Akane's quiet for a long moment... thinking, just thinking, of everything she'd done with Ranma in the year since he'd come to town. How they even managed to have fun together sometimes, just... doing all those ordinary, every day things like going shopping or to the beach or just hanging out together. And how happy Ranma seemed in those ordinary, every day moments.

"He didn't remember what his mother looked like when I first met him," she says suddenly. "His dad took him away when he was that little. And when Auntie Saotome used to visit he'd always have to pretend to be my cousin, because his dad had promised to make him a man amongst men before they could see her again and he... wasn't yet."

And then, suddenly, she makes a sound that's hard to tell if it's a laugh or a sob. "Just-- gah, the Cat Fist. Sometimes he really wasn't human in his head. Undefeatable when he was. But-- not human."