The contest began in earnest, with the crowd cheering on as the five chefs all scurried about the stage, gathering their ingredients and setting about the challenge with full enthusiasm. The stage was practically lit up with fighting spirit.
Ah, but if you could not see such things due to lack of martial arts training, have no fear. It was rather obvious. For you see, one of the twins - Pink - immediately and blatantly set about trying to cheat. She withdrew from her pocket a packet of mandrake seeds, and also produced a watering can.
"Wind, ready-" she muttered, licking her finger to taste the direction. "Humidity, check. Seeds - " She then ripped open the packet, and prepared to toss them square on Ukyo, whose back was turned while she was weighing out flour - but then Shampoo produced a fan and blew the seeds towards Hayato, where they quickly sprouted, screamed into his ear, and left him stunned on the spot.
"Foul!" the Gambling King called out. "Illegal use of exotic plantlife! Ten points docked from Shampoo!"
"Hey, how's that fair?!" Akane yelled, but the majority of the crowd was already cheering too loudly for her to be heard. "Ooh, that rich jerk! He's being so obvious about cheating, too!"
"Not necessarily," Ryoko said. "Often, poorer people will seek our favour whether we ask for it or not. It's entirely possible that this judge is not actually being bribed, but setting up for the possibility that he will be rewarded."
"Yeah, that guy's pretty dumb like that," said Ranma, the guy who barely managed to outwit him. "I can easily see him trying that."
Such is the power of money. One need not wield it to get what one wants, nor spend it to acquire what you desire. Merely flaunting that wealth can create sycophants without spending a dime, suckups who will seek opportunities to gain your favour, for the casual favour of a rich man can easily make the life of a poor man much simpler, even if only for a little while.
Although, weirdly, Shampoo wasn't kicking up a fuss herself. That's weird. Normally she'd be calling them an idiot, or showing frustration or something. Instead, she was just getting back to cooking as if nothing at all had happened.
While Hayato was out of action for a little bit, his octopus pals weren't. Oh no! Akane could see one of them was at Shampoo's desk, swapping the labels for the salt and sugar!
"Shampoo watch out!" Akane yelled, but the audience was still loudly heckling her. Drowning her out on purpose - and some of them even threw trash in her direction! "The labels are swapped! That sneaky octopus is - Oh, what's the use? The audience is in his back pocket as well!"
"Yes, there's not really any denying that, my foolish brother is being quite determined this time around," Ryoko tutted. "It seems that he is determined to crush those two mercilessly. He's forgotten the golden rule of annihilating someone."
"If you go for overkill, it'll bounce back on you," Nabiki said. "A lighter touch can be more devastating than trying to crush them from all sides."
The more those two interacted the more terrified Akane became. Urgh, the way they were coiling around one another, looking into each other's eyes... it was a bit creepy, like watching two snakes trying to eat each other.
"There has to be something we can do here," Akane resumed her focus on the contest. "We can't let him get away with cheating like this."
"Nah, I don't think that'll be needed," Ranma said. "I mean, look at Shampoo. You noticed it already, right? She's way too confident. Did you forget what kinda sneaky bitch she can be? Or who her great grandmother is? No way she came into this without a plan."
"By the way, I've been meaning to ask," Ukyo yelled across the stage. "Were you two the girls responsible for the giant plant overtaking Furinkan High?"
"Responsible is strong word, over!" one of the twins called back. Uh... Pink, she thought?
"But by strict definition, yes we were, over!" the other added quickly.
"You jerks! I was picking leaves out of my desk for weeks after that!"
"Also, they say to newspaper back home that airen is weakling..." Shampoo added, and you could really see Ukyo's blood boiling now. Her battle spatula was gripped tightly and -
"Foul! Kuonji loses a point for intimidation!"
"Huh? Intimidation?" Ukyo asked.
"Talking back to a judge! That's another five points lost!"
Urgh! Was it possible to go into the negatives, here? Why the hell was Shampoo so damned confident, anyway? I mean, sure. She was managing to block their attempts to interfere with her cooking, but they were still losing points because, it turns out, the act of defending yourself from cheating was being treated as if it was cheating because of how thoroughly rigged everything was! Which was a thought that verged frighteningly close to political commentary, so she decided not to go there because it could only invite pain.
"Kukuku... I - I fight on!" Hayato said, pulling himself to his feet. "You, foreign girl! You have invoked my wrath!"
"It not Shampoo's fault," Shampoo deflected. "Is Pink's plants that paralysed you. Maybe ask her not to interfere next time? By way, might want to turn down heat, octopus too busy switching labels to focus on cooking."
Oooh, she was being so cool headed it was kind of pissing Akane off for some reason.
"It is a simple contest," Chardin said. "If I finish faster, you pay for dinner. If you finish faster, I pay for it."
"My good sir, it sounds to me as if martial arts dining is an offshoot of martial arts dating," Kinnosuke said, leaning forward with keen interest. "Might I interest you in a lesson in martial arts dating?"
"Sir, sir!" his butler puppet piped up. "Are you sure it would be wise to share family secrets with him? It could be our ruin!"
"Not at all, my good sir," Kinnosuke smiled down at the wooden doll perched permanently on his hand. "If we expand interest in our school, we could make a good deal of money out of it in the long run. By training others, and exchanging information, we will be able to grow even greater than before."
"That sounds like a con to my ears," Cherry muttered, but loudly so that anyone paying attention could hear. Like Akane. Huh. Weird. She was able to hear them over this crowd?
"Man, I'm so glad I cannot hear what those judges are saying," Ranma grumbled darkly under his breath. "It must be asinine."
"It is," Akane said. Oh god, her sense of hearing was good enough to pick it up but his wasn't? The lucky - She leaned aggressively back into him, but then yelped a bit when his arms went around her. This was actually surprisingly comfortable. "Kinnosuke and Chardin are making blatant attempts to con each other, while Cherry's acting like a piece of grit that got tossed into some gears."
"By the way, I've noticed you've been glaring at the chef quite menacingly for a while now," the Gambling King said. "Why is that?"
"Crossdressers really annoy me," Mister Fujinami said. "Bunch of freaks. She should take a cue from my son, and act like her proper gender! It's rotten, how she gets away with pretending to be a boy. Men are men, and women are women, that's the way things ought to be."
Urge... to toss lightning... Rising! But no! No, if you look at this stage you can plainly see lightning conductors all over the place, if she tossed electricity anywhere it would be grounded instantly.
"Your sister seems tense," Ryoko whispered, oh god Akane made the mistake of looking back. The sight of her own sister sitting that closely next to another girl was really terrifying. "Should I set her mind at ease, or would you rather she remain at the edge of her seat a little longer?"
"Hrm... Go ahead. It'll be fun to have her join in on the joke," Nabiki replied.
Joke? What joke? What did they know that she didn't?
"That foreign girl made an unusual request when we met up," Ryoko said. "When it became clear that I did not desire my brother to win, she wanted me to get her some rather... expensive ingredients."
"Expensive ingredients...?" Akane repeated. "What sort of expensive ingredients?"
"She said it was something you were quite familiar with already," Ryoko said. "Kairaishi Mushrooms. Although she wouldn't tell me what she wanted them for - something about pork dumplings?"
Pork dumplings...? It couldn't be! Like back then? No wonder Shampoo was so confident! She was going to hypnotise the judges into giving her a perfect score! The one and only thing that might overcome basic human greed - directly taking control of the brain!
"Why do I have the feeling it's not going to be that simple...?" Akane asked nobody in particular.
"Because you've been paying attention to the basic patterns that make up your life," Nabiki replied.
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