"Ranma! Save us!" The demand came, the moment that he returned from school, prompting a sigh as he took in the sight before him.
It wasn't at all an out-of-the-ordinary request, either. Hardly a week went by without someone yelling for him to save them. This time, however, was a litte different somehow. He had saved a lot of people, including almost every one of the Tendos, his father, his mother, the other fiancees, his rivals fromtime to time, and a number of people just out and about Nerima who simply fell under the 'Innocent Bystander' category, and he was used to saving them from clearly present and unmistakable things. Rampaging martial artists, angry dragons and phoenix gods, stampeding buffalo, giant ghost cats, even Happosai if he absolutely had to.
On such scales, what seemed to be a little girl usually didn't even register.
"What's wrong?" Akane asked just before Ranma could, inadvertently allowing Ranma to step back and assess the situation, something he was rarely allowed to in other situations such as this, only dimly listening to Soun wail about being challenged to a fight, the stakes being food and Sake, and how the little girl was eating more than Ranma and Genma combined and was going to break the dojo's budget, and the fathers hadn't managed to make her leave, and on and on and on...
"I'll take care of it then. You should know by now that Ranma doesn't fight girls, Dad." Akane decided, jerking Ranma's attention away.
"Wait, what?" He wondered aloud. "I don't fight girls? What gave you that impression."
"Of course you don't fight-"
"Shampoo." Ranma stated flatly, raising a single finger as though to tick off the name, then added a second. "Ukyou. Cologne. Kodachi. Azusa. That noodle delivery girl, Kaori. Pink and Link. Rouge. And that's just the memorable ones."
"But-!" Akane insisted, sure of herself and not willing to back down in the face of logic and evidence.
"Look, have I ever once actually said anything like 'I don't fight girls'?" He asked plainly. "No. So don't put words in my mouth! 'Sides, this one's a little much for you, I think."
"She's a little girl." Akane stressed, fists clenching slowly.
"She's oni." Ranma deadpanned, getting a raised eyebrow and a smirk from the little girl in question.
"What gave it away."
"The horns." Ranma deadpanned again. "Also, that you're drinking heavier than my old man usually does, and I'm not seeing any real effect, but mainly the horns."
The oni nodded somberly, drawing attention to the horns in question and forcing Akane to wonder just how she hadn't immediately noticed something so blindingly obvious.
"So, you gonna give it a shot?" The oni wondered aloud.
"Don't rush me... I'm thinking. I don't suppose that if I ignored you, you'd just go away eventually?"
Akane's elbow and Soun's heel, coupled with a bellow about how he had to accept all challengers, and ignoring that the oni wasn't actually doing any challenging at the moment, showed exactly what they thought about that idea.
"Yeah, that's about what I figured." Ranma mumbled through a mouthful of floorboard. "So yeah. I guess I am."
"Alright! I'm Suika, of Ibuki clan, and if I win.... hm. Do you have anything I might want?" She wondered.
"Aside from the five hundred yen in my other pants? Not really." He admitted.
"No help for it then. So if I win, I'll just do the traditional thing, and carry you away!"
"That's how it is, huh?" Ranma grumbled. "So, what would happen after that?"
"Huh? After?" Suika wondered. "I think I'm supposed to eat you. Or ravage you. Or both, maybe. You look tasty though, so I'm sure we'll have fun finding out however it goes!" She said cheerfully.
"Ranma.... you lolicon!" Akane yelled, having gone steadily more incandescently red since the word 'ravage' had entered the equation, and punched him into a wall.
"Yeah..." Ranma said after stepping back through the hole, cracking his knuckles. "Can't say I'm keen on being eaten. But then, I'm not planning on losing, either. I'm Ranma Saotome, of the Saotome-ryu, and if I win then you have to call it square with Mr. Tendo and leave, okay?"
"Sure, why not! I don't plan on losing either, though. Ibuki clan takes great pride in our strength."
"Well then, let's-" Soun managed to get out before Ranma threw himself to the side and out of the house, barely dodging a punch that seemed to leave the air rippling around it for a moment before Suika leapt after him, the afterimage she had left behind wavering then fading away.
From the first pass, Ranma knew this would be a difficult fight. Suika was, all things considered, roughly as fast as his girl-form, and if he was judging accurately then she had enough power behind those fists to knock the wind out of Ryoga for a little while. Given that he had, foolishly in retrospect, never actually gone through the Breaking Point training himself, if he allowed the oni to land a blow then it would seriously mess up his day. He was having to go all out right from the bat.
And then, apparently sensing they were at a sort of stalemate, Suika upped the ante and things began to get ridiculously difficult with the new tricks she brought to bear. After all, just growing really big for a short time or throwing a really big rock really fast was one thing, and even the fireballs and breath had some precedent.
Throwing around what could only be described as temporary, miniature black holes, which wrecked the Tendo's yard, and turning herself into mist just as he was about to land a solid hit, and turning back to counterattack and force him to scramble out of the way... that was just plain unfair. Within a minute, the landscaping could almost be considered beyond repair, and he had twice had to quickly pat out fires that had caught onto his second favorite silk shirt before simply discarding it.
For his part, he had picked up that his chi-blasts still had some effect on her while she was mist, and could work with that, although Suika tended to dodge them with almost depressing ease if she was embodied at the time. He'd barely needed Genma's shouted advice to sink into the umi-sen-ken and start making like a ninja.... and then, after getting off barely two sneak attacks on the oni, things had gone just straight to hell.
Her thought process was clearly obvious, considering what it lead to. She couldn't see Ranma anymore. Therefore, he could be hidden and attack from anywhere in the nearby area. So, everywhere in the nearby area was someplace he could potentially be, and should be attacked to see if he was there. So what could be a better idea than attacking everything in the general area all at once, to minimize the chance of missing and getting countered?
The next minute or so had been an implacable hurricane of energy, and he'd been forced to drop out of the umi with an unfortunate, glancing blow early on, followed by dozens more just like it, leaving him heavily battered by the time one of the orbs caught him full on and slammed him into the stone wall. It had been inevitable, given that he doubted he could produce as many of his own chi-blasts all at once without passing out from the strain, and Suika didn't even seem a little bothered by the effort, suggesting she could hold it all day if need be.
And then, adding injury to insult, she had dropped the technique the moment he was hit, charging in behind it to deal a crushing body blow with a flying headbutt before he had even started to bounce from the initial impact.
Result, a moment of blinding agony, a deep impact crater in the wall to fall out of, and, upon coughing into his hand after dropping to his knees, enough blood to be taken as evidence of serious, possibly debilitating internal injuries that would have to be dealt with really soon.
"I win!" Suika declared cheerfully before Ranma stood, wobbling heavily, blood pouring from the corner of his mouth.
"Not yet..." He rasped, muscling his way past the pain, knowing that this was a bad idea but forced into it by his own code and bravado. "I haven't lost... until I lose consciousness.... and can't fight at all."
"Okay." Suika agreed, immediately followed by another burst of blinding pain as her fist was buried deeply into his stomach. The world swam before his eyes as he collapsed once more to his knees.
"All right." Suika said, the words seeming distorted, as though she were talking from the bottom of a well. "I'll be carrying you away now!"
There was a sharp, metallic click and a weight settled about his neck, before the whole world went black.
xxx
A.N
I WANT TO WRITE THIS. May or may not actually do so, but I want to. My brain seriously would not leave me alone until I had typed this up.
Pettan Pettan, Tsurupettan~