MCA: Ukyo's Heavenly Gift - A Cooking Contest coming up!

Unending BE - episode 1384674

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Ukyo’s relationship to Shampoo was in some ways simpler than her relationship with Akane.In other ways it was more complex. Unlike Akane there was no sense of friendship. Both knew the other would stab them in the back They had alliances, not camaraderie. But that begiled the reason they so often teamed up.

Because both knew that there was a sense that Akane was an opponent they could not defeat on their own. Before they could win, Akane needed to lose. Which leads to smashing down the Saotome home, and then bombing a wedding.

Fat lot of good it did. Now Ukyo was watching Shampoo’s reaction to Akane’s challenge. She was not the type to back down. Akane and Shampoo glared at each other. Any moment her restaurant might erupt into violence. Konatsu was watching both carefully, ready to intervene. Ukyo was just behind Akane, and desperately tried to signal to Shampoo to not try something funny.

Then Nabiki walked into the scene with a very familiar looking shit-eating grin. “Honestly Shampoo, I don’t see why you’d even bother to accept such a silly challenge.” She said, looking at her nails. “We all know how it would end.”

Shampoo twitched, “What Nabiki saying?”

Nabiki smirked, “Oh not much, you’ll just spend so much time flirting with Ranma that Akane will win by default.”

Shampoo’s eyes narrowed, “Nabiki sure think she big shot? Little scaredy cat hiding behind people who can fight.”

Ukyo stood up. She immediately got between Shampoo and Nabiki. Not that she could do much. Shampoo was scary good, and Ukyo knew that at most she could probably deflect one hit. But that would probably be enough for Konatsu to get involved. “Hey now, no fighting in my restaurant!”

The positioning was as such that between Shampoo and Akane there was now Nabiki and Ukyo. Shampoo glared at Akane, who looked concerned herself now. Shampoo reached into her blouse and her hand blurred, tossing something forward! It gleamed silver, and was fast.

Thud!

Everybody stared at what just happened. Nabiki had somehow jumped in front of Ukyo and used the tray she was carrying as a waitress to block the thrown object. Which was a knife, with the words “Challenge Accepted” engraved into it.

“Why do you have knives like that!?” Ukyo asked.

“For when Shampoo challenged. Got bunches of them for birthday earlier this year.” Shampoo said. “What? Akane would be able to catch easily. Watch.” She suddenly threw identical another knife, and sure enough Akane caught it between her fingers. “See?”

“It could have hit the person giving me a paycheck.” Nabki said dryly.

“So this weekend, Shampoo show Akane she worse at cooking, worst at being woman.” She winked at Ranma and left Ucchans.

The tension slowly faded, and Ranma finished off his okonomiyaki. “Great! I can’t wait to judge.”

“Excuse me? What makes you think you’re judging!?” Akane said, turning back to her fiance.

“Well who else would? Mousse? You know he’d say Shampoo won.” Ranma said. "I'm the only person we know who can be impartial."

“I’m not letting you eat food prepared by Shampoo!” Akane said.

“Hey you can’t “let” me do anything!” Ranma said. Oh good grief. Were they really going to fight in here?

“Hey since this dumb thing was set up in my restruant how about I be the judge. Konatsu too. Neither of us have any reason to be biased.” Ukyo stepped between them before this bickering could continue. “And I’ll recruit a third person to judge before it starts, OK?”

Akane and Ranma both seemed almost disappointed that their argument had been interrupted. But that couldn’t be right. They didn’t enjoy fighting? That’d be stupid!

“Wonderful I bet we can get people to come watch Shampoo and Akane compete and sell tickets!” Nabiki said, sounding excited.

Oh right. That reminded Ukyo. She had some questions. “Excuse me a moment, Konatsu you have the shop until I get back from this chat.” Ukyo grabbed Nabiki by the hand and pulled her into the back.

“Man.” Ranma said. “I didn’t know Nabiki could pull off a stunt like that.”

