Chapter Text
On Sunday, Ranma Saotome had had what some might refer as a "misadventure", and what some philsophical circles might refer to as "yet another chapter in the swirling morass of Oh-God-Make-It-Stop that is Nerima."
A smack with a frying pan from one Akane Tendo had led to
CRACK.
Ranma hitting the back of his head on one of the large decorative rocks around the koi pond.
A red-haired girl, unconcious, floating limply in the water.
("Well? Did you learn your lesson?")
The others might have worried, if it weren't Ranma.
The Ranma that awoke from unconsciousness, however, was a different person than the one that she'd been that morning.
A reserved, yet excitable nature. A dislike for fighting and violence. A pronounced discomfort in her own skin when in her black-haired male form.
Smiles met by blank stares and judgmental glares from those around her.
("Will you stop all that stupid girly talk?")
In an attempt to get Ranma out of the house and maybe get some equilibrium back, Akane had convinced Ranma to go out shopping with her.
The girl's clothing section in the department store, where Ranma gasped with excitement over the frilly and lacey clothes, despite the cringing anxiety on Akane's face.
("You're a man, body and soul. Got it?")
Akane had caved and bought her a dress, white and ankle-length, that this new, strange Ranma had thought was so beautiful.
("I'll take a receipt with that, please.")
A trip to that ice cream parlor that Ranma had already been a fan of. A conversation over parfaits. Ranma, still in that dress, staring guiltily into her ice cream, as she spoke about how all of her memories as a man felt like someone else's, or like a half-remembered dream.
("Do you really think you're a girl?")
Back to the Tendo home, where the stares and glares continued. The sight of an accidental cut on Akane's finger during dinner prep almost making Ranma faint, lightheaded and white as a sheet.
That night, things came to a head.
Ranma, standing with her hands on Akane's shoulders, apologizing, but softly insisting that this was who she was, now. That the Ranma Akane knew would not be coming back.
And Akane had not taken it well.
("...Fine. Fine! If you're not Ranma, then you can just-"
A swing of a wooden practice sword.
A loss of balance as Ranma dodged backward.
Feeling her bare heel skid on the wet grass, her eyes widening in surprise as she fell backward, her stomach lurching, until
CRACK.
Another fall.
Another sharp shock to the brain.
And there Ranma was, griping in his usual tone of voice about Akane smacking him around.
Everyone laughed. Another happy ending.
If it was anyone other than Ranma, they might have been worried.
Monday
Ranma lay in his futon, still in his pajamas.
The curtains had been drawn, keeping out the bright sunlight.
The overhead lights were turned off.
A cold, wet cloth over his eyes, Ranma dozed, heedless of the voices outside of the room he shared with his father.
"He's not pretending to be a girly-girl again, is he?" Akane asked, her crossed arms matching her mood.
Between Akane and the door stood Kasumi, blocking the way as best as she could. She had planted herself here in the doorway after catching Genma trying to loudly berate the concussed Ranma out of bed for their morning spar, never mind the dual knocks on the head mere hours prior. "Akane, Ranma got two nasty knocks on the head yesterday, to say nothing of the memory issues. He needs to rest and recover today, somewhere dark and quiet."
"Bah." Genma's familiar gruff voice interjected as he passed the two in the hallway. "You're overreacting, woman. The boy just got his bell rung. Happens to everyone."
Kasumi sighed. "Mr. Saotome, please. Your child just got an injury."
"If you'd stop with the Mother Hen act and let 'em just walk it off, he'd be fine in five minutes."
Akane rolled her eyes. If forced to choose between the two, she'd rather back up her sister. "Kasumi, I'm gonna trust your judgement on this." Raising her voice, Akane called past Kasumi. "Even if he's a hard-headed idiot!"
"Akane!" Kasumi hissed, her voice quiet. "What did I say about quiet?!"
"Alright, alright," Akane acquiesced, dropping the topic. If Kasumi was gonna force the issue, she wasn't gonna press it. "I'll make sure to bring his homework from Hinako-sensei."
Kasumi sighed, forcing a smile. "Thank you, Akane."
