Together at Last!
Chapter III
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfiction
By son_of_vegeta (formerly wingzeropilot)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hello again. It's me, son_of_vegeta. It's been a while since I updated (gomen!), but I was waiting for the 20th review to update. Right now, it's hovering at 19 reviews (so close!).
Yeah, this is the third chapter of the story. And don't think that I'm going to give away the storyline in the author's note at the beginning (like I have a bit of a habit of doing), because I'm not! So there! :P
Well, OK, if you're going to beg… This part continues right where I left off in the previous chapter. But that's as much as I'll let you know for now!
Anywho, on with the story, ne?
By the way, I STILL DON'T OWN RANMA ½. If you think I do, smack your head against something hard and pointy. There, that'll learn you, baka!
By the way again, in case you're unaware (i.e. all the Americans who don't watch the original Japanese version), "Nekohanten" means "Cat Café". Also, I'm aware that when a person learns most of another language, it doesn't mean that the primary "voice in their head" speaks that language (i.e. Shampoo thinking in broken Japanese rather than in her native Chinese), but for the sake of keeping characters familiar to the audience, I will ignore this and barrel through the rest of the fic. Besides, in the Ranma ½ series, we even hear Shampoo think in broken Japanese/English (depending on the dub), rather than in Chinese. If Rumiko Takahashi can do it, so can I! Also, some Japanese terms will be in the rest of the chapters, including "Hai", which means "Yes", "Sure", "OK", etc., and "seppuku", which is a ritual kind of suicide used by samurai to retain their honor. Also, the term "(name) no baka!" will come up, which means "(name), you idiot!" If you didn't know all this, read the manga or watch the original Japanese dub.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part III: Black Magic and Bonborries
It's been a whole week since the party, and she still hasn't come down from her room, Mousse thought, worried for his beloved Shampoo as he set two bowls of chicken ramen down for the couple sitting at one of the Nekohanten's tables. The couple thanked him before the guy happily tore into his ramen. Mousse managed a quiet, "You're welcome" as he walked back to the kitchen, looking towards the stairway that led up to Shampoo's room. (A/N: guess who the "happy guy" of the couple is and win ten points! No, it isn't Ranma! ^^ )
He never saw the doorway trim until he had already run into it.
His vision was normally pretty bad, but he never had trouble with stationary objects until Shampoo had started her self-imposed exile from society. Of course, the beatings Shampoo had given him when he tried to talk her into coming out of her room had little to do with that…
Getting up off the floor, he looked back up the stairs, sighed a heavy-hearted sigh, and continued working.
Stupid Airen… If he just marry Shampoo, we no have to worry… Shampoo thought miserably.
A week ago, right after leaving the party, Shampoo had gone straight to her room and refused to come out. Most of the time she either practiced her martial arts skills (an effective way to get frustration out of one's system), or just lay down in a fetal position, weeping.
Her thoughts tortured her endlessly. Images of Ranma and Akane holding hands ran through her head often, but her imagination often took the concept of that image and ran away with it, giving rise to images that were far more heart-breaking. Ranma and Akane holding hands, Ranma and Akane holding each other happily, Ranma and Akane kissing, Ranma and Akane kissing in a much more passionate way, Ranma and Akane in wedding clothes, Ranma and Akane embracing each other in a way that only lovers did…
All of it saddened and angered her, even though she knew that most of it was her imagination taking its toll on her heart.
She didn't know what hurt more: the idea of herself and Ranma being torn apart, or the idea that she and Ranma never were a possible match to begin with…
"Mousse, are you done mopping the kitchen floor?" Cologne asked, putting her pipe down and blowing out a ring of smoke.
"Yeah, I'm done…" Mousse grumbled. "…you freeze-dried old gnome…" he added under his breath, and regretted it as soon as he heard the whoosh of Cologne's staff homing in on his skull.
Cologne's eyes narrowed. "Good. Do me a favor—" Mousse groaned, earning him another skull-smasher from her staff, "—and check to see how Shampoo is doing."
