Story: Akane the Half Alien

There are a couple of things you have to learn about the alien called Rei, and you'd better learn them quickly. The first and most obvious fact: He's handsome. Super handsome. As in, if you run a statistical analysis of causes for problems in marriages across the galaxy, 'Rei walked through and asked my wife for a cake' is statistically significant.

"Here you go Mister Rei, please eat up," Kasumi said, dumping a whole load of freshly baked cookies right in the alien's lap. Yes, even Kasumi Tendo was smitten. His face was super effective against housewives, you see. This leads into point number two: Rei is only interested in food. Even a pretty face like Kasumi Tendo cannot sway him, and you'd better believe that there were several men in Furinkan that would give their right arm for Kasumi to look at them the way she was looking at Rei right now. Which I think is technically evidence that the universe is a cruel and unfair place to live.

But if you want further evidence, Rei immediately turned to try to hug Akane while yelling "Lum!" quite loudly. Which made Akane, Ranma, and Kasumi all sigh in irritation. For different emotional reasons that they would broadly describe in the same way.

"Oh no, go ahead and hug Akane while mistaking her for our cousin," Kasumi said to herself. "That's fine. Especially after I go to all the trouble of baking those cookies. It's not as if enough boys throw themselves at her anyway..."

Akane and Ranma both turned to Kasumi in mild shock. But this was quickly forgotten for reasons that will quickly become obvious.

"Airen!" Shampoo squealed, hugging onto Ranma's arm while Akane pushed Rei's face away. "Is too too awful for you. Kitchen destroyer cheat on you with other man. And stupid handsome man is dine and dasher who Shampoo must kill!"

For some reason she seemed to be of the impression that this would make Ranma hot for her. Meanwhile, Akane was trying to shock Rei off of her since inflicting violence wasn't working. Alas, this only seemed to encourage him all the more. Sort of the same way that Ranma trying to ignore Shampoo was making her try even harder for his attention.

"Airen!"

"Lum!"

It was genuinely hard to tell which one of them made a better octopus. Both Ranma and Akane were having to fend off their wannabe paramour with quite a lot of determination.

"Hey, quit trying to sneak a kiss!" Ranma protested. "I thought you came here to chase this guy, why're you hanging off me all of a sudden?"

"That before Shampoo see that mister dine and dash is hanging off too too uncute girl," Shampoo shook her head. "Is tragic case. No want to accidentally hurt clumsy weak demon girl and get accused of doing it on purpose. Yes?"

"Feh! As if you'd get the chance to hurt Akane," Ranma sniffed. For a moment there Akane's heart pounded a bit faster in her chest. Was Ranma about to compliment her martial arts ability...? "The way she's been lately, she'll probably wind up hurting herself by flying into the ceiling."

"Ranma! You idiot!" Akane yelled. She slipped out a hand, grabbed a glass of water and dumped it right over his big dumb head. Which was right next to Shampoo's, as she was nuzzling her cheek up against his. Which meant that Ranma was now a girl nuzzling her cheek up against a -

"Caaaaaaaaaat!"

Cue Ranma Saotome, girl form, running around the Tendo garden with Shampoo in adorable kitty form hanging off his shirt for dear life.

"Lum!" Rei tried yet again. This time Akane brought out Kasumi's self defense hammer and clocked him into the ground with it.

"Enough already!" Akane yelled. "I'm not Lum! I'm Lum's cousin!"

"Lum?" Rei asked, suddenly not under the hammer and instead behind her. Trying to hug her from behind. "Cook.. breakfast, Lum!"

"Aaargh!"

You never did see such a perfect example of a judo throw as this.

"I'm Akane!" the girl yelled, pointing at herself. "Ak-an-e! Not Lum! Get it right, you idiot!"

"Caaaaaaaaat!" Ranma helpfully screamed from the garden.

"Lum!" yelled an inexplicable bear-tiger-pig that appeared right where Rei had been a moment ago.

"Oh," Kasumi sighed. "Well, that's... really unfortunate. He's an idiot that transforms into an animal. That's... quite the hard sell no matter how handsome he is."

