[May 7, 2016: Want to win a $50 Amazon gift card code? I am running a contest to receive criticism of my writing. I am leaving the contest running until I get enough quality entries to pick a winner from. See the end of chapter one for details, or my profile.]

[soundtrack for this one: This Game, by Suzuki Konomi]

 Their fingers brushed once, twice, and then a third time as he reached with increasing urgency for her. Nabiki couldn't really feel her hands any more. She didn't know if that was from the wind chill, or the fear. Ranma grit his teeth and lunged for her, and she felt his hand grasp hers tightly — more from the pressure than any actual feeling in her hands. He then quickly pulled her in towards him and slid his hand down to her wrist.
She twisted and looked down and saw the ground rushing up to meet them at a terrifying speed. She opened her mouth and worked her jaw as her body tried to sob, but nothing came out. She spun around to look at him. She wanted her last sight in life to be of him. 
He met her eyes, then smiled as he started to move with a practiced grace. He pulled her in close to his body, swung her over to his left side, and wrapped his left arm around her while he twined his leg around her tightly as well. She clung to him and buried her face into his chest. She wanted to cry, but she was paralyzed from the fear. She looked up at him in misery. She hadn't wanted anyone else to die! 
She held on to him tightly and prayed to whatever would listen to her, to make it a quick and clean death, as an anguished whimper rose in her throat but died unvoiced. She looked up and tried to catch a last glimpse of his eyes. But, his eyes were focused up on the roof. Ranma, oddly, had a calm smile on his face, and he was glowing with a bright yellow aura. If she could see it, as scared as she was, then he was dumping all of his power into it.
"WHY?!" She managed to ask as they fell while she held on to him as tight as she could. She wasn't holding on to him to try to save herself, she was holding on to the future with him she'd never gotten the chance to have. Why die for me?! She wanted to scream at him, but she couldn't get the words out as her mind started to shut down from the fear.
"YOU KNOW WHY!" He yelled back calmly as he unwound something from his wrist, twirled it, and threw it. It was some sort of a cord. Her mind was still trying to figure out what he was doing, when they jerked hard to a stop. She felt every muscle in his body tense as he held her and prevented her inertia from carrying her away from him. She screamed as they then started to swing towards the building. It took her mind a moment to realize they weren't falling any more. He looked over at her and smiled. "Hold on, you're gonna be okay." He said in his usual confident voice.
I know I am. She thought as he held her. Her mind was all over the place, and her body was still trying desperately to figure out how to survive. But, intellectually, she was starting to realize that she wasn't going to fall to her death. She looked at him in wonder.
She had always known he was strong, and she had always known he could fight. She had seen some of it before, but never like this, and never so strongly. Ranma had usually been off with Akane or one of the others when things had happened, and she had just heard about it later.
It was one thing to hear stories about what he could do, it was another thing, entirely, to live through it, and be involved with it. She was starting to understand that it wasn't just luck that got him through things. He was relentless. He accepted nothing less than success, and he just kept pushing until he succeeded. If there was one thing that his stupid father had done right for him, it was giving him the ability to make his own luck through sheer stubbornness. He's certainly stubborn enough to just ignore whatever the universe has planned for him, and make his own fate. She thought with no small amount of pride as the building rushed up to meet them and she winced.
They impacted against a window of the building and she could see the cord strain and cut into his wrist and hand, but the cord held, and he didn't even seem to notice the damage. They held still for a moment, and she could suddenly hear herself breathing rapidly in fear. The cold wind tore around them and chilled every part of her not touching Ranma. She didn't dare look down. He held her more tightly with his free hand, yelled for her to hang on, then kicked them free of the building. She gasped as they swung back in towards it. Before she had time to be too afraid, he flexed and kicked the window out. It shattered around them as he let go of the cord and shielded her from the glass. They crashed into an empty room and he rolled them with the impact and wrapped himself around her tightly.