“I haven’t seen her try anything like that for over a year…” Akane said.

”Charcuterie.” Ukyo said to Nabiki when they were alone in the back, slipping Nabiki in the trance. Where she could answer some questions. “Why the hell did you try and block that knife!?” Ukyo knew Shampoo well enough to tell that the throwing knife had just been for show, she clearly hadn’t been trying to actually hurt anybody. Judging by how easy (relatively) they were to block.

“You might have been hit by it. And you commanded all of us to ensure your safety at all times.” Nabiki said.

Ukyo’s eye twitched. Kuruto was pissing her off more and more by the day. They say to not speak ill of the dead but Ukyo hadn’t ever cared about that. “You, a person without any martial arts training, was told to protect… me?”

Nabiki processed that question for a moment. “I have martial arts training Master.”

Huh? Ukyo had never seen Nabiki do anything even remotely like martial arts in all the time she knew her. Of course, there was the entire… thing… with this Kuruto guy. “How much did you train?” Ukyo asked

“I practiced every day possible with Akane and Daddy for most of my life.” Nabiki said, “I was also Vice-captain of Furinkan High’s Kendo club for my first year.”

“...why’d you stop?” Ukyo said.

“Because you told me too Master. You said that you didn’t need ‘two martial arts sluts’ and so told me to focus more on wanting to make money and mess with people.” Nabiki answered.

Right, back came the headache and the urge to muder a dead man. “Well I take those orders back. You don’t need to protect me and you can go back to martial arts if you want.” Ukyo said. “Now get out of the trance and let’s finish the shift.”

Ranma and Akane went home after having a snack and before Ukyo and Nabiki headed out. The walk home was rather uneventful, and the two slipped into the Tendo house without issue.

Following their homecoming for some reason the two completely independently got up and headed out into the dojo. Akane came in first, set up some bricks, and began her warm up.

“Ah…” Akane felt good. She had somehow managed to get past some weird mental block that had kept her from cooking. What other blocks could she get past? "It's so weird, why did I always get sugar and salt mixed up? Oh well."

Akane raised her fist, concentrated on the blocks in front of her, then lowered her fist sharply - and two feet before impact the blocks disintegrated. Ah, that felt nice. Funny, she could swear she had picked up this trick earlier, but that seemed weird. Why would she somehow forget a martial arts technique?

The door to the dojo opened, and Akane looked over to the door. “Hey.” Ranma waved.

“Hey.” Akane said, and the two began silently practicing for a few minutes. Stretching, going through forms. Getting closer and closer as they worked. Until the two were doing the same forms of the school side by side. Then they stopped, just inches from each other. And Akane suddenly moved rather quickly, one hand on Ranma’s shoulder and one on Ranma’s hip.

Ranma’s hands were on Akane’s side as well, well, one was closer to her rear. It turns out that nearly dying tends to make you want to make out with your fiance. And then keep making out with each other, even if a wedding got bombed.

Here in the dojo they were alone. People rarely came in here besides them. And besides, Ranma could hear Kasumi or Soun coming in. So they were safe to lean in close, their faces almost touching and…

“Hello there little sister!”

Scream and jump away when Nabiki was suddenly leaning over them both.

"I didn't see any eyelash in your eye," Ranma said, a little too quickly. "Hey, wait a minute. Why are you wearing a gi?"

Sure enough, Nabiki had on a gi. And not one of Akane’s. It was clearly sized for her taller and slimmer frame. “Oh. You know. Today I realized that maybe I should see if I can get back into practice.”

“You practice?” Ranma said.

“Of course she does.” Akane said. “I mean, you think I was the only person to ever use the dojo? Dad taught all three of us martial arts.” Akane looked over Nabiki, “Though you did quit last year.” Her eyes narrowed, “And then Kuno became focused on me instead.”

“Huh?” Ranma said.

