CHAPTER 1

Back to Baseline

Ranma had a secret.

One that nobody could ever, ever find out about. Especially not Akane.

It started innocently enough. She’d smile at him, and he’d think, “Hmm, she’s really cute.” Not shocked and surprised like before. Just, matter-of-fact. Like, yep. She’s cute.

Common knowledge.

Only, from there, it had escalated.

He started noticing other things that were cute, not just her smile. Like, the way she wrinkled her nose when annoyed or bit her lip when she concentrated, or puffed out her cheeks while sulking.

Sometimes he caught himself staring at the way her hair curled at her neck, how loose strands of hair brushed softly against her cheek. He even paid more attention to her hands, to the smallness of her wrists, to how pleasant flushed cheeks looked on her face.

And Ranma thought about kissing her.

A. Lot.

She’d be stretching at breakfast, still half asleep, and his eyes would track the lazy curve of her hip while his traitorous brain cataloged every tiny sound she made. Other times it wasn’t anything like that. She’d smile at something dumb on television, rest her cheek against her hand, or absentmindedly bite her lower lip while she read, and his thoughts would derail in exactly the same direction.

Even something as ordinary as seeing Akane after training was no longer safe. She’d come back flushed from exertion, her gi darkened with sweat, breathing in those slow, satisfied breaths that meant she’d given it everything she had. And somehow, his idiot brain always managed to take it somewhere it had no business going.

It was mortifying.

The change happened so suddenly, so naturally, he wasn’t even sure he could pin down exactly when things had changed.

Did he blame Jusendo? The sight of Akane in her wedding dress? Stupid teenage hormones?

Hell if he knew.

Either way, it wasn’t stopping.

Ranma was turning into the pervert she always accused him of being… and he had no damn clue how to make it stop.

Which was exactly why he needed to talk to Akane.

Not about that—he wasn’t crazy.

No, Ranma had a plan.

He’d approach this like any unfamiliar opponent: don’t rush, don’t force an opening, and definitely don’t do anything stupid. One easy conversation, maybe a sparring session or two, and if he could keep his head on straight through all of it, they’d be back to baseline in no time.

He’d beat these stupid feelings into submission even if it killed him!

And if she got weird around him too?

Good. That’d at least make this whole mess a little less unfair.

Of course, in order to put his brilliant strategy into action, Akane needed to come out of her room.

Not for the first time, Ranma scowled up toward the second floor.

What was taking her so long?

He knew she was home. He’d already checked her window more than once to confirm she hadn’t been kidnapped, incapacitated, or left for dead. She was definitely in there.

Could she be avoiding him?

“Ranma?” Kasumi’s voice drifted up from below.

He looked down from the banister to find her standing in the hallway, dish towel in hand, watching him with mild curiosity.

“You’ve been hovering there for quite a while. Are you waiting for Akane?”

Ranma laughed louder than he probably needed to. “Me? Wait on that dork?” He crossed his arms and scoffed. “No way.”

A door opened upstairs, and Ranma’s head snapped toward the sound.

Nabiki came sauntering down the stairs instead, lazily chewing on a strip of dried squid.

He tried not to look too disappointed.

Naturally, Nabiki noticed immediately.

“What’s got into you?” she asked around her snack. “Akane kick you outta her bed again?”

Ranma nearly toppled off the banister.

“I doubt that,” Kasumi said mildly. “He already assured me he absolutely has not been crouching here all morning, waiting on Akane.” She smiled up at him. “Isn’t that right, Ranma?”

Ranma flushed.

Crap. Was that what he’d been doing?

“Right,” he muttered quickly, because explaining himself would only dig the hole deeper.

Kasumi smiled pleasantly. “I know you’ve been very busy not waiting on Akane, but would you mind fetching her for lunch? I haven’t seen her all morning either.”

Ranma perked up immediately.

Of course. How had he not thought of that sooner?

“Sure, Kasumi…”

Trying—and failing—to look casual, Ranma pushed off the banister, and before either sister could say another word, he was already halfway up the stairs.

Akane’s room wasn’t far. He reached it in no time at all.

Standing before her door, he stopped, fingers nervously fidgeting.

He looked up and down the hall, checking to make sure he hadn’t been followed. The hallway looked empty enough, so he turned back towards the door.

Still, he hesitated.

Ridiculously, it felt like he was gearing up to face an opponent.

The first obstacle? This door.

Nothing about it had changed since the day he’d moved in. Same wood frame. Same silly nameplate. He’d barged through that dumb door, leaned against it, yelled through it, and loitered outside it more times than he could count.

Simply knocking shouldn’t phase him.

