Nabiki packed up her bag in a daze at the end of the day. The rest of the day had passed in a blur after the incident at lunch. She remembered clearly Ranma holding her after it was over, and she remembered walking hand-in-hand with him to her classroom. They'd hugged again then, and after that he'd needed to go back to his own class.
She also clearly remembered Riko arriving and jumping on her and being very excited about everything that had happened during lunch while Yui, Nanami and Chihiro looked on and smiled.
She didn't remember much clearly after that. She had a vague memory of Kuno asking her for something, but she'd ignored him. She knew the lessons in class had gone on, but they were a blur, although she had noticed when she put her things away, that she actually had managed to take notes today. She didn't remember any of it, though. She had been very happy after the incident, and she still felt somewhat happy, but it was fading under the weight of her worries.
The majority of her mind was now occupied with going through the plan for Ukyo, and anxiously trying to make sure that she hadn't forgotten anything. The rest of her mind was replaying and analyzing what had happened at lunch and what she had done, and what she was going to do in response to it. She was worried about Ukyo, and angry about the attack on Ranma. At the moment though, her worry about Ukyo was her dominant focus.
She got up slowly, said her goodbyes to her friends, and made her way to Ranma's classroom. People passed her in the halls in a constant stream, as they hurried on their way. Some of those people even called out to her, either to comment about what had happened during lunch, or just because they knew her. She ignored all of it.
She didn't know why, exactly, but she was starting to feel bad. Well, not bad exactly, she felt ... dread. Yeah, dread was the right word. She felt like something awful and final was about to happen. Like she was walking towards her own execution. She shook her head violently and tried to force herself to stop dwelling on it.
Everything was fine. Ranma obviously had feelings for her. He couldn't seem to bring himself to say it, but he could show it. But ... that was the real problem, wasn't it? She needed him to be able to say it. He had to say it, and act on it, before the week was out, or it was all over. She had told him that in order to be with her, he had to pick just one person, and he had to do it by the end of the week. She blew out an exasperated breath and looked up at the ceiling as she sighed. I am such a freaking idiot. She berated herself.
What was I thinking? He was with Akane for months, and they barely made any progress at all. What made me think I could get him to resolve everything and openly pick me in a week? A week? I am so stupid. A year, maybe. She thought angrily to herself as she neared his classroom. She wanted to change the conditions she'd given him, but it was too late now. They'd made the promises, she couldn't alter the deal now.
This isn't going to work. Getting him to tell Shampoo to go away was fairly difficult, and he doesn't even like Shampoo. Now I am trying to get him to go tell his oldest friend on Earth to go away today? There is no way he is going to be able to do it! She has a much longer history with him, she can cook, and she's gorgeous. What the hell can I offer him that she can't? She asked herself bitterly as she slowed her walking down.
It's all going to blow up today. We're going to go see Ukyo, and then he's going to freeze up, and Ukyo will call him one of her pet names for him, and remind him of their shared history, and ply him with tasty treats, and he'll look at me with those puppy dog eyes and ask himself why I am being mean and making him get rid of her. And ... the only answer I can possibly give him is ... I don't want to share him. She thought sadly to herself as she slowed her steps more and more as she got closer and closer to his classroom.
She reached the hallway that contained his classroom, and stopped. She was standing in the middle of the hall and she was completely frozen in place. She was scared. Every time they touched on the subject of the rest of the girls chasing him, she felt pulled off-center. She was so far out of her comfort zone, she felt that she no longer had tools ready to use for what might happen. She didn't know how to handle what would happen if everything fell apart, and that was what she was dreading. She was in new territory in her life, she was trying to change how she lived her life, and it was difficult.
Being the Ice Queen had been easy. It had been a very easy role to play. It was essentially selfishness personified. All she had needed to do was exploit people and situations for her own personal gain, and not care at all what the consequences of that exploitation were. Oh sure, she had used the power that she had accumulated from the years and years of favors owed to her, to help her friends and family. But, for the most part, she had been a remorseless, pitiless corporation of one. She had been Nabiki Corp. People had known exactly what to expect from her, and what the rules had been, and it had been easy.
It had also been lonely.
Even with Chihiro, Riko, Nanami and Yui being her constant companions, she had kept them mostly at arm's length. Only Riko had been allowed to share in her private, personal feelings from time to time. And that was because Riko was the only one who had known her before the Ice Queen had been born. Riko had been her friend before she had gotten into the favors business. Riko had met Mom. Riko was the real thing, and she absolutely trusted Riko.
