July 6, 1991
6:11 AM

Akane rolled over onto her back in bed, a quiet, contented purr escaping her lips. It’s happening, my love. I’m going to be your wife, and you’re going to be mine. Gods, we really showed everybody that said we couldn’t get here, huh? They should know better than to doubt us Tendo girls! She smiled warmly, contemplating the day to come, her mind lingering for a moment on a surprise she had prepared for her bride. 

You’re my wife. I’ll do anything for you. My whole life is going to be about standing behind you, supporting you. Making your problems go away, and opening doors for you. Telling you how strong and brave and talented and beautiful you are every single day so you can’t ever forget it. Everything else I do for the rest of my life after today is secondary to that. You are my forever, Ranko. 

Opening her eyes, she looked around the small studio apartment above the Phoenix, not needing long at all to ascertain that she was in it alone. Silly girl. You should have slept some more, lover. You’re gonna have a busy day. She giggled brightly, biting her lip with a blush at her devious thoughts as she flailed her legs under the blanket in excitement. And an even busier night. 

She swung her legs off the edge of the bed, stretching with a loud yawn. “Okay, Akane,” she said aloud in the dark. “Let’s go marry your princess.” She slid off the last corner of the lavender duvet color, slipping her backside off the side of the mattress until her bare feet touched the floor. She wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a yellow tank top, and her hair was an absolute disaster. She’d wanted to make love to Ranko when they’d come home from Steam, especially after that sensual song she’d sung, but by the time they’d made it to the apartment, both of them were exhausted, feeling the effects of a night of drinking, and too focused on tomorrow to want to spend any more time living in today. 

Akane smiled up at the dress bag hanging from the curtain rod. She hadn’t seen Ranko’s dress yet and vice-versa; Izumi had said there was some superstition about seeing your partner’s dress before the wedding being bad luck. Her own dress, she knew, awaited her downstairs in Hana’s office, which would be the dressing room she would share with Kasumi and Nabiki in a few hours. Ranko and her four sisters, and probably Hana too, would be using the upstairs apartment.  

“Most people say my life is music.” Akane sang quietly to herself as she ran her fingers through her hair to try to get it at least mostly pointed in the right direction. “They hear me sing, and they’re not wrong.” 

She smiled brightly at herself in the mirror mounted to the back of the open closet door. Hey there, Mrs. Ranko Tendo, Akane thought to herself. 

“But when they see the joy I feel up on that stage, I’m just the singer. You’re…”

Her quietly melodic voice came to an immediate stop as she heard a metallic crash from the kitchen, as if half the pots and pans in the building had all been thrown down a flight of stairs at once. 

Akane’s head snapped toward the door. What the… She stood, listening intently. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d heard, though she knew there would be a tremendous amount of hustle and bustle through the Phoenix that morning as they prepared for the event. But then she heard a second sound; one she could never have failed to recognize.

It was the distinctive, high-pitched battle kiai of Ranko Tendo.

“Ranko!” Adrenaline blasting the sleep from her eyes, she closed the distance to the apartment door in two steps, throwing the door open and taking the stairs two at a time in her bare feet. Before she was halfway down the narrow staircase, she heard Ranko scream again, in what sounded like the mutant offspring of a kiai and a woman in labor. She cringed in horror at the sound of a male voice she recognized. 

That of Genma Saotome. 

“Ranma, you are making a huge mistake! One you can’t come back from! But there’s still time to fix this, boy! Come with me, right now! We’ll go to Jusenkyo, get all this nonsense sorted out, and you can be back to normal! You can have your old life back, son, and then we’ll get everything squared away with your mother together. Everything will be just like it was before. You’d even be able to marry Akane for real. Think, boy! Think about our future, here! I’m trying to save you from yourself! Stop listening to whatever they’re telling you and be smart about this, for once!”

No. Not him. Not here. Not today! You just couldn’t let us have our fucking wedding day?! I didn’t get my chance to protect her last time, and Hana talked me out of going after him then. 

Not today. Not ever again. I swear it, Ranko. 

Akane gripped the wooden handrails mounted to the walls on either side of the stairwell, vaulting the last four steps at once and landing in a half-crouch in the narrow hallway dividing the front bar area from the kitchen. She rounded the corner to her right as quickly as her knees could absorb the impact of her landing.

Strewn about the kitchen floor were every imaginable kitchen implement: pots, pans, silverware, plates, and more than a few gadgets and devices Akane had never learned the functions of. The prep counter had been all but cleared of dry ingredients, with containers of flour and fruit spattered across the tile. The standing commercial dough mixer was toppled over on its side in the far corner of the room opposite the pizza oven. The back door leading out to the alley was warped and cracked open slightly, admitting a few orange-red rays from the still-rising sun. The handle hung askew from the steel door, indicating how the intruder had managed to gain access to the kitchen. The state of disarray in the kitchen was not remotely close to being her primary concern, though. 