As Akane headed down the stairs to head to school, Genma yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth. "Planning on starting breakfast anytime soon, or just sitting here all day?"
Kasumi paused, taking a deep breath, before looking back at Genma with as level a stare as she could muster. "Fine. But please, let Ranma rest today." With a thin smile, she added "It'd be a shame if all this excitement from the past day or so hurt Ranma's abilities to unite the schools, after all."
Genma paused, considering. He clearly hadn't considered that. "...Hmm. On second thought, the boy could use a day to recuperate."
"Thank you," Kasumi sighed, relieved.
Akane's leg tapped endlessly under her desk as she sat in her chair, staring down at her first period notebook as she chewed on a pencil's eraser.
The events of the weekend had been...unsettling, to say the least. Ranma, brash and cocky and headstrong Man-Among-Men Ranma, being reduced to a simpering, weak little thing...the very embodiment of what Akane strove to not be, every day...it felt wrong, just to have witnessed it.
No. It didn't just feel wrong.
It was wrong.
Plain and simple.
Akane grumbled to herself, trying to dismiss the strange tension in her shoulders that had settled there yesterday morning and hadn't gone away since. Trying to put the hurt, oddly frightened look of Ranma- no. Not Ranma. The fake Ranma. The one that had tried to take over his life, had told her that Ranma was dead and not coming back.
Her face. Her hurt, frightened face.
Akane sighed, trying to put the image out of mind. What's done is done. It was time to put the weekend behind her.
"Akane!" A familiar voice.
Akane turned, a smile rising to her face. "Hey, guys. G'morning."
Sayuri and Yuka, Akane's two oldest and closest friends, stood side by side next to Akane's desk, matching ear-to-ear smiles on their faces. They stared eagerly at Akane, as if waiting for something.
Akane chuckled. "What's with you two? You look like you've got something to tell me."
Sayuri leaned forward, rapidly tapping her (mostly) immaculate nails on Akane's desk in excitement. For whatever reason, during Sayuri's manicures, she only ever got the pinkie, index, and thumb done, leaving her nails short on the ring and middle fingers. It was a choice that never made sense to Akane- she could clearly afford to get all five done.
"We saw you!" Sayuri giggled, trying and failing to hold in the giggles trying to bubble out of her.
"...Saw me what?" Akane's smile shrank, just a little, as one confused eyebrow rose.
"Yesterday!" Yuka beamed, eagerly flapping the sleeves of her cardigan at her sides. "We were out and about, just the two of us, annnnnnnnnnd..."
"We saw you and Ranma!" The two girlfriends chorused.
Oh.
“Aw, really?” Akane’s smile faded away entirely, as the uncomfortable feeling of embarrassment crept up her shoulders. “I-I’m sorry, guys, I-“
“Don’t be sorry!” Yuka responded enthusiastically. “Nothing to be sorry about!”
“We’re just happy for you two!” Sayuri quickly plopped down the chair for the desk in front of Akane, sitting backward to face her. “We saw you two in the department store, and Ranma just looked so cute!”
“You gotta give us all the details!” Yuka agreed, crouching down to get on both of their levels.
Akane glanced back and forth between the two expectant faces, before sighing. “Look, guys, just stop it.”
Yuka’s smile faded. “What?”
“I get it, whatever you thought you saw was probably super funny looking in, maybe even cute, but I just wanna put this weekend behind me.”
Sayuri blinked in confusion, thick glittery eyeshadow catching the overhead lights. “Akane…I don’t understand. What happened? Ranma looked so happy-“
“Ranma was being stupid, as always.” Annoyance crept into Akane's voice, the word filled with venom. “I’m glad you two found something to laugh about, but I’m sick of thinking about it.” She looked pleadingly at the two of them. “Okay?”
Sayuri and Yuka stared back at her, confused, before sharing a concerned look.
As Hinako-sensei flounced into the room, ready to begin the day's lesson, the two silently slipped back to their assigned seats.
Tuesday
Ranma sat in his desk, at the back of the classroom. One hand tapped the full water bottle back and forth, back and forth, on the surface.
