A/N: Hello, readers! I bet everyone thought I abandoned this one. But no, I just have a picky muse, which anyone could garner from how I update. Anyhow, here's the next chapter. Hope everyone likes it! Please, R&R, your feedback is immensely important to me.

Akane walked a step behind Ranma, her mind miles away. She thought back to a week ago when Kasumi gave her the one thing that could change her life forever, though she didn't know it at the time. A single thin, leatherbound journal presented after a particularly bad incident involving herself, Ranma and the Amazons – it was odd that was all it took. An old journal that Kimiko Tendo had composed when her sickness had begun to settle into her bones – a little book, granted, but it was all that was left of her mother and it was the most precious thing in the world.

A soft splash brought her back to the present world and Ranma's sudden scowl. Ranma, who was now the vision of his buxom redheaded, decidedly female self. There was irritation in those bright blue eyes and something like resignation.

Akane cleared her throat and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. When he jerked unexpectedly at the contact, she pulled her limb back to her side, biting back the sigh that lifted her chest. That's right, he hasn't said whether he… She cut the thought short, afraid of what it might do to her already fragile mood. "Come on, let's get home and heat you up some water," she said softly.

"Did you mean it?" he asked suddenly, his voice somewhat uneven.

"Mean what?" she responded.

"That you lo… that you l… what you said in the C-Cat Café," he managed after a couple attempts.

Akane arched an eyebrow, her mind wondering if the reason he couldn't even say the word meant that he was too scared or if he just didn't return the feeling. "I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it."

"You always mean everything you say?" Ranma rejoined skeptically.

"Well…" Akane thought about the many hurtful things she'd said to him since his arrival in Tokyo, how many insults she threw out just because she was uncomfortable or hurting. "No." She watched his shoulders slump forward in defeat. "Ranma, I meant that. I do…" She stopped for a moment, taking a steadying breath. "I do love you," she managed in a whisper.

Ranma turned to face her abruptly, eyes wide and strong emotion pulsing out at her. "Akane, I… I…" He then exhaled roughly, though the gesture wasn't as effective on a female face. "I'm no good at this," he murmured.

Akane inclined her head slightly. "It's okay."

"You don't have to be so nice."

She bit her lip, keeping herself from biting back at him with words. Despite his seeming return to normal, she knew that there was still something wrong with him, something off. So, she decided to change the subject. "What do you think about having Ukyo as a sister?"

It worked, as Ranma's feminine face curved into a bright grin. "It's great! I mean, I get to keep my best friend, she gets to be a girl, and her honor is restored."

Akane rolled her eyes as she opened the front door, foregoing the formality to calling out 'Tadaima!' to the mostly empty house. "Well, everybody's happy, right?" Her tone was drier than she intended and she wasn't surprised when Ranma caught it.

He leaned forward to look at her face, red pigtail swinging slightly with the action. "Are you really happy about this?"

Closing her eyes, she willed herself to inject some real emotion into her voice and placed a semi-genuine smile on her face. "Of course I'm happy. It's just…" Her eyes darted away from Ranma's. "I was just thinking about some of the things Ukyo said before you got there."

Ranma's forehead wrinkled in concern. "What did she say?"

Akane waved a hand dismissively. "Nothing much. I guess I'll just have to get used to her opinion of me. It's not that important, anyway."

Though his face implied that he wanted to question her about it further, he followed her lead and shrugged, placing his pack near the door. "I wonder where everyone is…"

She looked down at the row of shoes near the door – hers, Ranma's… Nabiki's. "Looks like Nabiki's home, at least."

Ranma nodded idly at her statement but she could see his mind was already far away as he walked the familiar path toward the kitchen. Knowing that he was going to heat up some water in order to change back to his male form, Akane walked up the stairs, trailing her fingertips along the wall before knocking lightly on her sister's door.

"Hey, Nabiki. What're you doing?" she asked as she opened the door.

Nabiki turned quickly to face Akane, her smile a tad over-wide and laughing nervously. "Hey, sis." Akane narrowed her eyes immediately. She knew that expression – it was the same one she got when she discovered the spy camera in the eye of one of her stuffed animals or when she just crossed the line of decency to get some yen out of Kuno. That expression meant her sister had been hiding something and was sorely afraid of getting caught.

Her lips curling into a small smirk, Akane eyed the paperwork that littered Nabiki's desk. "What's that?"