His first reaction at this request was happiness. After all, it was a chance to see Shampoo again!
His second reaction was, of course, suspicion. After all, this is Cologne we're talking about here.
His third, and final, reaction was fear for self-preservation. After all, his previous visits had all earned him a hearty beating from Shampoo.
Luckily (or unluckily, depending on one's viewpoint), his happiness ruled over the other reactions. After saying a quick, "OK!" he made his way up the stairs to Shampoo's room.
Cologne smiled as she went to the back to do her weekly inventory on her supply of ramen noodles.
An hour later, after Cologne had finished her inventory, she went to see how Mousse was faring.
Not surprisingly, she came across his beaten and unconscious form at the foot of the stairs. A lot of marks on his body were obviously from fists and feet, but she could also make out a few marks made by Shampoo's trademark bonborries.
I see… The child has not yet recovered. I fear what may happen if her feelings become focused on getting the son-in-law back…
Cologne was one of the few people who knew of Shampoo's absolute abilities in combat. If she unleashes her anger on the outside world, the son-in-law may be the only one who would be able to stop her. Him or that Ryoga boy. I'm certain that Akane, Ukyo, or that one insane girl would not survive if Shampoo went into a destructive rage.
She thought about this for a second, and came upon one extremely facinating thought.
Would Mousse stand a chance of stopping her? If he did, would it be his fighting skills he would use, or something else…?
The next day, after recovering from his latest beating, Mousse wondered if maybe he should give Shampoo some time to herself.
If I keep on visiting her, I may end up in the hospital. Then again, if I don't visit her, I won't be able to see her!
If I don't visit her, she may try something drastic. Like trying to poison Akane Tendo. Or something worse.
But if I do visit her, she'll just get even more angry with me!
"Aaargh! I don't know what to do!" Mousse screamed out, unaware of the restaraunt full of customers at the time. He stood there for a while, his hands grabbing the sides of his upward-tilted head, before he remembered that he was supposed to be working. The people of the restaraunt stared at him for a little while, but since most of them knew about the antics of the "Nerima demolition crew" (A/N: sorry if I'm stealing this phrase from another author, but it's a perfect way to describe the main characters of Ranma ½!), they chalked it all up to the "run-of-the-mill insanity" and returned to their ramen.
The day had ended without any problems, aside from Mousse's confused outburst. Cologne finished up closing the restaraunt and went to do one more thing before turning in for the night.
"Child, is it alright for me to come in?" Cologne tenatively asked her great-grandchild through the door of her room. She waited a while for a response, but only came through the door after she heard a weak, "Hai."
"Grandchild, are you alright?" Cologne looked around the lightless room, spying several bowls of finished ramen and just as many empty tea glasses. "You eat your food and you sleep, but other than that, you have isolated yourself completely from those around you."
"Shampoo no care about what happen outside," she replied, her voice weak and slightly rough. She must have been sobbing about the son-in-law again. "Ranma is happy now with violent girl. He no want Shampoo. Shampoo no good enough to be Ranma's wife. Ranma rather live rest of life with violent girl than with Shampoo."
"You know, child, there are still many different potions and elixers that we have yet to use on those two," Cologne offered. Shampoo was always one to try and get Ranma through any means necessary, including using "underhanded" methods. She waited a while for Shampoo to reply.
After waiting a minute or two, Cologne tenatively took a step towards Shampoo. She could see her great-granddaughter's shoulders shaking with sobs of sorrow, but couldn't see the sad acceptance of reality in her eyes.
"No, Great-Grandmother. No potions, no e-lix-ers," Shampoo said, squeezing out the last word painfully.
"But child—"
"NO!" Shampoo shouted, standing up angrily. "If Ranma want Shampoo, Ranma would have say something. But Ranma no say something, so RANMA NO WANT SHAMPOO!" She accentuated the last words with a punch through the nearby wall.
