We enter on a balcony (read: a dusty training hall that Kasumi hasn't had the chance to clean yet today because of a certain pair of hopeless performers), with our lead Romeo (Shampoo) crouched in the corner with the back of her hand pressed to her forehead.
"He jests at scars that never felt a wound," Shampoo read aloud from her transcript. "Must have been a sharp sword."
"Better a sharp sword than your maces," Ranma quipped.
Oh yes, Ranma was here as well, lying on the floor out of the way and watching this nonsense play out. He could never get into this kind of malarkey. Acting out lines written by some guy on the other side of the planet hundreds of years ago. What was even the point?
Then Akane entered wearing a dress that she filled out very nicely. You could hardly tell that she was a tomboy in that kind of getup, heck that dress actually made it look like she had a chest and that her thighs were half as thick as they actually were. Pretty good tailoring if nothing else.
"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?" Shampoo crooned, holding her book in one hand while the other gestured out dramatically towards Akane. As for Akane, she was practically swooning in the doorway into the training hall. "It is the east and Juliet is the sun!"
"Yeah, she's about big enough to be the sun," Ranma quipped. And got a book thrown at him in the process.
Shampoo retrieved her book and continued on. "Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief."
"Must've eaten some of Akane's cooking."
That thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious; Her vestal livery is but sick and green."
"Yep, definitely eaten some of her cooking."
"Ranma!" Akane yelled. "Do you mind not riffing Shakespeare?! We're trying to rehearse, here!"
"What's riffing?" Ranma asked.
"Oh my god, Master has not seen Mystery Science Theatre," Shampoo mumbled to herself. "Must rectify, must make him watch."
"Make him watch Manos," Akane sniffed. "He needs to <i>suffer</i>."
"Alright, alright!" Ranma put his hands up, a last desperate act to keep the girls from tearing his head off and spitting down his neck. "I'll be quiet. You girls continue rehearsing."
The two of them seemed pacified by that. They returned to where they were, with Akane crossing her arms and putting her hands on her shoulders while Shampoo got on her knees and stretched out her hands as if reaching out towards Akane, desperate to touch her but at the same time seeming like she might burn herself if she did...
"I forgot my last line," Shampoo said.
Akane nearly dropped her own script. “Aren’t you the expert here?”
“I don’t have the play memorized Lady Akane.”
The two temporary actresses continued the play for a bit, once they got their lines down from the script. Though there were still a few stumbles, especially on Akane’s end. Ranma watched, quietly, and it looked like they were nearing the end of the scene.
“Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee,” Akane said, standing over Shampoo a fair big closer than they'd started. "I have no joy of this contract to-night:It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be ere one can say 'It lightens.'"
Imagine that a camera shifted to soft focus as the two of them continued their performance. Romeo and Juliet, extolling their attraction for one another in lines read countless times across the globe. Their breath brushing against their lips, their faces drifting ever closer…
"What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?" Akane asked, the breath from her mouth tickling Shampoo's lips.
"The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine," Shampoo answered.
Both girls closed their eyes and leaned in, lost in the moment, lost in their characters, lost in the youthful mutual lust that is a major cause of the central tragedy of the play...
Crunch.
The mood was ruined. Both of them slowly, slowly turned to look over to the side of the room where Ranma was sitting on his haunches. There was a very large bag of cookies in one hand. There were crumbs covering the other.
"What?" he asked. "I didn't say anything!"
“Master. There is something called ‘The Mood.’” Shampoo said.
Akane was much more direct. She grabbed him by the pigtail. “I think we need some alone time to practice Ranma <i>dear.</i>” Akane had taken to calling Ranma “dear” when she was annoyed with him. “So how about you go bother someone else.” With ease she tossed him out of the dojo.
“Fiiinnnneee.” Ranma’s voice faded into the distance.
Akane dusted off her hands, suddenly looking a whole lot less ladylike than a moment ago. She couldn't help but smile about putting that boy in his place. "Where were we?" Akane asked, then remembered herself and adjusted her posture. "Oh, please forgive me, I -"
And then her brain went to its off mode. In the few seconds she'd been turned around, Shampoo had somehow managed to take off every item of clothing she was wearing and tied them together into a makeshift blanket upon which she was now reclining. Resting her head on her hand, while the other hand trailed down the side of her body, its index finger tracing a large circle around her hip.
"Wouldst thou withdraw it? for what purpose, love?" Shampoo asked. In much the same way that a porn star might suggest that they didn't have enough money for that pizza delivery.
It slowly dawned on Akane that none of this was entirely out of character and was more or less how Romeo and Juliet's flirting actually went. So she stepped forward while fiddling with the ties on the back of her dress.
"But to be frank, and give it thee again," Akane said. The dress slid down her body. "And again, and again, and again."
<hr>
As Ranma flew through the air he had this vague impression that he was missing out on something really good. By the time he landed (on his feet, even the Russian judge would give a ten) he wondered if maybe he should have kept quiet so he could join in on that good thing.
"Nah, that play was super boring," Ranma yawned. "Even when it looked like they were about to make out, I could barely keep my eyes open. And who talks like that anyway?"
"16th century performers in England," said a voice behind him that he didn't recognise. "Iambic pentameter was a common style for playwrights at the time. Some idiots think Shakespeare popularised it but he was very far from the first to use it. Other idiots think he didn't write the plays at all because they are the only examples of his writing - only proving that they know jack shit about history in making such claims."
Huh? Ranma didn't really have the time to process that before something swung for his head, making him duck and roll out of the way.
"Of course, that's a strawman of their position, it's a bit more nuanced than that," the stranger said, throwing several really sharp looking knives right at Ranma. No problem for him, he was able to grab a plank of wood and catch them out of the air. "Although - interestingly - there is a subsection of anti-Stratfordians that detests democracy so much that they sincerely hope their conspiracy theory pans out so that they can play the Tudor family back in control over Britain."
"None of what you're saying makes any sense at all," Ranma said.
"Welcome to anti-Stratfordian thinking, people who may actually be as foolish as flat-earthers. Less well known, but no less divorced from reality," the stranger said. "Much like I'm about to divorce you from Shampoo, and also your head from your neck."
Hold on a second... No way! It couldn't be! This masked guy, he must be...
"You're a really big Shakespeare dork!" Ranma yelled. "I knew these plays made people weirdos. Maybe that’s why Shampoo likes acting like a sla-”
Huh. That's weird. For a second there it felt like a battle aura just blotted out the sun, but he honestly couldn't imagine anyone getting so thoroughly furious that they'd be able to do that. Must've been a really big cloud.
Or... A really big plastic duck being dropped on him from a great height.
"... I really should've kept my big mouth shut," Ranma said.
- Akane and Shampoo continue their practise. Without costumes. It becomes difficult for them to concentrate for some reason.
- Ranma fights off this mysterious Shakesphere nut. Somehow still fails to recognize him.
- Meanwhile, the anti male Ranma club is having its own issues.
- Some anti-Stratfordians show up to protest the play.
- Something else
No comments:
Post a Comment