Bab 340: Plugged In
"I don't care. I'm not going!"
Akane sighed, sitting on the foot of her bed and looking up at the nonplussed redhead sitting at the study desk. "Ranko, come on. Be respectful. You have to go."
Ranko looked up from her English notes, shaking her head. "What for?! It's not my fault the old pervert looked at a picture of me in my cheer uniform and threw a fucking clot! I didn't kill him, Akane!"
"No one said you did, Ranko." Akane stood again, walking behind Ranko's chair and rubbing her back through the yellow peplum shirt she wore. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't show respect and go to the man's funeral."
Ranko scoffed, leaning back into Akane's hands. She looked up with her head cocked backward, rolling her eyes. "Respect for what, exactly? What about that man merits respect?! He's a lecher, a creep and a thief. I didn't want anything to do with him when he was alive, and I damn sure don't now that he's dead!"
"Ranko, please." Akane shook her head in almost matronly admonishment. "You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. Don't you have anything nice you could say about him?"
Ranko shrugged nonchalantly. "He's dead. That's nice."
"Ugh! You're hopeless. He was an awful person, that's true. I won't try to deny it. But we can respect what he did, at least. Grandfather Happosai founded our whole style of martial arts, Ranko. You have to at least give him that." Akane leaned down, kissing her wife on the forehead to try to soften her rebuke.
"I don't have to give him nothin'. He's taken plenty. I don't even do martial arts anymore - not really - and as far as I am concerned, you and Dad are the ones who invented the style I know. You took his style and changed it, by giving it some honor. You made it about mixing and mastering techniques and not just about cruelty and dirty tricks and fucking panty raids. If you want me to go pick through his burnt-ass bones so he can reach out of the box and grab my tits one last time for old times' sake, I'm just not all that interested."
Ranko sighed, closing her textbook and standing. She turned, swinging the chair around to face her wife before retaking her seat. "Martial arts never did anything good for me anyway. Just a lot of bullshit and sadness."
The singer's wife shook her head. "I can't believe you would say that! What about Jusenkyo?!"
The redhead blinked in surprise. I… wow. I spent so long resenting that. It never really occurred to me that I think about it differently now. It's like the Cat's Tongue, where I used to hate it and, now that I'm happy with who I am, I'm… grateful for it.
"Besides," Akane said, pacing back over toward the couple's dresser. "Without him teaching them martial arts, our fathers would never have met. Which means you and me would never have met, either. And without Jusenkyo, you wouldn't ever have set foot in the Phoenix or met your family, and you'd never have started singing, either. You owe way more to the art than you realize, baby."
Ranko nodded softly. "Yeah… I guess I never thought about it like that. But I…" She sighed, turning her head away from her wife. "I just don't wanna go, okay?"
Akane pulled her wife's chair away from the study desk with her in it, turning it to face the bed. She then sat on the edge of the freshly-made bed, taking both of Ranko's hands on her own. "There's something you're not saying. I know you too well for you to hide stuff from me, you know. Why won't you talk to me?"
The redhead nodded sadly. "I just… it's not just the dead assholes I don't wanna see. It's the living ones, too."
"What do you mean? It'll be small, just Dad and the girls and…" Akane cringed in realization. "Oh. I get it. You're worried about him, aren't you?"
Ranko said nothing, but she bobbed her head again, her ponytail bouncing cutely on her shoulder despite the emptiness in her eyes.
"Look at me, princess." Akane squeezed her hands tight, shaking them a bit in her lover's lap until Ranko's eyes raised to meet hers. "I will not let him touch you. I won't even let him speak to you. He won't be able to sneak up while I'm away or asleep. Not this time. I will watch you every second." She grinned disarmingly. "And I don't even mind doing it, because let me tell you, you are easy on the eyes, girlfriend."
Ranko blushed deeply, fidgeting with the end of her ponytail. She was not expecting the compliment in the middle of the current conversation. "I'm glad I can be pretty for you."
Akane stood, reaching down and stuffing her arm under Ranko's backside, lifting her effortlessly out of the chair. She sat back on the bed, depositing the flushed redhead on her lap sidesaddle and wrapping her arms around Ranko's ribs. "You are not just pretty, little miss. You are the most beautiful creature that has ever walked this earth. And you're all mine. Gods help anyone who tries to tell me different."
