Story: Akane's Quest

With that out of the way, it was time for Akane to get serious. A martial artist's duty is, in the end, to protect the weak. The scroll for the Siren Statue was tucked away into her bag, and right now she was off to school with a scowl on her face, and -

"If you keep furrowing your brows like that, a farmer's gonna plant some crops..." Ranma suggested, earning him a well-earned bag toss. He caught it without a care, and gently tossed it back to her. "Something eating you?" A beat. "I didn't do something you misunderstood again, did I?"

"No," Akane said, not really wanting to bring it up to Ranma. If anything, he'd misconstrue her intentions. She didn't want to go to the Siren's Statue for its, shall we say, beneficial effects. She wanted to prevent boys from carelessly wandering into its chamber and getting turned to stone. That was all!  "It's nothing. I'm just trying to figure something out, that's all."

She risked a glance up to him. Ugh! That look... He didn't believe her, and was trying to work out what she was up to. Yep, there he went. Hopping off the fence to look her directly in the eyes.

"You know, you're pretty lousy at lying..." Ranma trailed off, letting it hang in the air.

"That's coming from mister can't-bluff?" Akane sniffed. She pushed past him and continued on her way to school. "How did I lie? I really am trying to figure something out."

He leaped over her, and she didn't even bother to stop this time. "You're hiding <i>something</i>, tomboy! Something dangerous? No, maybe something embarrassing... Don't tell me you're going to try making yourself seem sexy or cute, because that's not gonna happen."

Really now. Why did he always duck her punches during spars, but let her hit him with her slaps? There was something quite infuriating about that, which Akane couldn't quite put her finger on. It shut him up at any rate. Honestly, that boy! She could see how it would go, now. She'd be trying to get on with finding the statue in secret, while he's trailing along on the ceiling trying to see what she'll do, and then he'll get turned to stone and she would have to do something to sort him out and get him and the rest of the boys back to normal -

Ugh, it just hit her exactly what sort of state her life was in, when even the random magic-drenched nonsense was starting to get predictable.

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It might surprise some people to learn that Shampoo had things outside of her utter devotion to that hunky, handsome, adorable airen of hers who had yet to be convinced of how completely perfect they were as a match, but any day now!

Ah, that point wandered a little. She had other things outside of Ranma Saotome in her life. For example: Her work at the Cat Cafe. This foreign warrior was easy on the eyes no matter what part of her those eyes might put to the test, and she knew it.

"Nihao! Ramen delivery!" Shampoo chirped, in her effortlessly bubbly and cute accent. The door was opened. A nice young man answered. He looked her over, made a clumsy attempt to control his expression so it wouldn't be too obvious he liked what he saw, smiled, handed over the money, nodded politely, took the ramen and didn't even bother waiting for his change. A nice little tip that Shampoo stuffed into a pocket in between her spectacular breasts.

Yep. There was more to her life than Ranma Saotome, the one to whom she was destined. Her job as a waitress was fun and interesting, she occasionally returned home to visit her friends and family, she'd become quite close with some of the locals, often regulars to the cafe -

"Well, well. Are you ever in a bad mood?"

And she'd even made some new professional rivals as well. Like the pink-haired maid standing in front of her, all coy and innocent as though she wasn't an utterly ruthless businesswoman. The only reason Shampoo had never gone to slap the taste out of this woman's mouth was that she was not a martial artist and would definitely report the incident to the police, and that, in turn, would make acquiring her airen a great deal more complicated than it needed to be.

"Yes," Shampoo answered, "when talk with fake-fake nice girl."

"Your Japanese lexicon remains prodigious, I see," Cindy tittered. "You really are wasted working with that grandmother of yours."

"And you waste both our time trying to lure Shampoo away work for you," Shampoo huffed. "We talk this talk too too many time. Shampoo no interest in work for rival cafe!"

She had heard the rumours, of course. Work there for a few weeks, and you become a walking sex goddess. Honestly now. Why would Shampoo ever throw away her pride to work for a place like that when her body already knocked men over? Cindy was annoying, and that was all Cindy -

"Maybe," Cindy said a little louder while Shampoo began to peddle away, "But it looks like Akane Tendo is very much interested in working for us..."

Shampoo's bike did a pretty impressive trick just then. To start with, she twisted around in the air, bounced back and rolled on over to Cindy, who was casually inspecting her fingernails without a care in the world.

"What fake nice girl say?"

"I said that Akane Tendo will be working for us this month," Cindy said. "I think she's finally planning on making a play for that Ranma boy you're always going after. One month with us, and she'll have him wrapped around her little finger in no time flat. You won't stand a chance! Unless... Maybe if you were to work for us for just a little while..."

Shampoo didn't answer verbally. Instead she scowled at the pink-haired shit-stirrer in as menacing a manner as legally allowable, then spun her bike around and pedaled back to the cafe as quickly as possible. While it was certainly the case that not everything in her life revolved around Ranma Saotome, it didn't take an awful lot for him to return to the centre of her world.

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Stupid tomboy, being all uncute and secretive, as if that would make him want to drop the issue. It wasn't like he really cared in the first place; he was just kind of curious and making conversation, but she had to make it into a great big thing and now he <i>had</i> to find out.

Not because he was worried about her or anything like that. No, no! It was his pride that was making him crawl along the ceiling to follow her during break. She'd insinuated that he wouldn't find out what it was that was bothering her, so now he had to prove her wrong.

At first nothing seemed especially out of the ordinary. She bought an apple, wandered off through the building. No sign of anything weird yet. She seemed almost casual. Was carrying her bag around with her...

Then she stopped, bounced the apple in the palm of her hands, then tossed it directly into Ranma's mouth with a pitch that would've gotten her onto any baseball team in a flash.

"Ranma..." Akane said, using the same sort of tone that an angry wife might use when their husband came in drunk. You know the sort. Starts really low, then gets a little louder as the word is drawn out, the wife is standing there with arms folded, tapping her foot while her eyes dance with the fires of anger... Then Ranma realised the metaphor his brain had gone for and abandoned it like a rat leaving a sunken ship, because hahaha, that would make Akane his wife!

"Well, maybe if you'd told me what the problem was, I wouldn't have to follow you around like this."

"If I wanted you to know what the problem was, I'd tell it to your face!"

"Ah-ha! So there is a problem!"

"I was speaking hypothetically!"

"Oh, <i>sure</i> you were!"

"Saotome, how dare you raise your barbed tongue to the fair Akane!"


The pair leaped apart rather quickly when Tatewaki Kuno swung his bokken down in between the two of them. Akane took this opportunity as the perfect time to skedaddle, leaving Ranma fighting an idiot for all of about ten seconds before he got bored and floored the fool.

"Tsk! Which way did she go?" Ranma wondered aloud. "Stupid tomboy... Damn Kuno!"

Well, now he'd have to run around like a headless chicken looking for that girl and trying to keep her out of trouble. Honestly, she was the real trouble magnet out of the two of them! If only he had some sorta clue about what she was -

And then he stepped on something. A scroll that had been hastily, some may even say uncutely or clumsily or perhaps even violently dropped by a certain martial arts girl who had been in too much of a hurry getting away to notice it being dropped. Whoopsie....

1. Akane notices the scroll missing, and panics.
2. Akane has already found the statue.
3. Shampoo has a plan.
4. Ranma starts looking for the statue, misunderstanding what Akane is trying to do.
5. Something else