Ranko herself stood just inside the kitchen entryway, tensed in her aikido stance almost to the point of bursting out of her white satin nightgown.

“I’m gonna FUCKING KILL YOU!” Akane roared as she pushed her way into the kitchen, all but shoving Ranko aside as she ran at full speed into the room. She vaulted the prep counter with her right hand planted on it, throwing a flying kick forward that struck home on Genma’s chin. She rode him to the ground, landing with her full weight on his cheek before he’d had a chance to react to her presence. Akane thought on the periphery of her consciousness that she heard Ranko say something, but for the moment, that would have to wait. 

Genma pushed Akane off of himself, and she stumbled back out of the corner toward the back door. Kick-flipping to his feet, he dropped into a muay thai stance in the open space between the prep counter and the walk-in cooler. He no longer focused on Ranko at all; to his mind, the redhead in the satin nightgown was not much of a threat anymore, courtesy of the Cat’s Tongue. Akane, however, had proven herself quite formidable in their previous encounters. 

“I see some things never change, Ranma.” He scoffed in Akane’s direction. “Still letting girls do your fighting for you.”

“That’s MRS. TENDO to you, you fucking jerk!” Akane hurled a steel Dutch oven at the assailant, using the momentary distraction created by his blocking it to close the distance to him again and strike at him with a high kick. He blocked with his forearm, but Akane’s furious assault continued with several quick jabs that struck home on his sternum. 

“I’m gonna bring her your FUCKING HEAD!” 

Akane was beyond strategy. Beyond balance. Beyond reason. Defending Ranko was her job. Her purpose. Her whole existence. No one, least of all the devil that had lurked in Ranko’s shadow her entire life, would ever hurt that woman again. Not her wife. Not today. Not ever. She would not allow it. She would die first. She was fury incarnate, an avenging angel come for war in a pair of threadbare gray sweatpants. 

She would not accept apologies. She would not accept surrender. Not after this. Not today. Today, she would have blood. 

“Tsk.” Genma sidestepped Akane’s wild punch, striking a punch of his own to her midsection as she overcommitted to her assault. Akane coughed, grabbing Genma’s wrist as she doubled over. She fell to the floor, yanking him forward and planting her foot in his crotch to launch him behind herself. He slammed into the steel walk-in cooler door head first, leaving a small dent in it. 

By the time Genma had regained his footing, Akane was on the offensive again, launching herself at him with a flying double kick. Again, her overly aggressive move backfired, and Genma caught her in mid-air, slamming her to the tile floor. He held her pinned against the floor by the throat, and she reached up to grab at his wrists and try and free herself. 

Ranko threw herself at her father, the threat to Akane having snapped her out of her momentary panic. She struck his temple with a downward hammer fist, leaving a thin trail of blood slashing through his eyebrow from the sharp edge of her diamond engagement ring. 

Genma rose to a standing position to react to the new threat, but before he could square his stance, Ranko’s hand flashed forward at an almost imperceptible speed, striking at his Adam’s apple with a fist that had snapped closed mid-flight in a jeet kune do strike. He stumbled back several steps, hitting his back on the waist-high steel prep counter and gasping for air. 

Rather than pressing her advantage, Ranko scurried to her prone fiancee. “Akane, are you okay?!” She started to lean down to check on Akane, but gulped as her nightgown was grabbed from behind. Genma gathered a fistful of the garment, bunching up the fabric until the neckline had constricted to a diameter that was nearly choking his daughter and exposing her nakedness below her waist. With a half-spin to build momentum, he released his grip on her negligee and hurled her the full length of the hallway. She slammed into the saloon door with her shoulder, and the slatted blue door crashed open against the main back bar as Ranko’s limp form flew through it and crumpled to the hardwood floor between the two bar counters. Another few centimeters, and she would have landed on the red carpet runner that demarcated her bridal aisle. She rolled onto her back, momentarily stunned from the impact.

“Ow.”

Everything hurt. Ranko could barely breathe. She did not care. Akane was still at risk. 

Genma closed on the black-haired girl, who clamored to her feet but had yet to fully catch her breath. He grabbed a fistful of Akane’s yellow tank top, driving her backward against the frigid steel door of the walk-in cooler with a stiff arm and a locked elbow. “And you. Putting all that poison in his ear. You turned my son into… that! You’ve shamed him, me, yourself, your fath…” 

He heard the unmistakable rattle of something moving in a hollow wooden tube, followed by the shrill ringing of metal scraping across metal. Before he could turn around, he caught a glimpse of brightly-polished steel, reflecting the industrial lighting overhead in the disheveled kitchen. 

“Take. Your. Hands. Off. My. Wife.” 