“Oh please. Kuno-baby would have acted out on you whether or not I was still swinging swords at him.” Nabiki snapped into a defensive stance. A little clumsy, a little rusty, but you could tell she used to do this quite a lot. “Come at me Akane, I’ll show you how good I still am.”

Five seconds later Nabiki was pinned on the ground by Akane.

"Okay, maybe I'm a little rustier than I thought."

“I always was better than you.” Akane said, sticking out her tongue. “A year just made the gap wider.”

Ranma did like seeing Akane fight, and dang seeing that confident victory was pretty exciting. Not to mention Nabiki being in a gi actually felt very right. Both sisters grappling the other… he shook his head. He’d get to spend time with Akane later, and not bring up how interesting seeing her fight Nabiki looked.

“So tell you what. You help me catch up and I won’t tell Daddy that you’re macking on Ranma in the dojo.” Nabiki said.

“We weren’t doing that!” Ranma protested, to little use.

Akane sighed. “Fine. Yeah, we’ll help you get back into shape. But you have to beat Kuno up in a sword fight once you are.”

“Deal.” Nabiki said.

With Uchan’s closed for the day Konatsu was relaxing by reading a manga magazine she had found in a wastebasket. She was currently reading a romantic comedy about two spies on opposing sides who had to kill people in order to have romantic alone time. It was hilarious and Konatsu wondered byh Ukyo had just turned a little green when Konatsu had shown it to her. Ukyo seemed to think a lot of things Konatsu liked were disturbing. Like that hilarious slapstick comedy anime Elfen Lied Ah well, Ukyo was still wonderful and beautiful in many ways so who cared about her opinions on media?

“Konatsu.” Ukyo said, coming into their room and collapsing on her bed. “It’s worse than I thought.”

“What is?” Konatsu said.

“Apparently Nabiki used to do martial arts.” Ukyo said.

“Oh you couldn’t tell? She was subconsciously staking out the restaurant for any threats to your person the entire time.” Konatsu said, “Very commendable I’d say.” She looked over from her manga. “Oh! Perhaps I could teach her some ninjutsu, Lady Ukyo, that she might be better prepared to defend you with her life!”

“Uh, is that really necessary?” Ukyo said.

“Of course it is! You have many enemies, and now that you have ownership of the beautiful, powerful, and influential Tendo Sisters you can only get more. Who knows when more mind controllers might come upon the scene and try to steal them from you!”

“I mean…” that did sound possible. If there was one could there be more? “I mean, abusing the girls free will like that…”

“Free Will doesn’t exist, Lady Ukyo.” Konatsu said chipperly, “We are all animals in meat suits driven forward by our base hungers and perverse lusts. Controlled by the whims of cruel and capricious gods.”

“Remind me never to talk about philosophy and religion with you.” Ukyo said.

“I shall make a note of it.” Konatsu said. “I think you should go down to the Tendo household before the contest between Miss Shan Pu and Miss Akane starts, to ascertain how much power you have over all three of them.”

“OK Konatsu, how do you suggest I do that?” Ukyo said.

Konatsu stood up, “It seems quite simple. You suggest they do something that they would never, ever do.” She tapped her chin. “Like, have Miss Nabiki give you money for nothing.”

For some reason Ukyo remembered how Nabiki had tried to kiss Nabiki. How very obviously Kuruto had used his power over them for his own perverse needs. If she told Akane to kiss her, would she do it? If she ordered the lovely Kasumi to… to…

“Yes. Having them offer their lovely bodies to you would be a good way to test.” Konatsu said, “That way you’d know nothing is out of bounds, and you can work on being a good master to them like you are to me!” Konatsu said, and then offered a salute. She went back to reading her manga. Laughing at a page with the female lead murdering some minion.

Huh... Maybe Konatsu had a bit of a darker side than Ukyo had first realized?

Go back - Go to the parent episode.

Tritan

Tue May 26 00:34:08 2020

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