Part Two: Dramatic Irony

Ranma pondered the circumstances that brought him to this situation.

He had been mortified to find out that not only had he given in to the cat-fist once again, but that he had, in fact, lost. Of course, the loss didn't exactly count, what with a freak ball of yarn blowing through the battlefield and distracting him, leaving him wide open to a big green fist.

Or so he'd been told. That was perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the loss. Ranma had been under the cat-fist, which meant he couldn't remember what had happened. Which in turn meant that he still hadn't learned anything about his opponent's fighting style. Oh, he had been given the typical run-downs from his father, Happosai, and the old ghoul, but of course they had amounted to nothing more than "this fight looks too tough for you; give up and save yourself the embarrassment." He was pretty sure they had all been just trying to provoke him into increasing his efforts, but the advice was still useless.

One thing was for certain. Ranma Saotome never lost. At least not in the end.

So he had located the American and asked for a rematch. The fact that he was initially rebuffed was nothing new. The fact that his opponent wasn't at all proud of his victory, and was in fact continually trying to avoid Ranma was uncommon. Of course Ranma was nothing if not persistent, and while Banner's tolerances were high, annoyance and frustration eventually succeeded in bringing out his uglier side.

Ranma had quickly learned that to allow even a single blow from this opponent to land was a recipe for disaster. He also learned that the Hulk's hide was even tougher than Ryoga's. Some two-hundred-thirty punches in the same location had caused his foe pain...and made it madder...and that was about it. His Moko Takabisha had barely caused the green man to budge.

Of course one technique in his arsenal had seemed uniquely suited to this fight. It hadn't been at all difficult to create the spiral pattern (though due to the Hulk's size and leaping ability it was far larger than normal). Though no battle aura was visible around his foe, Ranma could practically choke on the hot qi being put out. When he produced the final uppercut of the Hiryu Shoten Ha, it was larger than any he had previously produced. The Hulk was thrown violently out of visual range.

So of course Ranma had been a bit surprised when the Hulk returned to the scene less than a minute later, apparently by a single leap.

Repeating the Hiryu Shoten Ha had surprisingly been quite possible. His opponent was either too simple or too blinded by rage to figure out how Ranma's tornado-generating technique worked, or how to stop it. Unfortunately, though each successive whirlwind was more powerful than the last (and caused quite a bit more damage to the surrounding property), every one had resulted in the Hulk simply leaping back, seemingly none the worse for wear.

Now, some may assume that Ranma's poor study habits would result in a poor grasp of math. And, well, they'd be right. But the martial artist had an unnaturally strong intuitive grasp on projectile physics. He needed it, given the highly aerial style of martial arts practiced by himself and his father. So as the distances over which his opponent was being thrown had become more and more ridiculous, he had begun to formulate a plan.

With great care, the spiral was traced for his largest Hiryu Shoten Ha yet. Though it had been difficult to move with such precision while still avoiding being pounded into the pavement by someone with more strength than Lime, it had been completed. And the attack had sent the Hulk off with force enough to cross an ocean, in a path straight for the one place that Ranma could pinpoint better than any satellite.

Of course, in thinking of all the springs of Jusenkyo that could de-power this monster, the young practitioner of Anything-Goes had forgotten the largest driving power behind the cursed training ground: dramatic irony. Thus it was that an over-large, green-skinned Akane, wearing stretchy purple pants and a purple sports bra (where had that come from?), had come leaping back at him, mallet ready to swing. "Ranma you jerk! Hulk smash!"

Ranma sighed, as he sailed across Japan courtesy of Akane-Hulk Airlines. This didn't count as a loss...for some reason. He was sure of that.

Bruce Banner pondered the circumstances that brought him to this situation.

Or at least he tried. There was absolutely no explanation he could come up with for why he was now a woman.