Cologne, although surprised and a bit intimidated, said, "All right, child. But remember that you cannot return to China until you have a husband." With that being said, she left Shampoo to her thoughts.
Poor child, Cologne thought as she heard Shampoo take some of her frustrations out on the room surrounding her.
The next day, Cologne decided that Shampoo needed to see more familiar faces in her newly-revised daily life. Thus, the job of food delivery fell into the hands of the one other person living under the Nekohanten's roof.
Mousse wondered if Cologne really wanted Shampoo to see more people she knew, or just find an easy way to kill him.
Against his will of self-preservation, he walked slowly up the stairs with the tray of food in hand. OK, OK, I'll just slide the food through the slightly-open doorway (shut enough to not allow any stray bonborries through), sneak a quick peek to see how she's doing, and be on my merry way…
As he approached her door and raised his hand to knock, a quiet, heart-wrenching sound stopped all voluntary movement in Mousse's body.
Shampoo's heavy-hearted weeping.
Stupid, stupid Airen! Why? Why Shampoo not good enough to be bride? Is Shampoo too ugly? Too violent? Too strong for Airen?
Stupid Airen no here help Shampoo through this. Stupid Airen always there help Akane, but no Shampoo! Only one who want save Shampoo from anything is stupid Mousse…
At that thought, a thousand memories came to light. Mousse refusing to stop fighting Ranma the first times they dueled, with Mousse tirelessly fighting for her hand. Mousse fighting against Wu on Kirin's flying barge. Mousse taking an inhuman number of acupuncture-like feather needles from Toristan, Toma's bird-like minion, only to ignore them all and beat the birdman senseless before his body finally gave out. Mousse happily agreeing to work every day at the Nekohanten, despite the inhumane treatment he received from both herself and Cologne (as well as an absurdly low pay rate), just so he could be close to her all the time.
Then, of course, there was always Mousse asking time and again during their childhood for her to marry him. Granted, not all of the times was he proposing to her (usually to a tree, a purple rake, an old lady ten times his age, a panda, one of Shampoo's decidedly less-good-looking cousins, and so on and so forth), but he was always asking if Shampoo would marry him, and always from the bottom of his heart did he ask.
She had pushed him away time and again. For what? The hope that Ranma would fall for her? She saw how that ended up. By trying for an impossible goal, she had pushed away any other chances for someone to love her.
Ever since she had arrived in Nerima, she had been alone. One Chinese girl who spoke broken Japanese amongst thousands of native-born Japanese people. Very few people in Nerima were able to speak Chinese, and only a handful were able to make out what she was trying to say when she first arrived. Although her Japanese had improved drastically since her first days in the multi-island nation, she had not yet grasped the language fully.
Unlike Cologne and Mousse, who spoke it flawlessly. Even though her two fellow Chinese Amazons had moved to Nerima with her, she still felt much like an outsider whenever people began speaking quickly in Japanese, even if it was Cologne or Mousse.
She lived in a land where she was an outsider, a foreigner. She couldn't go back to the Amazon village in China. She still had yet to marry or kill Ranma, and to return now would earn her either lifetime banishment or even "honorable" execution, a Chinese version of seppuku.
Although she had considered suicide (right after the party, when the hurt was at its most painful stages), it had lost its luster quickly. Shampoo too much of coward to do that.
Her self-pity and self-loathing doubled back, raking across her mind once again with painful thoughts, causing her to go into sobbing fits once again. She sat in the far corner of the room and cried, as she had done so often since the party had ended.
She tried stopping the tears when she heard the light tapping on her door, but they refused to cease coming. Gaining a hold on herself, she tried to make herself look as composed as possible as she went slowly for the door.
"What you want, Mousse?" she asked quietly as she cracked the door open, her voice weak and only a very little bit annoyed.
"I brought your dinner, Shampoo," he answered, holding the tray up for her to see. A smaller-than-usual bowl of ramen, some pork buns, a bowl of rice, some miso soup, and some green tea in a cup wafted their aromas into her room.