They ended up resting on the floor with her laying flat on her back, breathing heavily — one might say hysterically. Ranma had her face buried into his chest, his arms wrapped around her back and her head, while his legs were wrapped around hers. He had so efficiently shielded her from the impact, that the only part of her he wasn't still holding off the ground was her bottom.
After a moment had passed, he unwrapped his arms from around her upper body, and untucked his legs from under hers as he lowered her gently to the floor. He then carefully lifted himself off her in a push-up position before he pushed himself off to the side of her. She felt him quickly run his hands gently around her body a moment later. "Are you all right, Nabiki? Are you bleedin' or anythin'?" He asked with urgency in his voice. She noted with some amusement that he avoided her more sensitive areas as he checked her for wounds. 
It was strange how calm and cool he could be when he was in the act of diving off a building to save her, but as soon as he wasn't in a combat situation, his poise left him. He brought his head back into view as he leaned over her again and stared into her eyes nervously. "You all right?" He repeated.
She nodded her head shakily up at him. He let out a slow breath and tried to smile for him as he smiled down at her. She wanted to be brave for him, even though she was most decidedly not feeling all right. She plastered a fake smile on her face and pushed herself up on her shaking arms, and managed to get into a sitting position. She made it all the way to putting her hands to the floor, as she tried to get her legs under her to stand up, when it hit her.
She knew it showed on her face, because he looked over at her with panic on his face. "Nabiki ... hey, Nabiki, you OK?" He asked. His voice sounded weird, and further away than it should have.
"No...I'm not..." She said, as the fear and relief hit her at the same time and she lost it and began to cry as she hyperventilated. A moment later a massive wave of nausea crashed into her, and she had to lean back down to the floor as she threw up. Her whole body was shaking, and she was afraid she was going to pass out. Her vision was starting to blacken around the edges.
Strong hands reached down and grabbed her and pulled her back gently. She felt him prop her up in his lap and wip her face with a handkerchief he produced from somewhere. Then she felt him shift behind her. She didn't know what he was doing, but she didn't really know what she was doing, either. Her whole body was still shaking, and she was fighting valiantly to try to keep from throwing up again as her vision blacked out.
A moment later a heavy fabric draped around her. She was dizzy and couldn't see, as her senses overloaded. The last time she had blacked out was when she got a shot at the doctor's office when she was little. She hated the feeling. She sucked in some shaky deep breaths and waited it out. She knew her vision would return in a moment, once the overload to her senses passed.
She looked down a few moments later as her vision started to clear, and realized it was Ranma's blue silk shirt she had felt being draped around her. She stared at it without comprehension. She heard his voice from far away say something to her about hanging on to something. She nodded and leaned up against whatever the hard thing behind her was, and tried to focus her energy on keeping her head from spinning.
A moment later she felt something round press up against her lips. She almost fought against it before her mind told her it had water in it. She drank greedily from it. The water washed away the worst of everything, and also brought some clarity back to her thoughts. She blinked up at him, and saw Ranma looking down at her with worry in his eyes. He was holding a paper cup in his hands that he was pressing up to her lips. He was only wearing his undershirt. He must have found a water cooler somewhere on the floor we're on. She thought absently. She looked around and saw that the room they were in wasn't just empty, it was bare and missing some walls. She could see a lot of the floor they were on, open behind him through those missing walls. She could also smell sawdust in the air. It must be under construction. She thought dimly to herself.
"You feeling better?" He asked her gently.
She nodded as she pulled the cup from his hands and upended it to finish off the water. "T-thanks." She managed to mumble as her strength started to return to her.
He nodded as he crouched down across from her and stared into her eyes with worry. He handed her a couple of the things he called energy balls. She ate them numbly. "Was that ... the first time you thought you were going to die?" He asked her gently.
"N— ... uh yeah, yeah...I think so." She said wearily. She was also embarrassed. He was so strong and she was so weak.
He winced at her. "I'm sorry, that's rough. It's always worst the first time." He said with sympathy. "The adrenaline dump your system puts out as your body tries to save itself, is pretty massive. If you don't die, then all that stuff just crashes into ya, and you feel awful and shaky for a bit." He said gently.
