A Reflections Mini-Sequel
A. V. Morgan
Part Three
With an uncanny eye for natural beauty, Ranma had homed in on the ideal wilderness retreat. The river was one of the root tributaries of the Yellow River, cutting through a narrow, wooded valley outside of the Amazon Village. The pool Ranma had mentioned sat in a steep depression between two bends in the water course, at the base of a two-meter fall. The pool was ringed with medium to large boulders poking their heads and shoulders up out of the water, the largest positioned perfectly for diving into the deep end. Though the river was cool enough to shock, the trio had become completely inured to cold water as a result of both upbringing and the privilege of having a curse. Since it was just themselves, there really was no need to play at modesty; they eagerly stripped down and ran laughing and hollering towards the pool. After a short pause, while Fa Shen and Ranma scooped up handfuls of water to wash themselves on the riverbank, they all bounded up to the highest boulder and took a dive. More than they craved the peace of this beautiful, isolated retreat, they had longed for the simple pleasure of being in a group that had nothing more serious to worry about than play. For about an hour, they all reverted mentally and emotionally to about the age of seven, and had the time of their lives. For once, there were no curses, no fiancées, no rivals or challengers or such to interfere. The first were all safely locked, the second, third and fourth were all avoiding them, lost—a distant voice in the woods cried out, "Where the hell am I NOW!?"—or tied up in other things.
It was a relief just forget about all the problems, of that day and the whole trip to China. In fact, the would have continued to indulge in this carefree abandon if something unexpected had not brought them immediately back to reality. It happened as they progressed from a three way water fight to Ranma and Fa Shen double teaming Ranko in an attempt to dunk her under water. In the midst of thrashing around in an effort to flee from their grip, Ranko suddenly realized that all the hands assaulting her were masculine. Her startled pause was enough for the two boys to shove her under the surface. Ranko flipped under water, swimming deeper and then away from the pair to get away. Breeching the surface at a safe distance, Ranko sucked in a deep breath and turned to stare at them.
"Ranma!" she yelped, finally expressing her shock.
"What?" he replied, grinning aloofly.
"You're a boy!" she announced, raising an arm above the water to point.
"Wha…!?" he twitched, his hands moving instantly under the water to test this theory. With a startled gasp, he began to sink beneath the surface. Spluttering, he started to tread water again and cried, "Hey! When did that happen? I wasn't even… I totally forgot about trying to…"
"Ohmygod. She's right!" Fa Shen blurted, after studying Ranma's face carefully. Their facial features changed so little that, now that their hair was always red, it was almost impossible to tell what sex they were from the shoulders up. It took a careful eye to pick up the slight strengthening of the jaw or faint broadening of the face that made it merely handsome, instead of beautiful. "What did you do, Ranma? I mean," he waved a hand helplessly, "what were you thinking? When did it happen? Didn't you even feel it?"
"Er…" Ranma left his mouth hanging, while he tried to think.
"And how many times have I changed and not even noticed it?" Ranko challenged, swimming slowly back towards them. Frowning, she added, "It must have just happened, though. I mean, when you two first jumped me, Ranma still had breasts."
"Uh…" Ranma blushed and sank a little lower in the water.
"Ranma?" Fa Shen turned toward him, faint confusion and dawning suspicion.
"It's not like that…" Ranma was instantly on the defensive.
"What?" Ranko looked at them. They were studying her intently, but there was something different in their expressions. "What are you looking at me like that for?"
"I'm surprised we didn't think of this earlier," Fa Shen commented to Ranma. He blushed and looked down. To answer Ranko's confusion, Fa Shen added, "You just said, it had to have happened when we were struggling together. When Ranma was touching you."
Ranko squirmed. "So?"
"So…" Ranma huffed, sliding diagonally toward the ring of boulders and away from Ranko, "you still bring out the boy in me." As Ranko gaped at him, mouth open to protest, but unable to say anything, he sighed. "Maybe it's just that, I dunno, when one of us is a boy, it brings out the girl in the other, and when one of us is a girl, it brings out the boy. But, I'm more of a boy, right? So, when we're both girls, you bring out the boy in me."
