Disclaimer: I am not the owner of Ranma ½ though I do enjoy my waffles with honey
Takahashi-san is an inspiration but not my face in the mirror *scawwy**
So therefore, Please don't take me away to the funny farm!!!NOO oooo
Ryoga worked hard to get Akane the glowing blue Barrettes that suddenly everybody seems to be wanting…Cologne, the Kunos, even the Dragon Lords of Japan!! With the local Martial Arts Dance off coming up and a strange new visitor to the Tendo Dojo (who seems to have a tail), will it ever be the end of the curses?
Dancing with Bacon
**Somewhere in Northern Japan**
"It's only a couple hundred yen, son. She'll love them."
Golden eyes lit up underneath a shock of black hair. Ryoga Hibiki's gaze snapped up to look at the grinning vendor.
"Who..h-..how did you know?"
The man leaned in, "You've been staring at them for ten minutes. Safe to say it's for a lady friend of yours."
He smiled and slid back the glass panel. He brought out into the open a pair of blue barrettes, shaped in the forms of twisted, interlocking knots. Ryoga knew them to be based on Celtic art, being accidentally shipped to that side of the world when he was ten.
His habit of getting lost could sometimes be very educating. But annoying. And he tried so hard to actually show up on time.
The vendor eyed his yellow bandana and smoothed shaven features.
"Though on the other hand…. son, they ain't your color."
Ryoga started to stuttered a bit about how masculine he was and of COURSE they weren't for him but the vendor waved him quiet.
"S'Ok, son I believe you. Well, kid, these aren't your normal barrettes…y'see, they are specially formulated and tested by Tibetan Llama flame dancers…. Hey…HEY!.Where you going?"
The lost boy stiffened as he sensed a rip off speech coming in. Money was hard to come by. Blasting through city walls with the Bakusai-ten-ketsu Breaking Point technique didn't make people too inclined to hire him. He was stuck working a few jobs that required the super strength he had learned for fighting Ranma, even one as embarrassing as a Lingerie Unloader. He was so glad the others never knew. Who could have known panties were so heavy?
They had fired him after nose bleeding over the products.
He couldn't help it, they were so….. lacy.
Ryoga's ripped frame tensed at the opening lines the vendor threw out and he quickly turned on heel and started to march off.
Llama flame dancers…peh…..they lived in Guam, not Tibet.
"I don't have time for fake magic anythings or sure to win love charms." Ryoga rumbled.
It was a lie. He had tried so many he lost count. He cursed the companies and the packaging, and everything else he could "sqwee" at when they always failed to win over his one desire. Ryoga's lips curved in a small smile as he marched off at the thought of her gentle head massages when he was in that cursed pig form.
Akane Tendo, goddess of cheerful smiles and the mallet of doom. Ranma could insult all he wanted about his "macho" supposed "fiancée." Akane was a fiery soul, in a beautiful, black haired frame and needed a man with strength beside her.
Akane, if only you could tell me what I know is in your heart
Akane was kind, and sweet even to a little pig. He had to admit the scary temper did kind of turn him on, when it wasn't directed at him. And when she slept……OOooo
"No, no, son, you've got it all wrong! These are for bringing out the mysteries of the female mind!!"
Ryoga stopped and stared at his shadow in the dusty road. A bead of sweat trickled down under his open collar shirt and he faced the vendor, who was now shouting from on top of the cart.
Ryoga unclenched his fists and and reached into his pocket to count the money. For Akane….
He'd do anything.
He sighed and turned back to the cart……and found out it wasn't there.
"Nani?" His head swiveled around frantically, sweat breaking out on his skin.
"Hey, over here!!"
"Where? WHERE??" He started to run around, blasting trees and other carts out of his way. The screaming of the other cart owners didn't faze him, he was used to it.
**BOOM** SCREECH** no NO Please Not my shop **BOOM** AHHHHHH
"LEFT! LEFT!! Can't you see me??! Why are you going the wrong way?!"
"Stop THROWING things at me!!" Ryoga bellowed as the little box bounced off his thick skull.
It took him twenty minutes to get back to the man, even with the vendor screaming directions from the top of the cart, throwing different items at the lost boy's head while he navigated his way through fires, piles of rubble and fleeing people.
It was always the same ending to leaving a town. Ryoga tried to tune out all the rest of the shrieking and focused in on the man with Akane's present.
"LEFT! RIGHT!! Can't you SEE ??! Take off that bandana!! I think its suffocating your BRAIN!!!" The vendor was turning purple as he hopped angrily up and down like a squat toad.
"You just set FIRE to Keiko's SHOP!!! WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO??!!"
"Just sell me the barrettes" Ryoga grumbled. He went up to the counter and pushed over the money. **CRACK** The vendor threw the bag at him and sat down in a huff behind the wheel.
"Now remember, she must have them for a week and you'll soon know all her thoughts, everything going on in her head…."
Her thoughts. OOOoooo. Ryoga shuddered with glee, surrounded in smoking ruin. He was sure the doorway had been put before him. After many months, this would be the gift that gives back. He could almost feel Akane in his arms, smell her sweet sweatband.
His nose started to trickle a little blood.
"…… for she won't be able to say any lies."
The man cocked his eye at the young man grinning in front of him.
This was perfect. Ryoga wouldn't be able to upset her like that pervert Ranma. HE always told the truth….eventually. And now Akane could shake off the rein of the suppressive Ranma and run dazzling in the sunlight to him.
