In Heat

“What does Midori look like?” Mousse asked sharply.

Shampoo shrugged “like a normal newborn, ugly and cute at the same time. Last time I saw her she was a month old” she said with a shrug.

“I mean physically” Mousse said.

Shampoo frowned and tried to visualize Ranma’s little surprise “cute with dark fuzz on her head, kind of pale for an Asian baby but so is Ranma, blue eyes I think” she said. Mousse relaxed at this, in his family green eyes were the dominate gene on his mother’s side, all of her four children had them and most likely his would to. “Or they could be green, she was normally asleep when I saw her” Shampoo explained. Mousse frowned, the timing would be right, but that didn’t mean that he was the only man that Ranma had slept with.

“Shampoo please tell me that story again in greater detail” Mousse said.

“Okay what do you want to know?” she said, despite what people thought, Shampoo had a mind like a steel trap and right now it had an idea teasing it. She dismissed it simply because Ranma wasn’t into men that she knew of and Mousse hated Ranma.

“Start with what happened when she got pregnant. When did you know?” Mousse asked.

“She couldn’t change her form for over a week and claimed that it was due to a resurgence of the ladle of permanence. However a few weeks later she started getting sick in the mornings and refused to eat my delicious ramen. Kasumi thought it was because of the flu, but Great-Grandmother wasn’t so easily fooled, she stole the Tendo’s garbage and we found a pregnancy test that was positive. I was totally in shock, but kept this knowledge to myself. When she started showing, I think that the other fiancées and enemies were in denial about her apparent condition. Only Kasumi and I didn’t blame her eating habits for her weight gain.

Ryoga was trying to get her to fight him when she went into labour, it wasn’t until her baby was actually born that everyone acknowledged what had happened. We were all in such a state of shock. Ryoga said he was going to kill the man that forced his friend. Kuno in his love for his pigtailed girl claimed it was his and still does and Ranma refused to say who the father was” Shampoo said.

“Do you have any ideas?” he asked.

“No, I couldn’t see her sleeping with a man, but obviously she did. Getting back to my story, her father demanded to know who the father was and she refused, so he disowned her and moved back into his wife’s house. Akane turned against Ranma and claimed that this just proved that she was a pervert. Mr. Tendo and Kasumi insisted that she be allowed to remain at their house and she did for a month despite Akane’s objections”

“Then what happened?” Mousse asked.

“Ukyou happened, she had the nerve to try and claim Ranma as her husband and Midori as her daughter, I couldn’t allow that and told Ranma that she now had to come back to the village with me so that I could protect them both. Kuno kept insisting that Ranma was his wife and Midori his daughter and that they must move to his mansion. So she disappeared one night. Nabiki Tendo called us all together, told us that we had better not follow Ranma and called us a pack of vultures. Can you believe she thought that of me?” Shampoo cried in outrage. Mousse could all to well, he was disgusted at the idea of people squabbling over an exhausted teenaged mother and using her daughter as a means to trap her into an unwanted marriage.

“Why didn’t she go home to her mother’s house?” Mousse asked. He’d met Nodoka once and she’d impressed him with her gentle motherly ways.

“Apparently her father signed a seppuku contract with Nodoka that if Ranma failed to become a man among men when he took him on the training trip when he was five, then they would both commit seppuku. Mr. Saotome certainly failed to do that with Ranma’s curse and all, that’s why they’ve been hiding at the Tendo house. She intends to make them honor the contract. You can only imagine what would happen to Ranma if she returned home not only as a female, but with a baby” Shampoo said with a dramatic shudder.

Mousse thought about it and felt something that he never expected: guilt and sympathy. He’d known that Genma Saotome was a devious coward who only seemed to want to profit off his son, but he hadn’t known that his mother wanted to kill him. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” he asked as he hadn’t known her well enough to know who her trusted friends were.

“Don’t have any idea, I think that Nabiki helped her disappear” Shampoo said with a shrug. “After she left I realized that I had been chasing her all this time and she’d been running away, and then she ran again. So I talked it over with Great-grandmother and refused to hunt down a new mother, we decided to tell the council that Ranma is dead to cancel out the kiss” Shampoo concluded and wondered again why Mousse was taking such an interest in Ranma, she’d expected him to gloat about her downfall, not look worried. The idea teased at her again.