After...whatever had happened this past weekend, after he'd hit his head, Kasumi had insisted on keeping him home all Monday. Ranma hadn't complained- his skull had felt like it was on fire and about to crack in half.
Ranma had slept most of Monday, occasionally waking when Kasumi came in to check on him. He smiled gently. Kasumi was sweet like that.
As he'd slept, he'd had dim flashes of...something. Weird dreams. Half-there blurs that he couldn't make out.
Everyone had been really awkward around the dinner table that night, casting glances at him out of the corner of their eyes when they thought he wasn't looking.
Everything on Sunday was a haze.
A whole day lost. A strange hole in his memories.
It bothered him.
A lot.
Everyone at home said not to worry about it...but he couldn't ignore the strange, uneasy feeling chewing on him.
Like something he'd lost.
"Hey! Ranma!" A familiar voice.
Pulled from his musing, Ranma grinned as two familiar faces approached his desk.
"Morning!" Hiroshi grinned, plopping down in his desk to Ranma's right. He was grinning like someone who was very eager about...something.
Daisuke slid in behind Hiroshi, matching his grin. "Heyyyyy...soooooo?"
Ranma's eyes flicked back and forth between the two, smiling uneasily. "Soooo?"
Hiroshi chuckled. "Okay, so...we saw you this weekend."
Ranma blinked. "This weekend?"
"Yeah!" Daisuke chimed in. "We were at the ice cream place, the two of us, and...we saw you and Akane."
"You looked adorable in that dress!" Hiroshi added. He was positively glowing from the excitement he was trying to keep bottled up.
"O-oh..." Ranma's smile slowly slipped away from his face. "I, uh..I don't...really know what you're talking about."
Daisuke and Hiroshi blinked uncertainly, exchanging a glance. "Wh...what do you mean?"
"I, uh..." Ranma sighed, an oddly sad sound. "Look, I dunno. My brain is all screwy lately. I think I...imagined something I'm not, and I think it just kinda embarrassed everyone. That's the gist I got, anyway."
There was a strange, pale horror behind Hiroshi's eyes. "Ranma...what happened?"
"Can...can we just drop it, please?" Ranma sighed, trying to ignore the strange, phantom pang in his chest. He couldn't meet their eyes. "I don't wanna think about it anymore."
As Ranma returned to toying with his water bottle, Hiroshi and Daisuke shared a grave look.
Below the desk, out of sight from anyone else, Hiroshi slipped a hand into Daisuke's.
The automatic doors of the department store slid open silently as Akane stepped through them, a paper shopping bag at her side.
As she headed into the store, they glided closed behind her.
Yuka counted to ten before creeping forward, the doors sliding open again.
There was a gross, scummy feeling in her tummy, at the thought of tailing her friend like this. She was dimly aware that, under any other circumstances, this might be downright unforgivable.
But Akane had had that shopping bag tucked next to her desk, all day.
And Yuka needed to know if what she'd seen when she peeked into it...was what she thought she'd seen.
Ahead of her, Akane strode along with the bag. She hadn't noticed her stalker.
Yuka snuck along behind her, doing her untrained best to dart from support beam to support beam, just in case Akane happened to look back and see her- clumsy Yuka, struggling to play the ninja.
As Akane reached the front counter, Yuka dove into a circular clothing display nearbly. Slipping in to hide amongs the men's shirts hanging on coathangers, Yuka frantically grasped the bars of the metal rack, to keep herself from knocking the thing over. If it clattered to the ground right behind Akane, and she turned around to find Yuka's feet sticking out of the bottom, Yuka would have a lot of explaining to do.
"Excuse me, ma'am?" A confused employee was peeking over the top of the rack. "You're not allowed to be in there."
"O-oh!" Yuka laughed awkwardly, as loud as she could dare. "I-I'm just...inspecting the screws!" A pause. Then: "Health and Safety. Surprise inspection."
"....Huh." After a moment, the employee's smile brightened. "Makes sense to me!" She turned and walked away.
