Story: Curvy Akane

Here it is, a whole week after it should have been posted. Most of it was written before I even went offline, it just needed a little bit of finishing up. The emphasis for the series is going to take a bit of a different turn, and the drama/comedy is going to come from different places than the series actually canonically takes. Just in case people are worried I'm simply going about setting up the canon pairing once again.

Oh, and I don't have a subtitle in mind so please suggest one at your own convenience.

Being left alone in the training hall to gather her thoughts was exactly what the doctor ordered. While the sight of Akane with sweat dripping from her brow down, down, down into the very depths of her cleavage was a sight that would likely stay with Ranma until the day she died it was actually a bit of a relief to her libido that the girl was no longer in line of sight. It was like all of a sudden Ranma remembered how to think again! Goodness, but had all the colours of the world been so bright before? Had the sounds been so vibrant? They must have been, surely.

"Oh, there you are Ranma," Kasumi said, popping her head in through the door. "I just thought you should know. The bath is ready, and after the journey and workout you've had you quite probably need it."

A bath? With the hot water and the changing back to a guy, and the awkward questions and the look of betrayal and the "How could you?" and the -

So it's only natural that Ranma waved her hands in mortal terror at the idea, and pleaded quite shamelessly. "No thanks, Kasumi, it's... It's really not necessary!"

"I quite disagree," Kasumi said. The demure housewife sniffed, and tried to pretend she hadn't at the same time. An impressive feat, Ranma had to admit. "There are probably a few blizzards in the world less pleasant to walk through than this particular aroma, but it would be a long search to find one. If you don't get into the bath, I will have to be most upset at you and neither of us would like that. Would we, Ranma?"

It's a funny thing what inexplicable mortal terror does to the brain. Ranma didn't remember either being told where the bathroom was, nor did she remember walking there, nor did she remember deciding that since they were gonna find out about the curse anyway it might be better to get it all over with. Either way, these things obviously must have happened despite the gap in memory that went from Kasumi's smile to staring at the bathroom door. Nothing else for it but to walk in there, and -

"Oh! Hello, Ranma. Taking a bath as well?"

And try to cast a few thoughts through that inexplicable hazy mist of general pleasant feelings. Before Ranma could say anything else, Akane had grabbed her hand and pulled her inside. Holding hands! Why, she'd never held hands with a girl before! Okay, sure, that was nothing to be all that giddy about, nothing worth jumping the moon over. But come on. You haven't felt this hand! Imagine the softest silk glove wrapping itself around your hand. Imagine that it was sentient. Imagine that it was warm. Imagine that it was loving. Imagine that it was attached to a girl with <i>that</i> body. That body that was undressing right in front of her. Yeah. Ranma should probably not be watching that, given that this girl didn't know Ranma was actually a guy with a peculiar curse. It would be wrong to take advantage of this situation to commit yet further details to memory regarding the flawless, perfect, curvaceous figure of Akane Tendo as she sang a happy little song to herself and - apparently without meaning to - performed a striptease all for her.

…

Yep. Looking away any second now. Any second and then she'd turn away and my god, but those breasts were proof that perfection was an entirely obtainable concept in this world.

"You coming?" Akane asked, little realising how close the answer was to a dreamy yes. "Come on, we had a good workout. Now it's time to clean up and let our muscles relax."

Every danger sense in Ranma's mind was flaring at this point. Get out of there, you fool! Don't you see what's about to happen? But it screamed into a void, as the haze of lust and desire made it difficult to think of anything else. Why, Ranma hadn't even realised she'd taken her own clothes off while Akane strutted her stuff right there in the bathroom. Not that it mattered particularly much, for once again Akane was holding her hand and pulling her into the water. The hot water.

At which point Akane froze completely in place, leaving Ranma ample time to simply bask in her presence. The wet look worked on her every little bit as well as the dry look. Just about anything probably would, really. Well. Maybe not the "terrified out of her mind" look, which made Ranma really want to pound into mulch whatever was making her so scared all of a sudden. Ranma looked around but didn't see anything particularly scary, at least until the tip of his erection hit the side of the bath. Which is right around about when Akane screamed.

Oh. Oh! <b>Oh!</b> Oh <i>no!</i> Ranma clamboured out of the bath and dove for a towel, taking great care not to look behind him lest he fall victim to her charm and maybe do something really stupid. Mission accomplished, he gathered up his clothes and had his trousers back on faster than he could blink.