Mousse was worried, he wasn’t worried about Ranma physically so much, she was always strong in either form, but financially. What sort of a life could an unwed teenaged mother with a young child be leading? Was she with people who could help her? Was she eating properly? Did she have the right equipment she needed for the baby? Was she receiving proper medical care, as was her child who might possibly be his daughter?

“Mousse” Shampoo said interrupting his thoughts.

“Hum?” he said pulling himself out of his fog.

“That guy who raped you; it wasn’t a guy was it?” Shampoo asked.

“No, not really” he admitted.

Shampoo narrowed her gaze and everything fell into place; Ranma’s aversion to having females grope him, how he only seemed to like Akane who is as manly as they come. Ranma didn’t like girls and he’d used his female form to explore his sexuality as he knew that Mousse was completely straight. Even Shampoo with her aversion to Mousse had to admit that he was gorgeous and might have appealed to the sexually ambiguous Ranma. But with Mousse’s blind devotion to Shampoo, might she have had to stoop to other methods of persuasion for him? “It was Ranma” she concluded. Mousse flinched when she said this. She sucked in her breath at this revelation “what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know what to do” he admitted.

Ranma hummed as she straightened the room, happy that she shift was almost over so that she could pick up her daughter from her friend Laetitia and spend a few precious hours with her. Ranma had been nervous and had been positive up to the last second that she was going to give Midori up for adoption, until she saw her face to face and fell instantly in love with the tiny scrap of human life. She’d become her world and right then and there, Ranma had vowed that no one would ever take Midori away from her. Ranma’s own childhood had been spent moving from place to place and training hard, she didn’t want that for her daughter, she’d made a solemn vow to her that she would have a real home someday.

Ranma had worked in the same diner as her friend until she’d found out that the hotel was looking for maids and they offered a fairly decent benefits package that had caused Ranma to apply immediately and get the job. She missed the additional income from tips but her daughter’s health care was more important to her. She’d moved to Shinjuku by buying a train ticket at random and winding up in the busy, crowd place with Nabiki’s money stowed in a secret pocket she’d sewn inside her shirt and Midori strapped to her back. She’d tried to take a room at a rooming house, but they refused her as her baby would disturb the other guests. One lady had taken pity on her and pointed her in the direction of her friend who let small furnished apartments above his dental office. The neighbourhood was bad, but the apartment was clean, so Ranma, her ‘twin brother’ and Midori moved in. A couple jaunts out in her male form quickly discouraged any potential looters or troublemakers. She’d bought two used futons and crib to project the image that a large male lived with her, who was highly protective of his niece.

She found a job the next day at the diner where the uniform was just a touch too short, the buttons began a bit low and it clung like a second skin. She knew that she hadn’t been hired for her brains in this case when the rest of the blue stretchy uniform as a white pointed apron and matching hat. At first Midori had to stay in the company of Ranma’s middle-aged neighbour who she suspected drank, until one night she had rescued her co-worker from two men bent on committing decent acts with her and a friendship was born. Laetitia was one of the few people in the world that knew who Midori’s father was. Who knew that Ranma had run partially out of fear of the Kuno family as Kodachi wanted to kill her as she believed that Ranma had given birth to Ranma’s baby and Tatewaki because he believed himself to be Midori’s father. She also knew Ranma’s biggest secret that she was actually a he and that she liked men. Ranma had sexually experimented with Mousse not only out of curiousity but she believed that once she satisfied her perverted attraction to males, that she would come to like females instead. It hadn’t worked, all making love to him had done was refocus her attraction from muscular men in general, to tall, pale muscular men with long hair.

She was glad when she got home and changed out of her green polyester uniform and into sweats; she fed Midori and played with her a bit. Just the sight of her smile was enough to make Ranma’s day complete and take her away from her worries. She had used most of Nabiki’s money for first and last rent on her apartment and to buy what she needed for Midori. Yes she got a regular paycheck, but that just covered the cost of food, bills, utilities, rent, diapers and whatever else a baby required. She needed to make more money in order to move to a better neighbourhood, one that it would be safer for Midori to grow up in. One of the women at the hotel who maintained a room there for her ‘clients’ had suggested a way that would involve less hours for a lot more money, which would allow Ranma to spend more time with her daughter. She couldn’t, she’d had sex once in her life and knew she could never do that for work.

