July 6, 1991

6:58 AM

She didn’t… how… why wouldn't she change…

Akane could think of but one reason that the curse of Jusenkyo would not activate. It terrified her beyond comprehension.

Crawling the last meter between them, Akane threw herself over Ranko’s body on her hands and knees, desperately shaking her fiancee’s lifeless form. Steam still rose from the puddle she lay in. All of the pre-med training Akane had received thus far in her chiropractic education was lost to her mind, replaced entirely with a distraught panic that was itself giving way to total despair.

“Ranko, baby, please wake up! Come back to me, please! We gotta get married! PLEASE?!” Half-blinded by tears, she slapped Ranko's cheeks to try and rouse her. You can’t be dead! I need you!

After twenty-eight seconds that felt like an eternity, Ranko’s eyes fluttered open with a low groan.

“Ranko! Oh my gods, you’re okay!” Akane smiled in relief through her tears, cupping her hand on her bride’s cheek. There were now more questions than answers about how she had managed to avoid the triggering of her curse, but they were secondary for the time being. “I love you, Ranko. I love you so much!” She reached down, squeezing Ranko’s left hand tightly in her own and fingering her bride’s diamond engagement ring.

A shadow began to take human shape on the floor over Akane’s shoulder as Genma approached from behind her. He could not believe what he was seeing. What?! How could it be? Did the boy find a cure after all? And he didn’t tell me?! Now, you’re definitely coming with me, Ranma. You’re going to share the secret if I have to beat it out of you.

“Step aside, Akane. Let me see my son.” There was at least a modicum of concern in his voice, but it also carried the distinct tinge of a threat. He stepped closer to the pair, searching her form for any sort of totem, amulet, or other such witchcraft that might have spared the boy from the inevitable change hot water should have brought.

Akane released her lover’s fingers, moving her hand slightly to the left and interrogating the redhead who lay beneath her with a questioning gaze. Ranko, recognizing what she was thinking, gave her a small, surreptitious nod of assent without lifting her head from the kitchen floor.

With a furious scream, Akane suddenly exploded upward from the floor at the gi-clad man looming over her. He raised his hand quickly in front of his face to block her punch.

But she had not thrown one.

Punctuated by a high-pitched scraping sound of metal on ceramic, Akane swung upward in a half-moon slash with the blue-and-gold katana that had lay on the floor at Ranko’s side. There was a bright flash as the blade glinted in the fluorescent light streaming down from the ceiling fixtures, but the brilliant white gave way in an instant to a new color: a deep, sickly red.

Genma staggered backward with a shriek, blood pouring from his left hand as he cradled it in his right. Now on her feet, Akane advanced a step to close the distance between them, brandishing the katana menacingly in both hands. The weapon seemed to course with energy and malice in her hands, as if it had tasted its first blood in generations and now insatiably hungered for more.

She took another step forward and felt something squish under her bare foot. Moving her leg to the side and stealing the briefest of glances to the floor, Akane’s eyes bulged.

Where her foot had just been, two severed fingers lay on the white tile floor.

A distant voice in Akane’s mind told her she should feel guilty for what she had done. Recoil in horror from the sight of the pair of digits on the floor and the man who would have been her father-in-law cradling his maimed hand. Shrink at the sound of his agonized wailing. Blanch at the viscous, murky blood pooling on the tile as it dripped from the end of Genma’s saturated gi sleeve.

She did not.

With a primal roar, she raised the weapon over her head and charged forward. Her course was set. She would finish what she had started. She would keep the promise she had made to Ranko in March as she sat battered and bruised in one of the booths in the bar room just behind her.

Today, Genma Saotome would die.

Caterwauling in pain and terror, Genma darted toward the back door, doubled over at his waist to protect his mangled left hand. He bashed it open with his right elbow and ran out into the alley. The door slammed closed behind him, and then another loud metallic bang came from behind it. Akane rushed to the door, losing her footing slightly as she slipped in a pool of blood. She crashed into the metal door with her shoulder like a linebacker, but it did not budge. Bellowing in her white-hot rage, she kicked at the door with all the force she could bring to bear and it yielded to her, the dumpster Genma had used to barricade it skittering backward on the gravel and nearly rolling onto its side in the alleyway.

A waist-high red footprint dripped slightly down the steel door as Akane burst into the alley. Genma’s obstacle had bought him precious seconds, but he had left a clear trail of red droplets leading out of the alley and to the left. Akane gave chase, but was slowed as her bare feet were stabbed at by every sharp bit of gravel that made up the alleyway. By the time she had made it to the street, he was gone and the blood trail had ended. An old woman walking her dog down the curb screamed, snatching up her Pomeranian and leaping backward to avoid the crazed woman in blood-splattered sweatpants, the unsheathed sword in her hand dribbling the last of the Saotome bloodline onto the sidewalk.