"So, you mean…" Ranko tried, hesitantly.
"It all balances out," Fa Shen murmured thoughtfully, not intending to cut Ranko off. On impulse, he slid over toward Ranma. To his discomfort, Fa Shen wrapped his arms around the other boy and pressed himself close. A few heartbeats later, he was a she. Leaning back, to look into Ranma's startled eyes, she laughed, "Wow. I never thought it would be this easy!"
"But still…" Ranko tried again.
"That's it? We've mastered the curses?" Ranma demanded in surprise.
Fa Shen shrugged. "It's supposed to be hardest to do the first time, but we will have to try switching back to find out if we've really mastered them," she corrected.
"Hey! I'm trying to say something here!" Ranko shouted at them.
The other two jerked around to stare back into her glare. "What?"
"I was just…" again, Ranko trailed off. Swallowing, she composed herself, firming her resolve to try once more. "You… When you were… Well, back there, y'know," she gestured to where they had dunked her, "…you turned into a guy because you were touching me. But… I mean, why? You weren't… you know, THINKING of anything like…" She could not say it, she just looked at him helplessly.
"Like Copy-kun, that first time in the bath?" Fa Shen offered, helpfully. As the one who had absorbed that reflection, she remembered all too well what the first personality of the male reflection felt about his cursed original. At Ranko's blushing nod, Fa Shen turned to Ranma, prompting him with a look.
With a nervous laugh, he kicked under water, to propel himself back a bit. "Hey, you can't blame a guy for thinkin' like that! I mean, you were a guy, Fa Shen, I wasn't gonna be thinking that way because of you right then, was I?"
"So, you wanted to…" Ranko pressed, fidgeting.
"Hey, I wasn't plannin' on anything! I'm in enough trouble as it is, without sleepin' with you too!"
"Ranma!" Fa Shen snapped, noticing the way Ranko's face went blank.
"What?" he turned, receiving a face full of water from Fa Shen.
"You're being an insensitive jerk!" the original amazon cried.
"No, Fa Shen! That's okay…" Ranko tried to dismiss it.
"It is not okay!" Fa Shen turned toward her.
"What the hell… Come on, guys, you're confusin' the hell outta me!"
"Geez, you really are a boy!" Fa Shen declared in exasperation. "You'd think, with your first and second time both as a girl, you'd have a clue!"
"Please, Fa Shen. This really isn't necessary. I was just curious…"
"Well, that's the point, isn't it?" she turned to her twin. "You've felt it all, inside and out, three times through us, but you still haven't done it. I'd be curious too!"
Ranko blushed, at this. When Ranma turned to stare at her, comprehension finally dawning on his face, she held her breath and sank out of sight.
"Ranko?" Ranma swam towards her. As he got close, she just dove down deeper.
"Way to go, Stud," Fa Shen snorted, pushing off from a boulder and beginning a lap across the pool. As she stroked through the water, she frowned in thought. She had been conscious of the fact that Ranko was, thanks to her and Ranma, the most experienced virgin on the planet. The absurdity of the situation, this exploitation of sex to tap into power, had begun in order to save Ranko's life, but it had done a lot more than that. The trading places, and the experimenting with the power of the circuit, was the excuse she and Ranma used to indulge their physical attraction. It kept them from freaking out about what they were doing. But sex was weird like that. However much shame they might feel, because of who they were more than what they were doing, the act itself was like a drug. Fa Shen and Ranma had made a silent pact, the best they could come up with to resist that drug, to leave Ranko out of the messy part. But now, Fa Shen had to ask herself if that was fair to Ranko?
Fa Shen reached the other side of the pool and clung to a submerged rock. The answer to the question was obvious. "She feels shut out," Fa Shen sighed in misery.
Ranma, who had swam up next to her, heard that and confessed, "It ain't fair. But it's not really right, either. I don't think I can separate sex and love, an' dammit, how can I not love her? But I don't need Akane to make me see that it's really perverted. How can I do the right thing for Ranko and be sure I am really doing the right thing?"
