Hi. Another old fic here . . . I like this one better than the other(s), actually. Anyway, here you go.
Carets indicate thoughts. -Dashes- around words indicate that they're in Chinese (for those words that I do not know the Chinese).
And yes, the ambiguity is on purpose.
This IS What I Wanted, Isn't It . . .
by Kudilu
Kickpunchblockflipspinsmashcrackkickduckkickblockcounterpunchslap
Shampoo panted as she broke away from Mousse, spinning to a rest over eight feet away. Her lavender bangs clung to her forehead, and the thigh-length mane behind her was soaked through with sweat. She wore nothing but a thigh-length, high-necked blue Chinese shirt, her traditional blue flats, and her underwear. The remains of her pants lay in a tattered heap off to one side where they had been sliced from her several hours ago. She bled sluggishly from numerous small cuts, and several places on her body were beginning to turn purple from bruising.
Mousse stood in the same place he had been standing for the past hour; cool, calm, collected; the obnoxious sleeves of his robe hiding his hands as well as what they were holding.
When that stupid Mousse get so fast all of sudden? Shampoo barely keep up! She threw herself franticly to one side as he launched another set of chains at her. She managed to roll out of the way, then made a nearly-futile attempt to fend off the grappling hooks she found coming straight at her new location. Having lost her bonburi long ago, she was reduced to the hands, feet, and whatever Mousse threw at her that wasn't still attached to him. Unfortunately, as she knew intimately (and painfully), that wasn't much.
She spun again, barely evading the hooks and their following chains. Her chest heaved and her sides and gut ached in a way that she knew meant that she wouldn't be able to move later. She watched him intently as he paused, looked at her, and smirked. He didn't even look winded. Can it be? she thought, taking the proffered opportunity to catch her breath. Have Mousse finally learned to defeat Shampoo? Her heart skipped a beat at the thought. She had waited for so long for him to finally decide to really fight her. She knew he could beat her, probably without even really trying, if only he would quit being afraid of hurting her. Not knowing that his failure was hurting her even more.
She would have married him long ago if it wasn't for Chinese Amazon Law. She was a member of the top fifteen fighters of her village, therefore she was not permitted to choose her own husband. She must wait until a man, any man, defeated her; then marry him, regardless about how either one felt about the other. The lower classes of warrior, those girls could petition the council if she and the man that had defeated her could not stand each other, or if she had a man that she wished to be with instead. Law was strict, but could be bent for those of the lower classes. The lack of choice was the price a woman paid for being the best. Shampoo had just never seriously considered that she might be forced to follow that law until she followed Girl-Type Ranma to Japan.
Mousse could have defeated her long ago, before that fateful tournament. She almost wished he had. For all that she loved Ranma, she loved Mousse more. This was probably because she loved Mousse by choice, and forced herself to love Ranma because she could not stand the thought of marrying a man she did not love. She truly hoped that Mousse would defeat her today, as he had failed to for so many years – Amazon Law stated that if an Amazon is defeated by multiple males, she may choose the one she wants, and she so wanted to choose Mousse . . . but first he had to beat her.
He smiled at her, for all the world like he could see her thoughts. "Well, my beloved Shampoo, will you concede defeat?" he asked for the fifth time.
She looked at him, disbelief in her eyes. "You know Shampoo no can do that, Mousse," she stated softly, leaving 'even though I want too' left unsaid. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, then her eyes narrowed angrily. Her voice took on a more aggressive tone. "You no have defeated Shampoo yet!"
She launched herself at him for another attack, pulling her sword from the ground where it had fallen nearly two hours ago. She still had no idea what her sword was doing in Mousses robes. She swung at him, but the grip was damp and slipped out of her hands with a single skillful flip of Mousse's claws. She acquired yet another stripe of blood across her stomach. She hit the ground, ignoring the new wound as it was not deep enough to do anything but sting and bleed. She rolled, trying to get to her feet before he could launch another attack.
No such luck. She felt something hit her back and went sprawling, the impact throwing off her roll. She became tangled in the chains scattered across their battlefield. Before she could even attempt to get up, Mousse was there and embedded the chains across her wrists and elbows into the ground. Her feet were too tangled in the chains for her to move them very far.
After a short struggle to get up, she looked up. Mousse stood above her, the love and passion he had always felt for her burning brightly behind his eyes. They shone with those emotions, along with the mental agony he felt at having to put her through all this pain. His voice echoed that pain as he spoke.
"Please, Shampoo," he whispered. "Please don't make me hurt you more. I don't know how much more of this I can take." He knelt beside her and began stroking her hair, though whether it was as a comfort for him or for her she was not certain. -"Please . . . hurting you like this hurts me too."-
Shampoo gasped suddenly as all of the pain she had been holding back chose this moment to come flooding back into her senses. She realized with resignation that even if she really wanted to, she could not fight any longer. She was more seriously injured than she had realized – even her great-grandmother had never driven her like this. As she fought back the darkness that threatened to envelop her, she whispered, "All right, Mousse. You win."
He gaped at her in astonishment, as if he had not really believed that he really could beat her. "Really? You really mean that, Shampoo?"
She closed her eyes and nodded very slightly. He quickly detangled her legs from the chains tangled around them and slipped her arms free of the chains pinning them to the ground. She forced her eyes to open for one moment and painfully lifted one hand to lay on his cheek. Staring in his eyes, she whispered, "Wo ii nee . . . woda airen."
She heard him call her name as her hand fell to the ground and the darkness overtook her.