Authors Notes: Firstly, I want to thank you all for the warm welcome you gave the previous chapter! I was worried about, so I'm glad to see that folks enjoyed it. I know Nabiki is firmly established in canon as a distinct non-combatant, but, let's be honest, canon also portrays Nabiki as so shortsightedly greedy that she will invite Akane's romantic rivals to Akane's wedding because she was hoping they'd bring the traditional cash gifts and she could nick them. Given both the Tendo family's establishment as a family of martial artists, and the weird array of martial arts in canon, I hoped there would not be too many people put off by Nabiki being able to make any progress in martial arts at all. She's not going to be Ranma's match any time soon, but at the same time, that doesn't mean she can't be better at it than she'd thought if she'd actually give it a go. So, sorry Elsil. It's not as if Nabiki (or even Kasumi) secretly still having/being martial artists is new in Ranma fanfiction, but I intend to emphasize that, even if Nabiki has a talent, she's very much a newcomer to this "world" and she's going to lag behind throughout the fic.
Secondly, to those wondering if Azusa and Ryoga are going to hook up? ...Maybe. I'm still feeling out how I'm going to juggle showing the life of our cast outside of Ranma and Nabiki - as much as purists loathe them, I do appreciate the sentiment behind the anime filler episodes that let our secondary cast members get a little extra time in the sun.
HunterQwon: If there are Kenichi: History's Strongest Disciple gags in the previous chapter, it's purely a coincidence. I never could get into that series. It's more the fact that Genma did the psycho-yet-weirdly-effective martial arts sensei thing first.
Jack Inqu: Do remember, Akane may not be as terrible as fanon frequently portrays her, but she's not exactly that high a peak to reach, either. Akane-level or better characters kind of pop frequently throughout both canons. Hell, the anime has Temari Kaminarimon, who can go toe-to-toe with Akane (albeit with some trickery)... despite being all of 6 years old. I mean, yes, Martial Arts will never be Nabiki's primary strength or her go-to problem-solving method - but that doesn't mean she's going to be a complete damsel in distress, either...
Silverhawk88: Really, if you look at the canon, it's kind of obvious that all of the Tendo girls have been scarred by the loss of their mother in some way, it's just not something Takahashi likes to dwell on overmuch.
Y. Honey: Eh... I wouldn't go quite that far. I mean, even in canon, Ranma was flustered by Shampoo's cuteness & honest affection for him, and was a little upset by how she ended up being chased back to China. I don't think I'd ever call Ranma & Akane's relationship "rock solid"... "held together with authorial fiat and sporadic bonding moments" has always been more honest to me. I mean, yes, Ranma & Nabiki's relationship at this point is more potent than Ranma & Akane's was in canon, but that doesn't mean they're completely fixed together just yet.
Elsil: To be honest, I actually struggled to decide how to respond to your review. Suffice it to say that I console you to be patient; a certain amount of setting things up is required to begin really taking things off of the rails, simply because this story is actually not that divergent from its base concept. Once our major players are assembled, then things will start to really go off the rails, but you should start seeing some major divergences with this chapter. As for my writing Shampoo... I take you're unfamiliar with my earlier work?
Radical Dreamer 57: I think you're forgetting how the canon version of that storyline went. Firstly; in canon, Ranma fell completely unconscious after the Dance of Death, if only because he slipped trying to stand up and fell on his head again. Secondly, Ranma was knocked out after taking the Goodbye Whirl impact in canon, and was so badly hurt afterwards that Akane actually wanted him to quit the field and let her fight with Ryoga so he wouldn't get hurt anymore. Finally, in canon, Akane also broke down in tears because she thought Ranma had been legitimately seriously hurt or even killed by the Goodbye Whirl, and Akane arguably knows what martial artists are capable of better than Nabiki! Plus, Ranma actually didn't take down Mikado in either continuity; in the manga, Ryoga did it, whilst in the anime, Azusa did it. So, no, I did not "nerf" Ranma or buff the Golden Pair.
Chapter 10: From China With Hate! Behold; the Chinese Amazon, Shampoo!
As euphoric as their first kiss had been, that didn't mean that life immediately leapt to make Ranma and Nabiki's relationship smoother. Despite Ranma's sincere intentions of taking Nabiki out on a real date to make up for the one that Mikado and Azusa had unwittingly ruined, they first had to deal with little things like letting Ranma's bones finish knitting, and catching up with school work they'd missed after a week off.