At the far end of the pool, Ranko finally surfaced, arching her head back to slick her hair away from her face. With a glance over her shoulder at Ranma and Fa Shen, she dragged herself up on a boulder, then bounded away upstream.
A kilometer up the river, it struck Ranko that she was racing through the woods naked and no one was trying to pursue her. Coming to a stop, and shifting her hands to cover herself, she turned carefully to scan the surrounding wilderness, cursing herself under her breath. In the heat of the moment, it had seemed like a good idea to put some distance between herself and her siblings, but it was rather stupid to rush off and leave her clothes behind. On retrospect, the whole scenario was pretty stupid. Fa Shen was not entirely wrong about the effect Ranma and Fa Shen's intimacy had on her. Until her reflections had come out of the mirror, she had been extremely naïve about sex. Thanks to Copy-chan and Copy-kun's obsession with "making love" Ranko had become aware of her own sexual awakening, a path she had started down as a boy, that she had innocently continued on as a girl. Because of the curse, she had faced a serious obstacle to understanding sex, since she assumed all of the innuendo thrust at her by guys like Hiroshi and Daisuke had been a disgusting attempt to poke fun at her, as Ranma. In her ignorance, she could not take what they said seriously, and faced with constant accusations of perversion from Akane, she had not even been comfortable asking anyone else if there was any truth to the lewd interactions of her friends' depictions of intercourse. Now that she knew for certain what all the fuss was about, having gained a better insight into sex than any person outside of her trinity could hope to gain, the problem had been that she was not in a position to experience sex for herself. At least, not without some serious complications.
Initially, she had been relieved that neither Ranma nor Fa Shen had expressed an interest in including her completely in their adventures. Ranko was still having a hard enough time with the fact that she was conscious of every detail of copy-Ranko and Ranma's night with Ryouga, after she claimed the memory and the emotional impulses of that during the second fusion. Sex with either of her siblings would be safe, but the troubling question was, where could something like that lead? So far, what Ranma and Fa Shen had, while involving sex, had not been exclusively about or for sex. Each time they had fused, it had been to accomplish some other objective. The first time was to cure her. The second time was so that Ranma and Fa Shen could reclaim their own bodies, after being switched that first time. This third time had been to see if they could master their curses, and that had been quickly and unexpectedly successful. But, anything intimate between Ranko and them would be, exclusively, about sex. The minute that happened, Akane was wholly justified in her reaction to them. It would be a betrayal. It would be them choosing each other, themselves, over anyone else. Maybe if there was no one else, that would not matter, but…
"Ryouga would go insane," she breathed.
Taking a deep breath, she sat down on a flat boulder and curled her arms around her knees. Just after the battle with the Musk at Jusenkyo, Ranko and Ryouga had gone off together to discuss their relationship. The evening before the fight, they had reached the climax of their misunderstanding, when they both believed they had been rejected by the other. Ryouga had made a desperate attempt to renew things with Ranma, coming on to the recently restored boy in her new female form. Ranma pushed her off, being aware of Ranko's true feelings, and chewed Ryouga out for spurning Ranko. Of course, Ranko had witnessed the kiss and missed everything after that, fleeing from the heart-shattering scene. This in turn sent Ryouga into an explosive depression, reactivating the residue of her Heitonniichuan curse and tying the trigger to the heavy chi of her depression. Clearing the air between them had done a lot to raise Ryouga's spirits above the point where he was turning into a pig every time he turned around. They had agreed to be boyfriend and girlfriend, despite the fact that it was anyone's guess when who would be what, but because Ryouga had defeated Ranko—at the time as Ranma—and Ranko had declared her love, kissed him and then had sex with him—through her reflection—they were married by amazon law. That was a level of commitment neither of them were ready for. The only way out of it was to exploit a technicality of the law. They pointed out that Copy-Ranko was no longer a direct extension of Ranko, since Ranma took possession of that body. As far as Ranko was officially concerned, that night had not happened, so the marriage was reduced to a potential claim.