"Ranma?" the girl behind him called, and in a moment of weakness he turned back to look at her once again. The only thing stopping him from staring at her in wonder was the confusion and fear in her eyes.

"Yeah, that's me," he said turning away once again. "Sorry about this."

And then he was gone.
<hr>
Guys don't mope. So even though he was sitting on the roof, holding his legs and sighing wearily, whatever else he might be doing right now Ranma was most definitely not moping. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. I mean, that's a great idea, genius. Get into the bath with the girl that's scared of boys. Show her your curse in the worst possible way.

"There you are," said a voice from the ground. Ranma looked down and saw Kasumi staring up at him. "Everyone was wondering where you'd gone. Our fathers went out looking for you after yours explained the curse."

"I heard," Ranma said, not particularly wanting to talk to anyone right now.

"You should talk to her, you know. Akane went off to the training hall again. I think she's breaking bricks."

"Why should I?" Ranma said in a tone that was definitely <i>not</i> mopey, perish the thought. "Even if she didn't hate guys, why would she wanna talk to me after that?"

"Oh?" Kasumi said, tilting her head as if thinking about something. "Did she tell you she hated men? How strange. I thought it was immature boys she didn't like. I'm fairly certain she would rather enjoy to talk with a more mature man. Especially the sort that apologises for what they did, and confronts their problems head on instead of hiding from them on the roof."

All of a sudden that innocent housewife act didn't seem quite so innocent. Whatever. She was right. Sitting up here like this wasn't going to get anything resolved. He hopped off the roof almost casually (spooking Kasumi a little bit in the process, for which he quickly apologised) and then sped off towards the training hall, thinking quickly about what he'd say to her when he arrived. The first thing he should say is that he was sorry, that he still wanted to be friends, that he didn't mean to betray her like that, and then just roll with it from there. Yeah. That seemed like a reasonable plan. That seemed like… Like… Like…

"Hiiyaaa!"

And all of a sudden every thought in his head escaped on the contented sigh he made upon seeing her once again. In her sexy gi, with her back to the entrance, standing amidst a small pile of broken planks of wood and shattered bricks. Akane Tendo. She must have heard him, for she noticably bristled and the spell broke when she asked, "What do you want?"

"Listen, I'm sorry about -"

"About using your curse to peek on me in the bath?" she interrupted with a sniff. "You know, at first I thought you were like… Like me. Some sort of weird transformation hit you out of the blue, no rhyme or reason to it. I was so worried about you, running off like that in a boy's body scared out of your wits… And then I find out that your girl form <i>is</i> your transformed state, and, well, what else am I supposed to think?"

"H-Hey, I didn't mean to, it just sort of - "

"I know. And that's the part that's <i>pissing me off so much! <b>Hiiyaaa!</b></i>" another stack of bricks cracked and split beneath her fist, and she held the pose for a couple seconds longer than usual, taking deep, deep breaths. Angry breaths. After a moment she straightened herself out and turned around to face him, once again robbing Ranma of his thought processes as he caught sight of her exposed cleavage from a more revealing angle. She flicked him on the forehead. "Eyes up here, mister," she said. "See, this is what I'm talking about. You're not really the kinda guy that would normally stare at a girl like that, are you? No, right? But here you are staring anyway. What're those perverts at school going to be like when they see me like this? God! It's just the perfect ending to the worst month of my life!"

"Hey now, I've had a pretty awful month too," Ranma said, very carefully keeping his head and eyes steady, knowing that the slightest slip up could have him staring down at the wonderful pink valley that was just a little below his eyeline. It would be so easy to forget for a moment and get lost in it, which would hardly help keep her thought process steady at all.

"Oh, really? I've had to beat up a whole bunch of guys each morning, because some idiot put into their head that if they beat me, they can date me."

"And I've had to run and hide from some psycho warrior girl out to kill me! Chased me halfway across China!"

Akane weighed this for a moment, and sighed. "Okay, you had the worse month. Doesn’t mean mine was exactly a walk in the park, though."

“Uh, do you mind if we sit back to back while we talk?” Ranma said, rubbing at his increasingly sore neck. “It might make things a bit easier for me, you know?”

Akane seemed to be a little surprised at that, but soon enough composed herself and sat on the floor with her back to him. He followed suit, and allowed himself to exhale again. Right. So now what? What could they talk about now? Only one thing sprang to mind, if he was quite honest with himself.