Her eyes widening comically, Nabiki moved swiftly to cover all the papers with an arm but the swiftness and force of the movement caused one of the papers near the top to shift and then drift to the floor. Before her sister even had time to react, Akane darted forward, plucked up the sheet of paper, and backed away in order to have a look at it. "It's nothing, Akane," Nabiki insisted softly. "Just give it back, okay?"

"Really?" Akane arched a skeptical eyebrow at her sister and inspected the paper herself. After a moment of scanning it, she realized it was Ranma's birth certificate. It contained both the Aoyoma and Saotome namesake, apparently because his mother's official name was Nodoka Aoyoma Saotome. Her eyes slid from the certificate back to her sister's face. "What are you up to, Nabiki?"

Nabiki tilted her head slightly, affecting a nonchalant but knowing smile. But then again, almost every expression that passed across her face tended to be knowing in one way or another. "Just a little research," she caroled gently.

Keeping the birth certificate well out of her sister's reach – and also idly realizing that she was keeping her fiancé's information hostage – Akane settled herself firmly on Nabiki's bed and presented her with a glare. "Well, then. You shouldn't have a problem telling me about it."

Her older sister looked back at her with steady brown eyes for long moments before her searching expression broke into a smiling sigh. "Fine. Ranma is actually from a prominent samurai family. Even with Genma in the mix, his pedigree is better than Kuno-chan's, much better. As it turns out, Mister Panda was lying about the whole being from a family of liars and thieves."

Akane arched an eyebrow, pinning her sister in place with a look. "Why were you hiding it, then?"

Nabiki scoffed immediately. "I was going to sell it, of course. To the Kunos, the Amazons, and Ukyo," she clarified, ticking her main sources of income from her schemes.

Fighting the urge to bury her face in the palms of her hands, Akane shook her head slightly. I can't believe this. She was going to make everything even worse. "Nabiki, maybe I should tell you where Ranma and I have been today."

Nabiki arched an eyebrow, obviously having a hard time believing that she had done something with Ranma already that day and come home in an okay mood. "Oh? And what would that be?" She affected complete boredom, her mask of wishing she was elsewhere, but she still listened.

Akane sighed and glared at her sister until Nabiki's face melted into the familiar blank mask, broken only slightly by the chagrined half-smile. "Okay, so… we were with Auntie Nodoka today. He was going to…" She stopped, swallowing past the dryness in her throat. "He was going to fulfill the seppuku pledge." Nabiki opened her mouth to ask a question or make a remark but Akane just turned the glare up a notch. "Wait till I finish. Anyway, he didn't have to and I'd like to think I was part of the reason. And she… she took care of all of it. No more Amazons and no more Ukyo. Well, okay, there's still Ukyo but she's his sister now."

"Sister?" Nabiki echoed softly, her eyes gazing forlornly at the setup to her new scheme.

"You were going to destroy everything. You know this would have made everything so, so much worse." She leaned forward, letting the hard look in her eyes soften to sadness and taking her sister's hand. "Why would you do this?"

Nabiki's eyes glinted dangerously but quickly shifted from a borderline glare to her no-nonsense blank gaze. "Three reasons," she began, holding up three of her fingers for Akane to see. As she listed the reasons, she tapped each finger in turn with the index finger of her other hand. "First of all, we all know how Genma is. He would do to the dojo exactly what he did to Ukyo's dowry – destroy it when it stops being of use to him. Personally, I don't even know why he thought a dojo would be useful to him at all."

Akane's brown eyes flashed dangerously, having to admit that Nabiki's conclusions were true but still angry at how her life was still being decided for her. "And the rest?"

Tapping her index finger to the next digit, indicating that this was the second reason, the middle Tendo teenager continued. "Next, in my research, I manage to discover the statement of Ranma's inheritance. It clearly says that if he marries prior to his eighteenth birthday, cheats on his wife, or has premarital sex, that inheritance defaults to Genma. If he manages to follow these conditions, he'll receive it upon the birth of his firstborn."

At that, Akane ran a hand through her short hair, swallowing against the thought of sexual relations with her fiancé. "The last reason?" she asked in a small voice, almost afraid to know about why her sister had apparently been working to keep them as separate as possible.

"Lastly, there's... his curses. Both the Jusenkyo curse and the Nekoken, it seems that they both can be transmitted to his children."

"I admit that this is all bad. Worse than I imagined, actually," Akane admitted in a gentle voice. Feeling the tears filling her eyes after all that she had been through that day, she looked her sister in the eyes. "But why? Why would you sell this information? Do we need the money that badly?" Even as she asked the question, she was afraid to know the answer, knowing that various circumstances had led to them to become increasingly... creative with gathering necessary living funds.