She nodded blankly. She understood what he was saying, but it wasn't making her feel any better. She felt shaky and nauseous, and terrible. She wanted to get the focus off of herself. "H-how old were you, when you—"
"Seven. Trainin' exercise. Pop screwed it up. Barely got out alive. Then I had to help Pop reset it and try it again. Almost died several more times that day." He said in a voice that was mostly resigned, but was tinged with bitterness.
"Tell me about it." She asked as she pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them tightly. She nodded politely as he told his story, but totally tuned him out as she tried to handle what she had just been through. I can't believe he jumped off a building to save me. For some reason, she was upset about that. She looked at him with disbelief as he talked. He jumped off a building for me...he jumped off a building for me...HE JUMPED OFF A BUILDING FOR ME! She repeated to herself as her breathing grew more rapid and her skin flushed with heat. She could feel herself growing increasingly angry with him, as she sat there and recovered her strength, and her mind dialed back up to fully operational. The anger built inside of her until she finally felt she had to let it out.
"Stop, just stop!" She blurted out as she abruptly leaned forward and slapped the ground in front of her. He cut off mid-sentence as his shirt slipped down from around her while she tucked her legs down to the side and leaned forward towards him. She was angry, very angry ... probably unreasonably angry, but she didn't care.
He gulped and looked at her with wide eyes. She could tell he had no idea why she was so upset.
"What did I—"
"You IDIOT! You stupid, stupid, insanely brave, IDIOT!" She yelled at him as she fixed him with a glare and rose to her knees shakily.
"I—"
"What is the MATTER with you?! YOU JUMPED OFF A BUILDING FOR ME!" She yelled as she walked over to him on her knees. She wasn't recovered enough yet to stand. He was still sitting anyway. She reached him and grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO ME?! WHY WOULD YOU RISK YOUR LIFE LIKE THAT?!" She yelled hysterically as hot tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Why would I ... Nabiki ... I had to save you, I—"
"You're so reckless! If you get yourself killed for me, I will never forgive you! How can you risk your life like that?! Don't you care about the people who love you? What about your mom? How would she feel if you died jumping off a building like that?"
"I ... what? My mom? She—"
"I can't handle it if you get killed, Ranma. I CAN'T! I WOULD RATHER DIE THAN HAVE YOU DIE FOR ME. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!" She screamed at him as she slammed her hands into the muscles of his chest and then fell against him and shuddered as the anger left her, and she collapsed again and just cried.
She felt him reach his arms up to wrap around her gently and slowly. She could tell she had freaked him out. Good. He needs a little fear in his life. Brave people without fear do stupid things like jumping off buildings. She thought bitterly while she cried with her head pressed against his chest.
After a minute or so, she got her sniffling under control and leaned back away from him. She was overcome with guilt and regret. I didn't mean to unload on him like that. She thought, ashamed.
"Ranma ... I'm so sorry ... I—"
"Hey ... don't worry, Kiki. I told you. I understand. The worst time is always the first time. You're actually handlin' it better 'an I did when it was my first time." He said soothingly as he tightened his left arm around her waist, and pulled his right arm up and brushed her hair back and smoothed it against her neck.
She could feel her lower lip quivering as tears threatened to rise to the surface again. Instead, she buried her face into his chest and took several deep breaths, and forced herself to regain control. He patiently waited and held her. She couldn't see his face, but she knew he was looking around and scanning for danger while he held her. My Ranma is my eternal guardian. She thought happily.
"Can you help me up?" She whispered to him. She felt him nod, and a moment later he rose smoothly to his feet and pulled her up with him by hooking his arms under hers. As soon as she was on her feet he slid his hands down to her waist and held her loosely while she swayed and tried to regain her balance.
"You all right?" He asked her softly.
She looked over at the window he had smashed through when he had rescued her. She took a couple of small steps towards it. He kept his hands on her and turned with her as she moved. She could feel him tighten his grip on her as she got closer to the opening. She wondered if he was just worried she might slip and fall, or if he was worried she was feeling suicidal?
