I do not own Ranma or any of the characters, places, intellectual properties etc therein, they are in the sole ownership of one Rumiko Takahashi. That was until I sued her for intellectual property theft... she won, but it's the principle. Now if I only knew what the principle was.
Xian-Pu and her mother had left to catch up properly and the twins had run off somewhere to do... something. Ranma was left standing in the cosy living room, everyone just forgetting about him in the excitement of the reunion. He figured it would be best for Xian-Pu to enjoy the time she had with her mother rather than force her into the tour of the village. He decided he'd have a walk around on his own, get to know the place for himself. He took a few moments outside to familiarise himself with the building to he could find his way back here and set off down a random path.
His mind must have been on autopilot as he quickly found himself back at the entrance to the village next to the large battle log that swung lazily in the mid-afternoon breeze. It was a meeting place of sorts for the people of Nyuchiehzu with people milling about, meeting friends or waiting to see if there would be a challenge fight today. They were in no such luck as there was nothing scheduled for the day, however there were the occasional heated arguments that would result in a quick fight.
He noticed a large training area filled with various equipment and weapons not too far from the log where a myriad of woman, of various builds and sizes, and a few men were practising their respective arts. He watched them for a while, particularly fascinated by some of the weapon displays he saw, many of them he quickly knew would have no real application in a fight but they were impressive all the same.
After a while of watching the women train he took off again, this time to the opposite side of the village. It was all farmland out here with many rice paddies and a few fields of vegetables. He noticed there were no cattle or other animals present in any of the fields, except for a few chicken coops here and there and the occasional cow for milk. He wondered how they got meat for a while as he wondered around the tranquil farms, his only company being the birds that watched him curiously from atop trees or hedges.
He quickly grew bored and diverted his path to the more built up area of the village. He passed through a market where vendors flogged their goods to passersby, including him. More than once he was grabbed by the arm and told insistently that their product was the best he could find for miles around and that he wouldn't get a better price for even further. He politely refused them each time in his best Chinese, explaining calmly he had no local money with which to buy from them.
However when he looked around a bit more he realised that people weren't only buying their goods with money, but actually bartering their own items, or even services written on pieces of paper. It briefly fascinated him to watch people haggling over the most trivial thing like how many grapes constituted a bunch or whether or not the weighing scales were off. Course it couldn't hold his attention for long, it left him too inactive for long.
His body must have responded to his craving for activity and motion as he quickly found himself right back where he started, at the training ground. He thought that as long as Ku-Lon was putting in a good word for him and Xian-Pu was with her mother it couldn't hurt for him to train a bit. There were more than a few strange looks shot his way as he entered the cordoned off training zone. He didn't know that it was unusual for a man to be training, even more so for an outsider male.
The odd glances and almost hostile looks only increased when he actually started his warm up, first doing some physical exercises to loosen him up and then his warm up kata's. After a while he noticed there were still people staring at him and a group of girls were looking his way, pointing and laughing. He thought they might have a problem with him being here or maybe with his style of martial arts. He would get his questions answered it seemed as one of the girls was pushed forward by the other three and nervously, but still with an air of arrogance, approached him.
"You not from here, outside boy? You Japan yes?" He was quite a moment as he allowed himself to finish the manoeuvre he had been doing before straighening up and looking at the girl, who didn't look happy at being ignored.
"It's ok I understand Chinese." The girl looked startled briefly but if she was impressed she didn't show it."
"So you're from Japan, right?" He nodded warily, unsure of what was going on. "Ling-Ling told us there are only weaklings in Japan, people barely worth fighting." He made a mental note to have a chat with Ling-Ling when he next saw her, if he could remember which one she was.
"She's wrong." It wasn't really an accusation on his part, more a statement of fact, but the Chinese girl seemed undeterred.
"Are you calling my sister a liar?" She was finally starting to show some emotion, namely anger.
"Yes." Once again his tone was flat, without the hint of any kind of accusation; the girl seemed flustered for a moment.
"Just who do you think you are?" He smiled which was something that, for a girl who wasn't really smiled at by guys, brought up strange feelings.
"You can call me Ranma Saotome." Now the girl seemed properly perplexed, but still maintaining her dominant feeling of anger, in a way it almost reminded him of Akane and the way he used to get under her skin.
"You wouldn't be so cocky lying flat on your back." He never dropped his smile.
"I guess not, but it never happened before."
"That's because you fight weaklings in Japan, here we are proud Amazons!" He actually chuckled. The girl had no idea what was going on or who this kid was, nobody was supposed to laugh at an insult from an Amazon. "What's so funny?"
"I would hardly call guy who carry around one ton umbrella every day weakling" The girl wasn't sure if the strange boy was joking or his Chinese was just that bad.
"You need an attitude adjustment kid, one I'm going to give you!" Ranma rolled his leg and cracked his knuckles, usually he would have been totally against fighting girls but he knew from Xian-Pu how good of a fighter Amazon's were. She had also managed to hammer out his view that women were inferior fighters and fighting them was unfair. Anyway, he had been itching for a good fight for far too long now that he was almost fully healed.
He said nothing; he instead calmly walked out of the training area slowly. The girl thought he was running away from her and turned to laugh with her friends but stopped when they looked over her shoulder at something. Ranma had jumped up on the training log with all the agility of a cat; of course these girls couldn't grasp the irony of that fact. Infuriated that this nobody outsider would actually accept a challenge from her, she stormed up to the log and jumped on at the opposite end.
"You intend to fight me without weapons?" Ranma just shrugged.
"Don't need 'em to fight you." The girl had no such reservations and graciously accepted the two swords handed to her by her friend. She missed Ranma subtly alter his stance as she bent over to get them. They had now drawn a small crowd who had grown curious when a strange boy jumped onto the challenge log, even more so when one of their young warriors joined him up there.
The two opponents looked each other over briefly, sizing the other one up. The girl was happy to note the stranger had taken a very basic beginners stance, this was going to be far too easy. It looked as though the boy was already about to lose his balance and simply fall off the log. She could just wait there if she wanted and outlast the boy, of course she was much too proud, feeble opponent or not. An unspoken signal was acknowledged by the two and the girl strode forward, swords raised and pointed at Ranma.
"You will regret trying to face an Amazon warrior weakling! Now you will understand why nobody has ever defeated us or captured out territory!" She continued forward, swords never wavering and at the last second Ranma altered his crouched stance. Unfortunately the girl saw through the deception far too late and Ranma had already sprung over her head. She reacted too slowly as Ranma grabbed her wrists, pulled them sharply back to make her let go of the dangerous weapons and deftly thrown her off of the log.
The crowd looked on in astonishment as one of their most promising young warriors fell straight onto her face at the hands of this strange foreigner. Ranma didn't pay attention to the slow, uncertain round of applause as he jumped down, his cocky grin now firmly back on his face. He offered a hand to the fallen girl, who looked at him even more strangely than when she had been with her friends in the training area. In a small part of Ranma's mind two cogs were whirring past each other, trying to connect but just missing it each time.
The girl ignored his hand and sprung to her feet, catching Ranma off guard in a bear hug that almost knocked the extremely startled girl. Finally the two gears snapped into place and one thought shot through Ranma's mind. 'Aw crap, I did it again!' The girl broke the embrace, smiling warmly at the boy who had defeated her in fair combat.
"Wo-"Ranma firmly cut her off as he placed his hand over her mouth.
"I'm sorry, I cannot be husband, already engaged, forgot Amazon laws about outsider males!" Unfortunately he recognised the dreamy but heavily insistent look in the girls sparkling eyes. This wasn't good at all.