Ch.4 Akane Again

DISCLAIMER: Rumiko Takahashi is a brilliant lady, who hath created Ranma and Co.

Notes: Switching back to Akane’s viewpoint. Please do C&C, it helps me loads and loads. Thanks for all the reviews, everyone! I am not worthy!!^_^

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Shanghai was a bustling city. I had been here only once before and I was charmed to find it much as I remembered it. The city was noisy and colorful, and as soon as we stepped out of the airport, all sorts of scents assaulted our nostrils. The smell of spices, garbage, perfumes and oils all messed up together in a heady mix.

Outside the airport, waiting for our rental car, we were surrounded by dozens of beggar children, flocking around us and other people coming through the glass doors.

I’d prepared for this. Giving the kids money was strongly discouraged, so I always collected loads of hard candy from the flight. It was easy to grab them from my pocket and hand them around to the eager kids. Ranma just looked uncomfortable.

That’s when our car drove up. The chauffeur got out and came around the front of the car to hand us the keys.

Ranma stared at the keys in his hand and then studied the car.

“Is this ok for you, Ranma?” I asked. I knew some bodyguards had strange requirements about trying to control their environment as much as possible.

Ranma started and looked around at the little kids who were now pestering tourists.

“Gave away all your candy, huh? Little pests.”

I smiled. “I don’t mind.”

Ranma stared at me. “Akane...”

“Hmm...?”

“Do you still trust me?” He was frowning, waiting for my reply.

“Huh?” My heart stuttered for a second and then my well-trained mask of polite amusement fell into place. I raised my eyebrows. “Hey, who can you trust if not your bodyguard, right?”

For some reason, Ranma smiled at that.

“Let’s get going,” he said. He tossed me the keys. “I’m bushed and I wanna hit the sack.”

We got into the car with me in the driver’s seat. My suitcase had already been stored in the trunk.

“The Silver Lily. That’s where we’re headed,” he said, taking out our map to look at it. The Silver Lily was the hotel where Sir Blaine had last been seen, and we had been booked into a suite there.

“Okay, give me directions.” I accelerated slightly. We zoomed ahead of the cars to our right. “I’ll get us there.”

Ranma reeled off commands, studying the map and looking up occasionally to study the layout of the city around us.

The car was quite smooth to drive, and I admit I enjoyed myself. The drivers were a bit rude though. I could hear curses as I zoomed by.

“Are you sure we’re not lost?” I asked finally. “The roads have gotten kind of...empty.”

“I dunno, Akane...”In my peripheral vision, Ranma scowled down at the hapless map, as though it had steered him wrong on purpose. “I thought...”

What he thought I’ll never know, because right then two bands of flexible pipe came down over our heads and tightened around our throats.

I tried to scream but my air was cut off. My first instinct was to claw at the pipe, stop it from crushing my windpipe, but of course as soon as I tried that, the car started to veer crazily.

“Shut up, girl!” came a man’s hoarse voice behind my seat. “Just die quietly!”

Like that was possible. I got a glimpse of a heavy, unshaven face in the rear-view mirror as I scrabbled at the pipe with one hand and tried to steer with the other.

“Sorry...about this...” came Ranma’s strangled voice, and then a shoe came down so hard and so suddenly on the foot I was using to hold down the accelerator that I thought my foot was fractured for sure.

The car raced forward, making the MPH needle jump. My stomach sank with fear. A large hand came into my swiftly blurring sight and twisted the steering wheel so hard the car actually jerked before it careened sharply. There was the sound of a loud crash and breaking glass, and then the most unbelievable shock went through the car and through my body, leaving molecules whizzing in its wake.

Everything went black.

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“Akane! Akane, wake up!” I woke to the sensation of being shaken like a rag, felt my head rolling around loosely and painfully on my shoulders.

“R...Ranma?” Ranma let go of me and I sat up and looked around. I was lying on the ground, near the car, which had smashed into a tree. Our two assailants were tied up against the tree, completely knocked out. I couldn’t believe everyone had survived that.

“How in the world...what...” I thought back to the little scene at the airport.

“You *knew* those two were in there, didn’t you?” I accused him. “What on Earth were you playing at?”

“Heh. Akane.” Ranma folded his arms and looked away. “Stop and think for a minute. You had all those kids around you. Not to mention tourists nearby. Sometimes you just have to believe that a crash can harm two hitchhikers more than you when you’ve got airbags to count on! Besides, if we’d found ‘attackers’ in the car right in front of the airport, we wouldn’t have had a chance to do this!”

He walked up to the first guy and kicked him in the ribs. “Hey! Wake up, you! Before I decide to throw you into another tree!”

The attacker, a surly looking man, groaned and opened his eyes.

“You know the drill.” Ranma bent and grabbed a fistful of his dark tunic. “Who sent you?”