Ranko cuddled against Akane's chest, nuzzling her cheek into the front of her left shoulder. She curled up small, wanting to feel entirely enveloped by Akane's presence. Not even when she had been an all-but-invincible martial artist had she felt even half as safe as she did whenever she was surrounded by Akane Tendo's arms. "I love you, Akane. I love it when you hold me. I've never been so happy to be anything as I am to be yours."
Akane kissed the smaller girl on the top of her head. "I love you more."
"Why do we have to do this? Why can't I just stay here forever, in your arms, where I'm safe?" Ranko pulled her knees up into her chest more tightly.
Akane smirked. "You know… we could have some fun with this if we wanted to."
The young singer purred against Akane's chest. "Any time you want to have fun with me, all you have to do is ask, ya know."
"Not like that, silly girl. At least, not there. I'm talking about the funeral." Akane chuckled, shaking her head.
Ranko blushed, rolling her eyes with a shake of her head. "Way to kill the mood, babe."
Akane leaned her head forward, kissing the bottom of her lover's earlobe with open lips. "Don't you worry, little princess," Akane whispered mere centimeters from her ear. "If I want you to be in the mood, you will be. I can make that happen any time I like."
The redhead shivered, her breath catching in her throat as she nodded emphatically. She tightened her grip around Akane's neck with her arms as her body quaked in her wife's lap.
"So you were telling me about your new friend at school. Yume, you said her name was?"
Ranko's head bobbed slowly in response, but Akane's gentle kiss on the side of her neck had rendered the young singer in her lap momentarily incapable of speech.
"Well," Akane said, tracing her fingers down the trembling girl's hypersensitive neck. "You said she thought you were gonna be an unapproachable bitch because you're a celebrity."
"I'll be whatever you wa… want, Akane. Just don't sss…stop touching me," Ranko pleaded haltingly.
Akane grinned. "What if we leaned into it? Show old Saotome just how much higher class my girl is than him?" She paused her teasing for a moment, allowing Ranko to be able to think clearly enough for consideration and potential consent.
Ranko's flushed deeper still. "So you want me to, like, be a catty little cu…"
Her words were cut off by a rapping at the front door of the girls' apartment, and Akane blinked in surprise. She stood, cradling her wife in her arms until she could be deposited back into the study chair. Akane leaned down, whispering in her ear. "Now, you stay right here and be cute for me until I get back."
Leaving Ranko to catch her breath after a furious kiss, Akane made for the door and pulled it open. There was no one at the door, but a large box awaited her on the doorstep. It took her a moment to look it over before she realized what it was. "Oh, sweet! It's here early!"
"What is," Ranko called from the bedroom, daring not to leave the chair she was told to stay in. She heard the door slam closed, and a moment later Akane walked into the bedroom carrying an enormous white square cardboard box. Ranko was fairly certain that if they got cozy, she and Akane could have curled up in it together.
Akane grinned, lowering the box carefully to the mattress. "Something I ordered before you left on tour, when you got the last Yokai check. We're gonna need it for school, I think." She used her fingernail to pierce the packing tape sealing the box, popping its tabs open. She pulled a large, jagged piece of white styrofoam from the box, turning and balancing it atop Ranko's ponytail. "Hold that for me," she said with a giggle.
As Ranko watched, Akane reached her arms almost all the way to the shoulders in the box, extracting what appeared to be a small beige television from it. It had a large ivory base with a variety of slots in the front of it, and a selection of unfamiliar ports and connections dotting the back.
"We needed a TV for school? We already have one, but I'm down for extra distractions if it's a choice between that and doing homework," Ranko said with a giggle as she set the styrofoam square aside.
Akane set the device on the center of the desk, reaching back into the box and pulling out a flat box that was almost the full length of the taller one. She opened it as well, removing a beige keyboard with a coiled cord and setting it in front of the monitor.
"You bought a computer?" Ranko blinked. "Do you even know how to use one of those?"
Akane grinned and nodded. "I do, and you're going to, soon. Why did you think I made you sign up for a computer class, silly girl?" She began piling a collection of wires and accessories on the desktop as they came out of the box.
"Do you need me to move to the bed, so you can hook it up?" Ranko watched curiously, having never seen such a thing attempted. It was a skill she did not know her lover possessed.
