This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, Matt Bozon, Erin Bell Bozon and the creative teams of Kity Films and WayForward.


( 。◕ シーンブレイク ◕。)


Chapter 11
Save Wobble Bell!

Five young people ran through the plaza surrounding the pond. Shantae leading, dressed in red silk completely covering her body. Her purple bangs, lacking the familiar support of a tiara, were sticking to her forehead and getting in her eyes. Following her was Akane in a greenish gi and wooden sandals, her head tied with a terry bandanna. The still nameless friend of Shantae was next, dressed in a practical outfit of knee-long shorts, sleeveless vest, shoes and leather gloves, his head also tied with a bandanna. After him there was Nabiki, breathing stubbornly through her nose, their tempo being too high for her tastes and her outfit being too stifling: a long sleeved shirt, the dense trousers with a whip on her belt, the heavy shoes, the hat — it was all unfamiliar to her, so unlike her usual running outfit. In the rear was a barefoot amazon dressed in ragged micro-shorts and a towel, two scimitars in her hands.

Passing the town gate, Shantae turned left along the road. Well, calling it a road was a bit too generous. There was a strip of packed earth with grooves from wagon wheels and numerous horseshoe tracks.

There were grain fields at first, then corn. The tall, leafy plants obscured nearby forest on the left turning the road into a green corridor.

"Watch out for scarecrows," the half-Genie warned conversationally without interrupting her steady jog. "They sometimes jump right out of the corn."

"Scarecrows?" Nabiki asked, intrigued. "You mean, straw ones?"

"Naw, the only straw in them are their hats," Shantae said. "They are... To think of it, they resemble tinkerbats quite a bit. A similar black, nasty spawn of dark magic."

"Scarecrows working on dark magic?" Xian Pu voiced her skepticism. "I assume there is someone, let's say, not very smart in the local agricultural community."

"Don't I know it!" Shantae agreed. "It's not clear whose idea it was, to invite a dark sorcerer deal with crows. The mayor swears on his mom it wasn't him. But I was first hired for exactly this: clear the fields from the scarecrows, after they ran out of crows to scare away. Two years ago... I mean, the last year again, it was a horrible mess, the scarecrows swarming the fields, no crow or a town guard dared getting near. You won't believe it, the area grew so deserted dirt dogs made themselves at home...! I had to clean them too."

The road was smoothly turning to the right, limiting visibility. When it looked like they'd run into the open, Shantae took a sharp turn left, onto a narrow path cutting through the corn. Akane and Nabiki tensed, apprehensive of sudden trouble.

"We are not following the road?" Xian Pu probed.

"We are going into the forest!" Shantae confirmed. "The dungeon is in the forest, Wobble Bell is in the forest and the girl who will open a restaurant, I keep forgetting her name, is in the forest too."

"Where does the road go, then?" Nabiki asked out of curiosity when they were crossing a deep ravine across a flimsy wooden bridge.

"To the Water Town, with branches to the Sultana's palace and to the north. But boy does it meander! Going around one thing or other. I can't help taking shortcuts, ever!"

Xian Pu harrumphed in understanding.

After the bridge was a waste lot overgrown with lilac bushes, white Greek-style columns sticking above them here and there.

"Here, the lilac field," Shantae commented without slowing down. "Watch out for pits, the ground here is full of holes and cracks. And the scarecrows are most often found in the ruins."

"The ruins?" Nabiki asked.

And then they were through the next bushes, ruins opening up ahead. There were broken white walls sticking out of the ground, columns broken and whole, remains of beams connecting these columns.

There were pits under those walls as Akane found out by stepping in one, jumping away with a barely suppressed shriek.

"Hmm..." Nabiki stopped to peer into the darkness. "Are there dungeons?"

"Scoured clean a long time ago," Shantae said dismissively, stopping as well. "And terribly inconvenient to navigate. It's either low ceilings or vertical shafts. No monsters live down there, so there is never anything useful. Even the scarecrows don't go there... Speaking of which, there they are!"

A humanoid thing was loitering on a broken beam not far away, dressed in a green jacket and a straw hat. It had a black head and claws with a slight purple shine, but unlike tinkerbats it had a jagged maw.

"I suppose they attack with their claws?" Xian Pu noted.