The man growled out something disgusting. Ranma picked him up by the scruff of his shirt and slammed him into the tree trunk. I winced. I thought I heard something break.

“Aaaagh!” The man screamed.

“Another tree, you say?” Ranma asked pleasantly.

“Nooo, wait...kind sir...we were just hired... that’s all. A man hired us.”

“And his name is...?” Ranma casually cracked his fists.

“Kesari Dal!” the man continued hastily.

Ranma flipped open his cell phone and placed a quick call to the Shanghai police station in Chinese, telling them that two thugs had tried to attack us.

I wobbled over to where the car lay. Three of the wheels had burst so I was able to turn and place my elbows on the leaning roof, and rest my back against an unbroken window.

“The police are on their way.” Ranma walked up and watched me wiggle my neck to make sure nothing had been knocked loose.

“Ranma, did you really know those guys were in there?” I asked. “Why didn’t you drive?”

“I didn’t want to rasie their suspicions. I didn’t get us lost by accident, Akane. I’ve been in Shanghai before. We needed a quiet road to deal with them.”

There it was again, another tantalizing tidbit about his past. So he’d traveled quite a bit, apparently. I was trying to figure out how to frame a casual question when he said, “You’re as unfeminine as ever, I see.”

“Huh?” I gaped at him.

“Akane, you’re not a bad driver, but you were born with a lead foot!” He smirked at me. “You might as well tape the accelerator down!”

It sounded so much like one of our childish insults that I started to giggle. Ranma stared at me with surprise, as though I were a lab animal that had suddenly done something unexpected. He began to smile and my giggles grew louder, and even, I guess, a little hysterical.

“You know what, Ranma?” I gasped.

“What?” he asked, grinning.

“You are so uncute!” I burst into shrieks of laughter at his face, and he threw back his head and began to laugh as well.

“Well, you’re a pervert!” he shouted. I collapsed into giggles again.

. “And you’re...built like a...”

“..brick!” we shouted together, laughing loud, gasping laughs that made our stomachs hurt. God, it seemed so hilarious. All those insults and name-calling of so long ago sounded so infantile and kiddish now.

Of course, it really wasn’t that funny. I’d shed a few tears over that name-calling when I was sixteen and I knew now, looking back with spectacular hindsight, that Ranma hadn’t had the easiest time of it either.

But...there was something in that moment. A momentary harmony. We’d go back to the cold war soon enough.

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At the hotel, we checked in as Mr. and Mrs. Higurashi. I slid a glance across at Ranma signing in the guest book. If our fathers had had their way, I really would have been married to Ranma by now. But we wouldn’t be here in Shanghai, sweating in the heat. We’d be at the Tendo dojo and Ranma would be teaching students and I might...

Abruptly, I blushed, as my unruly mind skipped ahead to the natural consequences of marriage and sharing a bed. Furious at my wayward thoughts, I swung our bags up, ready to carry them off.

The clerk and Ranma glanced up together. The clerk’s eyes widened in surprise. Ranma smiled between his teeth and reached over to grab the bags.

“Darling,” he said warningly, “Don’t strain yourself.”

Oops. I’d forgotten that I was hardly supposed to be the strong type.

“Thank you, dear. I’m just so excited to be here! Uncle Phillip really did pick nice places, didn’t he?”

I turned to the clerk. “My uncle Phillip came here for a vacation last week. I’m sure you remember him. A tall man, with red hair...uhh, wore lots of sporty coats...?” At least that’s how Sir Blaine had been described to us.

“Ahhhh, yes,” the clerk smiled. “He was your uncle? He left day before yesterday.”

“What?” I shrieked. “He was here so recently?? Oh, darling, we just missed him. Oh, I wonder, do you know if he saw anyone here?”

“Yes, he used to walk around with Mr. Hiro. That’s another gentleman who is staying at the hotel. And there was also a lady, forgive me, I’ve forgotten her name. She was quite beautfiul.”

“Oh, I see. What room is Mr. Hiro in? Perhaps I could ask him about my uncle.”

We got the room numbers for my ‘uncle’s’ room and Mr. Hiro’s room, too. Unfortunately, a British couple had just moved into Sir Blaine’s room.

Ranma placed a quick peck on my cheek and walked by. “Let’s go, *darling*. We can relax up in the room.”



The room was light and airy, filled with bamboo furniture and fitted with silk. I walked onto the balcony, leaving the shower to Ranma. I felt better after my bath and cool and clean in my white halter-top and black shorts.

The view was beautiful from up here on the third floor. The sea stretched below us like a blue prairie. I couldn’t help wishing this vacation was real. Sans Ranma, of course.

“How do you plan to find this guy, Akane?” asked the object of my long-ago affection.

I turned from the balcony. Ranma was standing there with a towel slung around his slim waist, drying his hair with another one. His hair lay long and loose and damp about his very wide shoulders. I dragged my gaze up to meet his. It was very obvious that he still practiced the art.

