The schoolyard was quiet again, as Katie landed on her feet. Letting her hands hang limp at her sides, she looked at the group of students staring at the hole in the building where Kuno had gone–and waited. Sure enough, one by one all eyes returned to the foreign girl who just made an embarrassment out of who had been once the undisputed lord of the school. Quiet murmurs rose.
“She… she put him through the school’s clock.”
“So powerful…”
“Is he dead?”
Everyone waited and listened. Sure enough, they could hear a high-pitched whine of pain from a man too durable to avoid being knocked unconscious, but not durable enough for when it counted.
Katie let out a sigh and dusted off her knees. “Hoo… I needed that like a peacock needs a hen…”
Akane walked over to Katie, entering her field of view with care. The taller girl noticed and turned her head to greet her. “Howdy.”
“Hi,” Akane returned. “You are… way stronger than I expected.”
Katie shrugged her shoulders. “I’d better be, ‘else all that martial arts training was a huge waste of time and money.”
She looked back up at where Kuno’s legs dangled out of the school.
“Like with that dumb buck; he oughta look for a refund–at least to help with the medical bills.”
Akane let out a small laugh. “Yeah.”
Katie placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “I mean, who in their right mind practices kendo, and don’t even know how to fight without a weapon?”
Akane shook her head. “The problem is right there… he practices kendo, and nothing else.”
It took a moment for Katie to process. “… Oh, he’s an over-tiered sport fighter.”
Akane closed her eyes and nodded once in confirmation. “Mm.”
Katie tsked. “Ya hate to see it.”
She brought a hand up to herself. “By the way, the name’s Katie. Katie Izland.”
Akane blinked. “Izurando? That’s a bit weird.”
Katie waved it off. “Ugh, yes, there’s a Z instead of an S. It ain’t my first choice in a name, but I can’t go helping it.”
Akane nodded, and then bowed to her. “I’m sorry you had to be bothered, but thank you for stepping in. I don’t think I could put up for his nonsense for another day.”
Katie waved it off. “Weren’t no thang. Been too long since I had me a real fight.”
Nabiki joined them. “A real fight? I’ve seen slaughterhouses that gave the cows better odds.”
She hadn’t, but the sheer one-sidedness of that beating warranted the comparison. Katie appreciated the reference.
“Even better, he won’t be bothering anyone none for a hot minute,” Katie said with confidence.
And with that, an epiphany struck one of the boys in the horde of Akane’s suitors. “Wait, hang on. Does this mean we can ask Akane out on dates like normal people now? We don’t have to do this fighting thing anymore?”
Akane went stiff where she stood, her eyes wide and glassing over as fury radiated from her.
Before any could ask what Katie had referred to… Akane’s sheer rage manifested as a visible blue glow, bright enough to make Katie hop back from her.
“… Uh oh,” she said as Akane began to twitch and ramble.
“Ask me… out? Still what think… you after… me did to…?”
Nabiki was impressed, never had she seen her little sister so angry that sentences were a challenge. Like a car with a popped clutch rolling down hill, though, Akane’s sputtering stopped.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
It was the only warning anyone had, before she exploded.
“I’LL NEVER GO OUT WITH ANY OF YOU DISGUSTING PERVERTS!”
Just about every boy in the group went so pale they seemed titanium white except for a faint blue shade appearing on their foreheads and descending down their faces. Nabiki stepped back to catch everything on camera.
“YOU THINK THAT I’D GIVE YOU THE TIME OF DAY, WHEN I HAD TO PUT UP WITH YOU SHOUTING AT ME TO GO OUT WITH YOU WHILE YOU WERE SWINGING FOR MY FACE?! SCREW YOU! SCREW ALL OF YOU FOR EVEN THINKING IT!”
A dark cloud appeared over them, weighing down their shoulders and forcing their heads down in shame. The students not directly in the path of Akane’s verbal assault stood stock still, most of them–almost all girls–in awe of the unfathomable wrath that was pouring from the girl.
“YOU WEAKLINGS COULDN’T EVEN BEAT ME UP WHEN THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF YOU, WHY THE HELL WOULD I DATE ONE OF YOU?!”
Katie’s mouth dropped open, but no words came out.
On the other end of the verbal assault, what had once been a large percentage of the male student body were now extras for a zombie apocalypse film.
“SO GO AND FIND SOME OTHER GIRL TO BOTHER AND LEAVE ME ALONE–OH WAIT! YOU CAN’T! BECAUSE EVERY FREAKING GIRL HERE KNOWS YOU’RE DESPERATE ENOUGH TO BEAT UP A GIRL YOU CAN’T HAVE!”
