“Uncute!” Ranma said in a shouty voice that, if listened to next to his usual tone when saying those words, rather lacked the usual conviction.
“Jerk!” Akane replied, and much the same could be said for her own tone of voice. However, most wouldn’t notice and it was largely due to Akane’s effort more than Ranma’s. She was by far the superior actor of the two of them. “Always running off with those other girls. Tell me, what do you really think about Shampoo?”
It’s amazing what a little context will do. Outside of the context of their conversation, it would be taken at face value: An argument about the paramours the two of them had inadvertently acquired over the course of their relationship. Which was exactly what they intended to portray. In truth, it wasn’t quite that simple. It was a mask for their real topic of conversation: Who to have Master Konatsu use the technique on next, and how best to go about it.
“She’s pretty, she’s a good cook, and she’s a strong martial artist,” Ranma replied, counting off on his fingers as if reading from a recipe. Akane stomped her foot midstep and let out a loud harrumph to make it seem as though he was directing mockery at her by praising someone else for qualities she didn’t have. “And she’s also pretty sneaky, so I’d stay away from her for now.”
“I can take care of myself, thank you for your concern!” Akane replied.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever. What about Ryoga?”
“What <i>about</i> Ryoga?”
Ranma jumped off the fence and got right into Akane’s face. The two of them glowered at one another with burning intensity. It was a funny thing. Almost everyone they knew recognised the sexual tension between them, and could see that when they were arguing they were simply letting off that steam in the only way they understood. But now, they were much more aware how much they wanted each other and had to put on a performance as if they did not. The heat being generated in this instance was not from “I hate you,” but rather “I can’t wait until we can screw.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed yet!” Ranma said with a slightly unrealistic chuckle in his voice. “Ryoga’s been crushing on you almost since you first met! Unobservant and uncute! Quite the package deal.”
“He has?” Akane quietly said, and the mask slid off her face quite without her noticing. It’s rather difficult for any performer to maintain composure when they learn such a shocking truth, especially when it introduces a variable into a friendship that completely changes the context of - well, everything about it. “Seriously? No way! He does not… I mean! Ah! Y-You’re just messing with me again. It might seem that way because Ryoga is so lonely, but -”
“But he’s also thick headed, emotional, easy to manipulate and - oof,” Ranma interrupted with a sort of winking and hinting gesture that made Akane elbow him in the guts. She strode right past him with her nose upturned.
“Then I guess I’ll have to speak with him, won’t I?” she said. “We’ll have him… Sorted out easily enough. Now, what about Ukyo?”
“Yes, what about me?”
Both Ranma and Akane very nearly jumped out of their skins, as they had been too caught up in their own conversation to take note of the third presence standing nearby. Ukyo Kuonji leaning on the fence in the Furinkan High boy’s uniform, staring at the two of them with a quirked eyebrow. Really. It was absolutely impossible to tell that this was actually a girl when she dressed and behaved like this. In that sense you could say that her performing skills blew Akane’s out of the water. Even the way that she stood up straight and walked over to the two of them was so absolutely like a boy that, even were her breasts not tragically bound, any stranger would still have been convinced that she was a he.
“Talking about me behind my back?” Ukyo asked, eying the two of them with tremendous suspicion. Akane was able to feign ignorance, which is why Ukyo ignored her and went to mister transparent-as-glass-poker-face who was staring up at the sky while twiddling his thumbs, the universal gesture of “I’m innocent, guv! Please believe me! Or better yet, ignore me completely.” Trick is with a universal sign like that, it means everyone knows what it actually means, therefore defeating the very purpose of its inherent deceptiveness.
Which is why Ukyo immediately dropped the boyish act, and the transformation was so immediate one would think she had the same curse as Ranma’s. Her body language shifted just slightly, transforming from the “childhood friend” to “cute fiancee” in the time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings thrice. She gently pushed past Akane and up towards Ranma in a quite deliberately flirtatious light and stared up at him with the biggest, brightest eyes you ever did see.
“Wh-What is it?” Ranma stammered, genuinely taken aback by Ukyo’s proximity. “We weren’t talking about you behind your back! Really, we weren’t!”
“Oh?” Ukyo smirked up at him triumphantly. “And you weren’t talking about Ryoga or Shampoo either? You can’t fool me. I know what’s going on here. The way you’ve been behaving, Konatsu being a bit freaky. It’s so obvious! How could I miss it before? I know what you’re planning!”
Both Ranma and Akane swallowed nervously. Rumbled! They shared a look which said “This is bad. Priority target is now Ukyo.” Akane stepped back, gingerly began to reach out for Ukyo’s spatula with the intention of knocking her out there and then, though Ranma did think that she didn’t really need to have her tongue slightly sticking out of the side of her mouth as she did it.
“We’re not planning anything!” Ranma said, seizing Ukyo’s shoulders, desperate to keep her from noticing Akane’s action. “Really, we’re not!”
“You never could lie worth a damn, ’cept when you were playing jokes,” Ukyo said. “You’re planning a surprise party for my birthday next week! Oh, Ranchan! You remembered my birthday!”
“Your… Birthday?!” Akane said from the ground behind her, where her face had planted with quite a good deal of success. She twitched just a little bit. “We weren’t talking about… your… birthday… I mean-” She stopped, and even from his awkward position Ranma could see an epiphany light up in her brain. “I mean that would involve gathering together everyone we know into a single place and getting them to play a variety of party games. Including some really strange and esoteric western games like, say, for example, kiss tag?”
Ukyo unconsciously licked her lips while lightbulbs lit up over the heads of the other two. Suddenly it seemed as though their need to plan ahead was rather cut short. Sometimes opportunity does just drop into your lap from out of nowhere.
“Don’t worry,” Ukyo said. She pressed a finger to her lips. “I won’t say anything. It’s a surprise, right?”
“R-Right!” Ranma said. Relief flowing out of his voice as he spoke. “Don’t say anything to nobody, got it?”
“Don’t say anything about what?” Ukyo said, and like a switch was flipped she was back to her boyish behaviour. “Come on, you two,” her manlier voice said, though really it was not any deeper or detectably different in any measurable way from her feminine tone. “Don’t want to be late for school, do we?”
She rushed off ahead of them, leaving a slightly stunned Ranma and Akane in her wake. “Thank goodness,” Akane sighed. “I thought she’d caught us out. If not for your terrible acting -”
“What’s wrong with my acting?”
“I’ve seen tables capable of less wooden and stiff performances.”
“Yeah? And I’ve seen less ham at the Unryu farm!”
So it turns out that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And this time, rather than a coded argument about how to handle the people they know and how to get their Master to use his technique on them, the two conspiring servants devolved into a very real argument about who the better actor was. At the very least, it would make anyone not already suspicious about their behaviour convinced there wasn’t anything wrong with the two of them.
- Ukyo wasn’t fooled at all, and is using her birthday as a cover while investigating what’s really going on.
- Meanwhile, Konatsu has another encounter with the ninja girl.
- Ninja girl approaches Ukyo and tries to warn her about Konatsu’s technique.
- Nabiki notices something odd about Shampoo’s behaviour.
- Shampoo comes up with a trick to use on Nabiki.
- Something else
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