Pressing her lips together, Nabiki turned her head away in shame. "Twenty million yen," she answered softly. At that moment, even around her fairly audible gasp, Akane knew instinctively why her sister felt so ashamed about this. After all, she was in charge of the house's finances, almost all of the profits from her money-seeking ventures being dumped into the communal wallet. "Between food, utilities, repairs, and fines collected from the city, we need it within two months. If not, we could lose the entire compound, both the house and the dojo." Nabiki sighed, pressing the side of her face into the palm of one hand. "That's how badly we need the money."

Akane sat back, the sudden limpness in her frame almost causing her to flop backward on her sister's bed. For a long moment, she stared in a middle distance, her mind desperately clawing around for a solution, even though she knew that the labyrinthine maze of her sister's mind had likely already thought through anything she could come up with. More than anything, though, she did not want Ranma involved. Even though he had become the main source of their income, the way Nabiki could constantly find angles to exploit, there was something very wrong with him, something that had probably been slowly going wrong for a while. More than anything, she felt a burning desire to protect him from their problems.

Even if he was somewhat responsible.

"Is there a way to get the money without involving Ranma?" Akane asked softly, finally returning her gaze to her sister. Having grown up around Nabiki, she was far more used to her diabolic means, to the point that she was mostly numb to it. "I'll do whatever you need. I'll even get a job, if it comes down to it." Akane grimaced at that option. Putting aside the fact that she had never worked before, she didn't like the thought of her grades dropping.

Nabiki stared at Ranma's birth certificate disconsolately. "Even if all the fiancées were still relevant, we'd be hard-pressed to get the money in time. Now..." She glanced quickly up at Akane, obviously irked by the whole situation. "The best we can hope for is to milk the Kunos while we still can. Even so..." At that, she trailed off, not willing to admit defeat.

"Maybe..." Akane sighed, hating the idea that popped into her mind. "What about the Saotomes? Do you think Genma's family could help?"

Nabiki shook her head immediately. "I doubt it," she answered immediately. "The older Saotomes live in the Imperial Palace."

Akane swallowed thickly, suddenly aware of the ever increasing gap between Ranma and her. All of a sudden, she realized exactly how much they were not in the same league. Sighing, she stood. "Maybe Aunt Nodoka stayed in contact with them. Maybe if she talked to them... Well, I don't know."

Grinning, an oddly manic expression on her normally blank face, Nabiki nodded encouragingly. "That's a good idea." She sighed, twisting her body to lean over a paper filled with number. "Whether it's the Kunos or the Saotomes or both, we absolutely have to get that money."

"What money?"

Akane turned to find that Ranma was standing in the doorway, his blue eyes wide in inquiry, and she cursed herself for not shutting Nabiki's door behind her. Feeling suddenly ill at ease, she offered her fiancé a smile and then proceeded to usher him out of the room, only pausing to nod slightly at her sister. "It's nothing, really. We were just talking about the house bills. Nabiki's got a handle on it."

For his part, Ranma only narrowed his eyes at her, informing Akane that her ability to lie had not improved recently. "That didn't look like she had a handle on it. Are you hiding something from me?"

For a moment, Akane hugged her body by crossing her arms over her abdomen and looked off to the side. "I'm sure it'll be fine," she assured him softly.

"I know that look," he accused immediately. "This is my fault, isn't it?"

Risking a glance at his stormy blue eyes, Akane shook her head very slightly. "It isn't." That, she could say with a great deal of certainty. Even if she hadn't been to blame for a percentage of the fines they had received, she blamed Genma for much of the money they now needed so desperately.

Ranma sighed, obviously not believing her statement. "How much?"

Frowning, she pulled her body into a straight line, refusing to bend an inch when it came to this situation. "No."

"Fine." Ranma turned away, his face twisted into a sour expression. "I'll get as much as I can, then."

Instantly, Akane grabbed his arm to stop him, knowing that he was going to do something dangerous to fix this problem quickly. He was forever putting himself in danger, even when it wasn't entirely necessary. "I can fix this!" she asserted vehemently. "You shouldn't have to." Despite this, she could only grind her teeth at the person that had to be the main source of this predicament. Not for the first time, she cursed Genma's very name.

Finally, he turned back to look at her. "Akane, there's a problem that you won't tell me about that involves me," he declared, his face stressing how much he hated secrets. "I'm not running from my problems anymore." He exhaled slowly, glancing to the side. "Sorry if it hurts your pride or something, but I'm going to fix this. This is something I can fix."