Elsewhere, both Ryoga and Mousse felt really sad for some reason. As if they'd been personally attacked by accident by a source that would never normally go there.

Ranma had stopped to take a few deep breaths, putting her hands on her knees. Shampoo rubbed her paws into Ranma's back to help facilitate the pigtailed girl catching her breath. Then she resumed her madcap dash around the garden, screaming "Caaaaaaaat!" as she waved her arms around with a conspicuous lack of rhyme and/or reason.

"Breakfast!" Rei yelled in his beastly form, licking his lips after saying one of the few multisyllable words he knew. "Lum. Cook. Break. Fast? Rei hunger!"

"Urgh! Fine, I'll make you some breakfast!" Akane threw up her hands and stomped off into the kitchen. As she was gone, not much changed. Ranma continued running manically around the garden, not going into cat fist today for some reason. Kasumi tried to keep herself from staring at Rei's handsome face having realised that her attraction was only skin deep. She, like many others, failed to keep her libido fully in check when presented with that winsome smile.

"Say Tendo," Genma said, having been quiet this morning until now. It was, after all, quite a lot to take in and he didn't really feel it necessary to draw any more attention to himself than necessary. Still he had to ask. "Do you suppose your youngest is attempting one of those recipes?"

"I suppose she might be Saotome," Soun nodded sagely. "If the problem she had was her alien pallette, then it might well prove to be a cure for her malady if she does focus on such recipes."

Wishful thinking on their part? Perhaps. But that's pretty much how these two work when they put their heads together.

"Okay, I think it's gone... Oh it was hiding under my sleeve - Aaaaaaargh! Caaaaaaat!"

After a mere five minutes Akane stomped out of the kitchen with something... jiggling on a plate. Not quite jelly (or jello if you're an American) but more like jelly's distant cousin who had that awful divorce and it really messed him up the poor devil. The fathers stared at it with mild dread. They'd read stories (written mostly by Ranma and Nabiki) of Akane creating eldritch horrors with her cooking, and they were frightened that at long last she might have succeeded.

"There. A traditional oni breakfast," Akane nodded. "Curry mould set, with a dash of jalapeno."

"Yay!" Rei cheered, holding aloft his chopsticks. And then he planted his face fully into the... jiggling and writhing mass. It was consumed in one bite. Both fathers held hands and their breaths. Had she done it? Had she done it at last? Made an actually edible meal?

<i>“Let go you dumb cat!” </i>Ranma screamed in the background. Not one person paid her heed.

Rei chewed. Rei swallowed. There was a sound like a bowling ball falling into a bottomless pit. Then the young man turned... green. Bright green. He stood up, handsome eyes dancing with pain and despair.

"Not Lum!" Rei yelled, pointing an accusing finger at Akane. "Not Lum! Fake Lum!"

He then proceeded to put his head under a tap and appeared to be trying to drown himself. This left Akane feeling pretty ambivalent. On the one hand, this idiot finally twigged that she wasn't Lum. On the other, she was feeling pretty insulted. In the end her pride decided to take a backseat to the relief that at least one idiot boy would leave her alone.

"I'm home!" Nabiki yelled. She took one look in the garden, enjoyed the sight of Ranma humiliating himself through his ridiculous phobia. "Looks like you had fun and woah, who is the hunk?"

"A spoiler of dreams..." Kasumi sighed.

"His name is Rei and he's a total doofus," Akane said. Nabiki wasn't really paying much attention. She already had her camera out and was taking a few shots. There were more than a few girls around that would want some pics of this hunk. Herself included. "He also doesn't seem to have any money on him from what I can tell."

"He's hot enough that even I don't care about that," Nabiki said, then emphasised this with a raunchy bark. "Besides which he'll make me a mint when I start rolling these pics."

"Nabiki Tendo, you should be ashamed of yourself," Kasumi said, walking right up to Nabiki with three hundred yen notes in her hand already. "Selling off a stranger's sex appeal is an extremely crude and malicious action, especially if you're taking preorders and giving family a discount."

