“Akane! Stop this! I forbid it!”

Nabiki, who had just come downstairs to see what the commotion was about, scoffed. “Daddy, you might want to stay out of this. She looks pretty pissed.”

Genma looked up at her. “I don’t think you really want to do this, Akane. I won’t go easy on you like Ranma did, just because you’re a girl.”

Akane smirked darkly. “And I won’t go easy on you just because you’re a washed-up, sexist jerk.” Genma’s bluff having failed, his eyes darted around the room searching for some other way out of the situation.

Akane glowered, tapping the paper on the table. “You have been challenged. Do you accept, or do you yield?”

Genma sighed worriedly. “I guess I have no choice.”

Kasumi smiled, pushing into the dining room from the kitchen and picking up the empty teapot from the floor. “If you’re going to practice, please go out to the dojo? I just dusted in here.” Akane rolled her eyes, but nodded.

The group walked out to the dojo, Soun and Nabiki positioning themselves against the back wall. Akane gave a bow, keeping her eyes up. She wanted to keep this as formal as possible, to leave no excuse for Genma to hide behind if he lost. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it right. Genma barely nodded in return. Akane dropped into her fighting stance. “This is for you, Ranko,” she whispered under her breath.

She leapt forward with a flying kick and a loud kiai, but Genma easily swatted her leg away. While she was the stronger combatant, he was undoubtedly the faster. As she landed, Genma stooped low, sweeping her legs out from under her and planting her on her back. He attempted a heel strike down at her, but she rolled out of the way and kick-flipped herself back to her feet.

Genma advanced with a flurry of punches, landing two of five to her torso. His last punch missed wide left, and Akane drove her knee upward into his stomach as his momentum carried him forward. Genma coughed, stumbling backward. She spun into a roundhouse kick, striking Genma across the cheek, but by the time she spun around for a second kick, he caught her ankle and tossed her aside. “Just stop this, Akane. You know you can’t beat me.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” She ran forward, firing a fist forward. Genma was ready for her, knowing full well that he could use her anger against her. He jumped up, striking down with a hammer fist to her face and sending her crumpling to the dojo floor. She stood, spitting a little bit of blood onto the cypress boards beneath her.

Genma pressed his advantage, throwing a forward kick that struck home in the right side of Akane’s rib cage, following up with another overhand fist to her cheek, knocking her to the floor again. Soun cringed. He didn’t know what had come over his youngest daughter to make her challenge his lifelong friend, but it was still hard to see her take a beating like this.

On her hands and knees, Akane struggled for breath, the kick to her ribs having knocked the wind out of her. I told you I couldn’t do this, Ranko, she thought to herself. She stood, and barely got her feet under her before Genma swept them out again, and she went down hard face-first onto the floor.

Akane groaned, rolling over onto her back as Genma stood over her.

“Do you yield?”

Akane lay still, watching him. She thought back to her last conversation with Ranko. How disappointed she would be to find out Akane had lost. Ranko was so confident in her, and it broke her heart to have to let her down. She still couldn’t believe that Ranko had offered no useful advice, after all the times she’d fought against her father. “Don’t get tickled.” What the hell was that about?

She thought about the night last week where she and Ranko were roughhousing, and how Ranko wouldn’t stop tickling her. Yes, it was cute, but not very much help, you idiot! Maybe she was trying to tell Akane that she could win even if she didn’t believe in herself at first? She remembered how fast Ranko had tickled her, daring her to keep up in order to block the pinches. How did Ranko get that fast, anyway? And how did she match it? The only way she could think of was…

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She gasped audibly, and Genma took a step back. She chuckled to herself. You sly little minx, Ranko! You were teaching me without me even knowing it, she thought.

Akane kick-flipped to her feet, grinning confidently at her opponent. She took her fighting stance, despite being slightly doubled over. “Alright. Get ready.”

Genma chortled dismissively as Akane tightened her stance. Here goes nothing, Ranko. “Tendo School of Anything-Goes Martial Arts – Final Attack!”

Genma blinked, looking up at Soun. “Did you teach her a final attack!?”

Soun waved his hands and shook his head frantically in fervent denial. Akane let a sadistic smile crack the corner of her mouth – after all, it had been a Tendo who taught her. Just not her father.

Akane charged forward, bellowing as she cocked her fist. “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, revised! Swarm of Hornets!” Her hands flew without thought or aim, buffeting her opponent with a combination of fists and open-handed strikes. Genma put up his hands to try and defend himself, but there was no hope. Blow after blow landed on his chest and then his face, and he did not have enough real estate on his arms to defend both.

Soun stared with wide eyes. How did she manage to learn such a deadly art? Especially with the Amazon women having returned to China? Nabiki, meanwhile, could only grin. There was only one place her sister could have learned that move, and now everything that had happened that morning made perfect sense.

Akane hammered away at her opponent’s face until both his eyes were swollen, and at his chest until he gasped for air. When her arms began to shake from exertion, she grappled him and drove him downward into her raised knee, sending him to the floor in a heap. She stood over him, her chest heaving in anger and exhaustion. Stooping down, she grabbed a fistful of his gi and locked her elbow to pin him to the ground, cocking her fist over his nose. “Now, do you yield?”

Genma looked around for a way out, some dirty trick he could employ. He thought back to all of the lessons of Happosai, all the times they’d done sneaky things to help him steal womens’ unmentionables or a bite to eat. He needed some shady technique, something he could hide behind, anything. He was coming up empty.

With a tear forming in his right eye, he slowly nodded. Soun gasped, covering his mouth in shock. Akane grinned. “Good.”

The youngest Tendo daughter leaned down until her mouth was just a few centimeters from Genma’s ear, still pinning his body to the floor with her stiffened arm. She whispered dangerously in his ear, her voice quavering as she spoke just a few words that made his eyes bulge in shock.

“If I ever hear your daughter’s name come out of your mouth again…”

She lifted him a few centimeters off the wooden floor by the lapels of his gi, slamming his body down onto the boards once more for emphasis.

Soun dropped to his knees. “Akane, why? How could you?” She whirled to face him, wiping blood from her lip on the sleeve of her gi.

“Tell me. Why did you make me get engaged to Ranma in the first place, Dad?”

Soun blinked. “A.. Akane, you’ve always known. It was so we could merge the two schools.”

Akane nodded. Halfway there. “And I’m still going to inherit the dojo from you when you retire, right?”

Soun looked to Nabiki, who shook her head and put up her hands. “Don’t look at me, Daddy. I’m going to business school.”

Their father nodded. “Of course. But…”

Akane grinned. Checkmate.

“Well, I am now master of the Saotome School. So, when you retire, the schools will be merged without me having to marry anybody.” Soun gasped, and his youngest daughter continued. “So, I want you to break my engagement. You got what you wanted. Now I need to hear you tell me I can date anyone I want.”

Soun nodded dumbfoundedly. Akane shook her head. “I need to hear you say it, Dad.”

“I… Very well. You and Ranma, wherever he is, are no longer engaged.”

Akane nodded. “And?”

Soun sighed. “And you have my blessing to date whomever you choose.”

Akane nodded with a small grin. She quite enjoyed the irony of having gained permission to leave Ranma, so as to free her to date the woman he had become. “Thank you, Dad.” She turned and strode out of the dojo without so much as a second glance at the distraught and broken man that still lay prone on the hardwood floor.