Akane blinked at the last addendum, slightly confused. Was there something he couldn't fix? After all, since he had arrived in Nerima, he had made it painfully clear that he could do everything – he could do everything she could do but better and he even excelled at the things at which she failed. Still... "I know I can fix this... somehow," she told him. "Although," she added, her lips quirking upward in wry humor, "in all honesty, I did stop Nabiki from doing something potentially very bad."

He automatically echoed her expression, though it still managed to somehow look wrong on his face. "I'd prefer it if we were honest," he told her softly. "If you don't want me to do something, you have to tell me why."

Her grip tightening around his arm, she led them both to the couch, sitting very still for a brief moment as she tried to align the reasons in her head. It was clear that she could not tell him the real reason she didn't want me to run off on his own again: that there was obviously something wrong with him on an emotional level, that she was tired of Nabiki's exploitation of Ranma, that she could do anything the middle sister asked because she was long used to such exploitation. Instead, she decided to tell him the truth about what Nabiki had been about to do. "She was going to sell information about your lineage, Aoyoma and Saotome both."

He scoffed immediately. "Fat lot of good knowing about Pops' family will do anyone. They're all scoundrels. What did she find, a ronin or something?"

Akane laughed weakly. "The Saotomes are an honored samurai clan."

"Figures," Ranma replied briefly, rolling his eyes at his father's unnecessary lie. "And the money thing? What's that about?"

Closing her eyes, reminding herself that she said she would be honest, Akane began to list the items that were putting them in the red. "First of all, you and your father go through quite a bit of food. And then, there's the utility bills for the house and dojos, as well as any repairs. Aside from that, we seem to have accrued a pile of fines for structural damage around the district." She sighed, wanting desperately to massage her temples against the mounting headache. "So, that all builds up really quickly."

Nodding sharply, Ranma stood again, gently slipping his limb from her grasp. "Alright. I know what to do. Tell Kasumi I'll be late for dinner."

Akane immediately stood, her protective instinct thrumming through her body. "Ranma! What are you doing?"

He sighed deeply, tilting his head at her. "For once, could you just trust me? I promise it's not perverted or deceptive."

"For once, could you just tell me?" she rejoined automatically. "I don't want you going off and doing something stupid."

"It's not stupid," he asserted. "But if I tell you... you'll just follow me and I can't risk you getting hurt."

"If I would end up hurt if I followed you, how does that make it not stupid?"

"If I go alone, I can focus. If you came along, I would be distracted. I would need to protect you." His blue eyes pleaded with her to understand the kind of place that he would be going, to understand that this was actually a situation in which he would do better on his own.

For her part, Akane was not an imbecile. She had a good idea about where he was going, though it was not information that a good Japanese girl – martial artist or not – should ever have. "Can you tell me how you plan to get a lot of cash all at once?"

He grinned at her, his white teeth shining back at her. "Using my only real skill set, of course."

"Martial arts?" she guessed, knowing that he didn't consider himself to be skilled in any other area. Her lips then quirked into a cheeky smirk. "You don't have another skill set, right?"

"I know where there's a tournament with a large cash prize."

Akane nodded, knowing she had probably guessed correctly. He would be participating in a cage fight, which was definitely an atmosphere in which she would be hassled by men much larger and meaner than she was. "You won't die, right?" she asked sheepishly.

"I promise that I will be back," he answered, the smile on his face fading away. "Will that work?"

"In one piece?" When his eyes shifted to the side, a clear sign that he didn't respond to avoid lying, she reached forward and grabbed his shoulders. The movement itself forced him to look at her again. "Can you at least try?"

He smiled at her, a clearly genuine expression despite the worry that muddled his blue eyes. "I can promise that. I will try my best to come back with as little injury as possible."

She echoed his expression, never knowing that her true smile buoyed him more than mere words could, and released him. "Okay. When will you be back, do you think?"

Ranma turned to the door, glancing outside to gauge the time. "If I leave now, I could be back by tonight."

She gave him a light push then, even though she wanted more than anything to hold him inside the house. "Then you should go. There's no telling what Aunt Nodoka will do if she finds out you've participated in something that's likely to be highly illegal."

Nodding at her logic, he left out the door, hopping nimbly on the wall that surrounded the Tendo compound. Once there, he turned to look at her, granting her an encouraging smile. "Later, 'Kane."

Once he was gone, Akane released a disconsolate sigh. Despite how she knew that his solution was probably the best they could have possibly come up with, she couldn't dismiss that anxious stone that had made its home at the bottom of her gut. But they had decided together, in a way, and the only thing she could really do was wait.