Everyone else ... she didn't really trust, not completely. Even Yui wasn't fully trusted. She loved her friends, but she had to protect herself. That had always been job number one, protect herself. She had kept everyone at a distance, and never invited them in to help warm her up and ease the loneliness. The trade-off for that had been that nobody could stab her in the back or hurt her. She had always felt that the trade-off had been worth it. Eventually, she had stopped noticing that she had been lonely. That had worked for her for a long, long time. She couldn't even remember when she had started doing it, or why. All she knew was that it was all she had ever really known, for a very long time.
And then ... and then ... Ranma had picked her up and carried her safely to the ground that night, and everything had changed.
"Everything changed." She whispered to herself as she stared at the doorway to his classroom.
Ranma had held her, and protected her, and cared about her. He'd reminded her what having someone close to her could feel like. He hadn't done it because he'd owed her a favor, or because he was being paid. He'd done it because he was a decent human being who didn't want to see her hurt.
The sad thing was, if Ranma had grown up in her town, she didn't think he would have done it. He probably would have been one of the many people who would have laughed their asses off to hear that she had fallen off a balcony and been hurt.
She had a lot of enemies out there, a lot. Plenty of them were just bitter and jealous of the success she had achieved, where they had failed. But many of them were people she had stepped on or exploited to achieve that success.
She wasn't ashamed of what she had done. It had been survival. She had done it to protect herself and by extension her family. In Japan, especially for a woman, most especially for a woman who wanted to enter the cutthroat world of business high finance, she needed to be hard to survive. She had known from a very young age that to make it in that world, she was going to have to be ruthless. For her to succeed, others would have to fail. That was the only way it could be. Nobody wanted to hire a woman in upper levels of management in Japan anyway, and they certainly didn't want to hire one who wasn't the absolute, very best. In order to get where she wanted to be, she had to remove every single choice from them. She had to be the only candidate. The only person who could make the company succeed. If they had any other choice, they would take it.
So she had started out small, and built up her empire. She had embraced the Ice Queen persona, and she had thrived. She smiled a small smile. Riko had been joking at lunch, and she was sure Ranma had taken it as a joke, but the inside joke was, Riko had been joking about something that was actually true. She easily could raise her own army with the funds and favors owed to her. She had actual members of the House of Councillors on her favors owed lists, and she knew people in the Royal Family's household. She had CEOs and members of the Boards of Directors of very powerful companies who also owed her favors.
The funny thing was, because she usually operated in the shadows, most of the people who owed her favors, had no idea they owed them to a teenage high school girl. If they had known that, many of them would have tried to get out of paying, and she would have had to destroy them, and that would not only burn bridges and waste a favor, but could get messy. It was much easier to do a lot of what she did through intermediaries.
She had always operated her favors business in the gray area of the law. Nothing she ever did or procured or arranged, for anyone, was illegal, or against anyone's will. She made sure of that, and she viciously punished anyone who ever broke that rule in her name.
But in areas that weren't expressly illegal, or were just frowned upon in society, that was where she had thrived. She had walked the line between the light and the darkness for so long now, she didn't fully know how to walk around openly in the light any more. In a lot of ways she was relying on Ranma to lead the way, which was probably silly because he had even less experience than she did in social skills.
However, he didn't have the baggage weighing him down like she did. He was more or less innocent of a lot of things. She wasn't innocent, by a long shot. She wasn't a villain, but she couldn't honestly say she hadn't harmed anyone. She did her very best to only step on those who deserved it, or those who were directly in her way on her climb up the ladder — preferably both.
And now, here she was asking him to commit to her, and to get rid of his oldest friend, who happened to be in love with him. Ukyo would be yet another person she had stepped on to achieve what she wanted. The truly terrible thing was ... she wasn't all that sorry about it. Ukyo was innocent, and didn't deserve what she was about to cause to happen to her. But she would encourage Ranma to do it anyway. It was business, and Ukyo was in her way. On a personal, human, level, she felt bad for Ukyo. But she never made business decisions on that level. The Ice Queen was in charge of all business decisions.