As far as amazon law was concerned, they were simply engaged. To preserve that condition, there were three things Ranko had to avoid. She could not kiss him. She could not declare her love for him. She could not sleep with him. The first two technically invoked the marriage, the third sealed it. So, the only other person she was inclined to have sex with was off limits to her.
"Dammit!" she cursed.
The sexual tension was torturing her. That was the reason why her heart had begun pounding, and her body began to betray her, as soon as she realized that Ranma had actually been thinking about her sexually. Her life had suddenly become filled with impulses to arousal, but left her only the most basic level of release. At first, it had been easy to ignore the temptation of her sibling selves. They showed no interest in her that way, and they avoided indulging in each other without a justifiable reason to exploit the trinity. They were as safe as any brother and sister. But now, it would take a lot more will power to keep her hands to herself around them. She also had to be more cautious about letting them lay hands on her. She did not think her will was strong enough to stop anything past that point.
"And that's just like with Ryouga," she complained.
"Ranko?"
"Gyaaaa!" she leapt straight up, and clung to an overhanging branch. Focusing on the boy who emerged from the bushes, dressed solely in boxers and a towel draped over his shoulder, she glared. "Ryouga! What the hell are you doing, lurking in the bushes? And why are you in your underwear?"
"Sorry. I was on my way to the bath. I've been wandering in Cologne's atrium all morning looking for the way out, so I could go looking for you," he explained sheepishly. Taking a good look at her, and then pinching his nose tight, he squeaked, "How come you don't have ANY clothes on?"
"Er…" she dropped out of the branches and slunk down into the water, using the river to conceal her nudity. With a look of strained patience, she pointed out, "Cologne's house doesn't have an atrium, idiot. You're in the woods outside of the village. There's a pool down that way where I was swimming with Ranma and Fa Shen. I wandered off to think and forgot to grab my clothes. Now, what were you looking for me for?"
Ryouga scanned up and down the stream, allowing her remarks to sink in, before dredging up what he needed to tell her about. "Ah. Yeah. Well… I was looking for the bath when… You say this is not an atrium? I guess that explains how Lime and Mint got in… er… out. Whatever. The thing is, they're training Mousse!"
"Huh?" Ranko frowned, pulling her eyes away from a hungry appraisal of the lost boy's muscular body, and focused on his face. "What did you say!?"
"I said, Mousse was with Lime and Mint. They were training together when I stumbled across them. From what I heard, he's giving them information on Fa Shen, to give to Herb for their next fight, and they are training him for his fight with you!" he elaborated.
Ranko proceeded to curse like a deranged dock worker. On her third or fourth long breath, she ran out of invective and was reduced to smashing her hands through the water. On the bank, Ryouga stared at her. He had recognized slang and epithets from at least seven languages in her tirade. It was the best evidence to date that she really had grown up on the road with just Genma for company. Ranko caught his expression, and fell still and silent. Clearing her throat, she responded to his raised eyebrow with a shrug, saying, "Sorry. I don't usually curse, but… I do remember all the things that have been shouted at me an' Pops by people who were really pissed. Of course, I don't usually get really pissed."
"Hey, no complaints from me. We already knew Mousse was serious about this, but…" he shrugged and gave her a longing look. Forcing his eyes to cool and meet hers, he resumed, "Even if we sealed the marriage, he'd still be able to challenge you. Amazon male's privilege, right?"
"That blind, arrogant bastard," Ranko grumbled.
"Not that it'll help him if he wins. I promised you, I won't let Shampoo get me into a fight. I don't think he'd risk challenging you if Shampoo isn't somehow part of the package," he comforted. She sighed and relaxed. With a smile, Ryouga shifted his towel and gestured toward her, "Well, I missed the bath by a long shot, but I suppose the river here will do just as good, right?" He hung his towel off of a nearby branch, knelt at the edge of the water, and splashed himself with water. With a shudder and a gasp at the cold, she slipped off her boxers, tossed them on top of the towel, and joined Ranko in the water. "So, you were saying something about me when I found you. What was that about?" Ryouga asked casually.