She reached down and patted his hand gently to reassure him that she wasn't thinking of jumping. She looked out of the hole, and then briefly down at the ground. He had saved her with about two thirds of the fall still left to go. It hadn't seemed like it at the time, but he must have done it incredibly fast, to have stopped them where he did.
She pulled in a shaky breath and leaned back into him as she pulled his arms around her tightly and shivered as the breeze from the opening in the window chilled her. "No ... I'm not all right. But, there's nothing that can be done. We can't stop now, we have to keep playing the game, and we have to play to win." She finally replied. She put as much steel as she could into her voice.
As far as threats to her life went, the only real experience she had with that was what she had just survived. But, when it came to playing to win, and being ruthless, that ... that she had plenty of experience with. These people have no idea who they are messing with. She growled to herself as she felt the tears come again. They were tears of anger.
"Hey ... you're fine now, don't worry, we're gonna settle this and you'll be safe. Don't worry." He said gently as he reached a hand up to her cheek and wiped the tears away. It was his uninjured hand. He probably didn't want to get blood on her face. She cried even harder. Adrenaline did this to her, she had come to realize over the last few days.
She spun around in his arms to face him, and smiled weakly at him. "You idiot." She whispered as she labored to get her breathing under control.
He smiled back as he continued to gently wipe her tears away. "Hey, is that any way to thank me for savin' ya?" He asked with some humor in his voice.
"No, but your week isn't up yet." She said with a trace of her usual bravado as her nerves settled back from the life-or-death rawness her survival instincts had placed them on.
He grinned as he stepped back from her and slid his hand down her arm so he was holding her hand while he pulled her gently forward away from the window. He was again using his uninjured hand. "You're really making me work for it, aren't you?" He said softly, with a twinkle in his eye.
She squeezed his hand gently and smiled more broadly at him. "Hey, you're the one who keeps coming back. You obviously must think I'm worth it."
He smiled broadly at that as he reached for her other hand with the fingertips of his injured hand and pulled her close to him again while he leaned in to her. "Maybe." He whispered. She felt him brush her hair away from her ear a moment later, and sighed as she relaxed into him. He had no idea how much she enjoyed that.
She smiled as tears streamed down her face. "Why?" She whispered softly into his chest, because she couldn't let it go. She didn't understand what could make a person willingly dive off a skyscraper to jump after someone who was falling. There was only one force on Earth that was powerful enough to make her do something like that. But ... it couldn't have been that, could it? She wondered.
"I made you a promise." He said simply.
She sighed as she leaned back away from him and looked into his eyes with exasperation. Amazing. He will clearly walk into the mouth of hell for someone he feels strongly for, and punch a demon in the balls to show how he feels, but when the moment is over, he still has trouble saying it. She thought to herself as her heart soared and the dragon inside her sang. That was okay, she didn't need him to say it yet. She was pretty sure she knew.
Still, she wasn't going to let him off the hook just with that. He needed to learn to examine his decisions and the consequences of those decisions.
"What if you hadn't made me that promise?"
"I still would've come."
"Why?"
"Because ... because ... because, you know why, Nabiki." He said with embarrassment clouding his voice. She could see a touch of red creeping up his neck as well.
Amazing. She repeated to herself.
"I made you a promise too." She said with renewed determination. He nodded. "Well, then I guess we had better work on those promises." She said with a weak smile as he turned and led her to walk towards the nearest stairs. They stopped on the way for him to pick up his shirt and put it back on. Aside from a couple of smudges, he looked more or less how he had looked when they had started their date.
She took the opportunity to look down at her own clothes and was surprised to see that she also looked more or less all right. If someone looked very closely, they would see some smudges, and some very small abrasions to the silk, but for the most part she still looked all right. Of course, I am sure my makeup is ruined. She thought with a sigh. She could fix most of it with the compact in her purse, but it wouldn't be as good as what Kasumi had done.
