Ranma's never been so...glad...for stupidity before. As annoying as it is to carry these idiots up a damn mountain (and after they'd tried to ditch and probably kill him-geez, they can't even double-cross without screwing it up), they're still keeping his mind on this fight. He can't very well freak out in front of a pig and a duck, after all.
"Ryu Sei Hisho!" shouts Herb, and Ranma beams the brightness of his (fear) mind onto Herb's chi: thick like dragon-skin, because there are only dragons and wolf-guys here and not...those. With his muscles tensed to (flee) fight, he leaps away.
"Running already?" says Herb. "And I thought you wanted the Open Water Kettle."
"I'm not runnin.'" Ranma turns his head, forces himself to look at Herb and not the wolf-guy or...the other one. "And I thought you wouldn't have such a cowardly attack. Bouncing your chi all over the place-why not hit me like a man?"
Herb must not've heard him, because after a pause and a scream he lets the rubber balls of chi loose again.
Ranma's disappointed. "What? Don't tell me that's all you've got, jerk." He won't think about how his palms are sweating, how he's thinking of Akane's cooking, Kuno's bamboo sword, Happosai naked...anything but tiger-stripes and those things in the dark.
Dragons, dragons, dragons. There are only dragons here. Dragons who are about to release more chi.
"Kwak!" Mousse fluffs his feathers, settles himself on his shoulders again. Can he feel him shaking?
"You know what I just noticed?" asks someone from the direction Ranma refuses to look in. "Ranma has breasts!"
"Lime, you idiot. Who cares about those?" Ranma can tell (even as his brain hisses: cat cat cat) that Herb does. Instinctively, he reaches for the buttons on his shirt.
"But, Herb! Breasts!"
Tiger-stripes fill his brain. Ryoga might have said "Bwee!" but between the not-being-able-to-move and the thing coming closer and closer, there's no room for anything but
Cat. Cat. Cat. All the world is a cat, and it's reaching for him. He wants to run. He wants to scream. He wants to make it go away.
"CAAAAAAAAT!" Ranma barrels forward, fists blazing.