Akane’s eyes scanned the street analytically. He’s hurt. Where could he have gone? Nowhere he’d have to climb…

Her eyes fell on the bus stop across the street, which unlike most of the city transit locations, lacked a bench for waiting commuters. Akane had smashed it in her fury the last time Ranko had come under attack from her father. She replayed Hana’s words from that day in her mind. He’s gone. He doesn’t need you. Ranko does.

Akane nodded with a heavy, sigh, resolving herself to her decision. Good advice, Mom. I don’t like it, but you’re right, as usual. She turned back down the alley. She padded quickly but gingerly to the back door, pulling it open and stepping into the shambles of the Phoenix kitchen. She found Ranko sitting up on the floor, her back leaned against the wall separating the kitchen from the stairwell. Ranko covered her nakedness with her hands, as her soaked, still-warm nightgown lay on the floor a meter away. She looked up to confirm that it was Akane and not Genma that had entered the room through the mangled back door, and the fear in her eyes subsided, replaced by overwhelming relief.

“Akane…”

Letting the bloody sword clatter to the steel industrial countertop, Akane rushed forward, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms around Ranko. “You’re safe now, Ranko. He’s gone. I’ve got you, princess.”

With a slight blush and a hint of a weak smile despite her soreness and her distraught and disheveled appearance, Ranko reached up and brushed Akane’s bangs to the right out of her eyes, leaving her hand resting gently on Akane’s cheek. Her eyes were still heavy with disorientation as her mind sought to make sense of the missing half-minute in her memory. “My hero. You okay?”

Akane nodded softly. “I’m just fine, baby. Just fine. Are you okay?” She’s gotta be in unspeakable pain right now. I can’t even imagine it.

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“Gettin’ there,” Ranko said, rubbing her temples. “What did I miss?”

Her bride frowned, squeezing the redhead’s hand tight after she lowered it from her head. “Your dad threw the kettle at you, sweetheart. You must have fainted.”

Ranko sighed defeatedly. “I guess we gotta reset the counter to zero days, huh?” She motioned with her hand to her nude body. “I really appreciate you changing me back before I woke up, though. It means a lot to me. That would have been really weird for me after all this time.”

“Um, Ranko…” Akane cupped her fiancee’s hand comfortingly in both of her own. There was disquiet in her eyes, and Ranko doubted it was from the fight. “About that…”

Ranko nodded sadly. “I know. It must have been really hard for you, seeing me like that after so long. I was really hoping you never would have to again. I tried so hard. I’m so sorry, Akane.”

Akane shook her head, closing her eyes. How do I even begin to tell her? “It’s not… when he threw the kettle… I tried, but I couldn’t stop him in time. I’m sorry. But, Ranko, nothing happened. You didn’t…”

The redhead’s eyes widened in curiosity or concern; Akane wasn’t sure which. “Akane, please. You’re starting to scare me. What are you trying to tell me?”

Akane patted her lover’s hand reassuringly. “You… didn’t change, Ranko. You were still a girl.”

Ranko gasped, her jaw falling slack. “It… did I… what?! How?!”

Looking over the grisly mess that covered nearly every corner of the kitchen with a resigned sigh, Akane reached behind Ranko, pulling her close in her arms and slowly standing. She carried Ranko down the hallway and into the bar room proper, gently cradling the naked form of the beautiful woman she loved. “I don’t know. Some kind of fluke, or something. When it happened, I was so scared. For a second, I thought you might be dead.” Tears began to form in her eyes again at the memory of her short-lived despair.

Ranko shook her head as she was deposited gingerly into one of the booths. She managed a small, but sincere, smile. “You won’t get rid of me that easily, Akane.”

Ranko’s fiancee sighed despondently. “We’ll figure out what happened, I promise. Together. But right now, I gotta go call everybody, I guess.” She started to head back behind the bar to fetch the cordless telephone.

“What for?” Ranko groaned, rubbing her temples again. And I thought my head hurt before.

Akane slumped in despair as she pushed the talk button on the cordless phone, the dial tone droning in her hand. She spoke so softly and sorrowfully that the phone almost drowned out her voice. “The place is a wreck, and we both took a couple of pretty good shots. And we’ve got to make sense out of whatever the hell happened with your curse. There’s just…” She sighed sadly, her shoulders going limp as she looked around the scene that had been set for the day’s celebration. There’s no way we can do a wedding here today.”

Ranko stood, albeit with a wince and a hand on her ribs, and walked over to Akane. She reached down, pulling the beige plastic receiver out of Akane’s hand and pressing the green button again to silence the audio prompt.

