AHA! I've caught you red-handed, Kachie! Still alive, are you? I had a grave marker near my monitor for you and "Past and Future" that I lit incense sticks for every bloody day. I cried over that little monument to your story and your supposed premature death, I'll have you know. Cried. And this is how you repay me? By popping up years later and demanding another chapter from me? This is like a soap opera. A tragic one. Boo hoo.
Oh, right. Disclaimation.
YOU should know by now that I don't own any of this, and I'm not making profit on it, either.
MUST I put a disclaimer on every chapter? Who knows the answers to these questions.
UPDATE number four involves general third person narrative. I thought it was about time.
YOUR most humble servant ATS, thanks you for writing – er, reading.
STORY is below. It's a little short, but you should let it evolve as it will.
Nabiki was spared from the explosion by a towering figure wearing what appeared to be tiger print. He turned to face her, and she double-blinked at his cat-like eyes, alight with excitement, despite the numerous cuts and scrapes from flying debris.
"I have rescued a woman!" he declared loudly in her face, and Nabiki double-blinked again. "I will now proceed to touching!" Much to Nabiki's sudden alarm, he outstretched claw-like hands toward her chest, muttering to himself the whole while about groping procedures.
He narrowly dodged a glowing blue battle-mallet.
"You keep your paws off my sister, pervert!" Akane shrieked at the top of her voice, pulling back for another swing.
She caught him straight on the top of the head, plowing him directly down into the already-cracked pavement. Her eyes cast suspiciously about for Lime's partner in perversion, Mint.
He was almost surgically attached to the leather bustier of the woman in black. Said woman (Cursed man? Cross dresser? Animal-made-human-by-tragic-accident?) shrieked in mortified rage and disappeared in a puff of black smoke, knocking Mint to the ground with the rest of the unconscious horde.
As the cloud cleared, it revealed Happosai, sitting calmly atop the pile of charred bodies, smoking a pipe and chatting with Mint as if they had been in the middle of afternoon tea the whole while.
"Now, students," he continued in a lecturing tone. "Here, we have a special case. Ranma is a boy, in possession of a divine female form. In this case, you don't have to be so gentle or forgiving, as I've been teaching you to be. Beat her up and take a good snuggle."
"What the hell have you been teaching these morons, you old fart?" Ranma shrieked as she drove her fist toward the diminutive lecher/master. That boy doesn't miss a beat, does he? Girl. Cross-dresser. ...Whatever.
Her fist slammed into Lime's open palm and nearly cracked in half. Ranma howled, hopping around the devastated street, alternately clutching her hand and shooting dark glares toward Lime, who shone with holy fervor. A halo of light had popped up around him as he took a heroic stance.
"The noble master is educating us to be connoisseurs of all women!" He declared proudly.
"Yes!" Mint added enthusiastically, waving a celebratory flag. "We are learning how to appreciate all women have to offer!"
A dark storm cloud rumbled over Ranma's head; this was likely due to the fact that Mint was attached to her ample chest like a fox-leech cross-breed.
"Why, you!" Ranma roared – or rather, she used words somewhat stronger than this, but it's not necessarily proper to repeat them here.
She had barely raised a fist when Lime and Happosai were suddenly a part of the mess, and the three of them against a cursed Ranma spells bad news for personal integrity and dignity everywhere.
That's probably why Akane decided to intervene with another well-placed mallet-swing. This time, she made sure she sent the evil pervert (the original one, we're talking about) into another yesterday, via the crossing of the International Date Line.
As for Ranma, she managed to throw the pair of lechers-in-training off with a ninja body transfer (who says she didn't learn anything from Konatsu?) not with a log, but with a clothing store mannequin. Let's not discuss how she obtained it, I'm sure you don't want to know.
"Ooh, this woman's boobs are very hard," Lime noted with as much clinical detachment as he could muster, with amateur-level gropes.
"Yes, Lime," Mint agreed professionally. "All women are unique, as the master says. We must give each one our individual attention."
Mint had struck a noble pose, as he had been taught: fist in the air, legs apart, one hand on his hip. He had lived with Master Herb long enough that he was able to maintain that pose even as he was smashed into orbit by a furiously glowing Akane.
She turned to Lime, his hands still on the mannequin's chest, with deceptive calm. He grinned at her obliviously, clearly not noticing her demonically glowing eyes and ominously swaying blue warhammer of doom.
Probably because his attention was on her boobs. How unfortunate for him that this fact was not lost on Akane as she advanced.
But let's just look over here for a moment, why don't we, children? Isn't that a nice flower there, by the sidewalk? Please ignore the gruesome cries of excruciating agony behind us. It is of no moment. Hey! Isn't that a ladybug crawling up the stem? How cute!
A fanged tooth, covered in the blood of tigers, falls into our view of the flower, and the ladybug, startled, buzzes away. We shall also move our attention elsewhere – hey, that girl across the street, don't we know her?
Yeah, sure we do, wasn't she in our math class a couple of years back? I thought so. Hey, she's cut her hair! Why don't we go over there and chat with her a bit instead of sticking around here?
Well, it appears she had the same idea, because she seems to be fleeing the scene as fast as her legs will take her. Oh well. Perhaps she has something pressing that needs to be done.
"Alright already, Akane," Nabiki interrupted dryly, scooping up Inutenshi, who cowered behind her, whimpering. "I think it's dead, and we're going to be late." She drilled her fingers against her hip. "Principal Kuno's not here anymore, so I can only assume he's gone ahead to plan something humiliating for us."
