”
Takeda raised her eyebrows. “You think they would? Knowing some of the feats that Mister Saotome is capable of?” she questioned.
“Boys don’t think with their brains, they think with their… other parts, ma’am,” Akane said flatly.
“Hey!” Ranma protested.
Akane ignored him and continued. “Otherwise the Hentai Horde wouldn’t have been a problem for so long,” she finished.
“Indeed,” Takeda muttered. “I suppose if your fellow classmates don’t have any issue with it, Saotome can join the girls.”
Ranma’s nose wrinkled. “Can’t I just change in the nurse’s office or somethin’?” he asked.
“I think your friend is less worried about where you’ll change into your uniform, and more… Well, Saotome, I would rather not give a bunch of adolescent boys with poor impulse control unfettered access to a young woman, even if that young woman is a boy ninety-five percent of the time.”
“Besides, didn’t you want to get better at your physical mechanics as a girl? You get plenty of practice as a boy at home because of your Dad, but you’ve complained to me more than once that you feel like you’re a step behind as a girl.”
“Different points of gravity,” Ranma murmured. “Nearly ate shit against Kodachi because of it.”
“Exactly,” Akane said gently, resting her hand on Ranma’s shoulder. “Trust me, it’ll be fine. The girls are all super nice too. They’ll love to have you.”
…
“Alright, we’re going to sit and discuss this like human beings, because if I get woken up again by someone trying to murder my fiancé, I’m going to probably kill someone,” Akane said, dropping Ranma and the Chinese girl onto the floor of the Dojo unceremoniously. Ranma was not tied up, but the Chinese girl definitely was. Akane wasn’t sure how long that would last, but she was getting really tired of this chaos. “Ranma, why is this girl trying to kill you?”
“She’s from the village Pops and I stopped in after we got cursed. We hadn’t eaten anything in two days, and we saw this food sitting out. We started helping ourselves to it, which we probably shouldn’t’ve, and then this girl got all mad at us. I challenged her to a battle for the food, ’cuz only the best warrior in the village was entitled to it. I beat her handily, and then she gave me this thing called the Kiss of Death.”
“So, she’s going to kill you because you beat her?”
“Any outsider girl who beats a Nujiezu warrior in combat is to be killed for their dishonor!” the Chinese girl groused.
Akane hummed. “A question, then. What if an outsider boy beats you?”
“Then by village law, this one is obligated to marry him,” the Chinese girl said. “Not that I wanted to do either! Husbands are an obstacle to becoming a better warrior, and the last thing I wanted to do was chase someone for hundreds of miles!”
Akane nodded patiently. “What if the boy has an intended already?” she questioned. “How does that work, then?”
“Akane–”
“Shush, Ranma,” Akane said chidingly.
The Chinese girl wiggled a bit before grunting. “Then I am obligated to kill her… unless…”
“Unless?” Akane questioned.
“Unless she is able to defeat me in battle,” she clarified. “Then the bylaw of mutual concubinage would apply instead.”
Akane smiled and glanced at Ranma. Ranma’s eyes were wide, and he seemed to get the point. “Akane, you can’t possibly think–?”
“It’d solve at least one of your problems, and besides, she’s pretty,” Akane said gently, tilting her head slightly. “Not like it would hurt having some firepower in our corner. What do you think?”
“I– our Dads are going to throw a fit,” Ranma protested.
“They’ll get over it. Besides, I’d be more worried about whoever she’d bring to the party than our Dads. If she’s from a magical society of warrior women, then whoever her parents are, they’re probably scarier.”
“Grandmother Ku Lon is the wisest woman in the entire tribe,” the Chinese girl said. “Oh, goddess, I’m in so much trouble when she finds out about this…”
“Well, good news for you… sorry, you never gave us your name?” Akane asked.
“This one is Shan Pu, courtesy name Shufen.” the girl replied dryly. “I’m the First-Rank Champion of the Nujiezu tribe.”
“Which name would you prefer we call you?”
The girl squinted. “Shufen.”
“Well, Shufen,” Akane said with a smile. “It just so happens that Ranma here is a boy by birth– he has a Jusenkyo curse that turns him into a girl– and I am his betrothed thanks to a family arrangement done when we were little, and I just so happened to tie you up like a pig from an American cowboy movie. So, what’s this about mutual concubinage?”
Shufen narrowed her eyes. “You’re quite daring, aren’t you?” she said consideringly. “Let me go and I will explain everything.”