Akane giggled. "Unless you'd like me to put you in the box like a cute little kitty."
Ranko blushed furiously, shrinking with a shy simper as she hid her face against her shoulder. "No, I… I'm good, thank you." She stood and made her way to the bed as Akane snapped her fingers, swinging her arm forward as if disappointed with her wife's answer.
The larger girl crawled under the table, beginning to connect wires to the back of the machine. She threaded a telephone cable from the jack on the wall up behind the desk to the back of the machine before grabbing the dangling gray power cord from behind the device and plugging it into the electrical socket under the desk.
"You look excited," Ranko said, continuing to watch her. "I'm glad. I mean, I prefer to be the thing that's exciting you, but…"
Akane laughed as she returned to her feet, leaning over the desk and connecting the mechanical keyboard and single-button mouse to the back of the device. "You always excite me, gorgeous, even when I'm distracted." She reached behind the monitor, flicking a switch with a heavy click. "I think that's got it!"
Sure enough, a tinny chime squelched forth from the monotone speaker built into the side of the monitor, and it lit up to reveal a gray and white loading screen. A loud grinding noise split the air as the machine checked for the presence of a floppy disk in the drive and found none. Ranko grinned, clapping her hands in playful applause. "You did it! You gonna play with it for a bit? I can move my stuff out of the way."
"Nope," Akane said, standing and motioning to the chair. "You're gonna play with it for a minute."
The redhead waved her hands defensively. "Nuh-uh! I don't know how! I might break it!"
Akane laughed, patting the chair. "You can't break it, and I'm gonna show you how to use it. C'mon, get your cute little ass over here and sit down."
As Ranko sat, the screen changed to a background image of a nondescript grassy hill, over which several icons had been rendered down the left side. "Oh, cool, it has pictures!" The only computer she had ever used was with Nabiki at a school computer lab years ago, and its interface had been all green text.
"Yep," Akane said. "You can put any picture you want up there and that's what it shows whenever you don't have something open."
Ranko picked up a small beige peripheral connected to the computer, looking at it skeptically. "Is this a microphone or something? Hello," she called into the hole in the bottom of the device.
Akane laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. "Silly girl. You use it to point at stuff. Look, I'll show you." She took the mouse and rested it back on the table, pointing to the little white arrow on the screen with her finger as she dragged the mouse across the painted wood surface with a quiet scratching sound that reminded her she needed to buy a mouse pad. "And then when the arrow is on what you want, you push the button to pick it."
"How do you change the picture," Ranko asked, smiling up at Akane. I love it when she teaches me stuff, Ranko thought. She leaned over to the bed, grabbing her stuffed phoenix and setting it in her lap. "Come here, Burny! We're gonna learn how to be nerds!"
Rolling her eyes, Akane pointed to an icon. "Click there. Then there." She continued issuing directives until Ranko was faced with a selection of twelve images that came included with the operating system.
The redhead cycled through a few pieces of abstract art, a random photo of a seaside cliff, and a few images that were just the logo of the software company on different-colored backgrounds. "These are all kinda lame. I guess we'll just leave the original one," Ranko said with a tiny hint of disappointment on her face.
"Nah," Akane said, waving her hand dismissively. "We'll just go online and download a new one. Click that thing right there."
Ranko set Burny on the desk and reached for the mouse, moving it where Akane's finger pointed and clicking on a picture of a globe. In a moment, she was greeted with a small window asking for a user name and a password. "Do we have to set something up to use this," Ranko asked with genuine curiosity.
Akane.shook her head. "I took care of the sign up from school so it would be ready when the computer got here. Click on the user name box and type tendo, all lowercase. Oh, ya gotta click that button there first, to switch to the English key layout."
The redhead smiled. "Well, that part I could have guessed. But what about the password?" She clicked the next box on the little dialog box.
"Put in the number sign - hold the shift key and push 3. Good job. Then push 1, and then type the word firebird," Akane said, smiling brightly.
"Number one Firebird, huh?" Ranko blushed as she typed slowly, hunting for each key with a single outstretched index finger before turning in the chair to face her wife.
"Well, I am, aren't I?" Akane leaned down and kissed her cheek as a loud screeching sound began whining from the side of the device. Ranko started to jump, but Akane smiled reassuringly. "That's just the noise it makes when it connects. It's normal. And when the sound is done, we should be in."
