One might believe that Shutaro Mendo is the poster child for affluenza, but that's not true at all. Is he spoiled rotten? Certainly. Is he rich? Oh yes. Does he have a bad personality? The worst! Does he abuse his wealth for personal gain, heedless of the effect on those around him? My, my does he ever! Nonetheless, he does not quite fit the bill entirely. For one thing? He's actually willing to put in personal effort to make things happen.
If he was truly suffering(?) from affluenza, then all he'd be doing, all the time, is taking big fat wads of money out of his wallet, slapping someone with it, and telling them to make it happen. He'd go to school, slap down a cheque on the desk, and demand 100% on every test. But no, he didn't do that. He could have. Yet he didn't. His family was insane, but they were the more practical side of insanity. THey understood well enough that there were limits to what they could and should spend money to get away with, and so leaned into those areas.
The trouble is, this meant - paradoxically - that they could go even more outrageous with their spending when they were well within those areas. I mean. Someone suffering(?) from affluenza would never, ever spend an enormous amount of money specifically to publicly humiliate two small businesses by making use of a bunch of lunatics plus people who already had it in for them. They'd be more inclined to, say, drive their car through the wall of their business and bribe the cops to get away with it.
You see? Different kinds of madness at play here. Calling Mendo the poster child for affluenza is simply, flat out, not quite right. You're aiming in the right direction, but this is something... different. In some ways it's something worse, because he's more <i>competently</i> insane about it. He doesn't toss his wealth around without first thinking about where he's putting that weight.
For the time being, the assorted dishes had all finished and were in the process of being randomised before being presented to the judges. The judges were blabbering on, the contestants were the width of a horse's hair away from brawling on stage, and so this felt like a most opportune moment to sample the wares. In all honesty, he hadn't quite had the lunch he'd meant to, and the scent of this food was making him hungry.
Nobody would miss one of these dumplings. They did look quite nice. Most likely made by the twins, he thought. He'd not been paying that much attention to what everyone had been doing on stage, but - He quickly pulled one out and popped it in his mouth. Hrm! Not bad! Not quite up to his usual standards, but he had on occasion tried the sort of food available to the lower class and -
A loud bell rang. "Time to serve!" a voice rang out. That was Mister Ryuunosuke, being impatient like -
A sudden grip of something powerful, yet intangible, gripped Shutaro Mendo by the scruff of the neck, and he picked up two trays of food at random to deliver them directly to Mister Ryuunosuke. Huh? How strange, he hadn't intended to serve the man like this. But no matter, he waved at the crowd. All was proceeding according to plan. The judges had docked points from the contestants he didn't like, and they'd give around the same points for all dishes - thus ensuring that his preferred picks would win even with completely and fairly randomised dish selection.
"Bon appetite," Mendo said, then shot a meaningful look up into the audience, where he could see a certain pigtailed boy watching with his arms crossed. Oh? Still smug, Ranma Saotome? That confident in your girls, are you? We'll see, we'll see! Perhaps you would come crawling on your hands and knees, begging that their businesses are not ruined forever? Perhaps you will come to understand your place in the world better, and learn not to try to rise above your station? Perhaps -
Ding! A bell rang. It was Kinnosuke who rang it.
"How may I serve you, sir?" Mendo immediately asked, without any hint of hesitation. Huh? Why did he -
"Oh, I was hoping for a glass of - Pardon me, but water is free at this event, yes?" Kinnosuke asked. Mendo nodded. "Then you wouldn't mind, would you...?"
"Right away!" Mendo said, hurrying off to fetch him a glass of water as fast as his legs would carry him. What was he doing? Why was he serving that man? What had gotten into him all of a sudden?!
<hr>
Shampoo watched Mendo run off with a sense of dawning horror. Epiphany isn't always a nice thing to experience. Sometimes it makes you realise a truly awful truth about the world, and in this case -
"Ukyo!" Shampoo hissed. "Idiot rich boy must have eaten one of the dumplings!"
"Are you sure?" Ukyo whispered back. Then looked over at him hurrying along to give that Kinnosuke creep a glass of water, holding it on a tray like a butler serving their master. "Uh... I guess so?"
Those dumplings had a special mushroom in them that Shampoo intended to use to cheat this contest to her own victory. The way they worked was simple enough: The first sound they hear after eating one compels them to obey the first command they hear, until the effect runs out. Which created a problem. What sound had Mendo heard, and what command had he been given? Depending on those two factors, he could easily wreak chaos with their -
Oh! The Gambling King had eaten a dumpling! Shampoo immediately blew a whistle and yelled. "Give lots of points!" while doing a high kick.
"Hey, no influencing the judges!" that octopus mask wearing freak yelled. Shampoo stuck her tongue out at him and continued her impromptu cheer routine. If she'd figured this guy's game out properly, then they should only need one judge to give them lots of points anyway. The Gambling King, in turn, immediately gave the dumplings a perfect ten, likely without even realising he had done so. Perfect! Now they were on the track to -
Pink and Link clapped their hands together, right as Ryuunosuke's father ate a dumpling himself. "No matter what dirty trick you use! This is over!" they declared. Seeming triumphant and confident. "We will kick Shampoo's butt-"
And that's how Shampoo suddenly found herself fending off a complete lunatic, who was attacking her because he ate the stupid hypno-mushrooms, and those stupid twins had to give him a stupid command before she could give him a harmless one.
"Those dumplings were so delicious that I must attack you!" the man yelled.
"Aiyah! That make no sense at all!"
<hr>
So this was going well. Ranma pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a weary, weary sigh.
"Weren't you talking about how confident Shampoo was?" Akane asked, a bit of a barb there from her. "Hey, Ranma! Weren't you saying it would work out okay because Shampoo had a plan? You know! Like all the plans she came up with that ended up in total chaos!"
"You made your point," Ranma replied, then stuck out his hand to catch the spatula that was sent flying away from the stage. "Any better ideas from - Hey!"
Akane was already drifting off, floating down to the stage, casually weaving through the audience, huffing and puffing, and making a beeline right for the judge's desk. Once there, she grabbed a dumpling before Kinnosuke could eat it, then stormed over to Shampoo, grabbed her jaw and tossed a dumpling inside.
"Use your fucking shampoo memory thing on Mendo to make him forget all about us!" she commanded. "Honestly! The things a girl has to do to - "
She whirled around and clobbered Mister Fujinami without looking when he lunged for Shampoo, who had already turned away to scrub Mendo's hair. This got her a round of applause from the audience, who might be biased in Mendo's favour, but absolutely nobody liked Mister Fujinami. Literally nobody. Urgh! This whole thing was stupid! It was ridiculous! It was beyond the pale!
With that little task done, Akane quickly drifted back up to her seat while the audience watched in total confusion. Then she parked right back in her rightful seat. Ranma's lap. He was grinning like an idiot, of course, so she wrapped her arms around the back of his head.
"Done!" she said. "I hauled their dumb butts from the fire and saved the day for a change. So? Why don't we... Have a little fun while the chaos plays out down there?"
"Yeah," Ranma grinned back at her, and leaned in for that rightfully earned smooch. "Kinda wish we'd thought to do that to Shampoo way back when, huh? Would've saved us a lot of trouble."
All of a sudden, the mood was gone. Akane grabbed Ranma's pigtail, and sent a few volts right through it. That boy! He really needed to learn how to control his mouth better!
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