Akane Tendo was an odd girl to try to put in a box. She enjoyed a wide variety of sports, and her attitude marked her as quite a tomboy and yet outside of that she was fairly feminine. She liked cute things, and when she wasn’t involved in athletic activity dressed in a very feminine manner. Most peculiarly of all for someone of her age group, she never really shows that much of an interest in any kind of fiction. Doesn’t really read anything much, doesn’t watch much television. She’s the kind of person that’s more content to work out, hang with her friends, generally be quite active. Not really the kind of girl to sit around reading, not that there was anything wrong with it in her mind. She just never really got into it.
So, she was actually quite surprised to find herself fascinated by “My Sweet Bounty Hunter.” It was just a stupid joke by one of those boys that Ranma sometimes hangs out with. All that effort, and it turned out to be a chocolate teapot! But it was weird, somehow that stupid joke just sort of stuck with her. Even thinking about it now as she walked down the street it was making her chuckle a little under her breath, barely restraining it from an out and out guffaw. A chocolate teapot! And there he was, running through minefields dodging arrows and everything else, and it was all for a chocolate teapot!
Akane wiped a tear from her eye. It was weird. She wasn’t even sure she could quite explain it to anyone else if they asked, but it was the funniest thing she’d heard in years. She had to actually stop and lean against a wall to catch her breath, or more accurately her self control. It was then, just as she was about to leave, that she saw it. In the window. Several series just sitting there on display. Most of them were ignored as she had no interest whatsoever, but one title in particular caught her immediate attention. “My Sweet Bounty Hunter”. Akane stared for a moment, then checked her purse and dashed inside the store, exiting moments later with as many volumes as she could afford.
They were clutched to her chest right up until the moment she reached her room. Akane announced her return and dashed upstairs before anyone could realise she was there, then flopped onto her bed and started to read, devouring the script in moments. The concept opened up within the first two chapters. An ordinary high school student that led a secret double life as a world-famous masked bounty hunter. His missions routinely, albeit accidentally, wind up gaining him the affections of various quirky and attractive girls. Akane’s favourite was the first one he met: A cute and talented boxer that fell for his alter ego but regularly argues with his normal persona. The two of them were so adorable and funny in how they interacted, and she honestly kind of wanted them to get together by the end.
“This is so funny!” Akane chuckled to herself as she finished the last page. “I can’t wait for tomorrow!”
“Hey, tomboy!” called a familiar voice by her window. “What’s got an uncute chick like you laughing so hard? Practicing for the hyena convention?”
She answered him in a slightly more violent manner than most might have, but it was indeed the correct answer at the very least: She hurled a volume right into his smug, upside-down face, which mercifully seemed sufficient to make him leave her the hell alone. Akane huffed and sulked on her bed, then in spite of herself broke out into a bit of a smile.
“Practising for the hyena convention. That was pretty good.”
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They say that good things come to those who wait. Whoever said that hadn’t been left waiting at least two hours - Two hours! - before school for reasons that were, in the mists of the early morning, not entirely clear to them.
“You’re sure about this?” Hiroshi asked his partner in crime. “I mean, you’re really sure about this?”
“Hey, you read the book as well,” Daisuke replied. “We pull this off, we’re getting something really amazing as payback.”
“Only thing sounds amazing to me is a bit of shut eye,” Hiroshi grumbled, but suddenly he perked up a little as the gate opened up and a lovely vision strode out into the brisk morning air. “Damn, but she’s hot,” Hiroshi said, prompting an elbow from Daisuke. “Sorry, my inner monologue is sensible, hence still asleep.”
“Well, wake it up then!” Daisuke insisted. “Last thing we need is you messing this up and - Hey, Akane! Fancy meeting you right outside your front door early in the morning!”
“Oh, hello there,” Akane replied, much more warmly than she had ever greeted either boy before. “I’m just out on my morning jog. What brings you out here?”
“Well, now that you mention it, we were rather hoping we could drop off a few things,” Daisuke said, nodding towards Hiroshi who slipped a bag off his shoulders and offered it to the girl. “Since you showed so much interest in ‘My Sweet Bounty Hunter’, we thought it would only be right to let you try a couple other similar series.”
Akane took the bag and unzipped the top of it, revealing that it was packed to the brim with manga. All harem, all comedy, and all a touch more on the ecchi side than ‘My Sweet Bounty Hunter’, which was already averaging five panty shots for its about twenty-page chapters and featured more hot springs than a travel brochure. Akane reached into the bag and pulled out a volume of “Blushing = Heroic”, about a boy with a condition that turned him into a superhero when he was turned on.
“Gee, I don’t know…” Akane said, flipping through and looking at it a little bit questioningly. “Isn’t this a little… Perverted?”
Time for them to work a little bit of that magic from the tome, it seemed. The two boys nodded at one another, and began to talk. Starting with Hiroshi.
“I suppose it might seem that way to the uninitiated,” he said, far too quickly for Akane to catch on. “But on a deeper reading of the material, I’d say that the so-called perverted elements that are present aren’t not gratuitous.” Which is to say, yes. It was perverted. Gratuitously so. But the double negative was said so quickly that Akane certainly didn’t catch it.
“What my friend is trying to say,” Daisuke continued, carefully placing a reassuring hand on Akane’s shoulder and squeezing just the right amount to have the desired effect. “Is that one must not judge a book by its cover, so to speak. The jokes are funny, the characters are humorous and the art is really quite good.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Hiroshi said. “We’ll read that volume together, just now. If you don’t like it, we’ll take the whole lot back with us.”
“We can sit right here and read it if you’d like,” Daisuke invited, sensing Akane’s hesitation and working very hard to push her over the edge. “It won’t take too long to get through it all. Maybe ten minutes or so. Come on, give it a go, what’s there to be afraid of in just giving it an honest read?”
“When you put it like that…” Akane said, and they knew they had her. The book’s magic was, somehow, working. Akane sat down against the wall and began flicking through the book, while the two boys shared a look and casually leaned in, to read over her shoulder and, just by coincidence, gently rub a few points that should make her more amenable, more easy to manipulate and then, once they had gotten her into the right mindset, they would turn Akane Tendo, the biggest hater of perverts in all of Furinkan, into a pervert herself.
Inside a minute she was laughing. Which meant, according to the book’s calculations, within days they’d have her completely at their mercy. Then the fun would really start!
- Later, Akane encounters a harem series-style comedic situation which she sees in a new light.
- What exactly is the full scope of their plan?
- The conversation was spotted by someone that wants to know what’s going on.
- The boys decide to work their magic on someone else as well.
- Something else
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