"They do, but... Not all of them!" the half-Genie warned hastily. "Some spew dark magic, you'd see it in advance, they take a big breath. But the most dangerous are those that sit stuck on some column. These throw a pumpkin."

"A pumpkin?" Akane asked, bewildered.

"An incendiary pumpkin," Shantae clarified. "A big one. It doesn't fly far but flashes like it's full of flammable oils. Slaying them is mightily inconvenient. As soon as the fire disperses they are already raising their next pumpkin.

"Do they have more than one?" Akane frowned.

"It's magic! They can keep throwing these pumpkins without end."

"Do you want to deal with that straw dummy yourself," Xian Pu inquired bumping the scimitars against her shoulders they were resting on, "or should I exercise?"

"Yes! I mean, no!" Shantae scuttled. "Wobble Bell! Let's go until it's too late! We can clean the scarecrows on our return way!" She dashed deeper into the ruins, jumping over a three-meter wall absent-mindedly. The guy in a bandanna — whose name they haven't asked yet — followed her by grabbing at the wall with his spiky ball in the grappling hook mode.

"Big Sis?" Akane called out with worry as she glanced around searching for Nabiki, who had been there just a moment ago.

"The avaricious adventurer walked behind that corner," Xian Pu dropped a hint with ill concealed smugness. "All the while muttering under her breath."

Akane rushed there. Just in time: Nabiki was really muttering something, counting with her fingers and rubbing the bridge of her nose, unaware of her surroundings. A creepy scarecrow on a column behind her was already raising a huge pumpkin.

"Watch out!" Akane shouted desperately as she rushed her sister. Grabbing the distracted girl by her hand when the pumpkin was already flying she jerked them both away in an inelegant tumble.

As the pumpkin smashed into the ground it flashed like it was a gas tank, no less. Flame billowed, it felt like, to the very sky, almost engulfing the rolling girls.

"Big Sis—" Akane began.

"Another one!" Nabiki exclaimed jumping onto her feet with impressive dexterity to dash away.

Akane had to dodge the second pumpkin by a crooked tumble from a prone position. Because this one was thrown farther. The youngest Tendou barely arrested her tumble from continuing into a nearby pit.

"That's some pumpkin!" Akane squeezed out as she stood up hastily. Her treacherous voice trembled. She cast a suspicious glance at the scarecrow but it was just standing on its column, hugging the next pumpkin. There were green lights glowing in the slits of its eyes. "A wall of fire up to the sky!"

"Not exactly," the middle sister corrected coolly, only the paleness of her face betraying the fright she experienced. "It was just five or six meters tall."

"For us, that would have been enough," Akane said, shuddering. "We almost died because of some little..." As usual for her, she was growing angry by the second. "Just you wait, I'll show you to throw pumpkins!" Snorting like an enraged bull, she began tearing a rock from the earth.

"It's not little," Nabiki corrected. "Unlike the tinkerbats, it is— was as tall as we are."

The head-sized boulder launched by Akane's unerring hand dispersed the scarecrow instantly. It unraveled in wisps of black smoke.

"Everyone's all right?" Shantae rushed in, worried.

"We are, thanks to Little Sis," Nabiki replied irritably. "These new skills are just a bag of surprises, aren't they? Did you know I'm a pro archaeologist now...? Well, I didn't known either. Until my head exploded with knowledge from one look at these ruins. You're just standing there minding your own business and then bam! you suddenly realize this isn't a pile of stones but a temple complex abandoned about a thousand years ago, mixing Ionian style with elements of Minoan floor-plan, which shouldn't even be possible, disturbed by a major earthquake about twenty years ago, which led to formation of all these cave-ins..."

"Uhhh..." Shantae drawled, lost.

"It gives me headache too," Nabiki agreed with her. "Let's go, the farther from here the better."

Behind the lilac field, the forest began. Cool twilight reigned under the tall trees, especially nice after the sun-scorched fields. The forest resembled a park at first, scoured of everything suitable for fire-wood. Then bushes and fallen trees began appearing.

(the forest theme from the game's composer at Bandcamp: track/through-the-trees )

Shantae was running forward eagerly, going deeper into the woods. The bottom branches were growing lower, hanging just overhead, turning the forest into semblance of a green cavern.

From one such branch, a huge spider dropped on a web thread. The cat-sized thing was staring with its only cyclopean eye.