Again she idly toyed with the idea of contacting Mousse, but how? She didn’t even know how to spell his real name. She’d been chagrined to learn that the people who she known as Shampoo and Cologne, were actually Xian Pu and Ko Lun when they’d given her their contact information. Xian Pu had explained that most Japanese people couldn’t pronounce Chinese names properly with their use of X and Z, so they just gave them the closest they could get in Japanese. Ranma had bitten her tongue rather then ask how Mousse’s real name was spelled nor could she think of a plausible reason for them to pass a message to him on her behalf.

Troubled, Ranma put Midori to bed in her crib and put Laetitia’s three year old daughter, Etta to sleep on the other futon and climbed into her own to try and get some rest. She knew that Midori would wake in three hours hungry and that she would be tired tomorrow, she always was so tired.

Mousse found himself troubled since talking with Shampoo, so he sought his mother’s advice. Since leaving Nerima the transformation in the blind boy was astounding, feeling that a new look would be good for his self image, his mother had given him a make over. She’d bought his contacts that allowed his eyes to be seen and she’d helped him chose western style clothing that flattered his body and fit him just right. The first time that he’d ventured from the house he’d blushed whenever a girl giggled and had complained to his mother that night that people were making fun of him. She’d asked him to do an imitation of them and had laughingly explained to him that the girls were checking him out. When the love poems and gifts had started arriving, it had been exhilarating and embarrassing at the same time for Mu Tzu, he’d learned what the expression ‘newly pretty’ meant.

He’d appreciated the attention after being rejected by one Amazonian girl for so long, he’d started to think of Nerima as being a low point in his life. His own obsession just seemed so wrong now after he spent so many years trying to squeeze himself into the narrow package that Shampoo wanted. He found himself wondering sometimes that if Shampoo had wanted a cross dresser, would he still be sashaying around Nerima in a pink cheongsam to this day?

He barely noticed the admiring glances he drew this time as he walked towards the clinic that he now worked in. His position was listed as purely clerical, but in fact he worked unofficially with rape victims. He would see these poor battered souls soon after the doctors were through with them, with their misery visible in their faces. Mousse always began by telling them about his own experience. Somehow the idea that it could also happen to a male of his size made them feel better; that it wasn’t a question of them wearing something provocative or acting easy. They would soon open up to him and he would help them heal. Dr. Chan’s method of interaction proved effective and Mousse had even received marriage proposals from ex-victims.

He nodded greeting to several people he knew, located his mother and asked to speak with her and Dr. Chan. When they both met him in an empty office, he said “I have to go back to Nerima” without pre-amble.

“Why would you want to do that, you were miserable there?” Lo Xien said in concern.

“I received news of the girl I was with; she had a baby” Mousse said and let it sink in.

Lo Xien sat down heavily “you think that it might be my grandchild?” she said in a strangled voice.

“If the timing is correct, there is a strong possibility” Mousse said grimly and looked at Dr. Chan.

He adjusted his glasses “do you feel that you can face her without anger or hatred?” he asked him.

Mousse shrugged “she’s a girl the same age as me who as far as I have been able to tell, has been disowned and has no one to protect her. She’s physically strong for a female, but I find myself concerned about her. My initial reaction was to think that she made her bed and now must lie in it. However if there’s even a remote chance that the baby’s mine, I need to know that they’re safe” he explained.

“It sounds like this is something he needs to do” Dr. Chan informed Lo Xien.

“Very well, you have my blessing; tell her when you find her that she’s welcome to come live here without judgment. She will be welcome if you wish her to be” she said.

“Thanks mom” Mousse said, not able to see that happening.

“When are you leaving?” Lo Xien asked.

“In an hour, there’s a boat departing for Nerima” he explained.

Mousse felt remorse as he stepped onto the boat, he didn’t want to go back to Nerima, his place and future was in China. He had to laugh that it was always something to do with Ranma that drew him to Nerima. He watched as the small waving figures of his mother and sisters faded from view. He knew that they worried that he wouldn’t return for another year again.