"Cat... Cat... Cat... Cat... Cat..." Ranma repeated, crawling on the garden by this point. At long last Akane took note of Ranma, strode over and picked up Shampoo by the scruff of the neck to stop his wailing.

Ah, but if you thought that was the end of the chaos the Tendo family were enduring today, then you really haven't been paying attention. Not in the sense that 'well of course their lives are a constant swirl of chaos and misadventure.' Because, well, it's kind of not? They do have a lot of downtime, you're only seeing the interesting stuff and it's creating a bias of - never mind that, the point I was trying to make was that you weren't paying attention to the fact that Ran had spotted Rei, and was tracking him down in the previous episode.

To whit!

"Rei! Ran is here!"

The Tendos (and Genma) all looked at the perfectly ordinary looking intruder into their home, who had run up to Rei and was hugging his back.

"Uh... Hi there Ran?" Akane said nervously. "Is this... Uh... Is he yours?"

"Oh my goodness! Why, that would be so nice and pleasant wouldn't it?" Ran said mostly to herself. She drummed her fingers against each other and twirled around, all innocence and flowers and sparkles. "Teehee, if only it was that easy... If only that cheap nasty Oni didn't try to steal my Rei away all the time. Tempting him with her food. That <b>rotten skank</b>! Oh my, tralala, please ignore that outburst just now."

"Oh, that would explain why he was calling Akane Lum and trying to get her to make him food," Kasumi said.

Now, that was not a wise move on the part of the eldest Tendo sister. In point of fact, Nabiki was staring vacant eyed at Kasumi right about now, and very slowly facepalming in utter disbelief.

"By the way, did you guys know that this girl is Kuno's little sister?" Nabiki asked, dropping that bombshell because - well, because it was more fun than trying to sell the information would be. "With all the little quirks and foibles that family has?"

<b>"Are you trying to steal my Reiiiiiii?!"</b> Ran yelled, lunging towards Akane with quite limited success. Ran is not by any means a martial artist, bear in mind. Her only tricks are looking cute, draining energy with a kiss and alien tech.

“We knew.” Akane said. "As if we didn't have enough Kuno in our lives as it was..."

"Psycho doll girl let pet off leash!" Shampoo yelled, and Akane actually winced in pain at this point. Should've kept a closer eye on the cat and kept her away from hot water until this de-escalated. "No let pet run off free! Must pay bill! Is too too bad to dine and dash, unforgivable!"

"Eh?! What's that?!" Ran grunted angrily, rolling up her sleeves and marching over towards Shampoo. "You're saying my Rei ate at your restaurant and cut out on the bill? My sweet innocent Rei committed that crime? Are you trying to tell me that to my face?!"

"That exactly what Shampoo say!"

"Here you go!" Ran beamed, handing over a bag of gold coins to Shampoo in a total mood whiplash "This should cover his meal, right?"

"Hrm... Shampoo need to check if real gold," Shampoo said, then waved the open bag right in front of Nabiki's face.

Nabiki looked down reflexively and, on glancing the gold in the bag, started foaming at the mouth and shaking violently while making 'gimme' gestures with her hand.

"Is enough!" Shampoo said. "Thank you for service, bye bye!"

Worth bearing in mind that in outer space a taxi trip that would take ten minutes walking time costs all the oil on Earth. If she'd wanted to then Ran could've easily bought the street the cafe was on never mind paying for Rei's food bill.

"Oh man, I had the weirdest dream," Ranma said, getting up from the garden. "Akane was an alien, and then this guy showed up who was a bottomless pit but he also turned into this freaky looking monster. Then it turned out the Kunos were also half aliens with a weirdo missing twin sister... The whole thing was so freaky it was obvious it must have been a dream. Haha!"

1. Through a series of circumstances Ran quickly forms a rivalry with Akane.
2. Or decides that maybe her brother deserves her. Or he’ll drain her when he kisses her. Maybe.
3. Meanwhile at Uchan's, three crossdressers are forming their own rivalry.
4. Another Urusei Yatsura character meets another Ranma 1/2 character.
5. Something else