"Shampoo no hungry," she answered back. It didn't take long for her stomach to voice its opinion on her state of hunger, though, as she breathed in the scents of the food.
"I hear a differing opinion. Now, come on, Shampoo. You need to eat," his gentle, yet firm, voice replied. It was different from the usual tone of mindless admiration and adoration he spouted out all the time.
I think this situation is making us both grow up a lot more than usual, Mousse thought. He had heard about Shampoo's refusal to use her usual underhanded tactics to get Ranma back in her clutches.
He opened the door fully and walked in. Setting the tray of food in the middle of the room, he sat down, his arms going to their usual positions within his sleeves. Shampoo stood there for a moment, then decided to go sit down across the tray from Mousse.
It didn't take long for her to finish the food on the tray, as it had been a good day or day and a half since she had eaten last. As she set down the empty tea glass, she looked over to Mousse, who had been watching her, wearing a solid poker face the entire time.
"Mousse?"
"Yes, Shampoo?" Once again, a calm, concerned voice, rather than idiotically adoring.
She wasn't quite sure how to word this, especially in a foreign language. "You… you still in love with Shampoo, yes? You no leave Shampoo, like Ranma?"
That was a question that caught Mousse completely off-guard. Never before in his wildest dreams, well maybe not his wildest, had he imagined Shampoo asking him a question like that.
"Um, well, er…" he stammered, attempting to reply. "That is to say, I, uh…" Shampoo inched closer and closer to him. When she was right next to him, she leaned over, her head angling upwards to his, lips pursing.
What are you doing, you fool! Kiss her! She's finally coming around to you, and you're just standing there like some big stupid oaf! Mousse's internal thoughts finally regained coherence and began berating him on his lack of coping abilities.
But… She's just doing this because she's on the rebound from Ranma. She probably would do this to any guy in this position…
SO WHAT?! You've wanted this all your life! Who are you to refuse her?!
Mousse, for the most part, was able to keep this internal war just that: internal. Unfortuantely, the last barrage from one of the voices in his head really got to him.
"ShutupshutupShutUpSHUTUP!!" he shouted, jerking his head left and right. Shampoo stood back for a moment while Mousse tried to physically reign in his internal thoughts.
After regaining his composure, he turned to Shampoo. Seeing her, he instantly ran to the other side of the room. He had seen this kind of emotional reaction before, and always when Ranma had REALLY pissed Akane off.
"MOUSSE NO BAKA!!!" the red-glowing Shampoo screamed as she let loose with the first punch.
Cologne was about to walk out the kitchen door to go back and count the money in the register when Mousse's unconscious form found its way down the stairs in a not-so-gentle manner.
"I see that Shampoo hasn't let this matter get to her so much that it altered her reactions to certain stimuli," the old Chinese Amazon said all-too-casually.
Raising his face from the floor, Mousse's reply was short, mostly unintelligible, and had something to do with "terrifying red light." His face returned to the floor rather quickly afterward.
Cologne just shook her head. The more things change… She was just about to go to the register when she heard the a creak from one of the stairs. Slowly, Shampoo made her way down.
"Child, are you all right?" Cologne tenatively asked. "It seems you have worked out a bit of your anger."
Shampoo silently walked to the bottom of the stairs and kneeled down next to Mousse's unconscious form. Placing his head in her lap, she smiled ever-so-slightly.
"Shampoo feel better now."
"Are you sure you are alright, grandchild? You don't seem to be quite yourself just yet…"
Although there were still traces of tears in her eyes, Shampoo's smile didn't waver. "Shampoo OK now, Great-Grandmother. You no worry."
"All right, child. If you need anything, I'll be upstairs," Cologne replied, hopping up the stairs atop her ever-present cane.
Shampoo turned her head back to Mousse's face. "Yes, Shampoo all right, now…"
THE END…….?