Nabiki was about to comment that normal spiders don't have eyeballs when Shantae dropped low, warning hastily: "Watch out, they—"

The spider spat a big, yellowish-transparent droplet. Nabiki only dodged by miracle, landing on her posterior ungraciously.

"..spit poison," Shantae finished as she offed the monster in one hair strike. "Everyone's all right?"

"Are such critters common here?" Nabiki asked standing up and dusting her pants.

"They are," the half-Genie replied absent-mindedly as she continued on. "There are places swarming with them."

"Such a huge spider," Akane noted.

"Huge?" Shantae was surprised. "These one-eyed spiders are one of the smallest ones."

"I'm afraid to ask," Nabiki huffed catching up to them, "how big are the big ones, then."

"Well, they are about the size of a house," Shantae replied honestly, completely missing the subtext. "But to encounter such ones, you have to muck around in the dead of the woods, far away from the roads, or on uninhabited islands... Just don't get caught in the web. Spiders don't like fighting, they only jump those smaller than them or those stuck in their web. So, a human-sized spider would run away from you if you don't go tearing its web."

"Fairy tales could be scary, with a bad end, huh?" Akane muttered under her breath.

The deeper into the forest, the more broken the terrain was becoming. Sometimes they had to run along the edge of some deep ravine or other, a vista of crooked trees on the other side opening over the sheer drop, their trunks curving away from the slope and up.

At times, Shantae was jumping onto low-hanging branches to run along them, meandering over the yawning pits below. Akane was straiing but managing to jump alongside her. Nabiki had to use her whip, climbing it then struggling to catch up to the others. Then the half-Genie was jumping down to the ground again.

"An orc!" Shantae warned as a... beefy green oni appeared from the undergrowth. Wider than he was tall, this horned person was dressed in black leather crisscrossed with belts and a horned samurai helmet... Or, to be precise, a horned cap. It was his tusk-adorned face that resembled the scary masks of the samurai helmets.

Growling something unintelligible, the orc began stomping towards the humans intruding on his corner of the woods.

"Watch closely," Shantae warned as she jumped to the monster, hair-whipped him once then slid back.

Grunting deeply, the orc... unfurled tiny bat-like wings and soared, flapping furiously like a caricaturic cherub.

"Aren't your wings a few sizes too small?" Nabiki quipped, breathing hard. The monster had a really comical look about him.

Fluttering about five meters up, the orc aimed at Shantae ponderously — she stepped aside lazily, without even using the sliding — and plummeted, making a dull thud.

"That's all they can do," the dancer explained before hair-whipping rapidly three times. The orc was trying to soar again but burst into some carved sticks, rocks, pieces of paper and other trash.

"Garbage, quartz, garbage." Shantae said shuffling the remains with her foot. "Let's go!" She continued running.

One kilometer of such ticket and three surprise spiders later — Nabiki was running with her whip in hand now, having learned the lesson — the girls were attacked by a bat snapping its impressive fangs with agression. Shantae kept missing the small, agile thing because it moved up and down. The weakness of the half-Genie's style became glaringly obvious: she compensated her inability to aim higher by jumping and whipping mid-jump, but that was giving her opponent enough of a delay to react.

The bat got cleaved by Xian Pu, to Shantae's displeasure: it was apparent she preferred bloodless methods of conflict resolution.

The orc who then stumbled out of the bushes was smacked by the spiky ball guy. After the third hit, the monster tumbled back into the bushes but did not burst.

"This is a real one, not a shikigami," Shantae commented.

Akane peered into the bushes with feet sticking out of them. The orc opened one eye a crack. Re-evaluated the scale of the beatdown party. Squeezed his eye shut, playing possum even harder.

"Excellent technique." Nabiki tried to start a conversation. "By the way, we haven't introduced ourselves, haven't we?"

It was no use: losing a specific goal, the guy stood slobbering at the scantily clad Xian Pu, unaware of anything else.

"Meet Bolo," Shantae introduced him. "My old friend, sparring partner and an apprentice tinker. With propensity for epic mishaps. Hey, Bolo!" She grabbed the guy by his ear, twisting it. "Loses it every time he sees a beautiful woman. Wake up already! Go, go, move!"

"Uhhh," Akane could only say as she rushed after her.