“No.”

She set the phone on the bar top before wrapping both of her arms gently around Akane’s torso and resting her cheek on Akane’s chest. Despite how badly her skin still burned from the boiling water, how fuzzy her head was, and how chaotically a thousand different thoughts, wonders and worries zipped through her mind, the sensation of her naked body pressing up against Akane still sent a little shiver up her spine. “I don’t care if I have to crawl up that ramp on my hands and knees through fire and broken glass. I am going up on that stage and I am marrying you. Today. I can’t wait any more. I told him he doesn’t get to take away things that matter to me, and I meant it. And, nothing matters more than marrying you, Akane. I refuse to wake up one more fucking day where I’m not your wife.”

A spark of life returned to Akane’s eyes as she returned her fiancee’s embrace. “You really are a silly girl, Ranko Tendo. But you’re amazing. You know that, right?”

“I am your silly girl, Akane.” Ranko smiled, flushing with a little gasp as the magnitude of the morning’s events finally struck her. She had not changed this time. What if… what if she couldn’t?

“Maybe forever, now.”

“Hello?! Good morning, lovebirds! Who wants some doughn…” The cheerful feminine voice emanating from the kitchen trailed off suddenly.

Another familiar voice carried down the narrow hallway. “Whoa! What the fuck happened in here?!”

Akane winced, slipping quickly behind the service bar. She grabbed an extra-large mens’ black Ranko and the Dapper Dragons tee shirt from the merch display, tossing it to Ranko. “Put that on. I’ll be right back.” As Ranko complied, Akane pushed through the blue saloon door, which hung slightly askew on its hinges, coming face to face with both of her elder sisters as she emerged from the narrow hallway. “Hey, girls.”

Nabiki motioned incredulously to the devastation surrounding her on all sides of the kitchen. “I mean, Akane, I know Ranko was three sheets to the wind and couldn’t keep her hands off you last night, but don’t you think you two might have taken it just a little overboard in here?”

Akane managed to crack a tiny smile. Nabiki’s dry sense of humor always seemed to reach her even when no other levity would. It was among Akane’s favorite things about her sister.

“It was Ranko’s dad. He broke in and attacked us to try to stop the wedding. He’s gone. Maybe twenty, thirty minutes ago, I don’t know. Ranko and I both took a few shots, nothing serious. Saotome… not so much.” Nabiki’s eyes fell on the blooded sword lying on the steel countertop, and her jaw fell open. Akane closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she sought the words to convey the momentous non-event that had occurred during the battle. “He hit Ranko with a tea kettle.”

Kasumi gasped, covering her mouth. “Oh my gods, the poor dear! Is she alright?”

“That’s the thing, Kasumi.” Akane shook her head with a disbelieving chuckle. “She didn’t change. We have no idea why. It was the weirdest thing. She’s in the other room, and we’re both just sort of shell shocked by all of this. I don’t know what the heck we’re gonna do about the wedding, but Ranko insists she still wants to try to pull it off.”

The eldest of Soun Tendo’s daughters stepped forward, wrapping her arms around Akane tightly. “Then that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Together.” Kasumi released her sister, picking up a green-handled broom from a pile of debris on the floor. “Give me an hour, and it’ll be like nothing ever happened in here.”

Nabiki smirked, sticking her hands in the shallow pockets of her slim-fitting jeans. “It’s true, you know. She’s been training her whole life for this.” She looked down at the carnage behind the prep counter. “Daaaaaamn, you got him good, huh?”

Before Akane could answer, Nabiki picked up Nodoka’s - now Ranko’s - sword from the counter, wiping the blade clean of blood with a paper towel. “Our little sister, going full-on samurai. Impressive!”

Akane grimaced. The gravity of having disfigured Ranko’s father had not fully sunk in, but as the adrenaline coursing through her had tapered off, it was beginning to. “I, uh…” Her eyes widened as Nabiki weighed the sword in her hand, slashing at the air with it in the space between the prep counter and the walk-in freezer. “Careful, Nabiki. That thing’s crazy sharp. Kasumi, how can I help?”

Nabiki answered first. “Kasumi and I will take care of this place. And I’ll keep an eye on her and make sure nobody comes back.” She demonstrated a surprisingly good kendo stance with the katana to punctuate her offer, even as she scoffed at the dubious expression on Akane’s face. “Hey, don’t give me that look! Courtesy of how photogenic you and Ranko are, I’ve spent a lot of time around Kuno. A girl picks up a few things.” Grinning as Akane laughed, Nabiki gestured back down the hallway. “Your job, little sister, is to go take care of Ranko, and get your heads right. You two are getting married in seven hours, ready or not.”