Today, though, the stakes somehow felt higher…

This wasn’t about lunch, or even a simple conversation. This was about getting his life back under control, about proving to himself that he was the same guy he’d been before the pools flooded, before Akane died in his arms, before seeing her in that wedding dress forever rewired something in his brain.

He drew in a slow breath.

The Plan, he reminded himself. Just stick to The Plan.

He raised his hand. It hovered uselessly in front of the door for a second.

Come on. This was Akane. He’d fought homicidal martial artists with less hesitation.

Summoning every scrap of courage, Ranma knocked.

“Yeah?” Akane called.

Putting his game face on, he slid open the door.

His fiancée sat cross-legged on the floor beside her bed, a plain white box open beside her. A huge folded game board sprawled across the floor, littered with little paper people, dice, and several large cardboard cutouts of a house.

She appeared to be studying what looked to be an instruction manual.

“Oh. Hey, Ranma.”

Of course she had to smile at him. His pulse gave an annoyingly strong kick at the sight, and he could already feel his brilliant plan beginning to crumble.

Calm down, idiot.

“Kasumi said lunch is ready.”

“Oh!” Akane’s eyes snapped toward the clock above her bed. Then widened. “Lunch? Already?”

She stared at the time another second, like she genuinely thought the clock was lying to her.

Ranma frowned.

Akane usually had an internal clock sharper than most alarm systems. By lunchtime she’d normally have finished her morning jog, eaten breakfast, trained, and probably picked a fight with him at least once.

Instead… he took a second look.

She was still planted on her bedroom floor. Still in her pajamas. Her hair looked untouched, and faint shadows lingered beneath her eyes—like she’d barely slept.

Ranma’s carefully constructed plan quietly derailed.

“Uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “You okay?”

Akane blinked, clearly caught off guard by the question.

“Yeah?” she said slowly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Ranma shrugged, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. “I dunno. You just seem kinda… off? You didn’t even go for your jog this morning.”

A grin spread slowly across Akane’s face. “Oh?” she asked innocently. “Were you waiting for me?”

Ranma nearly choked. “N-no! No way!”

“Uh-huh.”

She was enjoying this far too much…

That was good, right?

At least she was teasing him again, and she seemed well enough. Whatever had her acting so distracted today couldn’t have been anything serious.

“So…” Ranma shoved his hands into his pockets, retreating back into nervous uncertainty. “After lunch, wanna train?”

Akane’s entire face lit up.

“Really?” She sat up straighter, hope and surprise blooming across her features so fast it almost looked involuntary. “You mean...together?”

His pulse stumbled.

She looked… way too happy about that. Had she noticed he’d been keeping his distance?

Ranma’s carefully rebuilt composure immediately began to crack.

“Yeah,” he muttered, saying the first thing that came to mind. “The old geezers are out, so we can’t exactly slack off. Besides… there’s nobody else to train with, so…”

The words landed between them like a thrown brick.

Akane’s smile vanished.

“I see.” She drew back slightly, the warmth draining from her expression so quickly it made his stomach drop. “If that’s how you feel, then never mind.”

Ranma winced.

“No, I just meant… better you than nobody—”

“Thanks,” Akane said flatly. “I’ll try not to let that go to my head.” She set the instruction manual aside and pushed herself to her feet. “Kasumi said lunch was ready, right?”

Her voice had settled into polite indifference. The kind that meant the conversation was over.

Ranma lingered another second, searching for some opening, some recovery move, but Akane was already glaring at him, waiting for him to leave.

There wasn’t anything left to say. All he could do now was close the door quietly behind him and try again later.

Still, back in the hallway, standing outside Akane’s door again, Ranma couldn’t help but pause. For once, the irony wasn’t lost on him.

Wasn’t this what he wanted? A return to normal?

And if so, why did it feel so awful?

* * *

Thanks to Ranma’s idiocy, lunch was a quiet affair. He didn’t know one of Kasumi’s home-cooked meals could taste so bland.

“So what have you been up to all day, Akane?” Kasumi asked pleasantly, breaking the silence before it could finish suffocating the table.

Akane poked absently at her rice. “Oh. Um…” She brightened slightly. “Actually, I found this old game in my room this morning.”

Nabiki looked up from her tea. “A game?”

“Yeah!” Some genuine excitement finally crept back into Akane’s voice. “I don’t recognize it at all. Maybe Sayuri or Yuka left it by mistake…”

Ranma almost pointed out that only Akane would get that excited over a dusty old board game.

Instead, he concentrated on his lunch with far more intensity than a bowl of rice deserved. He wanted to prove to himself he could act normal around her, not give her another reason to pound him.

“The thing’s huge,” Akane continued, oblivious. “There’s this giant folding board, paper people, dice, a giant cardboard house—”

“Aren’t you a little old for paper dolls?” Nabiki asked.