Ranko sighed, but saw no reason to be dishonest. "It's kinda depressing…"
"That's okay. I'm safe in the water. It'll change me back as fast as I can turn into a pig. I've been actually using that to break myself out of depression fits," she smiled. Having dropped her bath kit somewhere in her wandering, she scooped up a handful of sand in place of soap. It was ironic that water had actually become her ally against the pig curse. The change into a pig usually burned up all the heavy chi that triggered it, and shook her out of her depression. The pig curse no longer reversed itself, but the triggers for the girl curse that replaced it both worked. In hot water, she still reverted to a boy, and in cold water she became a girl, both overriding the chi curse. Of course, Ryouga was really good at getting depressed. She could get on a roll where she turned into a pig as quickly as the pig could get turned back human. Sitting in water, while trying to break her shishihokodan conditioning, was giving her the edge she needed to master her heavier emotions.
Ranko nodded, offering a supporting grin. "I am glad to hear that, Ryou-chan. I guess you won't find it as depressing…" she grimaced. "It's really just frustrating as hell. I was thinking about what we can't do," she confessed, not caring how much it implied that she really wanted to do it.
Ryouga paused and studied her. Then, she resumed scrubbing herself with sand, and murmured, "It's all up to you, Ranko. I am ready for it whenever you are. I'm not going to be like your old fiancées. I want it to be your choice, not something forced on you." The breathless euphoria of that first night with copy-Ranko had been severely strained by the conflicts that followed. The break up with Ranma had been murder on Ryouga's heart, but she'd been saved by gaining a second chance with the genuine Ranko. Ryouga was not taking any chances on screwing things up between them. To that end, Ryouga had not come too close to Ranko when their genders were flipped. Being the same sex did not erase all the chemistry between them, but it gave them both a degree of control. That was important, since Ryouga did not know if she could stop anything that got started between them. That was not so bad, but she dreaded the possibility of Ranko regretting it afterward.
"Thanks, Ryouga. It's nice to have a choice," she hugged the other girl, adding to herself, 'Even if it's already been made.' The only problem with that was, she was so new to her own life, she did not know if she was qualified to make a decision that would affect her entire future. She had a lot to learn about who she was, apart from Fa Shen and Ranma. She did not know if she would still be the person who fell in love with Ryouga when she was done learning. If there was any chance they would not end up together, it was better for Ryouga if they did not go too far before she broke away.
When Ryouga finished bathing, Ranko felt she had collected her wits enough to face her siblings. Taking the lost girl by the hand, after finding her towel and boxers for her, Ranko led the way down river to where Ranma and Fa Shen were, to retrieve her clothes. Arriving at the pool, she discovered that Ranma and Fa Shen had dressed and left, leaving her clothes neatly folded and warmed in the sun on a rock. Slipping into her halter, panties and pants, she offered her shirt to Ryouga, who shook her head and calmly wrapped the towel around herself. With her smaller stature, that was enough to cover everything from her chest to her upper thigh. With a shrug, Ranko finished dressing and set out in search of her twins. Unless she straightened things out with them, the earlier embarrassment would drive a wedge between her and them, and that could not be allowed to happen. Besides, she was curious to find out if they had full mastery over the curses, following the initial success at asserting their normal genders in each other's bodies. Until she found them, though, she had to push that thought out of her mind, or it would slip out and betray their secret to Ryouga.
"So, Ryouga," she decided on a tangent to her thought. "Have you been thinking about getting control over your girl curse?"
Ryouga, keeping her eyes locked on Ranko's back as she led the way out of the woods, scratched her head and nodded. "I'm more concerned about the pig curse, but getting control of the other curse might make more sense. Besides, I might need control over my human forms more. I was thinkin' about the fights with Herb, and what happened during the search for the Kaisuifuu," she shuddered. Back when they first confronted Prince Herb and his goons, Ranko had gotten locked in female form in punishment for challenging the dragon prince. Ryouga and Mousse had joined her on a quest for the cure, but their real goal had been to get their hands on the Chisuiiton, believing it could lock them in their normal forms. What they had not known was that the magic ladle chilled the water used to lock a person's form, meaning it triggered their curses and locked them as a pig and a duck. Ranko, of course still Ranma at the time, had fought Herb to distract him while Ryouga and Mousse went after the kettle, urging them to change back to normal. That almost cost Ranma his manhood, but Ryouga had saved the day by rescuing the Kaisuifuu from the depths of the earth, where it had been lost as the battle shattered the mountain they were on.
