As Genma quickly learned, trying to herd a bunch of hungry Saotomes has a few similarities with herding cats, though he somehow felt that neither Ranma nor his inexplicable siblings would quite appreciate the metaphor. The four of them scattered in search of food in four completely different directions, leaving him sitting there scratching his head with the Jusenkyo guide.
“Well, they certainly seem energetic enough,” Genma said, coughing into his hand, settling down in place without any intention of giving further pursuit to any of them. “I’m sure that Ranma will be able to use this opportunity to grow as a martial artist. After all, challenges like this are exactly what a martial artist must thrive upon!”
“Yes, good sir!” the guide said, nodding in enthusiastic agreement. “Is good chance for you training too! Keep control over such rowdy personality no easy to anyone!”
Unfortunately that was probably going to be quite true. Goodness. What was Nodoka going to say? A little bit of mental calculation indicated she wouldn’t believe the curse story without corroboration, like for example his own… Perhaps he would be better suited laying off finding a cure until he explained it properly to her? Once she accepted that idea, surely she’d warm up to the idea of having three more children than she actually gave birth to. Probably best to keep Ranko silent during that meeting, as she seemed like the type to raise trouble deliberately…
Then there was the engagement to one of Soun’s girls to consider. Didn’t he have three daughters? How fortuitous. While Ranma’s curse might complicate certain matters greatly, in this case it might make things easier. Far more likely now that one of them would be willing to go along with the idea; hell, if he played his cards right all three of them might well wind up marrying a Tendo! Not to mention that the four of them could easily play off against each other, pushing their martial arts skills to greater heights… Yes, it could easily turn out that this curse was the best thing to happen to either one of them!
Oh, Genma. Don’t you know that even thinking those kinds of thoughts tend to make the gods of fate quickly enter a pissy mood?
<hr>
Ranma was hungry and irritated, which rarely meant a decent combination. Three other hims running around made him feel understandably uncomfortable, in particular the way that they behaved nothing like him at all! He wasn’t an arrogant, vain son of a bitch, nor did he pick fights for no good reason or particularly enjoy getting a rise out of people all the damn time!
Except, of course, that these actually <i>were</i> traits that he had. He was just seeing them both amplified and from an outsider’s perspective. But that is a digression, and more insightful than Ranma was currently capable of because, as mentioned previously, he was quite hungry. Question was, where would a guy find something nice to eat around here? Wasn’t like there were any shops or restaurants or anything like that… Best chance was maybe finding some fruit, or maybe ask a local for directions somewhere -
Ranma stopped, suddenly feeling a sudden wave of dread wash over him. It felt like someone walked right over his grave, as though something terrible had just happened somewhere that he couldn’t do anything about. Well… Whatever it was, he’d have to deal with the consequences later on. For now, he was too damn hungry to care!
<hr>
“Who or what does a guy have to stomp to get something to eat around here?!” Isamu screamed to the heavens, but as he expected nobody answered. Bunch of bastards anyway. He jabbed out at the air, almost seeming to be aggressively dancing forwards rather than walking. But be warned! Say that to his face, and he might just put a bruise or two on yours. Dancing is, after all, for sissies.
“Gotta be something to eat around here,” Isamu grunted. “Gotta be something…”
“Hey, you!” a voice yelled and Isamu froze on instinct, which might seem a mite peculiar but he only did so to allow himself the chance to look around for the source of the voice, to ensure he would be better placed to run towards it. “Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing! That’s really not what you think it is!”
“Hahaha!” a rather ugly bald man laughed, carrying a plateful of delicious-looking ramen in his hands like it was the holy grail filled with water from the fountain of youth. “You can’t fool me! I know exactly what this is! Leave me alone and let me have my flowing locks back!”
“But it really isn’t the Dragon’s Whisker! For your own sake, please list-”
At which point, Isamu swooped right on in and swiped the bowl out of the bald man’s hands, then gulped it down in a delicious mouthful while shoving the pest to the ground. Oh, yeah! That hit the spot reeeal nice! For once, Isamu cracked a smile while patting his belly, though the smile did break when the pursuer finally reached him and gawked at him with his stupid old face.
“Take a picture. Last a bit longer,” Isamu sniffed.
“You… Ate the ramen?” the pursuer said. “You idiot! Do you have any idea what you have done?!”
“Dammit!” the bald man screamed. “You even have a full head of hair! It’s not fair! Damn you!”
Isamu gave him a look that should have killed the annoyance on the spot, but instead sent him scurrying away with his tail between his legs. Coward. It wasn’t like Isamu was actually going to try something with an obvious weakling. Then again, he might rethink the policy for the guy staring at him like he was a giant talking slug.