She sighed and eyed his classroom door, and dreaded what was coming. The similarity between what Akane had done yesterday, and what she was now doing, was not lost on her. Like Akane, she was standing alone in a sea of people, all of whom were streaming around her like she wasn't there, while she stayed rooted to the spot in fear.
Unlike Akane, she prided herself on being able to do what needed to be done, and having a inexhaustible pool of willpower. She could make herself do just about anything. She nodded sharply to herself and reached into her core, grabbed tightly, and pulled. She immediately felt better, and more at peace with herself. Using her Ki allowed her to calm her mind, and ease her fears, if only a little bit. She had always thought of it as her courage, and in reality, she hadn't been wrong. After all, most of what Ranma did with his Ki was based on his courage and confidence, wasn't it?
She nodded to herself and took a hesitant step forward and noticed a flickering blue light out of her peripheral vision. She looked down and realized she was putting out a battle aura. She hadn't even realized she had done it. She must have focused and shaped her Ki into a battle aura in response to her own fears. In her mind, what was coming up was going to be a battle — a terrible one.
Several people who passed her in the hall looked at her with a bit of worry in their eyes as they passed her. She knew that the people who were looking at her with concern, were Martial Artists. She hurriedly let go of her core and extinguished her battle aura. Then, in shaky steps, she forced herself to walk, as best she could, to the door to Ranma's classroom. Before she could reach out and open the door, it opened on its own, and she found herself face to face with Akane.
Akane blinked at her and for a moment she saw surprise, anger, resentment, jealousy, determination, and even fear flicker across Akane's face. Then Akane pulled a mask over her face and set her expression to one of cheerful friendliness.
Akane's eyes darted into her classroom and rested on Ranma for a moment, then darted back to herself. She nodded. She was here to see Ranma. He was standing next to his desk talking to his friends as he packed up his bag.
Akane set her shoulders and stared at her with determination as she opened her mouth to say something. Inside, she winced as she braced for Akane to come down on her for making a scene at lunch.
Akane's mouth stayed open for a second or so, then her little sister slowly closed her mouth and lowered her eyes. She blinked at Akane, confused. It was unlike her fiery younger sister to be at a loss for words when speaking to her.
Akane opened her mouth and tried again, but again no sound came out. Akane's eyes darted over to Ranma, and she followed Akane's gaze. Ranma was quietly watching both of them now. When she and Akane looked at him, he lowered his gaze in embarrassment.
Akane looked back over at her and raised her hand to gesture at herself, then turned her shoulders towards him, like she was going to point to him, but the gesture died in mid-air.
Akane turned back to face her and sighed as she looked up at her with tired eyes and a weak smile. Her little sister was still hiding behind her mask, but the message she was getting from Akane was more or less clear enough. Akane was both grateful that she had defended Ranma today, and also upset with herself that she hadn't at least said something in his defense. But, in true Akane fashion, her little sister couldn't seem to bring herself to say the words.
She made eye contact with Akane, and slowly nodded that she understood. Akane nodded back, sharply, and looked away. Then her little sister walked forward and resettled the straps of her bag on her shoulders as she did so. Then Akane raised her arms up like she was going to hug her, but stopped, and sighed again. Instead, Akane stepped to her side, and gently put a hand on her shoulder for a brief moment, before she walked away, without ever having said a word.
She pivoted on her heels and watched Akane slowly melt into the crowd, until she lost sight of her, then she sighed and turned back to look into the classroom. She found Ranma still standing by his desk, and smiling shyly at her in his usual easy-going way. She smiled back nervously, and held her hand out to him. He nodded and bounded over to her and took it.
"Ready to go see Ukyo?" She whispered.
He looked over at her, and she could see him wilt a little bit, but he nodded at her and gripped her hand a little more tightly. She nodded back and they set off together.
The students in the halls gave them plenty of room. She would have been hard pressed to answer if they were more afraid of her, or him. But, either way, it was nice not to be crushed in the crowd. Things usually got a little tense on campus for a day or so after she reminded the student body of the kind of things she could do. So she was used to it. Ranma didn't seem to notice at all. He probably expected to be given a lot of space just because of the frequency he was attacked, if for no other reason.