Bolo dreamily mumbled something about an "amazon in tiger furs". Xian Pu smirked.

Trees and bushes were flying by, dropping spiders were being swept aside offhandedly, Nabiki was huffing and sweating but wasn't about to give up.

"Here's the dungeon where Squid Baron is the boss," Shantae pointed on the run. To the left of them, there was a small trapezoid tower made of huge boulders and covered in lianes. The entrance was barred by an iron grate. Above it, an eye-shaped stone ornament was making the tower look like a frowning cyclopean head. "We need to go there, but we can't get in yet." She ran by without stopping.

They traveled for one more kilometer. The forest was growing wilder and denser, the rocky terrain becoming even more broken.

"Aha, here she is!" Shantae exclaimed turning right to go into the darkest thicket where daylight could barely reach. The cool air smelt of soggy wood and mushrooms. Amidst this ominous twilight stood an ominous carriage resemblind a small house with windows on its sides and the back door resembling a coffin cover, with a folding ladder leading up to it. Above the door, there was an ornament depicting a skull, the bony hands grabbing at the roof edge.

But that wasn't why the carriage was ominous. It was the horse skeleton harnessed to it. The skeleton of burden was standing utterly still but there were tiny red lights glowing in its eye-sockets.

"Whoa," Akane exclaimed nervously.

"It ssems your friend likes to... overdo it with thematic," Nabiki noted.

"Hey, Rotty!" Shantae began knocking on the door. "Open up, I'm here for you!"

"Oh! You finally had a change of mind?" a slightly hoarse woman's voice called back. The coffin lid flung open with a creak revealing a voluptuous green-skinned girl in short shorts and a brief sleeveless t-shirt baring her abdomen. Her short dark green hair was tied with a yellow ribbon, there were massive sturdy shoes on her feet, some sort of metallic accessories on her her left shoulder and right thigh.

(Rotty's theme from the game's composer at Bandcamp: track/serious-genie-business )

"Finally decided to share your brain with me?" The said Rotty licked her lips as she jumped down to stalk Shantae.

"Wait!" the girl in red interrupted her, her voice suddenly tense. "First thing first, that barking, how did you call him, sample of the local cuisine, is he still whole? Not nibbled on?"

"How do you know?" Rotty frowned in puzzlement. "Yeah, here it is, our emergency ration." Leaning into the cart over the threshold she pulled out a resisting, brown puppy with a white muzzle, dragging it by its leash.

"Oh Wobble Bell!" Shantae grabbed the puppy hugging it to her chest so tightly it squeaked in protest. "You're alive...! I'm so glad...!" Her eyes swelled with tears surprising everyone who knew her: crying was so unlike her. "I'm so sorry...! But don't worry, this time I won't let you perish!"

"Hey," the green girl grumbled in mock offense. "That's our food you are holding there."

Shantae wasn't responding, hugging the pup. Her eyes were shining with tears of happiness and relief.

"Well, folks," Rotty addressed everyone present. "Does anyone have any idea what was that about?"

"I dunno." Bolo scratched his head. "We had an epic battle protecting the town from Risky Boots. As soon as Shantae sent her packing, she just shouted we have to save Wobble Bell and started running... I went after her. But who...? Where...? No idea."

"Then, Wobble Bell is this puppy," Nabiki concluded. "But what is so important about it that she cares for it more than for shaking that seal out of Squid Baron?"

"So this snack has a name?" Rotty tilted her head to a side. "Hey, Shantae!"

Seeing her friend still preoccupied with happy thoughts, Akane stepped forward to explan in her stead: "Well, Shantae, she... Had returned from the future, so she knows what could happen for a year in advance."

"From the future?" Rotty said, stunned. "You mean she is a real time traveler? I've never heard of anything like that...! If you disregard third-rate comic books, of course."

"It's all because of over-fulfilled wishes," Nabiki explained. "Teacher haven't mastered her Genie powers yet, so side effects could be..." She straightened her hat with one finger. "..spectacular."

"Right!" the half-Genie exclaimed coming to her senses and putting the pup on the ground. "Whatever you say, Rotty, I know you are a true friend. Everything you've done for me... I mean, you haven't, not yet, but you would... Wow, this time travel stuff is so confusing!"

"So you will let me eat your brain, will you?" the green one flung her hands showing sincere-looking joy as she advanced on the girl in red to stand skin to skin.

