Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Chained World: The Fall of the House of Kuno ❯ Striking the Match ( Chapter 47 )

This was originally published by me under the name Anduril at Anime Addventures, with the only changes being a few corrections in spelling, punctuation and the occasional word choice. If you like the beginning of my story but think I've gone off the rails, or have your own ideas for a great branch-off, or think I'm taking too long to update and want to continue the story yourself, come to Anime Addventures and join in the fun!

I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi, or anyone else's published work.

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Ukyo relaxed as she and Akane walked through the front doors of the Juuban General Hospital, and the itch between her shoulderblades faded. That itch had taken up residence as soon as the pair had left the Tendo compound and stayed there for their entire trip, through lording after lording and several train transfers. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised our personal spies stuck with us through the whole trip, it isn't like we were trying to lose them. So, let's hope that they make the assumption that this little trip is about doing Usagi's friend a favor, like Nabiki's hoping for, she thought, reaching up to test her reach to the hilt of the battle ax that had replaced her battle spatula after becoming a Saotome.

From the expressions on the face of the guards flanking the doors, they were less than happy about that battle ax, but they'd recognized the two girls' samurai status from the way they moved, and so hadn't objected.

The two girls walked up to the front desk, and the platinum blonde secretary sitting there. The young woman had a slave collar around her neck — an actual collar, not the chain that Kuno had used and made standard for all Kuno slaves as soon as he became Lord, clearly displayed by the slave's pageboy haircut —and a name tag with her first (and as a slave officially only) name, Ren. “Saotome Ukyo and Tendo Akane to see Dr. Mizuno,” the former chef said.

After a few seconds' typing, the secretary frowned. “I don't see an appointment.”

“We don't have one,” Ukyo responded, shrugging and pulling a memory stick from her pocket to hand to the secretary. “Could you just pass on that we'd like to see her if she has a spare moment? She comes highly recommended, we've traveled all the way from Nerima to see her.”

“Nerima, hm?” the secretary repeated, picking up a reader sitting beside her computer and plugging the stick into it. She quickly scanned the contents of the letter that Nabiki had acquired, the girls had no idea from whom, then reached over to press a stud.

“Mizuno here.” The voice was that of an older, confident woman.

“Doctor, there are several girls from Nerima here to see you. You were recommended to them by an Andou Hideko, I'm forwarding a letter from her to your reader.”

There was silence for a time, Akane seeming to grow more and more tense as each second ticked by, until the voice came again. “I have a few minutes, send them up.” Akane's breath gusted out as her shoulders slumped.

“Yes, ma'am.” Ren looked up at the girls, her face expressionless. “Take the elevators to my right, room 304,” she said, handing back the memory stick to Ukyo. Ukyo accepted the stick with a smile and a thanks, and the two girls hurried over to the elevator.

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Dr. Mizuno was a tall woman, heart-faced and dark-haired, smile lines around her eyes — and with poorly-hid desperate hope in the eyes those lines framed.

The girls bowed, ignoring the slave collar around the woman's neck in favor of her professional training. The choice was made easier by the fact that Nabiki had learned that, when the previous Lord Kuno had made his economic assault on the Juuban lording, the more fortunate doctors of the hospital she administered had pooled their resources to purchase those members of the staff who ended up on the auction block and what members of their families they could. They had almost bid themselves into abject poverty, but they'd been able to rescue — if not free — at least their friends and those friends' youngest children.

Dr. Mizuno returned their bows. “So you're from Nerima,” she said. “I'm a little surprised that Andou-san would recommend that you come all this way to see me, seeing how she was only passing through, and only saw me because it was a busy enough day to pull an administrator out from behind her desk — Dr. Nishio at the Kuno General Hospital is her usual physician, and that hospital is both larger, and these days better staffed and funded.”

“Yes, well ...” Akane started, broke off. The girls exchanged glances, and she started again. “I'm sure she'd have recommended Dr. Nishio, if we wanted a doctor in our lording. But for why we're this far out ...” She pulled a memory stick out of her pocket and offered it to the older woman. “On the stick is a letter from Ami-san.”

Dr. Mizuno froze for a long moment, then reached out a suddenly shaking hand for the memory stick. “You know Ami?” she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“No, we don't,” Akane replied softly. “But we've recently met your daughter's friend, Usagi; she passed us the letter to deliver. If you have some time to write a letter for Ami, we can pass it back to her the same way.”