Indeed, a few moments later the irritating noise transitioned to what sounded like static and then fell silent, and a screen popped up featuring a blocky image of a white rabbit and a set of options in English.
"Okay," Akane said. "We're connected. There's all kinds of stuff we can do on here, but right now we want a new picture for the background, right?" Ranko nodded, and Akane continued. "Then we want to pick the Image Gallery there."
Ranko moved the mouse to the words, but nothing happened when she clicked on them. "I think it's busted. What did I do wrong?" She sounded a bit worried.
Akane laughed softly. "Nothing, baby. The mouse doesn't work on this part." She pointed to the English word on the screen. "See how the I in Image is a different color? That means you push that key to get to it. So, hit the I key on the keyboard."
Ranko did as she was told and smiled when the screen changed, her eyes widening. "Holy crap. There's a ton of categories here. Nature, sports, art…"
Akane grinned deviously. "Push C."
The redhead searched the categories until she found the one with the purple letter Akane mentioned. "Celebrities?" Still, she pushed the key as she was instructed and an alphabetized list of names appeared, each with a purple number in front of a name rather than a highlighted letter.
"Okay, hit N for Next Page," Akane instructed, quickly scanning the new options with her eyes. "Again? Keep going."
The more pages that scrolled by, the deeper the shade of red coloring Ranko's cheeks became. "You're not looking for who I think you are, are you?"
Akane giggled. "Depends on who you think I'm looking for. There! Type in 281 and push Return."
Ranko scanned the list, and sure enough, next to the requested number was her own name. "The hell? People actually have pictures of me up there?"
"Why wouldn't they? Do you not see people with cameras at your shows?" As Akane spoke, a long list of cryptic file names began to render on the screen.
Ranko nodded. "Fair point, I guess. How do you know what the pictures look like?"
Akane shrugged. "You gotta just kind of pick one at random and see if you like it. So I guess just start at the first one. Type in the number."
The redhead typed a 1 and pressed Return on the keyboard, and one line at a time, the image began to slowly render. "Man, this thing takes forever."
"It's faster at school. They have a better connection. But yeah, at home, it can take a little bit. That's okay, though. It just gives us convenient snuggle breaks!" Akane dove forward, wrapping her arms around Ranko in the chair from behind, tickling her as she kissed her on the nape of her neck.
The young songstress squirmed and giggled as the picture slowly began to form on the screen. After a few moments of being tickled and teased, enough of the image had displayed to identify it as a still screen from her performance of Back for More on the Saturday television show Bangers on the Beach.
"Aw, man, they got bathing suit pictures on there?!" Ranko hid her face with her hands in embarrassment.
Akane giggled, playing with her beloved's ponytail. "You were on national television, silly girl. Did you not think people saw it? But, this picture's too blurry. Push the X button to cancel the download, and let's look for a different one."
Ranko did as she was told, entering a 2 for the next photo on the list. Again, Akane pounced on her, kissing and tickling her as the photo began to slowly develop on the monitor. Barely ten percent of it had been rendered before Ranko identified the backdrop as Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, and noted that the picture was in better focus and saved at a higher quality; unfortunately, that had the effect of dramatically slowing the download.
As Ranko wiggled and giggled under her touch, Akane watched the photo continue to slowly appear. Ranko was wearing her sailor fuku, both of her beribboned pigtails flying parallel to the stage floor as she moved. That, coupled with the anime-styled castle on the video screen behind her, indicated that the photo had been taken either during the performance of Once Upon a Rhyme, or perhaps the mashup of Not Yours, Don't Touch and Sneak that followed it in the encore. The photo was taken from a low angle, implying that it was shot from one of the first few rows of the audience.
"Oh, this is a cute one," Akane said, giggling as Ranko tried in vain to protect herself from the barrage of tickles.
However, as more of the image was rendered and the agonizingly slow scan lines passed her waist, Ranko began to squirm for a different reason. From the angle at which the photo was taken, her pastel pink lace panties were clearly visible under her blue pleated skirt. "Oh, gods," she mouthed quietly, covering her mouth with her hands.
"Hey… Shhh. It's okay, baby," Akane said, wrapping her arms around her wife with an understanding sigh and a bit of a frown. "You're alright," she said soothingly. "You can't really… see anything."
