We join our story, already in progress…
After Ranma had explained his situation and introduced Mihoshi, Ukyo sighed and put her hands against her temples. “Only you, Ranchan….” When her best friend/fiancé had walked into an otherwise empty Ucchan’s followed by a cheerfully bubbly blonde girl, Ukyo had originally assumed the most logical conclusion (well, logical by Neriman standards, at least): Ranma had found another fiancée, and his stupid panda of a father had yet another beating coming to him. But that this girl would be a genie… well, it did explain the harem getup (complete with see-through pants), if nothing else.
In all honesty, Ukyo wasn’t sure what she found to be the most surprising about the situation: the fact that Ranma had found a genie, the fact that he had had the prescience of mind to ask for advice about his wish, or the fact that she actually found the whole thing to be plausible. That’s not to say that she was totally convinced that Mihoshi was actually a genie, but given the general craziness of Ranma’s life, it definitely wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Maybe I need a vacation from Nerima. This place is nuts.
“Uh, Ucchan? Are ya okay?”
“Sure, Ranchan — why do you ask?”
“Well, ya just sorta blanked out on me there.”
“Uh, yeah, sorry about that; I was just thinking to myself, that’s all.”
“Oh. Okay.”
The chef returned to her interior monologue as she tired to decide how best to respond to Ranma’s decidedly unusual request for assistance. Might as well assume it’s true, she thought to herself. If she’s just a nut, I’m only out a few minutes of my time, but if it’s true… then I actually have a chance to help Ranchan. “Okay, Ranma, I’ll help you. You just want some advice, right?”
“Um, actually, I was hopin’ ya could make the wish for me.”
Ukyo was dumbfounded by this particular revelation. She knew Ranma was trusting, of course, but this? “Wait — you want me to make your wish? Shouldn’t you do that yourself?”
“Eh, I ain’t no good with words; I’d probably mess it up. Don’t worry, Ucchan, I trust ya ta make a good decision.” He turned to Mihoshi. “That ain’t against the rules, is it?”
“Um, I don’t think so,” the blonde replied.
Ukyo took a deep breath before speaking up again. “Um, okay, but I don’t know if I could think of a wish that would take care of all your problems.”
“That’s alright — just try an’ get rid of some of the bigger ones if ya can.”
“Well, alright, I’ll give it a shot….” The chef brought her hand to her chin as she tried to determine the root cause of Ranma’s problems. After a few minutes, she came up with what seemed to be a reasonable possibility. “The way I see it, Ranchan, is that you just don’t communicate very well.”
“Huh? What’s that s’posed ta mean?”
“Well, take Akane for instance.”
“What about her?”
“She’s always clobbering you, because she thinks you’re always insulting her.”
“Hey, I ain’t always doin’ that. Sometimes I’m just tellin’ her what I think the cold, hard facts are.”
“But she can’t tell the difference, and part of the reason is that you’ve got this aloof attitude that generally makes it hard for anybody to tell the difference.”
“Huh?”
“Look, Ranma, it’s not just Akane that misunderstands you. I do, too: when I first got to Nerima I wanted revenge, because you gave no real indication that you didn’t know I was a girl. It’s the same with Shampoo — hell, considering her language skills and the cultural differences between Japanese and Amazon society, she probably has even more problems understanding you than Akane and me combined. And if you really want to push the idea to the extreme, one could argue that even your problems with Kodachi are there because you can’t get her to understand that you’re the same person as the ‘redheaded harridan’ she despises so much. And if you think about it, most of your stress in life is a direct result of having to deal with the four of us.”
“Even you?”
Ukyo stared at the floor. “Yes, even me, if I’m honest with myself. Having to try and handle four different girls at the same time would put a lot of strain on a normal guy, much less someone like you who doesn’t know how to say what he means and as a result rarely means what he says.”
“Ya really think that?”
“Of course — that’s why you asked for my help with this in the first place, remember? Because you ‘ain’t no good with words.’”
“Oh yeah. I guess yer right. But it ain’t all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Ukyo admitted. “I guess by now we all should have figured out that your lack of eloquence works both ways, and that you have just as much difficulty understanding us as we have understanding you. Understand?”
“Um, I think so, but what’s an ‘L of quince’?”
Ukyo had to resist rolling her eyes as Ranma inadvertently proved her point about his communicative skills. “You need to do better at talking to us, and we need to do better at talking to you.”
“So…”
“So, what I’m trying to say is that if there was some way to get around your lack of skill with words so that it was easier for us to communicate with you, that could help with your problems, as it would clear up a lot of the misunderstandings that cause those problems in the first place.”
Mihoshi suddenly grinned; it felt so good when she got the chance to help people. “Granted!” chirped the amiable genie.
To say that Ukyo was startled by the stereotypically ditzy blonde’s sudden outburst would have been a rather severe understatement. “What do you mean, ‘granted’? I haven’t made the wish yet!”
“You haven’t?”
“No!”
“Then what was all that before?”
“I was explaining to Ranma the reasons behind the wish.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure I got it pretty close to what you would have wanted.”
Ukyo’s eye started twitching. “Pretty close?”
“Well, yeah. You said that you and those other girls had problems communicating with Ranma, so I made it so that won’t be a problem ever again.”
The chef was almost afraid to ask her next question but she knew she had to: “How?”
“Why, telepathy, of course!”
This time Ranma joined Ukyo in shouting, “What?!”
“Nothing makes it easier to understand what somebody’s thinking than being able to read their mind!”
“You can’t just do that!” Ukyo insisted.