“Something I can help you with?!”
“No… But there may be something I can help <i>you</i> with. I should probably explain. That man stole what he believed to be the Dragon’s Whisker. It is an old remedy for male baldness. Very rare. However, in recent years we have taken certain precautions to dissuade thieves like that; in particular we sought assistance from someone greatly knowledged in mysticism for a suitable punishment for those that attempted to consume the whisker without our permission.”
“Yap, yap, yap! Care to get to the point already?”
“Ahem! Yes, well. We, uh, requested that the punishment reveal to the world the true nature of the thief, in particular how big a dick they were. Unfortunately she seems to have misunderstood, and… Well… I’m sorry to say…”
All of a sudden, Isamu’s centre of balance was thrown way, way off. A moment ago his trousers were pretty baggy, but now… Now they were pretty damn tight. Without saying a word, he nodded his head and walked over to the nearest tree, whereupon he completely destroyed it with a single punch.
<hr>
Tomorrow was an important day. The most important day of the year for the people that mattered. Tomorrow was the day that Shampoo would win the village championship. Tomorrow was the day that she would establish herself as the best young warrior, the shining example of her generation. So. Today she had certain things in mind: For example, ensuring that her skills were sharp, her body healthy, her mind clear, and to that end she was going to bathe within a concealed hot spring which had been used by her family for the purpose of rejuvenation going back generations.
It was her first time here alone. The route was treacherous unless one knew the secret, which dissuaded most that would come this way. Some just liked a challenge. Even so, they wouldn’t discover the hot spring that easily. Even if they did, they wouldn’t think it a worthwhile enough reward to tell anyone about it. Shampoo and her family knew better. There was something about the spring that brought good fortune to her family in matters of strength, beauty, longevity and love. In all honesty, Shampoo was already blessed with strength and beauty, and had little concern with how long she would live. If only her love life didn’t consist of Mousse pussyblocking her at every single point then she would have the perfect life…
“Oh, what beautiful scenery,” a voice said in a language she didn’t actually understand. “It matches with my own portrait rather nicely. Alas, for a camera so that it could last forever! However, my thoughts return once again to filling my appetite, so I must regretfully leave my musings behind and that’s a naked girl, oh goodness, I do apologise!”
She had been seen. By an outsider male. Shampoo eyed him carefully, and noted that he did seem to move like a martial artist. Her hand moved swiftly underneath the water, snaking up towards the surface to retrieve a towel to properly cover herself, before leaping out of the spring to launch an assault on the peeper - Which somehow went a mile wide.
“You are so dead!” she yelled, spinning around to adopt a battle position once she had landed on the ground. His own posture seemed relaxed at first glance, but it told Shampoo all she needed to know. He was a defensive fighter, using his agility to avoid his opponent’s blows. Well then. Shampoo could certainly cope with that. She was pretty fast and agile herself, not to mention aggressive.
“My most sincere apologies,” the boy said in suddenly perfect Chinese. “I did not mean to offend. Must two such beautiful people fight one another? It would be a crime to inflict injury upon your beautiful face.”
Oh, so he fancied himself quite the lady’s man, did he? Well. Sure, he was handsome, and flirtatious, and goodness, the muscles underneath that gi almost seemed to gleam with perfection, but Shampoo had been wronged by this man! This outsider! So she had to punish him! Then erase his memories of their encounter with a certain bottle that she pulled out of hammerspace, all the better to punish him with.
So, she leaped up around to the back of him with the intention of getting this over with quickly and neatly, except that he rolled away from the attack quite easily and somehow wound up behind her instead, pulling her into a tight embrace. “Now, now! Let’s not be silly,” he whispered in her ear. “I know, it’s impossible for anyone to forget meeting such a beautiful person… But we can still put this behind us, can’t we?”
She attempted to ram the back of her head into the front of his, which seemed to make him panic a little bit. So she attempted to clock him with the bottle of shampoo, only to find her blow blocked and the bottle dropped into the spring. Fine. Shampoo shrugged that off. She could retrieve that later, but for now -
“Please, miss!” the nuisance peeper insisted. “I have no intention of harming a beautiful woman, but if you do insist on attempting to damage my own features then, alas, I must relent and retaliate! Prepare yourself!”
Prepare herself? She did nothing but prepare herself, day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment! She unleashed a flurry of blows, not quite the vaunted chestnut fist but far faster than any outsider should have been able to keep up with. Should have. This boy did it single handed. For the first time since the fight began, Shampoo caught a glimpse of it. This boy, this outsider… Was leagues ahead of her. She might have to give him the kiss of marriage by the time this was done.