"You know, I've been doing a lot more crying since I got involved with you, than I have in the last ten years, Saotome." She said teasingly after they started walking again.
He looked sideways at her as they walked and grinned shyly as he hesitantly replied. "T-that just means you're having more fun, though, right?"
He's even learning how to joke! She thought happily as she leaned into him and looped her arm through his. "It sure does." She whispered happily as he opened the door and they started down the stairs.
***
She walked down the stairs with him and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. It had started out easy enough. But, even going down, after fifteen flights of stairs or so, it got tiring. After about thirty, it was exhausting. Her legs were shaking, and she was too out of it to even try to hide it. She could see him glancing at her with worry in his eyes every now and then, but there wasn't much she could do about it.
She wasn't in the physical condition he was. Hell, she wasn't even in the condition Akane was. She exercised to allow herself to mostly eat whatever she wanted, and that was all. She didn't do any strength conditioning, and she didn't do endurance training. She did light aerobic exercise, and that was all. She also wasn't conditioned to handle the kind of adrenaline that was being dumped regularly into her system lately. She was going to have to ask Doctor Tofu about that; she was starting to worry that the adrenaline was going to mess something up inside her.
She looked at the floor marker of the latest landing they were passing, and sighed with relief, they were on the third floor now. As near as she could tell, the building they were in was a fifty-plus story building, so she had just descended almost forty flights of stairs. She was going to be sore tomorrow.
Ranma looked over at her as they stepped down to the second to last landing and smiled at her gently. "See, that wasn't so bad was i—" his face shifted unexpectedly to a hard glare as he reached for her with lightning-fast hands and yanked her behind him as she heard a door crash open behind her.
She spun as he let go of her, and found herself looking over his shoulder. Shona was in the process of launching herself through the fire door on the landing they were standing on!
Ranma didn't waste any time yelling threats or trying to negotiate. He simply dove into Shona, and resumed the fight with her he had interrupted to save her life. She leaned up against the wall and just watched. Even if she had wanted to run away or try to help him, she couldn't. Her legs were burning, her lungs were straining to pull in enough air, and she was exhausted. She was useless at the moment. So she just watched.
Oddly, she didn't feel threatened at all. That was weird, and her mind flagged it for later review. By any measure, she should have felt threatened. Shona had a bloody nose, and a swollen eye as well. The Amazon's face was twisted into a determined rictus as she fought with Ranma. She knew that if Ranma failed and went down, that Shona would kill her. But she wasn't worried, even a little bit. Ranma clearly outclassed Shona, and now that he wasn't fighting to get past Shona to save herself, and he was instead fighting to keep Shona away from her, she knew that she was invulnerable. If she hadn't been so exhausted, she would have been making faces at Shona just to taunt her.
Ranma was fighting hard, but she could tell that now that he wasn't desperate to save her from falling to her death, he was pulling his strikes again. He was still hitting Shona hard enough that every time he hit the Amazon, she could tell he hurt her. But, he was no longer going all-out against the young warrior. It didn't matter. Shona was in no condition to be fighting him.
She must be terrified to go back to the old ghoul in defeat. I bet she thinks he'll kill her in honorable combat and give her a way out of that. Idiot. He could have killed her any of the times he's touched her. If he didn't do it earlier when he was tying to save me, he sure as hell isn't going to now. Although ... I might have to break him of that habit. He's a little too soft for his own good. She thought as she watched the fight.
Shona slashed at him with a hooking axe-kick. Ranma brought his hands up in a rising x-block and shifted his stance to drop her past him, and sent a whipping back-knuckle into the Amazon's ear for her trouble. Shona shifted with her forward momentum and turned it into a spin that launched a rear-kick at him. He danced to the side of it, and slammed his fist into one of the nerve bundles in her leg.
The only reason she knew he had done that, was because Shona started limping after that, and favoring the other leg. The Amazon switched to hand techniques for her followup attacks. She smiled smugly as she watched. She knew it was about to be over. Ranma made no indication that he was about to do anything different. He parried several of Shona's strikes back and forth as he wove in and out of the young warrior's stance. Then, as he passed in front of the center of the Amazon on his next weaving pass, his hands suddenly blurred and Shona's head snapped back and her eyes went glassy. He had used his Chestnut-Fist rapid punching technique.