“No dice, scary girl. You’re liable to blow up this dojo, and my late mother’s shrine is right over there,” Akane said, gesturing to the small shrine to Mom that Dad had erected inside the dojo. It wasn’t as nice as her gravestone, but it was a way to pay respect to her and the legacy she left behind as a martial artist on top of her legacy as a mother. “I can’t be held liable for not choking you out if you so much as breathe on it wrong.”
Shufen sighed. “Fine,” she muttered. “The bylaw of mutual concubinage is another law among our tribe. It was created as a means of inducting a husband who was able to provide fresh blood, and a wife who could become a warrior.”
She shrugged– or at least shrugged as best as she could considering she was still hog-tied. “Assuming all those things are true, if I did invoke that bylaw and right, Grandmother would still want to test you both to see if you’re worthy,” she admitted. “Theoretically you both could be recognized as proper warriors… but she’s a terrifying force of nature sometimes, and I couldn’t tell you what she’s planning, if anything.”
“That was the old crone we dealt with in the village, right?” Ranma asked. “I could see it. But that’s okay, Akane’s gettin’ better now that she’s got someone taking her seriously, and I’m always gettin’ better, and you can help us if you want.”
Shufen huffed. “It isn’t as if you are giving me much of a choice,” she said dryly. “Can you please untie me? I need to pee.”
“If you promise you’ll come right back here, I will– and Akane will go get a hot kettle of water to show you my curse. Fair enough? On your honor as a warrior?”
Shufen narrowed her eyes again. “I swear on my honor as a warrior.”
“Good. Now hold still…”
…
The next morning, Akane was firmly resolved to the idea of enjoying the fireworks. She suppressed a mirthful snort as Ranma’s father stopped cold at the sight of Shufen sitting at the breakfast table.
“Boy… why… why– that’s the girl from that tribe that’s been trying to kill us!”
Ranma gave his father an unimpressed look. “Yeah, her name’s Shufen. She’s going to be staying with us for a bit.”
“Now, wait a minute, Ranma–” Akane’s father went to protest at the imposition of yet another person in their house.
“How delightful,” Kasumi said brightly, cutting Dad off. “You can sleep in Ranma’s room, Shufen. Mister Saotome can take the free room downstairs.”
“Now wait just a minute–” Mister Saotome went to protest.
“Shufen is a young woman who needs some space of her own, and Ranma’s half-girl, so there shouldn’t be any issues if they bunk together,” Kasumi said brightly. “The room is large enough to accommodate them both. Besides, wouldn’t you want to be closer to Father? You both stay up late every night playing shogi and drinking anyway, so it makes perfect sense for you two to be so close so that nobody else is disturbed.”
Both her father and Mister Saotome had, at the very least, the good decency to look chastised at Kasumi’s words.
“This one is very grateful for your hospitality, Kasumi-dajie,” Shufen said gracefully. “I will endeavour my best to not be a burden or trouble to you and your family.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” Kasumi said with a nod, and in a flash, a long, several inch kitchen knife was embedded in the wood of the table. Everyone jumped in shock, except for Shufen, whose eyes were locked with Kasumi.
“Of course,” her elder sister said placidly. “All I ask is that you please look after my little sister and her fiancé.”
Shufen smirked and nodded once. “With every possible means, Kasumi-shijie,” she said plainly.
“I get the feeling like something serious just happened,” Nabiki quipped, her eyes not leaving the long, sharp knife in the center of the table. “But I don’t know what.”
…
“Are you sure this was a smart idea?” Ranma questioned the next morning as they walked to class, Shufen accompanying them. “I mean, her granny’s kind of intimidating. I only met her for a few minutes ’fore Pops and I high-tailed it out of there, and she was kinda scary.”
“Grandmother is only scary to those she doesn’t like,” Shufen said. “If you make a good enough impression on her when she arrives in a few weeks, then I’m sure she’ll treat you like she treats the rest of the family. Of course, she’s also got an absolutely horrible sense of humour, so I don’t know. She might just find it fun to bother you until you crack.”
“Oh, great,” Ranma muttered, pinching his nose. “It ain’t that you’re not cute or nothin’, Shufen. ‘Cuz ya are, but this just sounds like we’re askin’ for trouble.”
“I want to do this, so Grandmother will honor it. She just wants to make sure you both are good enough for me.”
“Getting the Chinese Amazon equivalent of the shovel talk from a woman who could probably turn us inside out with a magical spell,” Akane quipped with a grin.
“Nothing quite so gory,” Shufen said non-chalantly, giving a slight grin.