For a long minute the doctor clutched the stick to her chest with both hands, almost hyperventilating, before reluctantly setting it aside. Wiping at her cheeks in embarrassment, she said in a husky voice, “That won't be a problem, I have a large file of letters I've written over the past two years. I owe you an incalculable debt. How can I at least begin to repay you?”

“I ... I ...” Akane broke off and took a deep breath, her hands clutched together behind her back. “I would appreciate it if you could test me for pregnancy.”

“For pregnancy? And you didn't want a doctor in your lording....” Dr. Mizuno sat back down at her desk and gazed at the tense girl in the soft daylight from the window behind her, then nodded and pressed a stud beside her desk monitor. “Toin-kun, please have Amiko-kun come to my office with a blood test kit, angry wife protocol.”

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Akane was holding onto what calm she had with both hands. She had tried reading, but couldn't concentrate on the words. She hadn't been able to sit still, but there wasn't room in the office for decent pacing and from the amused glares she was getting, Ukyo was about ready to knock her out. Not that Dr. Mizuno would have minded the brief outbreak of violence, if she even noticed any more than she'd noticed the fidgeting; she was at her desk reading her daughter's letter, a constant smile on her face even as more tears flowed.

Then a chime sounded, and Dr. Mizuno jerked in her seat. Taking a deep breath and grabbing a tissue to scrub at her cheeks, she looked up at the two girls. “Tendo-san, the report on your blood work is in.” Looking back down at her screen with a finger on her trackball, she murmured, “Let's see — red blood cell count is good, white blood cells a bit high, some more findings you aren't interested in ... and you're pregnant.”

“Yes!” Akane was on her feet, fist pumping the air. Whirling, she grabbed Ukyo's hands and pulled her to her feet and into a hug, twirling her around, squealing, “Ranma will be so happy!”

“Easy!” Ukyo laughed as her swinging feet knocked some books off a side table. “That's enough, Sugar, there's no room for that, here!”

Blushing, Akane stopped spinning in place, letting go of her friend once Ukyo's feet were back on the floor. “Sorry,” she muttered as she walked over to pick up the books.

“Don't worry about it,” Dr. Mizuno assured her, chuckling. “That's certainly a much happier response than I often saw.” Standing, she offered a memory stick. “Here's all the letters I've written for Ami in the past two years. Again, thank you so much for the opportunity to send these to her.”

Ukyo accepted the stick and the two girls made their farewells and quickly left, Akane almost skipping on the way to the elevators.

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“Yes! Ranma will be so happy!” On the roof of the hospital, Morita Hwa Su winced as the shout was fed into her headphones by the bugs she and her partner had emplaced outside Dr. Mizuno's office window. Not because of the shout itself — her surveillance equipment was bleeding edge and had automatically damped down the volume before it reached her — but because of the announcement that had preceded it. She's pregnant. We are so screwed. All through the long train ride out to Juuban, she had been hoping that the possibility Hanh-san had reported after her encounter with the Saotome/Tendo contingent during the raid on the slave smuggling transshipment point would prove false. But it hadn't, and they had run out of time — things were about to get ugly.

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The Master of Servants simply sat at his desk for a time. Pregnant — what he had feared the most. Finally rising to his feet, he strode to the window of his tiny office and stared out over the small garden it looked out on. Usually the peace of the scene was a balm to his soul, but not this time, not when the peace was temporary at best, illusory at worst. Kuno-sama is not going to take this well, not at all. Of course, you don't have to tell him.... For a time Pyo-sensei considered the idea, but finally shook his head. Whenever Kuno-sama learns of it his reaction will be the same, and the backlash is likely to be the same. All putting it off will do is give Nabiki-san more time to spread her tentacles throughout the lording. I don't know what she's up to with her pointless attacks on the slave auctions and her ludicrous cover of Genma-san's classes to organize them, but that just means I'm missing something — and against someone of Nabiki's caliber, that is dangerous. No, best to strike now and get it over with. Perhaps this way, the damage will be reduced.

With a sigh, he turned away from the window to return to his desk and hit a speed dial stud. When the face of his lord's secretary appeared on his viewscreen, he forced a thin smile. “Itsuko-chan, please notify Lord Kuno that I need to speak with him.”