It was easy to get really sick really fast of Tendo Soun's whining. This was something all the inhabitants of the Tendo dojo were painfully familiar with. Especially when he stayed up all night and moped, like he had done the previous night. "Muh-muh-my daughter is a luh-luh-lesbian!" he blubbered. "My own d- duh-daughter!" If Ranma had been feeling spiteful, he could have mentioned all the times Nabiki had groped his female form. But that wasn't how he felt. Truth be told, he didn't know how to feel. Whatever it was, it was obvious that seeing his most omnipresent fiancee and his most annoying admirer huddled together in a pile of hot, naked female flesh had blown a fuse in Ranma's brain. He had been the first to peel away from the crowd of onlookers, walking down the hall and down the stairs in a solemn, wordless procession. Genma had gone after him. "Get back here, boy, don't you have anything to say to your fiancee?" Genma asked. Ranma's only answer was a backhand blow to his father's jaw that sent the panda-man crashing into the wall in an unconscious heap. Ranma hadn't once looked him in the eyes. Nabiki watched this impassionately. She knew what Ranma was capable of, and she knew someone who wanted to be left alone when she saw one. Her father had gone off to his room to mope, so that left only herself and Kasumi standing in Akane's doorway. The middle Tendo sister exhaled deeply and crossed her arms. She looked at Akane and Kodachi, who still looked to shocked to move, and made a decision. "Well, I guess we'll all be talking about this a lot tomorrow," she said. She looked at Kasumi, who had an innocently confused expression on her face. "Oneechan...maybe you could help Akane clean up?" Kasumi noticed the smell of feminine musk still lingering in the air. "Oh my...would you like me to wash those sheets, Akane-chan?" Akane, who was grabbing wildly for her bathrobe while trying to stay under the sheets, spoke for the first time since being caught. "Um... yeah, thanks, Kasumi-chan..." She put the robe on under the sheets and jumped out of the bed. She ran over to where Kodachi's leotard was slung over her chair, and tossed the Black Rose her clothes. Kodachi dressed in the same manner as Akane, trying to salvage what was left of her noble pride. "Maybe you should go home, Kodachi," Nabiki suggested. Kodachi looked at Akane, who nodded silently. They pressed their lips together one last time. Nabiki looked on in silence, aware of the magnitude of what had happened just now but not the significance. Her sister and the gymnast broke their kiss, and Kodachi left in a very un- Kodachi-like way: through the door. 'Of course,' Nabiki thought. 'She's always sneaking around, but this time she's been caught. Sneaking won't help now.' Aloud, she said to Kasumi, who was gathering Akane's bed sheets, "Oneechan, do you think you could look out the window? At the roof?" Kasumi opened the window and stuck her head out. "Why, yes...Ranma's up there," she said. "Should I call him?" "No, leave him alone," Nabiki said. "I don't think he's in the mood to talk." Kasumi cheerfully resumed collecting Akane's soiled sheets, humming "Zettai! Zettai!" to herself as she left. Nabiki shook her head at her younger sister and walked back to her room, slowly. Akane could only stand there, barely breathing, with her arms wrapped around herself. The darkness outside her window offered her no comfort. The night was still young, but when the sun rose the next morning, it would be over a different world. ----- Kodachi felt way out of her league. Her normally brimming confidence just wasn't there. Instead of jumping from roof to roof, ribbons and demonic laughter trailing behind, she was reduced to taking the sidewalk like a commoner, in total silence. The buildings around her seemed too tall to be real, and she could sense them glaring down at her for all the times she had walked on top of them. The cat was out of the bag now, and the gymnast was out of the closet. The only question was...what would happen now? Ranma knew...Akane's family knew...and it would only be a matter of time before hers found out. Tatewaki would go ballistic, picturing his own sister bedding down *his* object of affection. As for her father, she could just imagine that fool's reaction. Something to the effect of, "It ain' right dat wahinis be fallin' in love wid udda wahinis! Da Big Kahuna ain' down wid dat!" The two of them were fools, however, and she didn't care much for their opinions. But her own honor was another story, and everything she had been told about nobility for the past 16 years went against everything she had been doing with her Akane. There was a very real possibility she could be expelled from the Kuno clan. Then she would have no choice but to hope Akane could convince her family to take her in. Kodachi's lover meant the world to her, but she honestly wasn't sure she could adapt to a lower-class lifestyle. She sighed. The night felt colder than it should have, and she doubted it was because of what she was wearing. But as she left the Tendo dojo, she was unaware of a pair of eyes watching her. ----- Ranma was well acquainted with the feel of the dojo's roof, having spent more than his fair share of time up there. It