Yuka breathed a sigh of relief.
Then, she carefully slid two shirts to the side, like parting curtains, opening the thinnest gap to peer through.
Yuka watched as Akane finally made her way to the front of the small line at the customer service desk. The employee smiled at Akane brightly. "Hello, miss! Welcome back! How can I help you, today?"
Akane smiled uneasily as she sat the paper bag on top of the counter. She tried to ignore the feelings of someone staring at her back- she was being paranoid, imagining things. "Hi, I'd like to return this."
"Of course, ma'am. Do you have the receipt?"
"Yeah, right here."
As Yuka watched, Akane fished the folded slip of paper from the pocket of her uniform. Nodding, the clerk reached into the paper bag.
Yuka's eyes widened as the clerk slowly pulled a long, sleeveless white sundress from the bag- the same one Yuka and Sayuri had seen Ranma, in her girl form, wearing with a smile that outshone the sun, just two days ago.
Wednesday
The classroom was silent, save for the scratch of pencils and the rustle of paper.
Dead center of the classroom were Ranma and Akane's desks, side-by-side.
The two kept their eyes on their work, silently filling out the answers on the worksheet.
The past few days had been...quiet. Typically the class could count on at least one argument a day between the two- it had been joked that rage-baiting each other was their love language.
But the past three days had been downright icy.
They'd been well-behaved, even.
At Akane's left, Sayuri finished scribbling onto a scrap of notebook paper. Silently glancing to the left and right, she quickly folded it into a small square.
Normally she'd seal it with a lipstick kiss, but this wasn't the time.
Looking up front to make sure Hinako was still engrossed in her manga, Sayuri placed the folded paper between atop one manicured thumbnail, angled her aim upward, and flicked it hard with her thumb, like flipping a coin.
The note spun around and around in midair as it sailed over her head, no one else the wiser as it landed directly behind her, on Yuka's desk, with a muted tap.
Silently, Yuka unfolded it, scanning the words on the page, before gently squeezing Sayuri's elbow between finger and thumb, one-two-three.
"Pass that to Daisuke and Hiro-chi," Sayuri whispered.
Lying on her stomach on top of her desk at the front of the room, kicking her feet in the air, Hinako looked up from her Doraemon manga volume, glancing at the wall clock. "Five minutes left!" She eagerly dug back into the manga, humming happily.
Glancing to her right, Yuka re-folded the paper, extending it to the student sitting directly behind Akane. "Pass this over, pretty please," she whispered
Daisuke was just finishing up the worksheet as he felt a tap-tap on one shoulder. On his left, a fellow student he barely knew was sneakily extending a folded paper. "From over here. Take it."
Nodding, shooting a glance at Ranma sitting directly in front of him, Daisuke unfolded the paper once more. A quick once-over to read it, and he re-folded it.
With a light toss, Daisuke's pencil skittered as it landed on the classroom's tile floor, just to the left of Hiroshi's desk, right in front of Daisuke's, to Ranma's right.
"Whoops," he whispered, just loud enough to be heard. He stood from his desk, leaning forward to pluck his pencil from the floor. He reached one hand out, leaning on Hiroshi's desk for support, palm flat on the desk top.
As Daisuke retrieved his pencil and withdrew his hand, the folded paper was revealed, lain on top of Hiroshi's desk.
Hiroshi silently plucked the paper from where Daisuke had sat it, glancing at Ranma, unfolding it.
There, written in pink, glittery pen ink:
Meet after school.
Ucchan's Okonomiyaki.
Need to discuss Ranma-Akane situation.
The bell over the door jingled as it opened.
Behind the counter, Ukyo Kuonji looked up from the manga volume he'd been reading. "Welcome to Ucchan's, sit wherever..." She grinned at the sight of four familiar faces. "Heya, kids."
Yuka waved hello, cardigan sleeve flopping. "Hiya, Ucchan!"
At her side, Sayuri mirrored her girlfriend, her multiple bejeweled hair clips tapping together as she waved. "Table for four, please, Ucchan!"