Genma turned to find his child locked in a kendo stance she’d picked up in one of her many fights with Tatewaki Kuno. Not even the shimmering white nightgown and wild bed hair could betray the deadly seriousness of the teenage bride as she leveled the unsheathed ancestral katana of clan Shimizu between herself and her father. 

Ranko noticed her father eyeing the knife block that lay on its side a meter or so away from his right foot in response to her threat. “Don’t even try it, man. You’ll be dead before you can bend over. Don’t think I won’t do it, Genma.”

“I know that sword. I see she found you after all.” Genma straightened his back, chuckling nervously as he released Akane’s shirt. He took a tentative step away from the winded combatant, moving between the prep counter and the stove to put the counter between himself and the sword-wielding songstress that had once been his son.

Ranko nodded, placing the katana so that its length bisected her face from his point of view. She would not let him look at her without having to stare through the weapon’s threat radius and know he was cornered. “She did. And she’s decided she wants a relationship with her daughter. A chance you pissed away a long fucking time ago, old man. I don’t feel nothin’ for you anymore except hate and resentment, and I can’t tell you how good it would feel to stick this thing through the hole where your heart should be.”

“Oh, Ranma, you can’t fool me. I know you wouldn’t do that to your father. You couldn’t. You’ve gone too soft.” Genma sneered in a veneer of confidence, crossing his arms across his chest, but Ranko knew him well enough to know he was bluffing.

Ranko glared, reaffirming her grip on her mother’s blade, so long the physical manifestation of dread for both Saotome men. She positioned herself at the center of the prep counter, so she could close to either side before he could and prevent his escape from the narrow alley between the counter and the cooktops. 

He was trapped. And now, he would finally hear her. She swore it.

“You haven’t been my father in years! You don’t know me. You won’t even say my name. You’re nothing to me. You had your chance. I am never going to be what you want. You are never going to control me again. You weren’t there when I needed you, and now you just can’t accept that I learned how to not need you. It was the only way to survive. You broke me time and time again for your own sick schemes, and it ends now. Today. You stole my life from me, a little more every day, and you’ve gotten all you’re getting. This is my life. I made it on my own. You have no claim to it, and I would rather die as Ranko Tendo than spend one more second as Ranma Saotome.”

Genma saw an opening as Akane wobbled a bit and caught his child’s eye. Ranko edged closer to her right, brandishing the sword in both hands with a serene malice that truly terrified Akane to see in the eyes of her bride. Her new position gave Genma a bit of leeway to escape to her left, but gave her a better chance of getting between him and Akane if needed. “I swear to all the gods, you take one step closer to Akane, and I will take your fucking head clean off your fat neck and step over your cold corpse on my way to the altar.” She extended the blade partially over the counter, demonstrating that she had enough reach to strike him from her position if she had to.

“Besides, if memory serves…” Ranko began, her voice conveying even more danger than the razor-sharp steel in her hand. “You owe the Shimizu clan your life.” She sneered hatefully, motioning with her head to the sliver of sunlight peeking into the room through the warped door frame behind the intruder. “And, of far greater value, you owe the Phoenix clan a doorknob.

“So, for old time’s sake, I’m giving you thirty seconds to give this up get the fuck out of here and never come back, or so help me gods, Akane and I will both use your guts for garters. Under our wedding dresses.” She raised the katana, preparing for an overhand strike should Genma try to escape in Akane’s direction, as Akane finally stabilized her breath enough to get back into the fight.

Genma nodded pensively. “Then it would seem you’ve left me no choice. I’m truly sorry about this, my boy.”

“Don’t you EVER fucking say that word to m…” Ranko’s eyes bulged as Genma swiveled at the waist. In one fluid motion, he snatched the one remaining object within reach on the cooking surface behind him and hurled it in his child’s direction. 

Ranko’s still-boiling tea kettle.

Akane shrieked murderously, charging him, but she could not reach him before the projectile had left his hand. She tackled Genma to the ground, and as their bodies crashed to the tile floor in a tangled heap of limbs and kitchenware, her ears rang with her lover’s bloodcurdling scream. It was followed by the sharp ringing sound of a steel katana clattering to the tile floor. Those sounds, in turn, were followed by the loud thump of a limp human body doing the same.

Oh my gods, no. No! Not today! You fucking monster! What is this even going to do to her head after all this time?! She’s been so careful for so long. I wish you’d have just stabbed me instead. It would have hurt less than watching her go through this today. I’m so sorry, Ranko. I failed you again.

Disentangling herself from the interloper, Akane frantically clamored around the prep counter on her hands and knees. “Ranko, baby, I’m coming!” 

She rounded the corner, still on all fours, and froze in stunned horror. 

Lying motionless on the floor next to the ancient sword, in a soaking wet and all-but-transparent nightgown that clung to every curve, was a young woman with flame-red hair.