They made their way out of the school, and down the streets that led to Ukyo's shop. They traveled together in silence. It wasn't quite as comfortable a silence as it had been when they had gone to go see Shampoo's Great Grandmother. She kept looking over at him and trying to catch his eye, but he stayed stubbornly looking straight ahead with downcast eyes. She could tell he was ... distressed. All that did was increase her own nervousness. There were so many ways their upcoming meeting with Ukyo could go wrong — including Ranma backing out of it and canceling the whole thing. But there was nothing she could do about it now, she was fully committed to their plan.  All she could do now was worry as she walked with him. She wanted to sit down and hug her knees to her chest and rock back and forth and try to calm down, but she couldn't.
She tried to take her mind off her worries as they walked by focusing on what was going on around them. The late afternoon breeze felt nice in her hair, the sun was shining, and Ranma's hand in hers made her feel a little bit better. But, for the most part, she was barely holding it together as the icy core of her worry spread out to her limbs. Her steps got a bit slower, as she felt her icy worry slowing her down. Ranma slowed his pace to match hers, but didn't say anything. After many minutes of that, they finally arrived next to the street Ukyo's shop was on.
"Are you ready to do this?" She asked him gently, as they stopped at the intersection that connected to Ukyo's street. Ukyo's shop could now be seen in the distance. She looked over at him and found him staring in the direction of Ukyo's shop with an unreadable expression on his face. The wind changed to a cooler breeze, which chilled her a little bit more. Ranma didn't seem to notice it. "Ranma?" She prompted him again.
He sighed and nodded slowly without taking his eyes off Ukyo's shop.
"We ... don't have to ... if you don't want to..." She said softly. "We can stop now if you want." She said as she squeezed his warm hand and held it gently in her own chilled hand.
He squeezed her hand back, and shook his head softly. "No, I'm ready, let's do this." He said quietly.
"She may cry. Are you ready for it?" She asked him. She wanted him to be really certain he knew what he was getting himself into.
"I ... I know. I hate this." He replied in a haunted tone.
"I do too." She said sadly. She was both lying and telling the truth. She actually loved that he was willing to finally end things with the rest of the girls for her. But she took no joy in hurting the girls to achieve her goals. She wouldn't feel guilty about it, but it wasn't something she was proud of, or enjoyed doing.
He looked over at her then and smiled a very small smile as he breathed in deeply and squeezed her hand tighter. "I'm ready. What's the plan?" He asked.
"The plan is to let me handle it. It will actually be best if you don't know what's coming, so your reactions will be genuine. No offense Ranma, but your acting skills are terrible." She said gently but with a teasing tone.
He scowled at her. "Hey, I can act when I need to." He protested.
She grinned at him. "Yes, you can, especially when Martial Arts are involved, but when you are dealing with matters of the heart, or Martial Arts aren't involved ... your acting skills are ... lacking." She said with a laugh.
"You won't ... hurt her, will you?" He asked in a scared voice.
She wondered why he was so afraid. It was never an easy or fun thing to tell someone they weren't right for you, and that there was no future between them and you. Well ... it wasn't easy or fun if one wasn't a sociopath, anyway. But there wasn't really anything to fear about the process. It was a necessary evil of the human condition. Dating and romance were some of the most complicated things most people did in their lives.
"I ... can't guarantee that she won't be hurt, Ranma. But I will try my best to not hurt her." She said gently. He looked at her with anguished eyes. "I have come up with a plan that I think will give her an honorable way out of the situation she finds herself, and I really do think the plan will allow her to be happier in her life." She hurried to add. He continued to look haunted as he looked at her.
"But she'll still be hurt?" He asked softly.
"I ... I can't say. I am hoping that the plan, as it is presented to her, will turn her onto a different path. She will have to realize what taking that path will mean for her, though. And she won't be able to take the path and hold on to you." She said in her best soothing tone of voice as she reached for his other hand and pulled him so he was facing her and holding both her hands loosely.
"So ... it would be more like she was giving me up?" He asked hopefully.
She nodded. "Yes, more or less. She may not go for it though, Ranma. If that happens, I don't have a fallback plan besides what you have already done with Shampoo. It will be rough, but that's all I have in reserve." She looked into his eyes as she tried to figure out how committed to this process he was.
She really, really wanted him to go through with it, but she couldn't force him to. But she also had her own week-long deadline staring her in the face and egging her on to get things sorted out. She was afraid of what would happen if things didn't get settled before time ran out. She knew how very easy it would be for everyone if things just settled back into the status quo they had been in. Easy ... for everyone, except her.