Shona slowly slid down to her knees, and then slumped over sideways, unconscious. She could have sworn for a moment that the Amazon warrior had smiled as she lost consciousness. Ranma stayed in a fighting stance for a few more moments and simply looked at Shona. Then he approached cautiously. A moment later his foot lashed out and pushed against Shona's hip and whipped back quickly to a fighting stance. Shona slumped even further, but didn't otherwise move.
"Looks like she's out." He said with a smile as he turned to face her. She smiled back at him. She noticed that he kept himself between her and Shona though. "Ready to go?" He asked. She looked hard at him, and shook her head. "What's wrong?" He asked, with worry in his voice.
She sighed. "Nothing other than the obvious, Ranma."
"...what?"
"I ... it's just ... are you just going to leave her there?"
He looked back at the Amazon and shrugged. "She'll probably be out for a minute or so. That's more than long enough for us to get away."
She sighed again and shook her head at him as she slid her professional mask into place on her face and summoned the ice inside herself. It scared her a little bit how easily the ice inside her rose to her command, but she ignored it for the moment. She would do what had to be done, even though the thought of it was already making her feel like she wanted to throw up again. "Ranma, she threw me off a building, to try to kill me. And she just tried to kill me again." She said patiently to him.
He nodded at her. "I know, but what—"
"What do you mean, but?" She asked him sternly. He looked at her in confusion as she continued. "She's dangerous. She tried to murder me, twice. If you hadn't been with me, I would be dead."
"But ... I was with you..." He said slowly, as he tried to figure out where she was going.
She sighed. "I know, Ranma. But ... Shampoo said it was going to be a war, and that I would be killed. It seems to me like she was telling the truth. They're serious, Ranma." She said sternly.
"I know. I'm gonna hafta hit a little harder than I like to." He said with regret in his voice.
She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Ranma..." she said as she nodded her head towards Shona, "I don't think in a war of survival, one leaves a defeated opponent alive on the battlefield. Your mercy is admirable, but foolish." She said in a cold voice. She didn't like it. But if this was a war, then by God, she was going to win it!
"I don't—"
"Finish her, Ranma." She said quietly.
He looked at her blankly for a moment before he finally realized what she was telling him to do. He shook his head slowly and frowned. "That's not our way, Nabiki. The Anything Goes School of Martial Arts doesn't kill unless we have to, and we don't injure defeated opponents." He said in a cadence like he was reciting something.
She frowned. She didn't want to push him on the subject, but she didn't think he understood the gravity of the situation. "Ranma ... that's fine for schoolyard fistfights, but ... this isn't a fistfight. This is a war, based on what Shampoo told us, and Shona's attempts to murder me. War has ... different rules." She said quietly.
He shook his head again more emphatically. "Pop said that our restraint rules are what makes us different from assassins and thugs on the street. We fight with honor, and we know when to stop." He said proudly.
She looked at him, and a smile broke through her mask. She loved how earnest and honest and good he was! And she really didn't want to take a life either. "All right, Ranma. I guess they take prisoners in war too. We can leave her for now, I guess. But I don't want her following us." She said sternly.
He nodded. "Sure, no problem I can—"
"Break her legs." She ordered.
He smiled and shook his head again. "Can't, she's defeated. The rules apply. I can tie her up though. It'll probably take her a few hours or more to get out of it, but she'll be all right." He said confidently.
She opened her mouth to argue with him, then closed it. He had fixed his eyes on hers and she could see in those eyes a fire burning. It was the fire of righteousness. Or, more accurately, self-righteousness. She wasn't going to win this argument with him. She was just going to have to trust him to keep her alive until he learned about war the hard way. She just hoped that he didn't have to learn about it too brutally. 