"Not if I can help it!" Ranma cried defiantly, and scooped up her bag, Akane's bag, Akane, and Nabiki, and rocketed toward the school in the distance.
Inutenshi yipped in surprise, and Nabiki sighed, trying to hold on to the angelic dog, her school bag, and hold down her school skirt while flying along. She knew she should have gone in early today.
"What about everybody else?" Akane asked, craning around to look behind them.
"They'll be fine," Ranma replied impatiently, "Discord never actually hurts anybody herself." Akane looked like she was about to say something else, but they arrived in front of the closed and quiet school gate.
"No one's in sight," Ranma mused as she vaulted the gates with ease. "I wonder -" But she was cut off as they landed on the other side, right into a trap floor.
Bonus Section: Fear Factor vs. Ranma Saotome!
"I hear you've won a few martial arts tournaments," Ranma commented between mouthfuls of his first plate. He was shoveling it in with his left hand, and keeping crickets from escaping with his right. The other contestants looked on in horror.
"Yeah…" Joe mumbled, completely absorbed in the nauseating display in front of him. Ranma deftly caught a cricket as it made a desperate bid for survival from his mouth, and broke its legs with a twist of his fingers before popping it back in and crunching it to oblivion.
"Well if you want to spar or something, maybe after I finish lunch," Ranma cheerfully was digging into his second plate of rotted durian and live anchovies. The contestant he stole it from was still gaping at him in abject terror. "I haven't gotten much chance to fight too many American styles since I've been here –" he burped and spit out beetle shells. "I was really looking forward to it when I first came over, but I've been so busy with all the other stuff you guys got going on around here." He picked up the bile, maggot and fish eye shake and tossed the straw out of it before gulping it down directly out of the jug.
"And what…" Joe attempted to keep the show on track, "what… have you been up to since you got to America?"
"Well, you know," Ranma scooped up a handful of snails from the bucket. Joe was supposed to have blended them into the shake, but he had been distracted by the truly stomach-turning scene in front of him. And we don't blame him at all for that. "Hey! You shelled them already, cool!" Ranma shoved a huge handful of wiggling snails in his mouth. "Usually, you mmff-" he swallowed quickly, "usually you have to shell each one and the eating is so slow! This is pretty great, guys, thanks!" He helped himself to the final contestant's plate (cow testicles, sheep brain, sugar-coated cockroaches, alive and hissing, all topped with a fine pig's blood sauce). The third contestant had long since disappeared around the corner to be violently sick.
"Anyhow, there's been a lot of great stuff to try out in America. Stuff like bull-fighting and car-racing, and I've tried sky diving and boxing. Football and those other team things have been cool, but it's hard for me to get all the rules down, and there's all these people that are on your side, and you've got to fight together. That's just a little different for me." Ranma mercifully closed his mouth to chew the still-struggling cockroaches into submission.
"Well, uh, Ranma…" Joe said, valiantly maintaining his cool (and his breakfast), "since it seems you've won the fifty thousand dollars, tell me – what are you going to do with your money?"
"This whole thing has been great, I mean, doing that cool helicopter thing, and the car flipping thing, that was neat. And lunch, well, I'm always happy to eat, you know. And giving me money, well that totally makes my day! I'm gonna use it to buy this girl I know … uh… something. Maybe cooking lessons!" He snorted mirthlessly, sending a smattering of pig's blood everywhere.
"Aw! Using it on your girl, that's …cute." Joe had difficulty getting this last out, while watching Ranma use the last of the sheep's brain to mop up the remaining pig's blood on his plate before levering it all into his mouth. He had almost said 'revolting'. "Does she really need a fifty thousand dollar cooking lesson?" he joked.
Ranma snorted again and fished cockroach chitin out of his teeth. "Does she ever! This was total gourmet compared to her stuff. What she manufactures in the kitchen is registered by the government as weapons of biological warfare."
"Really," Joe mused as Ranma went back to scraping his plates clean. "Do tell. Well, have her come round the office, Ranma. We may just have a job for her..."
ATS notes:
I added that last bit because the story wasn't very long, nor as funny for me when I read it through. It's hard to be funny on demand, isn't it?
Well! I feel I've been successful in preventing foolish mortals such as your lovely selves from reviewing my story, but clearly my threats to particular writers haven't borne any fruits. I positively suspect you're out there, reading this, Vaniah, Kachie, Trent, all of you.
Speaking of you, Vaniah, how are you? Been good lately? Watching 24? Jack was such a sucker to buy that guy's story, of course he was a traitor, right? Shouldn't have let him pick up that case before they left, of course it was a bomb! Okay, I lied, I was suckered, too. Don't you think Lynn should tell someone that his keycard was stolen? Yes, I thought so, too.
But enough with the small talk! I've got a case of muffins here, recognize these? They were stolen from your secret stash. Under your desk. I thought so. Unless you start writing and updating your stories immediately, one of these muffins is going to get devoured every day until I see a new chapter of your crime-drama (no oneshots). I know you have some special attachment to this banana nut one here, she's going to be the first to go, should you not cooperate. Don't call the police, and don't try and be a hero. No one has to get hurt here, just comply with our demands, and your muffins will not be eaten. This is your only warning. We expect to see results, so you'd better get moving.
--Muffin Terrorist Out. End communication.