was usually because of Akane that he ended up there, and in that way, tonight was no different. But it was different... No matter how angry Akane ever got, he was sure that somehow, some part of her still longed for him, couldn't resist him, or subconsciously wanted him to infuriate her. That was just the way she was; it was easier for her to express herself with violence than with compassion. Or at least, he had thought so. He watched Kodachi leave the dojo. She wasn't leaving in her usual way. Actually, she looked more like she was leaving a haunted house. Well, it was what she deserved. He'd never really liked her, but he'd never really wanted to see her get hurt, either. Even the first time he'd met her, he'd saved her life...something he'd come to regret in various degrees since then. Now, watching her stripped of her bravado, a stranger in a strange land, gave him a perverse sense of satisfaction. 'One minute they're trying to kill each other...the next they're having *sex*?!' he thought. 'I know I'm not the smartest guy around, but was I so blind I couldn't see this happening right in front of me?' He thought for a minute, and couldn't remember any indications that Akane and Kodachi ever wanted to do anything more than break each other's necks. 'No, they got me,' he admitted. 'They got everyone. The whole thing about hating each other...it was all fake! But...how long has it been going on?' Kodachi was out of sight now. He had half a mind to follow her, but no idea what he would say. 'And...why is this hurting me so much?' ----- Akane woke up the next morning to the sound of explosions. Shaking the sleep from her eyes, she ran to her window to open it, but was glad she didn't. Half a second after reaching the window, she jumped back in shock as it was pelted by charred chunks of wood. Cautiously, she moved back to the window and looked out. Ranma was down in the yard, breaking blocks of wood like she always did in the morning. But there was something different: Ranma's punches were chi-enhanced. His fists were glowing blue. When he smashed the wood, it didn't just break, it blew apart into tiny, smoldering chunks. Between boards, Akane noticed Ranma's hands were covered with scratches, some of them bleeding badly. There were also dark circles under his eyes. How long had he been doing this? Sometimes Akane forgot just how powerful Ranma was. ----- When she dressed and went downstairs, the environment of the dojo was different from its usual chaotic milieu. Everyone was just sitting at the table eating breakfast in silence, except Soun, who was still sobbing quietly between bites, and Ranma, who wasn't there. Genma had a large bruise on his head from where Ranma had hit him. Akane sat down and began eating her breakfast in silence, too. For a while, no one said anything. Then Genma uttered an uncomfortable grunt and spoke. "Er...Akane, I think your father wants to say something to you," he said. Soun only whimpered more until Genma nudged him. "Come on, Tendo!" Soun looked bleary-eyed at his youngest daughter, and spoke only one word: "Why?" "I think we'd all like to know that," Nabiki said evenly, taking a bite of a rice ball. Akane put her food down. She looked up, only to find that all eyes which had once been looking down were now looking right at her. She swallowed up all of her shaken self-assurance, and gave them the only answer she could. "Because I love her." Kasumi blinked. "But she's a girl," said the oldest Tendo sister. "How can you be in love with a girl?" "And more importantly," Nabiki drawled, "how can you be in love with Kodachi, of all people?" "I...I just am," Akane said. "Do I need to explain myself? I can't choose who I love, I just love them!" "You were supposed to marry Ranma!" Soun whined. "That was your idea, not mine!" Akane said. "No one ever even asked if I wanted to marry him!" "So did you?" asked Kasumi. Akane sighed, pulling her legs up against her chest. "I don't know. I guess...maybe I might have thought about it a few times, but I never decided I wanted to, not for sure." "I guess we can forget about that now," Nabiki said. Soun suddenly switched modes. He slammed his palms onto the table. "This is ridiculous! It's unforgivable! Your poor mother would be turning over in her grave if she knew what you had been doing! She so wanted to see the schools of Anything Goes united!" Akane stood up. "That's not fair! You can't put that kind of guilt on me!" Genma grabbed his friend's shoulder and held him back. "There's no need to panic, Tendo. After all, you do have two other daughters..." "That's right...Kasumi? Nabiki?" Kasumi smiled. "Oh, no thank you. Ranma's a nice boy, but he's not my type." Nabiki shook her head. "And I'm not looking for a long-term engagement any time soon." Genma's chopsticks snapped in his hand. He and Soun exchanged worried looks. "OK, now we can panic." Both men jumped up from the table and tried to seize Akane, who jumped out of their grasp. She started backing away, but they followed her, determined to catch her and make her marry Ranma. "You must do this! The future of the school of Anything Goes martial arts depends on it!" "No way! I'm not doing it!" "You have to!" "No I don't!" "STOP IT!" yelled a new voice. It was