RANMA ½ - THE ENEMY WITHIN - CHAPTER 24

"Kiss Ranma?" Ryoga muttered, over hearing Nabiki and Akane talking. He looked in the girls direction. "No..."

"Ha!" Mousse shouted. "I have you now!"

And with Ryoga's momentary distraction, Mousse attacked, threw the Sigh chain, and it wrapped it around him.

The chain tightened like a vice, squeezed Ryoga. The edges of its metal roughness rubbing harshly against the bare skin of his arms.

Ryoga grimaced. "You sly, little..." The chain completely bound him several times from chest to waist. He still held onto his bandannas, but without use of his arms, he couldn't throw them. He struggled, wiggled around, to free himself, but to no avail. "Damn!"

Mousse smirked. "For countless centuries women have been distractions for lonely hearts..." the man, the self-professed master of hidden weapons, started to say. "I know one such woman who drives me - this host - wild with every syllable of her voice. . ."

And Mousse looked at Shampoo.

Ryoga turned his head following Mousse's gaze. She was aiding her great grandmother, who was now starting to show signs of life after a hard defeat from Shampoo when possessed by a demon.

Ryoga turned to his enemy at the moment. "Mousse loves her, you know...the guy you're possessing is obsessed with that Amazon girl. She is pretty..."

"She's gorgeous!" Mousse said.

Ryoga nodded.

"Even now I find it hard to resist the urge to go to her. But I'm stronger. I own this body now."

"None of us own our bodies, we own rent them," Ryoga said philosophically. "Then they return back to the dust from where they came from."

"Very profound. When did you get so insightful?"

"I've been around. I travel a lot and I learn a lot. I may have..." He hated to admit it, "...a lousy sense of direction, but that's just the way I am. I've accepted it. I never stop learning and I never stop growing. And that's why..."

The chain around his body began to black and dissolve, then disintegrate, turning to dust as it fell around him. Ryoga brushed himself off.

Mousse stood in agape awe. He said, "H-how'd you do that?"

"I told you, I never stop learning. And through my journeys I've picked up some interesting tricks."

"But t-that's im-impossible! No one can do what you did!"

"Never underestimate the power of the mind and your own Chi," Ryoga said, once again sounding profound. "I found a way to turn my depressive Chi into something positive using my Lion Roar Shot technique. I can control it a lot better. It no longer controls me."

Mousse continued to stand mesmerized and shocked.

"And now...this ends!"

Ryoga reached and plucked Mousse's glasses off his face, and with one perfectly centered punch to his face, Mousse dropped down, unconscious.

The so-called master of hidden weapons dropped like a stone and landed with a thud. A mist whisked from his body and into the air, disapitating into nothingness.

The demon that was inside Mousse had left him.

They must leave the body when the host is rendered unconscious, Ryoga reasoned.

Except when forced out by a very powerful Chi, like mine, Ryoga thought.
It was an arrogant thing to think, but it was true. And not every martial artist can achieve such power. This written in a book of philosophy he found discarded on Buddhist enlightenment.

But he would have to contemplate that later.

"Kiss Ranma?" he thought again, reminded of what he heard from Nabiki and Akane's conversion. He hadn't heard everything, but he had heard enough.

No, Akane can't kiss Ranma! "I won't allow it! Under any circumstances! I won't it!" Ryoga vowed.

Copycat Ken stooped, crouched on a rooftop overlooking the battlefield, or what remained of it. The fighting was pretty much over. But it wasn't over yet. The original plan was still going exactly as Master Xi'an had foreseen.

Spiritual demonic warriors had to be sacrificed, he knew, but they were worth it for the grander plan. Besides, the demons the master had summoned from the depths of Hell were weak in mind, power, easier controlled, and manipulated. But all they had to be was a distraction...

And the minute Akane Tendo kissed Ranma, the Saotome bloodline would be no more. The lipstick Akane had applied to her lips was poisoned and it would take three minutes to filter through her system, but in the meantime, she'll kiss Ranma believing it will save her sister, and both Ranma and Akane would die.

Akane was the catalyst everything, Ken recalled, remembering Xi'an's explanation of his plan, just before sending Ryoga out to kidnap Ranma's friends. Everything was merely a ploy for this moment.

Genma Saotome was too old to have anymore children. And when Ranma dies, so will the last of the Saotome bloodline. Ranma's father would be dealt with fully soon enough.

There was but one antidote to the poison, Ken recalled, but only he and the Master knew it, and he'd never tell.

Everything was going perfectly.

No, he couldn't allow it. "No. . You can't!" Ryoga stepped forward and blocked Akane's path with his arms out-stretched, feeling an importance, the weight of stopping this outrage. The outrage of Akane having to kiss a jerk like Ranma! "You can't kiss him!"

Akane's eyes widened with surprise. "You heard that, Ryoga?"

"Yes; all I needed to hear," Ryoga said. "And I refused to let this happen!"

"But you don't understand, I need to. . ." Akane said.

"No, you don't; there has to be another way." Ryoga took Akane aside, faced Nabiki. Akane's sister was the last of the four demons to be cast out. "You will not force Akane to do this!" Ryoga demanded.