Ukyo chuckled. "Sure thing. And no need fer Hiro to worry, we haven't had anyone else in an hour."
As the four students sat at a table, Ukyo pointed a spatula from one face to another. "Usuals fer one gyaru, one token guy, and two gorgeous girls?"
Sayuri grinned. "You know us too well, Ucchan, you charmer."
Daisuke pulled one chair out, the other person in the boy's gakuran sitting down in it with a relieved sigh and a smile. Daisuke squeezed her shoulders. "You okay?"
In her seat, Chihiro nodded. "Yeah," she responded, looking gratefully up at her oldest friend. "Better, now that we're out of school." It was as if the ugly tarp with that other name painted on it that she had to wear over herself all day was finally lifted away.
"Oh!" Sayuri quickly dug in her bookbag. "I think I have a spare hair clippy, if you want it?"
"I'd like that, Sa-chan, yes please."
"Here, let me just..." Sayuri brushed Chihiro's long bangs to one side, clipping the hair clippy into place. "There you go, Hiro-chi, all better."
"So pretty, Chi-chan!" Yuka chirped.
Chihiro smiled, a light blush reaching her cheeks. "Thank you guys, so much."
Sayuri leaned forward. "Say the word, Chihiro, and I will move heaven and earth to get you a girl's gakuran."
Chihiro nodded, a small, grateful smile on her face. "One day. Baby steps."
The four of them had always been Furinkan's weird little queer circle. All duirng Freshman year, they'd had each other's backs.
Sayuri had held Yuka's hand where everyone could see them, and hadn't shown a shred of fear.
Daisuke had held his best friend close and let her cry into his shoulder, on that night when she told him that she was born wrong and no one knew, that everyone only thought she was a guy.
The arrival of Ukyo in their second year, the okonomiyaki chef ever between-genders, had only strengthened their circle, welcoming her with open arms.
"Oh, Ucchan!" Daisuke pointed a pinkie finger at their host. "Gender today?"
Wrangling ingredients on the griddle, Ukyo waggled one flat hand by their side. "Ehhhhhh."
"Dope, gotcha gotcha."
Yuka had fallen silent, her brain creeping back to what had been on her mind, all of their minds, for the past few days. "So, uh...we should probably talk about it, huh?"
Sayuri slipped on hand into her girlfriend's, as Chihiro sighed, the long heavy sigh of someone who has a job to do that they're dreading. "Yeah. We should."
Ukyo glanced up. "Talk about what?"
The four students seated at the table glanced between each other, each waiting for someone else to start.
Finally, Chihiro straightened up. "Well, Ucchan...we think something happened to Ranma, this past weekend, and we're not sure what."
Ukyo nodded. "Yeah...Ranchan's been super quiet, past couple'a days. Seemed like somethin' was weighin' on 'em. He didn't seem to wanna talk about it, so I didn't press it."
Yuka glanced at Sayuri, who squeezed her hand reassuringly. "Well...Sayuri and I...we saw Ranma and Akane out at a department store over the weekend."
Daisuke nodded. "Chi-chan and I saw them at that parfait shop Ranma likes, too."
"Stalking? For shame," Ukyo chuckled.
However, the laughter fell silent as he looked back at the four grave faces staring back at him.
This was something serious.
"...Ranma was wearing a dress," Chihiro continued. "A...really pretty white one. She looked...well, she looked happy."
"She looked over the moon about it!" Sayuri added.
"...Huh." Ukyo nodded, carefully plating the four meals she'd just finished whipping up. "Okay...that doesn't sound too bad."
Daisuke sighed. "Here's what we know: we all saw Ranma and Akane, out and about on Sunday. Ranma's in a dress, smiling, I'm thinking she finally figured it out."
"Then Ranma's not at school on Monday," Sayuri continued. "We tried to talk to Akane about it, she got...weirdly defensive? Said Ranma was just being stupid, and that she didn't want to talk about it."
Ukyo paused where she was, just briefly, as she sat the plates in front of their respective customers. An uneasy pit was settling in her stomach.