<i>And would that be such a terrible thing?</i>
The thought was a sufficient distraction for him to land a sweep, and keep her from landing any way but awkwardly. She bounced her head off the side of the spring and landed in the water, which for reasons that mystified her seemed a little more bubbly than it used to. Then she saw why, and felt a strange terror rising up inside her. The bottle had popped open in the bottom of the spring. She was being exposed to memory-erasing shampoo moments after taking a blow to the back of the head. Had it hit a few shiatsu points to trigger a memory loss of any kind? Shampoo struggled, and couldn’t remember for the life of her. What <i>were</I> the shiatsu points in the first place?
She broke the surface of the water and took a deep breath of fresh air. A hand appeared and she gratefully took it, then found herself being hauled up into the grip of a stunningly handsome young man.
“Are you alright?” he asked. “You don’t still want to fight, do you?” Shampoo shook her head. Why would she ever want to fight someone like this? “Glad to hear it. My name is Akihito Saotome. What is yours?”
“Shampoo,” she replied automatically, then with a jolt realised that she couldn’t remember anything else at all. “I… I don’t know who I am!”
“Oh dear,” Akihito said. “Let me see, I think you landed pretty heavily on your head. Hm… No blood, but we would do well to get you to a doctor in case you have a concussion… Do you remember anything else at all besides your name?”
Shampoo concentrated. No. Nothing in particular came to mind. Except… Looking at Akihito’s face, she did seem to recall something she should be doing right now. It was an important something, though why it was important was currently beyond her. So, she just did it. First, she cupped his cheeks and looked him in the eye. Then, she said the words “You, I love,” and kissed him on the mouth.
“Well… If you insist,” Akihito said, blushing slightly. “But… I think you should have your head checked out first, don’t you?”
“Yes, husband!” Shampoo said with a sincere and charming smile.
<hr>
This was a form of torture, it had to be. Given how hungry she was, it was inevitable that she would develop a few quick cons to get a bit of a nibble here and there, but the damn place was vacated! It was in the middle of nowhere! Made sense, really. Who would wanna live anywhere near a cursed valley? Kinda made her wonder what the guide’s game was. If he was trying to hide from someone, becoming a tourist guide seemed a stupid occupation. Maybe something else she wasn’t seeing…
“Damn you, Ranma Saotome! Where the hell are you?!”
Aha! Someone was singing her favourite song. Ranko smirked, then cleared her throat and prepared herself for the performance of a lifetime. Arrange her gi to show off a bit of cleavage, stuff the trousers and the boxers out of sight, lie back on the ground in a swooning position and then -
“Oh, woe is me!” she moaned. “I have been lost in this strange wilderness for so long, all alone and helpless! If only a kind-hearted stranger would arrive to rescue a cute, helpless damsel in distress!”
A head poked out of the brush, and Ranko’s concerns about food vanished in a heartbeat. Though this may seem confusing to some people with limited imaginations, particularly when the word “Yum!” passed through her head a couple of times.
“Are you alright?” the handsome boy asked, by her side in an instant. “Do you need me to take you -” yes, yes, yes, Ranko enthusiastically thought “- to a doctor?”
“No, but thank you,” she said, still feigning weakness. “What I need right now… Is food!”
She watched with amusement as he unpacked his giant backpack which had to be full of just about every single thing in the world. It was so adorable! Almost as cute as his butt, which she could so easily reach out and -
Hang on. This guy had said Ranma’s name, right? Hrm… She put it through her memories from that previous life, the less than awesome time where she was nothing more than a repressed thought in Ranma’s head and tried to put a name to the face. The fangs were the giveaway. Ryoga Hibiki. Gosh! Who could have guessed he’d be so… Handsome and rugged to the female point of view? That thought made Ranko smirk a bit to herself. She understood the male perspective better than any woman. Seducing him would be a snap!
Well, that’s what she thought at the time. As Ranko would soon learn, she only had experience of being Ranma Saotome. Not of what men are like in general, nor come to it what it was actually like to be a woman.
- Ranma arrives at the Joketsuzoku village, and meets with Cologne or Mousse.
- Akihito returns to the group with his new wife. Genma is not amused, but lightens up a bit after Shampoo cooks for them, then kicks his ass for a sexist comment.
- Isamu discovers that more than just his dick size has changed!
- Ranko’s seduction of Ryoga goes so badly, he falls off a cliff.
- Later, at the Tendo family dojo!
- Something else
Nice stuff, but...I'm pretty sure that the memory shampoo didn't work on its own, it had to be massaged in with shiatsu techniques.
ReplyDeleteQuoth the episode, “Had it hit a few shiatsu points to trigger a memory loss of any kind?
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