**Bells and flower petals start to fall in the back, the music swells…**
"Neither will you be able to say any untruths,"
The smile vanished on Ryoga's face **and the flower petals went up in smoke**
"…or anyone else for that matter around her." The man finished.
"No lies?" Ryoga scratched his head. There was something wrong with this and he couldn't place it. Just what was it…?
The vendor shook his head and sighed as he turned over the cart's vehicle engine "And don't let them touch all the elements in one day. You won't like it."
Ryoga wiggled his nose in confusion. Ok, now this was weird. "Elements?"
"Jeez, son. You've about the intelligence gifted to a turnip." Ryoga bristled and his aura flared up but the vendor didn't notice. "They can't be exposed to water, air, metal, earth…the stuff called fire too….oh you know them." The man drove off in a cloud of ash.
Ryoga took out the barrettes out again and traced the outer knot over with his calloused thumb.
He fumbled for the directions in the barrettes package..
"WELCOME" the red letters loudly proclaimed " to the WORLD OF TRUTH. TO ACTIVATE, PLEASE PRESS THE POUND SYMBOL WITH YOUR NOSE NOW"
Ryoga muttered the incantation, bought a chicken and shook it at a fat lady. After getting slapped senseless, he took the three hairs from the next passing cat he saw.
After getting new scars on his tongue, his face and his chest, he took the hairs, along with amerikaijin stuff called "Mac and Cheese" and burned them with a magnifying glass.
And was rewarded when the barrettes glowed blue in the now rising moonlight. The light spread a path before him, igniting the ground and ending in the horizon.
He looked up with determination as the wind whipped his gi around his legs.
Soon Ranma….Akane will know you for what you really are
He tucked them inside his backpack and headed for Nerima.
………..
***Seven weeks later***
A little black pig crawls past the border line of Nerima in the pouring cold rain. Ryoga mustn't stop moving, otherwise someone could mistake him for a dropped piece of pork.
Then he would wake up to the warm scent…..of his flesh being seared in soy.
In his teeth is the strap for the backpack and the bag of Akane's present, dragged all these miles, a show of his devotion….or his lockjaw.
"I will stop by behind Ucchan's,"he trembled in the cold "She always has hot water going for Ranma, he won't miss it."
Step by step, focused in on each tightening moment, Ryoga made his way up the back kitchen stairs and into the laundry room. He ran into a tiny figure dressed in black furiously stuffing something into a little sack.
He sqweed and the figure cackled and lost in the resulting explosion, Ryoga didn't notice the figure shifting through his pack. After pocketing the package, the money and some panties left over from his last job, the shadow vanished.
…….
"What a haul! Oh what a haul!!" Cackling echoed down the hallways of the Tendo Dojo.
Happosai went starry-eyed as the tears that only the truly demented can shed fell onto his little bandit outfit.
"So...lacy..." as he lifted the panties one by one of no doubt now furious young females across Nerima to be inspected and felt by our favorite old creep. "So..soft.."
"Eh?, I forgot about this.." He shook the package he pulled out of his bag and held it p to the light. He stared as a blue glow started to emanate. "I wonder…ack!"
Ranma promptly ground the old lechers face into the dojo floor. In his heroic pose, wearing those boxers that screamed 'Ranma Ranma!' he tossed his pigtail over his broad shoulder, while nonchalantly looking over the envelope he had snatched from Happosai. His blue eyes squinted and he didn't even notice the attachment he had accidentally picked up. That old pervert was always stealing stuff, but sometimes it was useful.
"Got what, you old pervert, you stealing someone's mail too?" Ranma winced as Happosai started to gnaw on his foot. "Stop that!"
The short bundle of whiskered lecherous intentions stopped and a glint came to his steely eye. Ranma took up a defensive posture as Happosai cackled again "Ranma, my boy, you've got to learn to respect your master before you start stealing secrets." He whipped out a happy bomb.
With happy bomb raised, it looked like he would never know the contents of the package, until flying out of mallet-space, came Akane! Damn that macho female!
Though in that instant where he turned and tried to bring up his defense, he had to admit, she had great form.
**WHACK**THUD**
"RANMA!! YOU PERVERT!!What are you doing with MY Panties!!??" Akane arched the mallet above her head and seemed to merge it with Ranma's skull. ***WHACK**
"Wha—wha—wha!! WHAT are you TALKING about, MACHO GIRL!?!" Ranma clung to the ceiling support, brain swelling and looked down at what was held in his hand.
There lay the little duck patterned offenders, in gentle pink.
He could feel his face turn chalk white.
"No!" His head snapped up, as panic streaked across his face "It wasn't me!!!NO!"
He struggled to shake them off but they stuck to his hand like a second skin. Confusion and sheer fear lanced through him as Ranma furiously tried to get them off.
But they kept on sticking!
"WHY ME?!?!"
"GIVE THEM BACK!!" ***CLANG**
"That's it, my boy" Happosai called while stuffing the panties back into his bag "Dodge, dodge…slide, good!!"
"There's another bunch of money burned for a new hallway." Nabiki muttered from the kitchen table.
Wailing noises and splashing could be heard from the outer garden.
Kasumi calmly placed her plate down and sighed as another crash was heard. "And the outer wall. Will they ever just let things be?"
Nabiki smirked " It's not good for business of they do."