"What, you don't think you can be locked in your pig form, do you?" Ranko winced.
"Well, no. Not directly. It's just, I need to have the other curse active to reverse my pig transformation. It doesn't have a reverse mechanism, so if I was locked as a girl, the next time I got depressed I'd be stuck as a pig," Ryouga pointed out miserably.
"Oh," Ranko wilted, realizing her boyfriend was correct.
"Yeah," Ryouga sighed, adjusting the bandanna around her head. Trying to keep her spirits up, she interjected, "But, according to Fa Shen, I should be able to master the curse, if I'm willing to risk being locked to do it. She was going to work on it with Ranma and, once she found a way to test the technique she was taught, she'd train me for the ordeal."
Ranko nodded. "I suppose you wanna get a handle on your depression first, just in case," she tested, earning a nod from Ryouga. With a smile, and a reassuring hand on her shoulder, she confided, "Well, I think you're in luck. I'm pretty sure Fa Shen's figured something out. That's sorta what we were focusing on before you showed up."
"Really? Well, let's go talk to her then!" Ryouga was instantly excited.
"On our way, Ryou-chan," Ranko smirked, linking hands with Ryouga and picking up the pace. While the new part-time girl clasped one hand to her chest, to keep the towel in place, Ranko lurched into ground devouring aerial bounds, dragging Ryouga along like a fluttering tail. They arrived at the perimeter to the village to hear all-too-familiar voices raised in dispute. With an aggravated sigh, Ranko growled, "Great. Ranma ran into Akane again. Come on, Ryouga, we better stop them before she starts throwing blows. Or other things."
As they reached the disturbance, they were forced to fight their way through a crowd of amazons to reach the feuding pair. Emerging into the center of the mob, Ranko spotted Fa Shen—at least she assumed it was Fa Shen—holding her head in resignation. Slinking to her side, Ranko pried, "What set her off this time?" Her eyes were focused on where Ranma and Akane stood tensely across from each other, leaning in face to face, shouting over each other's voices to be heard.
Fa Shen peeked out from behind her hands and then dropped them to her side. With a grimace of frustration, she shrugged, "It's not our fault. Ranma and I were talking to each other about… well, y'know… what happened at the river. Guess who walked by behind us at the worst possible time?"
Ryouga cocked her head in puzzlement, "What did Ranma do to Akane?"
"Who said Ranma did anything to her?" Ranko asked in a strained voice. A lot of things had changed, but at the drop of a hat, Ryouga was still quick to assume Ranma was at fault whenever Akane got worked up. Turning to Fa Shen, she dropped her voice and asked, "You don't mean…?"
"Girl talk," Fa Shen warned Ryouga, making the female boy recoil automatically, and leaned in to whisper into Ranko's ear. "That's exactly what I mean. Your reactions to each other in the pool kinda pointed out that we've never seriously talked about sex with you. Uh, that is… both ways. I mean," she blushed, "We haven't been talking about the sex, or how we all feel about it. We avoided involving you in it, as much as possible. So, Ranma and I sat down to talk about having sex with you."
Ranko gulped.
"Relax," Fa Shen sighed, shaking her a little. "It's kinda obvious you're curious, but it's not just that, or being horny. It occurred to me, after you left, that we don't know what would happen if we did… with you. We only know what happens if it's Ranma and I."
Ranko's eyes widened in understanding, "So, you were talking about an experiment…"
"And Akane walked by," Fa Shen nodded.
Pulling back, speaking in a normal voice, she asked, "Okay, then what happened?"