“I already did. In fact, it should start working right about… now!” As soon as the blonde genie made this pronouncement, both Ranma and Ukyo fell to the floor grabbing their heads as both spontaneously developed massive splitting headaches.
Elsewhere in Nerima, Akane Tendo’s daily practice was suddenly interrupted as she collapsed on the floor while something that felt like a cross between a migraine and a jackhammer began searing her skull.
Similarly, at the Nekohanten, Shampoo appeared to spontaneously develop an uncharacteristic klutziness as she dropped (and shattered) several bowls of steaming hot ramen, much to the concern of everyone present, but especially Cologne.
For her part, Kodachi didn’t collapse when her headache hit, as she was used to them; she’d been suffering from migraines since her mother died (few people knew about this particular problem, however, because Kodachi didn’t want other people thinking that she had weaknesses of any kind). Due to her rather extensive knowledge of botany, she knew several effective treatments, not a few of which were of her own devising, and thus she had multiple ways to cope with the pain. Still, this was an unusually severe one, and it forced her to momentarily pause in her Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics training so she could sit down and wait it out.
It was then that Mihoshi realized she may have committed a tiny faux pas: “Oh, yeah, I guess I should have told you that there might be some minor discomfort while the telepathic links are being forged because I had to make them were extra strong to make sure that none of those nasty misunderstandings you talked about ever happens again. Don’t worry, though: they should pass in a few minutes, and then, everything will be hunky-dory!”
“AaAargh!!” groaned Ranma from the floor.
“Well, I’d love to stick around to see how this turns out, but I’ve got more wishes to grant, so I’d better be going. Bai bai!” And with that, the Mihoshi (and her lamp) poofed away to meet up with the next soon-to-be-satisfied customer.
It was a few minutes before Ranma and Ukyo (and Akane and Shampoo and Kodachi) recovered, but amazingly enough, once the pain receded, there seemed to be some silence… for all of about thirty seconds.
Ranma was the first to recover, managing to get to a seated position before focusing his attention on what had happened. Aw, man — what the heck was that? Like a spark from a sparkplug, this was enough to set of veritable explosion of information—most of it was in a disorganized murmur, and though Ranma caught bits about aspirin and hot ramen and rhythmic gymnastics and stupid blonde genies from the crowd, four complete thoughts stood out almost immediately:
| Ranma? | Ranchan? | Airen? | Ranma-sama? |
Ranma had been a telepath for less than a minute, and as such didn’t have very much knowledge of any of the specifics of his new “abilities,” but he did know two things: One, hearing voices in your head that was generally not a good thing, and two, when those voices belonged to your fiancées, (and one fiancée wannabe) that was probably worse. Crap.
| You got that right, Ranchan. Looks like the blonde was the real deal. How in the world do you get into these messes? | Wait… huh? Is that really you? What are you doing in my head? Is it something perverted? I bet it’s something perverted. Pervert. Get out of my head! | “Crap”? Well, that certainly seems like something Ranma-sama would say… and more to the point, it’s not the sort of thing I often imagine him saying… which means… could it be that this truly is the voice of my beloved? | That is you, isn’t it, Airen? At the very least, it sounds like you. But how can a voice sound like yours when I’m not hearing it in my ears? And why are you speaking Mandarin—or rather, how? |
The martial artist clambered onto a chair and grabbed both sides of his head in a futile effort to quell the chaos currently swimming around in it. Obviously, now he could tell what Akane, Ukyou, Shampoo, and Kodachi were thinking, but the information was being rushed to him all at once, and he couldn’t make sense out of it. In desperation, he tried “talking” to them: Look, I can’t talk, or think, or whatever, ta all of ya at once. Can you take turns or somethin’? Please?
| You can’t talk to all of me at once? I don’t understand, Airen — I’ve never heard you use a figure of speech like this before, and it obviously doesn’t work as well in my tongue as it does in yours. And you still have yet to explain how you suddenly learned Mandarin. “Yes, Grandmother, Shampoo is okay….” |
Sigh…. Nonsense, just like all the other voices. And here I was hoping that the kami had seen fit to approve my union with Ranma-sama by providing a medium through which we could privately converse. | I don’t understand, Ranchan — I don’t hear anybody but you, assuming I haven’t gone crazy. I wonder if there’s a decent psychiatrist in the area? The market sure as hell exists for one. Maybe I could get a recommendation from one of the Kunos…. Great, now I’m seriously considering asking those weirdos for help. At this rate, I’ll be in a straitjacket by the end of the week. | All of me? What the hell is that supposed to mean? What did you do to me, you pervert? Oh, great, now Daddy’s crying again… why does he always overreact like that? “I’m fine, Kasumi—but I think the baka’s somehow gotten me into another one of his messes.” |
Ranma had even more difficulty sorting out this cacophony than last time. Wait… are you tellin’ me that yer all only hearin’ me in yer heads? Not each other?
| I must have been exposed to a bit too much jimsonweed while I was tending my garden. I wonder how long the hallucinations will last this time? | I’m not certain what you mean by that, Airen. Perhaps you should switch back to Japanese… I’m a bit more used to your language than you are to mine. | Others? Who else’s head would you be sick enough to pry into, except… the fiancées! You got Shampoo and Ukyo involved?! Why you… you… pervert! | Each other? What do you… wait, that ditzy genie did say that the wish involved “other girls…” Oh, no…. |
Ukyo finally managed to get to a standing position. As she continued to massage her temple, she turned to the pigtail martial artist, who was still seated with his head in his hands and spoke aloud, “I think you’d better tell the others to come here, Ranchan. We need to figure out what happened.”