"Well..." Shantae tried backing away but found her legs hog-tied with the leash. "I kind of still need my brain for myself..."

Rotty expressed dramatic disappointment.

"But you can eat this." Shantae threw something small at her.

Rotty caught the item and began studying it. To Akane's growing worry it really was a cut off pinkie.

Both the Tendou sisters and Xian Pu found themselves more and more lost without knowing the subtext!

"Risky was in rare form today," Shantae explained.

"Hm-mm?" To Akane's horror the green girl gobbled the pinkie up like a cookie.

"Well, I though," Shantae explained averting her eyes sheepishly, "I had a new one healed, and you were visiting anyway, so..."

"Oh, you're so sweet!" Rotty gushed hugging Shantae, which made the dancer girl squirm uncomfortably. Wobble Bell began backing away nervously, tightening the leash. "Only a true friend could be like this...!" Nuzzling Shantae's neck, the green girl nibbled lightly on her earlobe: "Can I have another bite...? Just a teeensy one?"

"Uhh, let's leave that for another time, all right?" Shantae replied nervously, wriggling involuntarily in her hands. "First, it would've been painful, second, I'm running out of healing potions fast and it would only get worse. I have a whole crowd of guests living with me!"

"Well, so be it." Rotty relented releasing her with reluctance.

"Meet Akane," Shantae hopped in place to turn around with her legs still hog-tied, "my friend from another world, from the Nerima Land. Her family owns a school where they teach hand-to-hand combat. She helped me improve my fighting skills greatly...! Nabiki, Akane's sister whose wish was to turn into a legendary relic hunter. Don't mind her calling me 'teacher', I was teaching her dancing... Xianpu, umm, Akane's rival for her fiance. Fought pretty good against Risky Boots... Rottytops, my old friend, from back during my first big adventure. An insufferable pest, a true friend and anyone who tries hurting her learns the true horror of the words 'big brother'. Doubly so: Abner and Poe — we'll meet them — are cool big brothers caring about their little sister."

"They are like that," Rotty agreed. "Akane, right?" She stepped towards the said girl.

"Rotteeee!" Santae drawled warningly trying to untie herself.

"Tendou Akane," the dogi-clad girl confirmed. "Um, glad do meet you?"

"Likewise!" the green one grinned widely, walking up to the reluctantly backing Akane and hugging her lightly. "I'm very glad..."

Everything froze, for about three seconds.

Then Akane jumped back with ultrasonic shriek like she was stung.

"Rotty." Shantae sighed tiredly as she urged Wobble Bell to run around her unwrapping her legs. "You can't keep doing that..."

"C-c-cold!" Akane stuttered nervously, her hair standing on ends.

"But who," Rotty grinned, "forgot to mention one itty-bitty detail while introducing me?"

Shantae groaned facepalming. Wobble Bell yapped dashing around her like a rocket, instantly hog-tying her again.

"It's your own fault," the green lover of surprising others finished triumphantly. "Not warning them that I'm a zombie."

"A zombie?" Akane repeated, taken aback.

"Oh, I see," Nabiki and Xian Pu chorused.

Bolo mumbled something sheepishly under his breath.

"Yeah, Rotty is a zombie," Shantae confirmed. "An endo...thematic one, at that. Well, with a constant body temperature not depending on the environment."

The otherwolders noticed, at last, that the metallic ornaments on Rotty's shoulder and thigh were, in fact, braces stitching the respective extremities together over hair-thin cut lines

"So, how is it, knowing the future?" the zombie girl inquired. "Would something interesting happen during this year? You did visit me today that time too, didn't you?"

"Well, you would be telling me now about the Sequin Land barons. I can't believe how careless I was, never curious about the place I live in. Then I'd bother you with questions about Risky Boots' whereabouts. You'd summon that little spider of yours and learn from the world-wide web that the bodacious buccaneer was just spotted in Scuttle Town but it would have been old news as I was just from there... But none of that is necessary now: me and her are kind of on the same side, saving the world. We have to collect the three magic seals! Risky is bullying Hypno Baron right now — why don't I feel sorry for him, at all...? Ranma and Ryouga went after Ammo Baron and we five are going after Squid Baron. Right after we return Wobble Bell to his owner."