She knew that at the center of everything that was happening, was her selfishness. She didn't want to share him, and she didn't want to be constantly fighting for him or wondering if he would pick her some day. She couldn't put her life on hold to wait for him to make a possible future decision.
She wanted him to make a commitment to her, or ... to let her go. She didn't know how she would get over it if he wasn't able to commit to her, and she really didn't want to think about it. But she knew that he was doing everything he had been doing, for her, and only her.
She idly wondered if he would have started the process to commit to Akane, if Akane had ever asked him. Of course, for that to have happened, Akane would have had to admit her feelings for him. She felt a great wave a sadness for her little sister.
It wasn't Akane's fault that Mom's death had messed her up so badly. It also hadn't helped that Daddy had checked out after that, and then all of the mess with the guys at school had started up on top of that. Ranma had walked into her little sister's life with all of that having already happened to Akane, and with his own issues as well. It was no wonder that they fought all the time.
Hell, she had to keep catching herself to stop herself from saying things that she knew could start a fight between them. He frequently did and said things that either annoyed her, were casually insulting, or just careless. She knew he wasn't trying to be deliberately offensive though. He just needed time to figure out the social graces. Time was something she was willing to give him ... if he committed to her.
Ranma finally nodded. "All right, let's try the plan, and hope it works." He said with a pained smile.
"You sure? We can wait until later, if you want." She said quietly.
"I'm sure. It's like you said, it can't keep going on forever. I really hope she goes for your plan though. I'm not sure I can say to her what I said to Shampoo." He whispered.
"What if you have to?" She asked, insistently. She didn't want to corner him on this, but she needed to know what she was getting into before they went in there.
"If I have to ... then ... I will." He said sadly.
"We can always come back and deal with Ukyo later." She whispered.
He shook his head softly. "Who would we talk to instead? Akane?" He asked in a tone she couldn't read.
She changed the subject quickly. She knew as well as he did, that she had no plan for Akane right now. "Ranma?" She asked, and waited for him to meet her eyes before she continued. He looked sad, and uneasy. She pressed on as best she could. Her voice was shaking, though. "Ranma ... do you know how rare it is for two people to meet, fall in love, and be happy together for the rest of their lives?" She whispered.
He shook his head softly. "It almost never happens." She whispered sadly. "Most people just settle for a good enough match, and try to make it work, or they settle for a bad match and just try to endure. Some don't ever find any kind of match at all. Real love, true love, if I can believe what the romance books say, is one of the most rare things in the world. It's more rare than the perfect business opportunity at the right time with funds in hand. It's more rare than straight A's in school, or hitting a home run, or making it as a musician." She said in a voice that rose in intensity as she went on. His eyes widened as she spoke.
"That's why ... that's why I think they are holding on to you so tightly. I think Ukyo, and Shampoo, and even Kodachi see in you a match that isn't just good enough, or one they can endure. I think they see in you a match that is perfect for them, for their own reasons. I don't think they are not going to give you up easily, Ranma. And ... I don't blame them." She said with a soft smile.
"What about ... Akane?" He whispered with downcast eyes.
She smiled sadly. "Akane too. I can't speak for my little sister, but it seems to me like she also thinks you are a match for her worth fighting for."
He nodded and drew in a shaky breath. Her little speech seemed to have had the desired affect of steeling his resolve a bit. He now had a better focus for the kind of fight he was walking into.
She looked into his eyes, and sighed inwardly. He was trusting her to help him ends things with all of them, as she had promised. Promises and trust were very important to her. And she knew he knew damn well that as far as Akane went, she had no plan yet. She kept trying to come up with one, but she couldn't. Everything she thought of, hurt Akane badly, and broke their family apart.
He looked hard into her eyes, and she read in those eyes the anguish he was trying to rise above. Ending things with the rest of the girls was hurting him. That ... scared her. Feelings, even weaker feelings than the ones he might have for Akane or herself, were powerful forces. Empathy was both the greatest asset humans had in dealing with each other, and it was also one of the biggest causes of suffering between people. It was very easy to get pulled down into someone else's pain and have their problems become your problems.
"Well ... let's go talk to Ukyo." He said simply. "I trust you, Nabiki." He added in a slightly more positive tone.
She nodded firmly and turned to face Ukyo's shop as she slid her hands out of his and shifted so her arm was linked with his.
"All right, let's do this." She said with as much bravado as she could as they started walking again.