Ranma. He had come in from outside, blood running between his knuckles, sawdust and wood chunks on his shirt and in his hair. He hadn't looked so furious since that impostor had shown up, pretending to be him to his mother. He pointed a bleeding finger at Akane. "Living room. *Now*." If he hadn't sounded so threatening, Akane probably wouldn't have moved. In his eyes, in his voice, in everything about him, she couldn't see even a trace of the Ranma she knew. ----- The blue-haired girl sat on the couch, waiting for Ranma. A minute or two had passed, and he still wasn't there. For all the urgency he'd tried to convey, he wasn't being especially quick himself. Wait, there he was. He walked into the room, brushing the dust off of himself with a towel. When it was mostly gone, he wrapped the towel around his right hand, where spots of blood began to appear on the outside of it. He began to pace back and forth irritably. For the longest time he didn't say anything, and Akane began to get impatient. "I can't believe how blind I've been," Ranma finally said. He looked right at Akane, who didn't answer. "I should've known from the first day we met." "Known what?" Akane asked, irritated. Ranma swung his towel-covered fist and put a hole in the wall, stunning Akane back into silence. "That you like girls!" The answer caught her so off-guard that she didn't know what to say. "I remember what you said that first day, when we got to school," Ranma continued. "You said, 'I hate men!' And then you beat the crap out of half the guys at school." Akane blinked. She could hardly remember that; it seemed so long ago. "That...wasn't what I meant," she said. "Yeah?" Ranma sneered. "Ranma-the-girl shows up at your front door, and you're the picture of nice. Then you find out Ranma-the-girl is really Ranma-the-guy, and you don't give me ten nice words ever again." She looked at the floor. Normally, whenever Ranma's mouth opened, her ears closed, but this time, she felt she owed him an opportunity to speak his mind. He hadn't exactly come out of this in the spotlight. And he did have a point, she hated to admit... Then Ranma was laughing. He sounded deranged, and his body was shaking so badly that he had to lean over and put his hands on his knees. "What are you laughing about?" Akane asked. Ranma wiped a tear from his eye with his non-bandaged hand. "Heh-heh, I just think it's funny that you spend all this time calling me a pervert, when it's actually *you* who's the pervert!" "How *dare* you!" she cried, ready to tear him a new one as she usually did when he pissed her off. "NO!" he yelled, and brought his arm down on a table, which splintered like a chopstick. Akane was tossed back into her seat. Ranma looked at her like a teacher staring down a disobedient student. "I don't think you understand how this works," he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You don't *get* to be pissed off right now. *You* aren't the one who was lied to for months!" He stopped talking, and she dared not reply. "What I wanna know is *why*," Ranma finally said. "Why what?" Akane asked. He was in her face before she could blink. "Why you screwed with me like that! You coulda just told me you were a...you know, one of those things..." "Lesbian?" she said quietly. "Yeah! If you'd just told me you were one of those in the first place, I woulda said fine. But you strung me out, you let me think you liked guys! You even stayed engaged to me, for kami's sake! Why the hell did you do it?!" "I didn't know..." Ranma's anger faded a little. He moved away, turning his back to Akane. "When did you figure it out?" She sighed. When exactly *did* she figure it out? For some reason, she couldn't remember having any feelings for another girl, especially Kodachi, until a certain point. Then, her eyes had just opened with such an impact she couldn't believe how long she had been blind. What she told Ranma was when she had first developed feelings for the Kuno girl: "It was...about a month and a half ago." Ranma looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "So for the past month and a half, you and Kodachi have just been *acting* like you still wanted to rip each other's guts out." She nodded. His fists clenched tightly. Blood began to seep from the towel, which was still wrapped around his right hand. "Why?" he choked. "Because I knew everyone would freak out if I told them. Everyone would be acting like...like this!" "Tell me how it happened. How you fell in love with her." Akane only stared at him, as if he'd asked her to strip naked and do a handstand on the breakfast table. "Do you have so little respect for me that you won't even tell me that?" Ranma asked. Akane sighed. Maybe he deserved to know. "All right, fine. I'll tell you." End chapter two. ----- Author's notes: "Zettai!" (pronounced "ZAY-tay") is the theme from one season of the Ranma 1/2 anime. Naturally, it doesn't make any sense for Kasumi to be singing it. LOL. For anyone who's wondering about time frame, this happens sometime after the appearance of Ryu and the Yamasen-ken/Umisen-ken fight, and sometime before Ranma moves in with Nodoka. That's between Volume 28, part 1 and Volume 36, part 3 of the manga.
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