"Wait, wait," Rotty halted her. "If you are from the future shouldn't that mean you have new tricks and know the queen of seven seas like the back of your hand? How comes she sliced you so? And why the closed shirt with long sleeves? Aren't you hot in it?"

"Risky had returned from the future too," Shantae explained. "And she was... missing me so much she threw herself into battle against me, got carried away and ended cutting little pieces off here and there... This shirt," she tugged att he collar of her red silk shirt, "is borrowed from Ranma. You're right, it's awfully hot and stuffy. But my top got halved, my tiara shattered and we didn't have time to search for replacements."

"Hmm, I thought she prefers clever plans, sabre-rattling isn't her style," Rotty said. "What did happen between you two?"

"I'm not sure myself," Shantae admitted. "But it seems that in her future I had died so she grew bored without fighting me... Also, be careful around her! She is much more dangerous now! It feels like she was really training for twenty years."

"But you and her fought as equals, right?" Bolo asked, worried.

"No." Shantae shook her head. "I was like a mouse dueling a sated cat. I still feel my back crawling with icy creeps! I was completely at her mercy!"

"Hmmm." Rotty's eyes narrowed. "So you say Risky as she is today is totally unlike like she was yesterday because of twenty years having passed for her?"

"Yeah." Shantae nodded. "Tell Abner and Poe to be very, very careful when dealing with her. We have a truce against a common enemy now, but who knows how much did she change in so many years. I can't forget her eyes smoldering with something I couldn't put a finger on. Such intensity! It felt like her gaze was burning through me!"

"Could it be?" Rotty stared at her intently.

"What...?" The half-Genie twitched nervously under her stare.

"That Risky was so fired up because she got hots for you!" the green one exclaimed dramatically, raising her clasped hands to her cheek.

"Wh— Wuh—" Shantae barely held her balance to stay upright. "Rottyeee!" She leaned down, dragged the puppy close by the scruff of its neck and began shaking the weakened leash coils from her legs. "What nonsense are you speaking! We are both girls!"

"Hmph! Do you really think that would stop her?"

"Of cou—" The half-Genie froze mid-sentence, her face alit with dawning horror. "No way! No way! This couldn't be true!" Grabbing the puppy under her arm she dashed away with such fervor that Nabiki had to go flat out not to fall behind.

"Where are we going?" Xian Pu inquired. "Not just away from an... uncomfortable realization?"

"Deeper into the forest!" Shantae replied briefly as she ducked into undergrowth that opened onto a narrow log over a deep ravine. "We have to return Wobble Bell to his owner and finally get to Squid Baron. I owe him a beating for the last time..."

It was no place for talking from that point on: a real thicket began. Towering trees were rising from the mess of rocky ravines, sheer cliffs and deadfall so thick that ground wasn't visible in the dark gaps between piled trunks. It felt this treacherous trap smelling of root and fungus was five or so meters deep. One misstep and you'd disappear.

Akane was tense, nervous, doing her best not to fall behind. Nabiki was trying not to show it but she was stumbling at times, catching herself with her whip against low-hanging branches.

While Shantae with the puppy under her arm was dashing through all those obstacles weightlessly barely touching the ground.

(Rottytops by OmegaSunburst at DeviantArt: omegasunburst/art/Rottytops-386186683 )

(Hugs by OmegaSunburst at DeviantArt: omegasunburst/art/Hugs-432549417 )

(Rotty and Wobbles by AWMikeHarvey at DeviantArt: mikeharvey/art/Rotty-and-Wobbles-387216005 )


( 。◕ シーンブレイク ◕。)


"Won't do," Ranma said flatly. He and Ryouga were standing a midst a rocky desert looking at a tall tower of sandstone blocks covered in sharp poles like a porcupine. "We won't be commandeering the town for that one-eyed clown!"

"So how are you planning to get inside!" Ryouga snapped. "They won't let us in without a passport, beating tar out of the guard didn't help, the grate is enchanted against 'breaking point'!" He grit his teeth, his fists tightening: in this wrong, wrong world whatever important stuff you put your finger on, his ultimate technique simply wasn't working. He was still feeling outraged at the unfairness of this.

"Elementarly, my dear lost friend." Ranma smirked making the said guy boil with anger. "We are going to use another way!" He pointed at the top of the Battle Tower.