It was the most powerful and devastating truth of her eruption: in their desperation to avoid Kuno’s wrath they hadn’t just poisoned the well–they contaminated the entire aquifer. All any girl saw for the last three days were hundreds of boys gathering up to beat up a girl and get beaten by that girl like she wasn’t trying.
Who would date a guy like that? Who would want to go near a guy like that? Who could call themselves a man after that?
Her long, ribbon-secured hair looking more disheveled than it ever did fighting the boys, her face red, and her body covered in sweat, Akane stood there gulping down a lungful of air and shaking as she growled out the last words she ever wanted to say to any boy.
“Get the hell out of my sight, and if I lock eyes with any of you, I will do so much worse than what happened to Kuno!”
Completely destroyed, the male students of Furinkan High School obeyed, and one by one began to disperse.
As they marched silently away, everyone could see it in their lifeless eyes: there was no hope for them, no light, not even a faint glimmer. All romantic aspirations for every single one of them were dashed with their irrational decisions. There would never be a springtime of their high school days, or real love and companionship to look forward to.
All that was lost forever, in lieu of a dark, lonely future surrounded by plastic figurines and posters of unattainable fictional representations of women, warmed only by the light of computer-generated wives programmed to worship them but feel nothing.
Akane couldn’t imagine a more fitting punishment.
Katie took a deep breath. “… Damn.”
Nabiki let out a whistle as Akane’s reactor scrammed and the meltdown ended. “Well, you didn’t throw a punch this time, but I think you neutered all of them.”
“They never had any balls to begin with,” Akane snapped back.
“Inclined to agree there,” Katie said as she dusted off her hands. “Iffin’ that’s all square, I’m gonna go to class.”
As she began to walk away, however, Akane called to her. “Wait, Izurando-san!”
Katie stopped and looked back at Akane. “Yeah?”
Akane bowed deep once more. “Seriously, thank you so much, and I am sorry you had to see that.”
Katie waved it off. “Don’t apologize fer doing the right thing; those boys had no business picking on a pretty lil’ thing like you.”
Katie’s compliment hit its mark with Akane. “Oh, um… thank you for that as well, uh…”
Akane brightened and seized the opportunity to learn more about the mysterious girl and that unusual attack of hers. “Do you want to have lunch together?”
Nabiki raised an eyebrow in curiosity, as Katie gave Akane a probing glance, and smiled herself.
“Sure, you don’t mind eating lunch outside, do you?
Akane shook her head. “No, that’s fine.”
Katie smiled a little broader and reached out to give Akane the V-sign. “Cool. I’ll see you out under the trees then.”
Katie turned and began walking back to the school along with the rest of the dispersing students. As they watched her go, Nabiki looked over to Akane, who was happier than she’d been over the last few days, despite having just gone off.
“She’s so nice,” she said.
Nabiki shrugged her shoulders. “Eh, she’s all right, I guess. Let me know when a hot guy comes along.”
Akane huffed noisily at that. “A hot guy? Here? If I ever meet a hot guy our age in this town, that’ll be the day I’m engaged to him!”
|Qinghai Province, China|
“ACHOO!”
The sneeze of a hot Japanese young man dressed in a karate gi, with brown eyes and dark hair ending in a tightly-braided pigtail, made his father and their tour guide–both middle aged, follically challenged men–jump.
Sniffling, Saotome Ranma brought his fingers to his nose. “Aw geez, I hope I’m not coming down with a cold.”
“Don’t you worry, son, these springs will cure all that ails you even as we train,” his father, Saotome Genma, declared.
Ranma sniffled again and shivered. The air here was pretty chilly, for a place that was supposed to be a spring. “I hope so, it doesn't feel like no hot spring though, Pop.”
Their tour guide, a stocky Chinese man wearing a green uniform and matching cap, looked back at them. In stilted but comprehensible Japanese he spoke urgently.
“It not hot-spring, honored guests, it cursed spring. Very dangerous, you no want to fall in.”
Genma dismissed the tour guide’s warning like he didn’t understand it. “Whatever, even if they’re not hot springs. There’s nothing that a good workout won’t cure!”
Ranma had been paying more attention. “Wait, what about not falling in?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Genma insisted. “Besides, that’s the whole point of this training, you won’t fall in.”
The two of them looked ahead at the cursed pools of the Jusenkyo Springs before them. Thousands of wide pools spread out for as far as they could see in the mist-shrouded clearing in the hilly forest.
“Trust your old man, son. Nothing will go wrong.”