“We need to search Blaine’s room, talk to Hiro and the lady, whoever she is.”

“And you got any idea who this ‘Kesari Dal’ is?” He’d flipped his hair over his head and was towelling the ends.

“No. The name sounds Indian, though.”

Ranma flipped his hair back and stared at me. “Akane, I think it’s time you told me what’s in that package you’re carrying.”

By the contract he had with my company, I wasn’t required to tell him anything, but at this point, there wasn’t much use in having Ranma around if he didn’t know what the hell was going on.

I told him about the diamond. Ranma whistled.

“The Great Mogul? No one’s seen that in a long time, Akane. In fact, I thought it’d been cut up into smaller diamonds.”

I took the stone out of its hiding place and we watched it sparkle.

Ranma pursed his lips. “I really don’t know much about diamonds, but this one’s...”

“Not as pretty as you expected?” I grinned. “Yeah, but it’s priceless.”

We’d discussed Ranma’s attackers briefly on the flight. I was startng to wonder now if they were connected to him or me.

“Sir Blaine came to Shanghai for a reason, Ranma,” I said. “Possibly to buy something. I know some people here. If Blaine’s been here, they’ll know about it. We can go see them right now.”

“Whoa,” Ranma gave his hair a final rub. “I’m goin’ nowhere without lunch, Akane.”

“Still thinking with your stomach, Ranma?” I smiled, remembering the Saotome food fights at the Tendo dining table.

Ranma smiled at me, then he gave me a once-over. “Not always with my stomach, Akane”

Eeek. Where had Flirting Ranma re-appeared from? I bopped him on the head as I went past him.

“Hey,” he grinned. “You walked into that one.”

“Ranma?”

“Yeah?”

“Your towel’s slipping.”

“Aagh!”



We picked a seafood restaurant.

Ranma finished ordering and the waiter took our menus. This was the moment I dreaded. When I could no longer avoid him and could not think of anything about the case to discuss with him. When in doubt, prevaricate.

I leaned back. “So. When have you been to Shanghai before, Ranma?”

“I’ve been here on business.” There was no warning before his next words, not even a blink. “Why aren’t you at home, Akane? You were inheriting the dojo. I figured you’d have settled down by now, married Ryouga or Kuno or one of those other guys who used to come along all the time and had a couple of kids by now.”

I went pink with embarrassment. Did Ranma think I was some kind of housewife?

“After you...”I cleared my throat. “After you left, Dad was pretty disappointed with me. He’s still leaving me the dojo, but he started teaching again. He’s got quite a number of students now. I don’t think he’ll be stopping any time soon. He’s still very...very healthy.”I was babbling and I knew it. “Anyway, I...got tired of Nerima and anyway, I got a scholarship to study abroad. So I came here. It’s really that simple.”

“Have you gone back?”

I paused. “Once.” It had been for Kasumi’s wedding. Seeing home again without Ranma there had torn my heart open. Nabiki had also visited from her college, and Kasumi had been so deliriously happy that it hurt to remember how her marriage had ended.

The waiter arrived with our meals.

“What about you?” I glanced down at my folded hands. “I thought...that you would go to Ukyo or even Shampoo. But they were just as...I mean, they were broken-hearted. You really did disappear completely.”

“Well, I didn’t see any reason to stay around.” Ranma’s eyes had hardened. They reminded me of polished pewter. “As for Ukyo and Shampoo, yes, I was sorry to see the last of them. I did pay them both last visits. It was...very rewarding.”

I blanched. “I see.” I could just imagine it. Ranma in that last fit of rage might have done anything. It was hardly surprising if he’d decided to have some fun of his own before he left. Images of Ukyo and then Shampoo wrapped around Ranma flashed through my head.

I stared down at my meal. I’d completely lost my appetite. But if there was one thing I knew in this business, it was that I had to fuel myself. I twirled my chopsticks and began to eat methodically.

And besides, I couldn’t really blame him. I could tell him the truth now, but why would he believe me? He had no reason to.

Ranma was watching me. “What about Kuno?” he asked, and had the great pleasure of watching me flinch.

“I don’t know. I think he took over his family business and...”

“I meant,” said Ranma, softly, “What about Kuno and you?”

Looking up, I noticed that Ranma had finished his plate. Apparently he wasn’t bothered by old emotions. Abruptly, I felt angry.

“We were never together, Ranma. I know what it looked like, but I was never with him.”

“You lying bitch,’ said Ranma, softly. “You’ve got the nerve to tell me nothing was going on when I caught you naked in bed with him?”

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Notes: Abrupt ending, I know...but it’s 4am, dunno how that happened, and my eyelids refuse to stay open. If all this looks like complete rubbish in the morning, I shall revise but it makes sense to me so far. Hope it does to you, too!!!