Ryouga frowned angrily... Then his face bloomed with a blood-curdling smile. The lost boy crackled his knuckles eagerly.


( 。◕ シーンブレイク ◕。)


"What's with... this prop," Nabiki huffed when they were running by a huge boulder of a soft lavender color.

"This...?" Shantae glanced back, saw the other girl going on sheer stubbornness and stopped to let the middle Tendou catch her breath. "It's how hidden stashes are disguised. Now... hmm... Magic Jam should be the most common find. Don't eat it! You can exchange it for various magic items and powerful spell books that aren't sold for money alone. I'll return here after my powers recover, comb the forest again, break these things with my Elephant Stomp, then collect Heart Squids from the trees."

"Magic jam?" Akane asked.

"Remember the rotund woman in the town?" Shantae turned towards her. "Oh, you haven't meet her yet. Well, her batch of magic jam was recently stolen by monsters."

"Why a rock of such unlikely color?" Xian Pu poked it with her scimitar. It turned to be really stone. "If not for this, it would have looked quite natural."

"Different color perception," Shantae explained. "Some creatures see colors differently from humans, I know that from experience. For the mermaid and the harpy, for example, a common blue sky is awash with colors that don't even have names in the human tongue. The bat and the monkey simply see colors differently even if that isn't immediately apparent. But for the elephant, green and red are the same color. Well... it keeps shifting. Let's take a campfire in a forest. You look at trees, they are green but the fire is green too. You look at the fire, it's red but then trees are red too. Something like that."

They continued traveling at a more sedate pace. The forest was growing denser, ravines happening more often. When it was beginning to feel like they were stumbling into the 'here be dragons' dead of the forest inhabited by the house-sized spiders Shantae had mentioned, the trees parted opening up onto a clearing with a small, tidy house in the middle of it.

Barging in after Shantae, her followers saw a wistful girl with long blond hair in a pink dress with an apron and a tall chief's hat. She was even smaller than Shantae, either so young or she was just born that way. Try tell.

Shantae handed her the puppy. The girl was taken aback at first, then beamed shouting "Wobble Bell!" and twirling around hugging it. She then put it on the floor. "Thank you, kind stranger! You haven't just returned my friend, you have returned my dream! Let me thank you by cooking you a Tasty Meal!"

Then she raised frenzied culinary activity stoking the oven, heating the woks, cutting, mixing and sifting.

"All right, let's go outside, we are in the way." Shantae shooed everyone out. The house was really tiny.

While the inspired chief girl was doing her magic, the half-Genie busied herself with the puppy. It was running around her yapping happily while Shantae was throwing it a stick or scratching behind its ears, happy but looking like she couldn't believe this was really happening.

"There's some dark story connecting Teacher with this doggy," Nabiki said watching them.

"Her wording 'this time I won't let you perish' leaves no room for guessing," Xian Pu agreed. "But what killed the puppy in that variant of the future?"

"Maybe Rotty devoured him?" Bolo suggested reluctantly, scratching his head.

Akane shivered. She still felt her skin crawling as she remembered the touchy-feely zombie girl.

"So Shantae held herself guilty for not stopping her?" Xian Pu elaborated.

"Maybe we are better off not knowing," Nabiki replied.

"Exactly," Akane said flatly as she glanced at the laughing Shantae. "Enough about that, this time he won't get killed!"

"Doing a good deed is nice and all," Xian Pu began. "But aren't we dawdling too much with the world saving business? For how long would she be cooking that gift of gratitude? Maybe visit her later?"

Like running through monster-infested wild woods was just a walk in the park, Akane thought, pouting inside and trying to count how many orcs and spiders they beat on their way there. She lost count.

"Remember the dungeon entrance?" the half-Genie replied turning to face the amazon but remaining crouched. "That... concerned parent would only let us in if we let him smell something delicious... To think of it, I got into so many dungeons by letting them smell the right thing... It's a trend!" She returned to playing with Wobble Bell.

"I'll go search for Bolo," Nabiki said looking around but failing to locate the said guy. "He has something of Ryouga-kun in him, he may get lost."

"Was it worth going so far just to have something to smell?" Xian Pu harrumphed sticking her scimitars into a nearby tree and rolling her shoulders. "We could have roped the okonomiyaki girl into this, she'd do it much faster. She is the best of us at such things."