She smiled at him and gestured for him to proceed. He nodded at her and set to work using a different cord he produced from one of his pockets. She looked at the cord curiously. I wonder where he got paracord from? She wondered.
In just a few moments he had Shona's legs bound tightly together at the ankles, and the wrists as well, then he looped some of the cord through the railing for the stairs and connected it to the Amazon's ankles and wrists. He hadn't tied it so tightly that the Amazon couldn't move. But she was convinced Shona wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
When he was done, he stood up and smiled at her again and walked over to her as he held his hand out to her. She nodded and took it, and walked quietly next to him down the last of the stairs. They finally reached the ground, and Ranma pushed open the door to the street using the crash-bar, and they found themselves in an alley next to the building she had almost fallen to her death from.
She looked up, and immediately felt dizzy. She started to slowly sink to the ground as she slid her hand out of his. She ended up sitting roughly on the curb of the street, leaning her head against the wall, and breathing heavily as she tried to fight back a wave of nausea.
"You okay, Kiki?" He asked her as he reached his hand down for her to grab.
She looked up at his hand, as tears filled her eyes, and a heavy darkness filled her heart, and shook her head. "No, I'm not all right, Ranma." She said in a shaky voice. She didn't take his hand.
He sank down to his knees across from her and looked at her in worry. "Are you hurt?" He asked as his eyes traveled her body looking for wounds.
She shook her head as she fought the tears back. She didn't want to rub her eyes and smear the stupid makeup even more. "I ... I ... it's just ... all I wanted to do was go on a date with you ..." she sucked in a shuddering breath and tried to calm down. "That's all ... I just wanted to go on a date with you, like a normal couple. Akane got to go on a normal date with you. She didn't get attacked and almost killed. It's not ... it's not fair." She whispered.
She closed her eyes and breathed in slowly and deeply as she tried to control herself, and keep the tears back. She heard a rustling sound in front of her, then again next to her and Ranma moved positions and sat down next to her. A moment later he wrapped his arm hesitantly around her shoulder and pulled her in to a side hug.
"I'm sorry ... I wish we coulda been left alone too. But hey, at least we got to start the date with no one botherin' us, right? And now we can finish it." He said cheerfully.
She looked over at him incredulously as a tear managed to slip out and run down her cheek. "Finish?" She asked, confused.
"Sure. We still have your part of the date to do, right?" He asked. "I mean, I guess we could go finish the last of mine ... but I don't think they want to see me back at that store again any time soon." He said in an embarrassed tone. "So, what do ya say, are ya ready to finish the date and do the stuff you planned?" He asked her quietly.
She nodded, unsure of herself. "Yeah ... but Ranma ... all that stuff ... we were going to do that before ... before ..." Before I'd been drugged, abducted, and almost killed. She thought to herself.
"I know. But ... we can't let 'em win, right? If you still want to, then I want to too." He said with determination. She could tell he was putting on a show to try to make her feel better. And despite the fact that she knew that ... it was working.
"O-okay, Ranma. Let's do it, let's finish our date." She said with a shaky smile as she sniffled and rummaged in her handbag for a tissue. She found one and dabbed her eyes and cheeks clean, then blew her nose. She knew her makeup was probably a bit smeared, and her eyes were probably red-rimmed. She knew her clothes were a bit dirty. In short, she was a bit of a mess. But, he didn't seem to care, at all. He was beaming at her and holding her as he sat next to her on the cold concrete next to the building he had saved her from falling from.
She was in his world now. She really wanted to pull him more into her world, and to find a balance, but until the issues with the Amazons were settled, there just wasn't much she could do about it.
She looked over at him seriously and pursed her lips into a straight line as she scrunched her nose up at him. "You are ... an unusual date, I'll give you that."
He smiled back at her. "Good. I don't like bein' normal."
She squinted at him as she stuck her tongue out at him and allowed him to pull her to her feet and into his arms. "Oh, I can guarantee you that being with you is anything but normal, Ranma." She whispered to him happily as the heavy darkness in her heart was replaced by something much lighter and joyful.