"Well, she clobbered him, of course," Fa Shen groaned. Gesturing to the crowd, she went on, "Right in front of witnesses, she cold-cocked him. Of course, that wasn't enough, she shook him awake and started ranting at him. Now everyone in the village thinks Ranma fantasizes about sleeping with you… and me," she blushed. Waving that off, "She actually accused him of doing it, but after her first accusation, I think the crowd got the idea that she's making assumptions and being jealous."
"That's bad enough," Ranko squirmed, finally understanding the looks she had been getting.
"Akane thinks Ranma's sleeping with you two?" Ryouga snarled.
The red-headed girls nodded, sadly.
"You… you haven't been, though… right?" she panted, on the edge of shock.
"No! No I haven't!" Ranko shouted in panic.
"Oh." Ryouga sagged with relief, gulping, "Thank God."
Ranko turned a desperate look to Fa Shen, who shrugged and thought, 'Good thing you didn't have to lie there, Ranko. Kinda convenient that he assumed you spoke for both of us, too.' Turning back to her "brother" and his fiancée, she noted that they were past accusations and denials, all a confusion of incoherent noise as they drowned out each other's words, and had entered the deadly insult phase. "Get ready for it," she warned, as Akane's form was shrouded in a deep blue aura of rage. "Now, Ranma. Just like…" but Ranma had forgotten about the rage quenching technique Fa Shen had tried to teach him. He missed his cue, and all the chi was instinctively channeled into the fist Akane snapped under his jaw.
"I HATE you!" Akane screamed, getting in the last word as the blow snapped Ranma's mouth closed with a teeth rattling click, a nice high pitched accent over the loud, dull smack of flesh on flesh.
"STOOOOOOPIIIID T-OOOOooommmboooooooiiii…!" Ranma's dwindling retort echoed back.
The crowd craned their heads, hands up to shield out the sun, to follow Ranma's trajectory. A retrieval party was formed and ran off after him. Akane dusted her hands off, turned to glare hatefully at Ranko and Fa Shen, then stomped off toward the tournament field.
"Nice to see some things don't change," Ryouga quipped.
"Well, that's 5 and 0," Fa Shen muttered in disgust.
"What happened to the other plan?" Ranko demanded.
Fa Shen gestured at herself. "It's kinda hard for me to pass as Ranma at the moment, don't you think?" she challenged, archly.
"So, you two couldn't…" she trailed off, remembering Ryouga's presence.
"Nope. Stuck this way, same as before," Fa Shen admitted. That was enough to confirm what she and Ranma had discovered when they had tried to test their mastery of each other's curses. Their initial breakthrough had been helped along by their sexual polarity, but the same thing did not work in reverse. Shrugging, she added, "I have an idea, but it involves your help. I'll tell you about it later, okay?"
Ranko nodded.
Ryouga, who had managed to piece the clipped conversation together and come up with something close to the truth, looked at Fa Shen, "Are you saying that it didn't work? What you were doing to master your curses?"
Fa Shen studied the boy-girl. "You know, our experiment didn't work right for me and Ranma, but you might have more success. You should get your pig curse under control before trying it, though. You'd have to be locked to try this, you know," she counseled.
Ryouga nodded, "You're right. I don't wanna get locked as a pig."
Ranko's stomach suddenly began to grumble.
"That reminds me," Fa Shen smirked, "we missed lunch."
"And breakfast," Ryouga added for herself.
"Let's go eat!" Ranko began salivating, grabbing the other two and racing toward the Matriarch's house. On the way, Ranko and Fa Shen quickly explained the situation with Ranma and Akane, starting with the battle of the breakfast insult, and the tribe's interpretation of their conflict. Without explaining why, they told her that Akane's temper had blinded her to the consequences of beating Ranma. Although, since she had never given Ranma a chance to apologize, much less kiss her, they had so far only made a spectacle. Remembering Ranko's comments at the end of the last fight, Ryouga began to pry, curious to know what sort of plan Ranma and Fa Shen had cooked up to deal with Akane. Rather than let him know they intended to have Fa Shen stand in for Ranma, to challenge Akane's victories, Ranko changed the subject, "Fa Shen, can you lead Ryouga to the table? I should go fetch Ranma, I am sure he'd kill us if found out we'd eaten without him."