Akane rolled her eyes. “They’re game pieces. Not dolls.”

“That’s exactly what someone emotionally attached to cardboard people would say.”

Kasumi smiled warmly. “It sounds fun.”

“It actually kinda does,” Akane admitted, ignoring Nabiki. “A little confusing, but fun. I thought maybe… we could all try playing tonight?”

Kasumi nodded immediately. “I’d love to.”

Nabiki leaned back in her chair. “Hm.” A slow grin spread across her face. The dangerous kind. “Sure. I’m in.”

Akane perked up. “Really?”

“Why not?” Nabiki shrugged. “I’ve got a couple errands to run first, but my evening should be free.”

Errands, in Nabiki-speak, usually involved extortion. Whoever was on the receiving end had his sympathy.

Still… he glanced toward Akane. The easy excitement from upstairs had returned, softening the lingering tension in her shoulders.

Something twisted unpleasantly in Ranma’s stomach.

He wanted that easy excitement back.

“I guess I could play too,” he muttered before he’d thought better of it.

Every eye at the table turned toward him.

“You?” Nabiki asked, openly skeptical.

“What?” he grumbled. “It’s not that weird. Why shouldn’t I wanna play? Kenpō is practically a game.”

Both had rules. Strategy. Competition. People whining when they lost.

Close enough.

Akane stared at him another second. Then, slowly, a smile returned to her face. It was small and tentative, and probably grudgingly given—but he’d take it.

“Good,” she replied, seemingly satisfied. “Then that makes four of us.”

Across the table, Nabiki’s grin sharpened almost imperceptibly.

“Oh,” she said lightly. “I can already tell this is gonna be fun.”

* * *

The rest of the day settled into something surprisingly easy.

No sparring. No arguments. No dramatic martial arts challenges.

The awkwardness from upstairs softened little by little until it became almost effortless to pretend it had never happened at all.

There’d been an unspoken agreement between them that the dojo was off limits for the rest of the day.

Which, Ranma admitted grudgingly, was probably for the best, anyway.

The dojo led to training. Training led to close proximity. Close proximity led to problems his brain was currently ill-equipped to survive.

So instead, they stayed home. And somehow, without him even trying, The Plan had started to work

Without their fathers around to interfere, lecture, shout, or force proximity, there was an easy comfort between them they didn’t get nearly often enough.

No expectations.

No meddling suitors.

Just familiar domestic noise, bad television, and Akane somehow managing to monopolize the warmest patch of floor in front of the television like she owned it. She’d tucked herself beneath a blanket near the kotatsu while some campy horror movie flickered across the screen, filling the room with eerie violins, terrible special effects, and cold flashes of television light.

Ranma lounged nearby with a few manga volumes, trying to read—and mostly failing—while Akane periodically yanked the blanket up to her nose whenever the soundtrack turned ominous.

Several times, he heard her shout, “Don’t go in there!” and then scream when they inevitably failed to listen.

It was always hilarious and unfairly cute. Lethal combinations, for sure.

But this was it. The quiet, ordinary version of normal he’d been trying to claw his way back to for days.

This was The Plan, plain and simple.

So why wasn’t it working?

Ranma had tried multiple times to stop looking at her like some kind of pervert—but the fatal flaw in his plan, was that being “normal” around Akane still required being around Akane.

How the heck was he supposed to not look at her?

One minute he’d be reading manga. The next, he’d catch himself staring at the way Akane curled beneath the blanket, or how she absentmindedly rested her cheek against her hand in the television glow.

He made it through four whole panels before discovering he hadn’t absorbed a single word. Somewhere between panel two and three, the glow from the movie had caught in Akane’s hair, and his brain had fried right along with it.

And the worst part?

Even after Akane disappeared upstairs to bathe, she still haunted him.

His mind continued to wander… to Akane slowly undressing, to Akane relaxing in the furo, covered in soap and suds—and yeah, reading was entirely useless after that.

He pushed the dumb book away in disgust.

Then Akane came back downstairs, fresh from the bath, and Ranma’s eyes had followed instantly.

How was he not supposed to notice how her hair hung loose and slightly damp around her neck? How she carried the clean scent of soap and shampoo into the room when she passed?

She dropped onto the floor with a soft sigh, cheeks faintly pink from the hot bath. She’d traded her pajamas for a burgundy dress over a white sweater, and as she settled onto the tatami and stretched her legs out in front of her, the hem crept a little higher than it had any right to.

She looked utterly at ease, a softness Ranma rarely got to see. And he could not look away.

Just like that, The Plan died kicking and screaming.

The pathetic part? He hadn’t even put up a fight.