Ranko pulled her knees up, placing her feet on the seat of the chair and hugging her knees, her thighs pressed tightly together. "You don't think they took it that way… on purpose, do you?"
Akane leaned down, kissing her wife on the top of the head. "I don't know, princess. I guess it's possible." She sighed softly. "I mean, you're a cute girl, and there's plenty of gross people out there who like cute girls a little too much." Hell, Dad's gonna have one cremated later this morning. "It's not okay that someone might try to do stuff like that, but I think we probably have to expect the reality that some people at your shows will try as your popularity grows, and be prepared for it."
"How do we take it off of there? Off the computer, I mean?" Ranko looked up hopefully to Akane, shrinking a bit when her wife shook her head.
"I…" Akane squeezed her tight around the shoulders. "I'm not sure we can, baby. It's not as bad as it could be, at least."
Ranko started to reach for the keyboard. "Can't we just cancel it like we did the other one, so people can't see it?"
Akane shook her head again. "That means we don't see it, but it doesn't stop anyone else." As she spoke, the photo finished rendering, the image ending just above Ranko's knees.
"I'm gonna start wearing shorts under my dresses on stage, I think. Like I used to, before. Is that… okay? Is that a thing normal girls do?" Ranko looked up to her wife nervously for confirmation, smiling a bit in relief when Akane nodded.
"Ranko, honey, listen to me. You are a normal girl. If you do something, it becomes a thing normal girls do. If it makes you more comfortable, it's absolutely okay, princess. They make special shorts that are really tight, for athletics and stuff, so they won't bulge or bunch up under your skirts. We'll get you a few pairs before you go back out on the road, I promise." Akane rubbed her love's shoulder comfortingly through her frilly yellow shirt. "I'll reach out to the administrators of this system tomorrow, and see if I can get them to take the picture down and check for any more like it. I can't promise they will, but I'll ask."
Ranko nuzzled against Akane's hand with her cheek. "Thanks, Akane. You take such good care of me. Now, how do we get rid of it off our computer?"
Akane giggled, taking Ranko's hand before it reached the keyboard. "I mean… while I don't love anybody else having it, and I'd love five minutes alone in a dark alley with whoever uploaded it, I dunno. I kinda like it." She grinned deviously, affecting a purr in her voice as she spoke, hoping to cheer her lover up.
"Akane!" Ranko turned to look up at her, shock in her eyes. "You're so bad!" Her cheeks were flushed, but the beginnings of a smile were starting to cross her lips. "And you used to call me a pervert!"
The raven-haired girl behind her blushed, giggling a bit. "Hey, I don't know about the random American creepo that took the picture in the first place, but I married you. I'm allowed to look up your skirt if I want to." She leaned down, kissing Ranko on the forehead. "And unlike in high school, I don't even have to pay Nabiki for this one. Bonus!"
"Wait… Nabiki sold you pictures of me?" Ranko's face was absolutely glowing red, her jaw hanging slack.
Akane bit her lip, nodding her head with a guilty little smile crossing her lips. Her own cheeks were nearly the color of Ranko's hair. "Why did you think I always told you the top drawer of my desk was off-limits?"
"I thought you kept your diary in there!" Ranko gasped, covering her gaping mouth with her hands. "You little shit!"
Akane giggled. "I did! Just, ya know, other stuff too! Don't worry, I didn't have anything too dirty. Mostly just the cute ones. But now, I don't have to rely on sneaking pictures." She leaned down again, suckling ever so gently on Ranko's earlobe and flicking at the silver stud punched through it with her tongue. "I get to see you whenever I want."
"I mean… yeah." Ranko's face was aflame, but she gave her lover a bit of a coy simper as Akane let her recover from the kiss. "If you want to look at my body, you don't gotta be sneaky about it. Not anymore. I'll gladly just take off whatever I'm wearing."
Akane breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Ranko's smile. She reached over Ranko's shoulder, pressing B on the keyboard to go back and close out the image without removing the downloaded copy from the computer's hard drive. That done, she reached down, scooping Ranko out of the chair and effortlessly lifting the smaller girl.
"Oh, no you won't. I'm supposed to take good care of you, remember?" Akane leaned down, kissing the redhead she cradled in her arms on the lips as she lowered her gently onto her back on the yellow duvet cover of their bed.
"I'll take it off for you."
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone