"I'm going to tear you apart!" Inuyasha snarled. The cavern was incredibly high, as if the mountain itself was hollow and everybody was inside it. The smell of rancid flesh mixed with the dank odor of fungus in a cave, resulting in an entirely new and even more displeasing smell. However, the tension was too great and the stakes too high for anybody to be notice.
"Idiot, how are you going to face me without even a sword?" Naraku said as he looked down at the half dog demon condescendingly.
Inuyasha curled his lips into something resembling a smile, "That what you think. Tetsusaiga!"
From the corner of his eye, Ranma noticed a slash of white as an old rusty sword flew towards the outstretched scabbard that Inuyasha now held. When it got close enough, the hanyou grabbed onto the hilt and transformed into the massive sword that Ranma had seen him use earlier.
Yellow flames licked across the blade as the hanyou brought the sword before him, "Kaze no Kizu!"
"You'll regret that." Naraku smiled as he made a backhanding motion. The spear of pure demonic energy that Inuyasha had released was shunted aside into the mountain. That the blast was deflected off the rocks that it hit and aimed strait at Ranma almost caught him off guard.
"Argh!" Still holding Shippou, Ranma flipped onto a ledge above him to avoid the blast, but was dismayed when he saw the energy bounce towards Kirara. The twin-tailed demon dodged the blast, to Ranma's relief but was quickly pinned to the wall by a sudden tentacle attack from below.
"Your own attack is causing the suffering of your friends." Naraku observed. "It will be your fault when the die."
The only response from Inuyasha that the overlord received was a low growl of frustration.
Ranma observed the youki fueled flame as it circled around cavern. "It's circling around the cavern!" he realized, "heh, this will be a cinch!"
Ranma started leaping around the cavern in the same path as the Kaze no Kizu, while Naraku and Inuyasha were too focused to notice. Shippou, however, thought that Ranma had gone insane.
"He's running around doing nothing!" the little fox-child wailed.
"Your miko friend is not here to help you, Inuyasha." said Naraku, "I will kill you now!"
More tentacles sprang up from the depths below, forcing both Inuyasha and Ranma to dodge, jumping from ledge to ledge in hopes of staying alive.
"Almost there!" Ranma thought, swinging around a tentacle that had barely missed him, "Now!" In an instant Ranma initiated his soul of ice, suddenly giving of cold ki as he punched upwards, "Hiryuu Shoten Ha!"
For those who are interested in the mechanics of the mix of ki and youki, it should be remembered from previous chapters that youki works as cold ki because it is very dense in power. However, it should now be stated that youki is not as dense as cold ki because it was not artificially made so. Therein lied the flaw in Ranma's plan, although to be fair, he did not know this at the time.
Ranma was therefore very surprised when his attack literally spiraled out of control.
"What went wrong?" he wondered, the tornado that he had created was now blazing around the cavern at dangerous speeds and levels of power. "If anything, the large concentration of youki in here should have made the attack not work!"
Ranma's concentration was broken, however, as he lost his grip on the ledge and was swept upwards in the cyclone. Above him, Ranma saw the ceiling tear apart and around him were all the people that had been involved including Miroku, Sango, Kirara, Inuyasha and Naraku. The last person seemed to have a look of mild surprise as he and the pink ball that he seemed to reside in was swept away as well. Below Ranma saw the overpowered tornado tear apart the mountain and much of the area around it.
"Oh man, I think I messed up." he thought. Sighing, Ranma decided to catch the other people before they landed on the ground. Somehow, he doubted the landing would not be very soft.
When Ranma turned around however, he found himself face to face with another person that he had never seen before.
Besides the breastplate, the stranger seemed to be wearing skins as clothes, including a fur shoulder pad, arm guards and leg guard as well as a fir cloth around his waste. He was also very unconscious.
"Nice fashion sense" Ranma thought as he grabbed the person and put him into a fireman carry. The martial artist then looked around to see if anybody else was around, and thankfully saw that a conscious Kirara was still near an unconscious Sango and Miroku. Inuyasha meanwhile was below and seemed to be shouting at Ranma.
A few minutes later the cyclone had dissipated. The crew was now many meters above the ground. Ranma sincerely doubted his ability to land without injury. When he looked over at Inuyasha and saw that the dog demon was not worried however, his ego kept him from voicing his doubt out. "After all," he thought, "if dog-boy can survive, so can I... that which does not kill me makes me stronger after all."
So when the martial artist looked down and saw a lake, Ranma did not know if it was a blessing or a curse.
Ranma-chan crawled onto the beach, coughing up water as she did so. The man in animal skin that she had saved was lying on the beach and down it, she could make out the red-garbed Inuyasha. Above her, Miroku and Sango landed on the ground atop Kirara.
"Are you all right Miss?" Sango asked, "you look like you fell out of the sky."
Ranma was at a loss for words, answering a question like that was strange enough, but in her situation it was even more difficult.
As she stared blankly at the demon exterminator, she felt a shiver up her spine. Ranma turned around to see Miroku feeling her behind.
"Ehehehe," Ranma chuckled nervously, "I think I had better show you something to avoid confusion." Behind her lay a trampled on and very unconscious Miroku. "Have you got any hot water?"
"Sorry, but I don't think I'll be able to get that without Kagome's backpack" Sango said thoughtfully as she stroked Kirara, "we have the heat source but we don't have anything to boil water in. You'll have to wait until we get to the next village."
After some cursing, Ranma turned back to Sango, "You'll just have to trust me on this one, but I am actually Ranma."
Sango raised an eyebrow, "Ranma?"
"Yep you smell like him, that's for sure." The intruder was Inuyasha who had just caught up with the rest of the group, "you're Ranma."
Ranma looked up at Inuyasha in gratitude at being backed up before frowning at the smirk on the hanyou's lips.
"So, fem-boy, are you going to give us an explanation about why you turn into a girl?" Inuyasha laughed, "I'm sure you'll be a much better girl than a guy!"
"Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken!" The hanyou's eyes widened in brief shock as he was blasted a few meters backwards. In front of him was an angry Ranma-chan.
"Look dog-boy, I may look like a girl now, but I am a guy and I can still kick you good!"
Inuyasha growled back at her, "You? Ha! If I rember correctly it was your carelessness that got us into this mess. I'll admit that your tornado was strong, but it's messed everything up! Naraku's gone and the whole freaking mountain's been blown away!"
Ranma's face flushed, "it shouldn't have been that strong." She mumbled, "but I know I'll do better next time, I always do!"
Sango watched the exchange with interest, "you created that powerful attack? As a human?"
"I told you, It shouldn't have been that strong." Ranma's countenance grew thoughtful, "perhaps I was wrong about youki, I thought it worked exactly like cold ki."
"That attack was full of youki" Inuyasha told Ranma, "I know you are human, it couldn't have been you."
"Shut up!" Ranma snapped back but again was thoughtful, "perhaps I was wrong, if Youki was less dense than cold ki, then it would have worked as hot ki in that situation. If that was true, then Inuyasha's spiraling Kaze no Kizu and the enormous amounts of jaki that Naraku was giving off led to an overabundance of it. With the small amount of cold ki that I released, there was a lack of control, causing a monster, out-of-control hurricane!"
The other people were now staring at Ranma in complete puzzlement.
Sighing, Ranma faced the group, "I messed up, ok? I'll win next time!"
Before Inuyasha could respond skeptically, Sango cut in, "so how did you become a girl?"
Ranma grimaced, "it was an event in China in my time, I fell into a cursed spring which turned me into a girl. Luckily, hot water changes me back into a man – unluckily cold water turns me into a girl again."
"So are you a boy or a girl?" Shippou piped up.
Closing his eyes, Ranma chanted to himself, "he's just a kid, he's just a kid."
Nearby, the originally unconscious stranger stood up.
"Oh, it's the wimpy wolf." Inuyasha said uninterestedly.
The mentioned person, who Ranma later learned was a wolf demon named Kouga, shook his head and looked around, his gaze resting on each of the group and finally Inuyasha.
Ranma could almost not follow the wolf demon's shape as he blurred and appeared next to Inuyasha holding the hanyou's throat.
"What happened to Kagome?"
Inuyasha swung Tetsusaiga at Kouga in response. "I can't find her you idiot, and you should thank us for saving you instead of complaining!"
The wolf demon blurred again, reappearing just out of reach of the sword, "I guess dog-boy couldn't protect his woman huh? That's why Kagome is mine!" Ranma had to admit that she would be hard pressed to match Kouga's speed, although the youkai did remind him of another warrior who used the speed of a wolf.
"That isn't important! Let's just get to the nearest village and find signs of Naraku," Inuyasha said, "or have you forgotten that Kagome is still missing?"
Ranma went to peer at Miroku as the two argued, "I think he's waking – maybe I overdid it a bit?"
"Less than he deserved." Sango snorted.
Ranma was suddenly aware that her hands were clasped in between the monk's. She looked back at Miroku to see him staring into her eyes.
"Will you bear my child?"
It was Kirara who had to carry Miroku's badly beaten body as the group journeyed to the next village.