One quiet afternoon. One bad horror movie. One glimpse of Akane fresh from the bath, and he’d folded completely. He was right back where he’d started… except now he’d volunteered to spend the evening playing some lame board game.

This day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

“Oh, Ryoga! Welcome,” came Kasumi’s voice from the entryway.

Ranma froze.

…Damn it. He’d spoken too soon.

Kasumi guided their guest into the living room with practiced warmth.“How nice to see you found your way back again.”

The moron grinned awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “It did take a few tries.”

“Just a few?” Ranma mocked. He’d seen Ryoga leave the house early that morning, so even one failed attempt should’ve been too many. Had the idiot been circling the neighborhood all day?

Kasumi continued, “Well then, I must insist you stay for dinner. I was just about to set the table.”

“That’s a great idea!” Akane added, all smiles. “Kasumi always makes too much food anyway. Though to be fair, Ranma eats enough for three grown men.”

“Ha ha.” Ranma stuck his tongue out at her.

Ryoga’s face brightened instantly. “R-Really? I-I mean, I wouldn’t want to impose…”

“That’s never stopped you before,” Ranma pointed out.

Before Ryoga could smack him for that slight, the familiar rattle of the front gate announced Nabiki’s return, and the middle Tendo daughter sauntered in.

“So, what’d I miss?” she asked, slipping off her shoes.

“Several wrong turns,” Ranma muttered.

Fortunately for Ryoga, Kasumi chose that moment to announce dinner.

The meal itself passed easily enough.

Hot rice steamed into the chilly evening air, bowls clicked softly against the low table, and without his old man around to steal half his meal, Ranma actually got to enjoy it.

Somewhere between second helpings and tea, Nabiki smirked across the table at their guest. “So, Ryoga,” she asked, “how do you feel about games?”

Ryoga blinked. “I… like them?”

“Perfect.” Nabiki gestured with her chopsticks. “Akane found some giant board game upstairs. She’s been gushing about it since lunch.”

Akane brightened instantly. “You should definitely play, Ryoga! I promise, it’ll be fun.”

“Yeah, Ryoga,” Ranma added sweetly. “Play. It’ll be fun kicking your butt in something new for a change.”

Ryoga slammed down his tea. “Just you wait! I’ll wipe the floor with you, Ranma!”

Kasumi frowned gently. “Oh my. I could never ask a guest to clean the floors.” She rose with a warm smile. “You leave the wiping to me, Ryoga. I insist.”

Akane leaned forward impatiently. “Can I help? It’ll go faster.”

Kasumi laughed softly as she gathered the empty dishes into her hands. “Thank you, but I’ve got it. Why don’t you go and get your little game and start setting it up?”

That was all the encouragement Akane needed. “Consider it done!”

The dork practically bounced toward the stairs, her excitement palpable. Ryoga watched her go with approximately the same expression people reserved for religious experiences.

Ranma scowled harder. “Don’t you have a girlfriend you should be getting back to?”

Ryoga glowered back. “Don’t you think I would’ve been with Akari hours ago if I could find my way there?”

Before Ranma could torment him further, the front door burst open.

“Airen!”

“Ran-chan!”

Shampoo and Ukyo swept into the room in a gust of winter air and uninvited chaos.

Ranma’s eyes drifted to the large boxes tucked under each girl’s arm.

…Were those games?

Slowly, suspiciously, every eye in the room turned toward Nabiki.

She looked up from her tea and shrugged with maddening innocence. “What?” she asked. “The more, the merrier, right?”

Ranma barely had time to glare before Shampoo and Ukyo descended on him from opposite sides of the table.

Ryoga folded his arms with unmistakable satisfaction. “Now who’s the unfaithful one?” he taunted.

“Oh, shut up,” Ranma snapped.

This definitely wasn’t the baseline he’d been aiming for.

* * *

Upstairs, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe unfolding below, Akane carefully gathered the game pieces and returned them to the white box.

Then she paused.

“…That’s strange.”

A single card remained near the edge of the board. The title caught her eye immediately.

THE SHADOW PRINCE.

Frowning, she picked it up to get a better look. She was certain there hadn’t been a Shadow Prince card in the deck before.

It was the illustration that made her pause.

White hair. Brilliant blue eyes. Dark princely clothes painted in rich midnight colors. A boy so beautiful he hardly looked real.

Akane’s fingers tightened around the card as something cold prickled across the back of her neck.

The face stirred a distant memory. She saw flashes of an unfamiliar street, the bell above a curio shop door, and a boy waiting inside who’d seemed strangely out of place, as though he’d stepped into that world from somewhere else.

The memory crashed into place so suddenly, she nearly dropped the card.

Somehow, impossibly, she was staring at the boy from her dream.

END OF CHAPTER 1