“What did you used to look like?” Ranma finally asked. “I mean, those guys must’ve thought you were pretty cute if you had to beat them all up like that.”

“I guess. Didn’t really think about it before,“ Akane said with a wistful sigh. “Ugh! What am I even gonna do tomorrow? I can’t imagine what sort of looks they’re going to give me at school tomorrow. And those boys were bad enough already…”

“Don’t worry. If any of them try anything, I’ll take care of it.”

It had come out as a whisper, something he’d been intending to think and not say… But there it was. Out there in the open. He’d said it, and all of a sudden Ranma was aware of a palpable change in the air around them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Akane asked, her tone much sharper than it was before. “I can still defend myself pretty well. Remember our spar? I did pretty well for myself, right?”

Yeah, she did. Because he was so hung up on how completely gorgeous she was. It wasn’t hard for him to imagine those boys going down with smiles on their faces even as they gasped for air from the punch to the gut or rubbed at the bruise forming on their cheek. All of them with their hand reaching out, not to harm but merely to touch her skin. Eyes leering. Thoughts turning on dirty musings. All that thought did was make Ranma that much angrier.

“I’m not some innocent, fragile flower!” Akane said. “Nor am I your damsel in distress. I can defend myself perfectly well, thank you very much!”

“You’re my friend, right? Friends don’t let friends face things like this alone.”

“And friends don’t lust after friends so much they forget to tell them about how they’re actually boys with a freaky curse! Huh! Do you really think you could do anything to stop them? They were persistent enough no matter how much I beat them up. Do you really think you could do anything to dissuade them? They’ll keep coming after me until…”

She trailed off, and Ranma caught himself seething. Here he was trying to offer to help, and she was yelling at him for it? Sure, maybe he should be leaving this to her, but he was a martial artist and she was obviously in need of help no matter how much she might think she could handle it. With the way things were, it wouldn’t surprise him if a bunch of the guys at school tried something really nasty, something she couldn’t deal with herself, but with someone to watch her back…

“Maybe you can help me,” she said, very slowly, very deliberately. “If… If we pretended to go along with the engagement, that might convince them to back off. I mean, it just makes sense. Right? The only way they’d back off is if I already have a boyfriend or something, and - And it would keep our fathers happy while we tried to work our way around it.”

“So… You want to be engaged all of a sudden?” Ranma asked, trying to ignore the suddenly rising heartbeat in his chest. Pounding. Pounding. Echoing in his ears. Something about that idea felt right. Engaged to Akane Tendo… Yeah, he could live with that.

“Well, not really,” Akane said, and Ranma deflated a bit. “But if we pretended to be, it might solve a few of our problems… In the meantime, we could investigate cures for our curses.”

Ranma slowly nodded. Okay… That all mostly made sense. It would give him an excuse to threaten off anyone thinking of trying anything funny with his fiancee; hell, she suddenly seemed to expect it of him if he was reading between the lines correctly. Not to mention, pretending to go along with the engagement might make his idiot of a father less inclined to keep harping on about it. Even so…

“We should set ’em a few conditions,” Ranma said. “First of all, we’re not getting married right away or anything. We just met, right? Best if we got the chance to first make sure we’re making the right choice and all that… You know, that sorta thing.  And I dunno how we’d go about investigating your curse if you don’t know what caused it. You got any ideas on that?”

“Yeah, there’s someone we could probably talk to. He’s the family doctor. He’s super smart, and way more likely to know anything about this than anyone else I can think of right now. If nothing else he might know the right direction to push us in.”

Ranma very nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt her hand first brush up against his own, then tightly clasp it. It was odd how her hands could be so small and soft and relaxing yet so powerful at the same time.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said firmly. “I’m still kind of annoyed at you for not telling me about the curse, so let me set you this ground rule. I catch you staring too long, I slap you. Got it?”

Ranma smiled, and tried to ignore the traitorous thought that the slap would be worth it, instead saying, “Sounds fair to me,” while giving her hand a squeeze back. His peripheral awareness caught her back stiffen at the gesture. Had she even realised she’d done that? “Anything else you wanna say?”

1. The two of them set out and set the engagement in motion, with their terms… But their fathers have a few of their own.
2. Actually, why wait? They’ll head to Doctor Tofu’s first.
3. The next morning, the two head off to school.
4. What’s Nabiki been up to during all of this? What sinister plans does she have in mind?
5. Something else