"We made a deal," Nabiki stated.

"How can you force your own sister to kiss. . ." Ryoga stopped, turned to Akane inquisitively and a little shocked, and said, "A deal? What sort of deal?" He gasped. "Not for your soul!" He grabbed Akane's shoulders in fretfulness. "Oh Akane, you didn't promise this demon your soul, did you?" Turning to Nabiki he said, "Take mine, let Akane go! I beg you!"

Nabiki blinked twice. "Are you dense?"

Ryoga's brow folded confused. "I've seen movies like this. A girl like Akane wishes for happiness and makes a deal with a devil to get all she wants, but her price is her soul. What did she offer you?"

"She didn't offer me anything. I told her to kiss her fiancée." Nabiki pointed at Ranma. "And she will kiss him!"

"No she will not!" Ryoga shouted. "You've already made you intentions when you plastered that marriage license to Ranma's chest. You won't force this innocent - Akane - to kiss such a wicked cad! Not on my watch!"

"Ryoga you didn't hear the whole conversion, did you?" Akane said, Ryoga still holding her shoulders.

"I heard enough! And besides, what purpose would it serve for you to kiss Ranma?" Ryoga asked her. "You're engaged, that's true. But the guy is a jerk! Ranma doesn't deserve to marry you...you deserve someone who cares for you, will weigh on you hand and foot, heed to your every beckon call and desire like..." He couldn't say it. He couldn't say she deserved him instead of Ranma.

I love you, Akane Tendo! he thought in his mind. If you're being forced to kiss anyone, then let it be me!

But his thoughts were all he could muster.

And then was struck across the side of the head with a bonbari. Ryoga rubbed his head. "Ow! What was that for?" he said, learning Ranma had taken one of Shampoo's dropped bonbari and thrown it at him.

"Get your hands off her! I'll kiss her. She my fiancée, after all!" Ranma eyed Nabiki. "I heard everything. If Akane has to kiss me for that long to save you, then it's worth the sacrifice."

But as soon as the word "sacrifice" came out of his mouth, he realized his error - a poor choice of word. He knew that Akane would pick up on it. And she did.

"Sacrifice?" Akane said annoyed, the sides of her mouth curled in a sneer. "Would kissing me be that disgusting?"

"No, I didn't mean it that way Akane and you know it!"

"Then what did you mean by it! Huh?" Akane said angrily.

"You always jump to the wrong conclusion about me!" Ranma felt a sharp twinge of pain from his stomach, but he ignored it. His mind swirled with the explosion of anger he started to feel whenever Akane initiated an argument. She was so hot-tempered. He really didn't know where she got it from. Her father was calm, though he cried a lot. Kasumi was very subdued in her emotions, and Nabiki was also calm. But Akane always had an explosive temper. "But I want to do this! Kiss me Akane! Now!"

"Not with that attitude! And not if you demand it!"

"Oh c'mon! What attitude? And I'm only trying to help!"

"Um guys, should you two be fighting? We have a demon to cast out," Ryoga said causally.

"Shut-up!" Ranma and Akane said in unison.

Ryoga continued regardless. "Your sister Akane, remember? I didn't know." Ryoga scratched a finger to his temple. "If it's for a good cause, I guess it's alright."

"I don't need your permission to kiss any body, Ryoga! You're right, though, Ranma's such a jerk! But if I have to kiss someone. . ."

Akane reached over to Ryoga, grabbed the sides of his hand with both hands and kissed him on the lips for three seconds.

There was a gasp from everyone. And when Akane pulled back, Ryoga collapsed with ecstasy to the ground.

"No!" Nabiki said. "You were supposed to kiss Ranma, not that fool!"

Akane clenched her teeth in anger. She grabbed Nabiki and raised a fist. "Leave my sister now, or so help you..."

Nabiki's eyes narrowed. "I'm sorry, my lord. . .I failed you!" she said to no one in particular. The demon whisked out of Nabiki's body in a swirl of smoke, and Akane caught Nabiki as her sister collapsed from the stress of it all.

Ranma said, "It's over! We won!"

"Not quite!" a familiar voice said. Copycat Ken looked down from a near-by roof, one leg perched on the arch crossway. "While you may have defeated those rather disappointed demon rejects! You still have me to deal with."

Ryoga started to regain consciousness.

"That poison you ingested by applying that lipstick, Akane, is filtering through your system as we speak. You'll be dead in minutes. And so will that fool because you kissed him instead of Ranma."

Ryoga pressed two fingers to his lips. Akane had kissed him, just like in his fantasies. But it was for the wrong reason - in anger and for revenge. He said, "Poison?" stunned.

"No!" Ranma said, his face contorted in aghast horror at the revelation.

"But it doesn't matter," Copycat Ken went on. "With Akane and Ryoga out of the way and with you with that severe injury, it'll be easy to kill you without interference. You're too weak to fight back at full strength. There won't be anything to stop my master from having his revenge now! A dishonor will finally be washed away and his family set free from an eternal unrest at Jusenkyo with your death for what your ancestors did his a century ago!"

To be continued.