"You admit she is better than you, just like that?" Akane couldn't help it despite a nagging feeling she'd get beaten in a battle of words. Badly.

"A warrior had to know her strong and weak points and those of her opponent," Xian Pu said condescendingly. "I can cook perfectly fine when I have our amazon eatery, supplies and the chore boy Mu Tsu at hand. But Ukyou can bake her cabbage pies in the wild, on the grill she is always draging with her using the hidden weapons technique. Just don't tell me you haven't noticed. If she has cabbage, she can cook. But her very art will be her downfall! So obsessed with it she won't even realize she should give Ranma what he wants!"

"And, you, of course, could give him that," Akane quipped, again unable to help herself.

"Of course I could!" Xian Pu snorted flicking imaginary dust off her short shorts, bending dramatically to do that. "A hot wife, a village rich in traditions and techniques, treacherous neighboring tribes with their own techniques... But what would you offer him? Daddy's dojo?"

Akane's riposte came out pathetic: "At least, unlike someone else, I am not glomping onto him like... like..."

"Oh, right, you aren't just unable to cook," Xian Pu said patronizingly as she made a point of straightening the towel on her chest. "You are too shy to even show your charms to Ranma! Although... I admit, there is not much to look at."

Gritting her teeth, Akane withstood that without reacting to the barb.

"A helpless prude, in short," Xian Pu was taking her time finishing her off. "I bet you can't even think of seducing him in his female form, can you?"

"I'm not a pervert!" Akane exploded turning red slowly, beginning with her ears.

"Oh come on!" Shampoo smirked. "We both know him all too well. And you are well aware that Ranma-chan wouldn't be against some minor... experimenting."

Akane was huffing, her fists clenched, being torn by contradicting feelings, growing beet-red.

"You can't rival me even in that," Xian Pu struck the coup-de-grace. "I have experience under my belt: traditions of our tribe encourage relationships between unmarried warrior women. Ukyou has her curiosity and the upbringing of a born fishwife unencumbered by hypocrisy going for her. What have you got, proper city girl?"

"Turns out there is a road close by," Nabiki interrupted the verbal beatdown, dragging Bolo behind her by the hand. He looked giddy from such contact. "As I suspected, this house isn't in the middle of the forest but on the edge of it." Glancing at the boy she was dragging, ready to be putty in her hand, she swore under her breath: "Che! Don't tempt me, scam fodder. I'm an archaeologist now."

After a while the diminutive host finished, handing the half-Genie a huge dish giving off steam and heavenly aroma. Both began thanking each other.

"I..." Akane swallowed looking at the dish with hopeless envy like a legless person at the peak of Chomolungma. "I never thought you can make something like this out of rice and fish..."

"An outstanding pilaf," Shantae agreed with a smile as she replaced the dish in her ki pocket. "Let's go!"

And again they were running through the ticket of untamed woods, crossing ravines in the shade of tree crowns and towering crags obscuring the sky. There were sudden one-eyed spiders dropping on their thread to spit poison. There were almost no orcs but they met a snake woman instead. This monster displayed ability to make three-meter high jumps which haven't prevented Shantae from downing her in one powerful kick. The snake woman shattered into a pile of bones gnawed clean.

But there it finally was, the familiar stone tower of a dungeon entrance, the huge boulders of its tilted walls entwined by lianes, the stone eye above the entrance grate glaring at the uninvited visitors.

Shantae pulled the Tasty Meal out of her ki-pocket. Heavenly aromas permeated the clearing. Bolo swallowed noisily.

"It feels like a waste, giving this feast up for passage," Xian Pu voiced.

"Who said about giving it?" Shantae grinned nastily. "We'll let him smell it."


( 。◕ シーンブレイク ◕。)


(Steam achievement "Play Dead": kill the puppy i/fanf/ddr/play_ )

A.N.: It took me a while to restart this fic, mostly due to delving into Brutal Doom and writing "Too nice for such brutality", a NC-17 Shantae / Brutal Doom crossover. And then I got involved in playtesting Brutal Doom betas...

This chapter was finished in Russian at November 17, 2018. It took me almost half a year to get to translating it.

The next chapter: into Squid Baron's dungeon

Don't except epic fights, though: nothing serious happens until Chapter 15.