"Then Ranma's back in class yesterday," Chihiro nodded. "Dai-kun and I tried to talk to her, too, and she just seemed...so sad. Said she didn't wanna talk about it either.
An icy-cold feeling of dread was in Ukyo's stomach now. His eyes widened, pieces falling into place in his head. "Oh...oh no..."
"And that's not all..." Sayuri glanced at Yuka, who nodded. "I saw Akane returning that same dress to the store, just yesterday. Got her money back."
Numbly, Ukyo plopped into a chair, white as a sheet.
Seeing her grave face, Chihiro nodded. "Y-yeah. You're thinking what we're thinking."
"J-just so I'm clear," Yuka cut in, an odd desperation in her eyes. "What are we thinking? I mean, I know what I'm thinking, I just..." Her eyes dropped to the tabletop. "...wanna be sure."
No one spoke for several minutes. It was obvious what everyone was thinking.
The facts were these:
- They had seen Ranma, out and about, happily feminine, seemingly comfortable in her own skin.
- They'd seen Akane, at the same time, looking...uncomfortable, at best.
- That happy, exuberant girl they'd seen on Sunday was not seen on Monday, and gone by Tuesday. Withdrawn, quiet, wanting to just move on and forget about that day.
- Akane had been defensive at best and sharp at worst when asked about it, acting like nothing was out of the ordinary.
- Akane had returned that white dress, that Ranma had loved so much, back to the store, with no Ranma to be seen.
The pieces were combining to form a puzzle with a frightening picture.
"It was a test drive," Chihiro whispered.
Four sets of eyes fell upon her.
"A test drive?" Ukyo murmured.
"A test drive...out of the closet." Chihiro nodded, looking from face to face. "It had to have been."
"And...what, it..." Daisuke looked for the words to say. "It went South?"
Ukyo found himself thinking about the other people in Ranma's daily life.
Ranma's Pops, thief of the Kuonji Family's Okonomiyaki Cart years ago, always uptight and vocal about Ranma being a Man Among Men, Capital-M-Capital-A-Capital-M.
Akane's dad, Genma's best friend, with skin in the game on his beloved "uniting the schools."
Nodoka, who seemed to come and go as she pleased these days, just as uptight on Ranma about being manly, ever since she'd found out the secret about the curse.
Kasumi, silent and submissive.
Nabiki, a sneering mercenary eager to line her pockets.
And...as much as Ukyo hated to admit it...
Akane. Quick to anger, quicker to accuse Ranma of any number of things, to call her a pervert.
Ukyo had always counted Akane as a friend, even despite her short fuse.
But the numbers were adding up to a tragic sum.
"I think..." Sayuri paused, swallowing a lump in her throat, before continuing. "I think it looks like...like she got shoved back into the closet."
"She looked so happy." Chihiro's voice was small, soft, fragile, heartbroken.
And now she's trying to forget about...about that joy she felt, Ukyo thought to himself.
Yuka glanced around at the others, her face lost. "Wh...what do we do?"
In the back of Ukyo's head, a tiny, evil part of himself shouted We can use this to get Ranchan back on our side! This is how we win!
Ukyo promptly strangled that thought until it fell silent.
Ukyo's best and oldest friend needed help.
Something very wrong has happened to my best bud.
Squeezing his fists at his sides, Ukyo looked up at the others, determination in his eyes. "I wanna help."
Four sets of eyes turned to look at her.
Sayuri nodded. "Whatever's happened...we gotta help Ranma."
"Let her know we're on her side." Chihiro nodded, eyes widening.
"Ranma's my friend," Daisuke squeezed a fist. "I already swore I'd protect any of you guys, if anyone gave you trouble. If Ranma needs it...I wanna give it."
Yuka, happy tears in her eyes, nodded rapidly. "M-me too! I wanna help Ranma feel safe! Safe enough to try again!"
"It probably won't be easy," Ukyo warned. "If the worst happened, Ranma's probably built those walls a lot thicker than they used to be. But if y'all are in, so am I."
Silently, the five placed their hands over each other's in the middle of the table, a silent pact made.
"Starting tomorrow...we rescue Ranma."