So, it wasn't until later in the week that the two fiancées were finally able to get on with that date. To Nabiki's pleasure - she did, after all, have a sweet tooth; it was her primary vice - Ranma had taken them to an ice cream parlor named "Pand". True, some clumsy idiot had tripped and spilled their glass of cold water all over her date's head, but Nabiki had rather resigned herself to little incidents like that. So long as Ranma wasn't going to make a big deal out of it, then neither was she.
"Here you are, Miss; one hot fudge sundae, as requested," the waiter said, placing the delectable consumable in front of Nabiki.
Nabiki licked her lips in anticipation, picking up her spoon and was about to start eating when she realized that Ranma had received no similar treat, and was instead merely paying for her sundae. "Ranma? Where's yours?" she asked in confusion.
"Eh? Oh, um... I wasn't going to have any," Ranma admitted sheepishly.
At that, Nabiki rolled her eyes. "Ranma... just because you're paying for it does not mean you don't get to have any. It's not a real date if I'm the only one eating," she scolded him...her. Whatever. 'Otherwise, that would mean those little luncheons Kuno paid for would count as dates... blech!' Nabiki had a full body shudder at the idea of 'dating' the buffoon who called himself 'the Blue Thunder'.
"Oh! Um... kay. Mister? Could I get a hot fudge sundae too?" Ranma asked the waiter, who simply nodded.
Nabiki smiled and took a spoonful of her treat, savoring the creamy richness of vanilla ice cream paired with chocolate fudge sauce. Shortly afterwards, the waiter returned with Ranma's ice cream, with the boy-turned-girl visibly excited as the fluted glass was placed in front of her.
"Oh, wow! I've always wanted to try one of these!" she confessed, before wolfing down a huge spoonful. At that, her eyes lit up with joy and she actually let out a girlish squeal of delight. "Yummy! Oh, man, that's even better than I'd ever dreamed!"
"Take it easy, Ranma, it's just vanilla and chocolate fudge sauce... what, you've never had a sundae before?" Nabiki playfully chided her fiancée.
"Nope. I've never had ice cream before," Ranma explained, gobbling down another spoonful and nearly choking on it at the horrified shriek of "WHAT?!" that erupted from her tablemate. "Ow, my ears! Nabiki? What was that all about?" Ranma complained, looking over at the table... and recoiling at the look of dumbfounded horror on her fiancée's face.
Nabiki-dot-exe has experienced a fatal error. Please reboot your system... rebooting...
Nabiki shook her head to clear it, grimacing as she reached up to rub her temples with her fingers. "Tell me what you just said, Ranma. Because I didn't hear you correctly. I can't have heard you correctly!"
"...Are you feeling okay, Nabiki?" Ranma hesitantly replied. "You're acting a little weird..."
"Answer the question!" Nabiki snapped, smacking the table with her hand as she stared at Ranma with a fire that Ranma wasn't used to seeing in his more collected fiancée. "Did you really just utter something so outrageous?!"
"Outrageous?! What, when I said I'd never had ice cream before!?" an incredulous Ranma replied. "Dad always said guys shouldn't eat ice cream... said it wasn't manly."
"Your father is a monster," Nabiki flatly shot back, resolving to deal with Genma's...horrid ideas of what foods were appropriate later. "That is the most nonsensical thing I've ever heard in my life... nobody should be denied ice cream, no matter what their gender is!" she shook her head in denial, feeling unshed tears prick her eyes at the very thought. "
Listen to me, Ranma... there are people who think that boys shouldn't enjoy sweet things. Do you know what the name for such people is?" she asked her genderfluid fiancé, staring straight into her eyes as she did.
"...No?" Ranma hesitantly replied, more...apprehensive of his fiancée at this moment than he had been when facing an entire martial arts school his pops had ripped off..
"Morons. Sweets are a fundamental right that all people should be able to enjoy. So you eat that ice cream sundae, and you enjoy it. In fact... in light of what you said, Ranma, I'll treat you to a second sundae, okay?" she asked, smiling in what she hoped was a reassuring manner as she did so.
"Okay!" Ranma chirped brightly. 'I still don't get why it's so important to her... but I'm glad she cares. Besides, this is yummy!'
With that, the two fiancées resumed tucking into their frozen treats. In their companionable silence, they finally registered the blaring of a TV mounted into the wall behind the serving bar, which was evidently broadcasting some kind of documentary on China.
"-the legendary Byankhala range of the Qinghai province. The peoples of this area revere China's White Rock Mountain as a local deity... "
At those words, Ranma perked up and looked over her shoulder at the television set. "Hey, I've been there!" she noted conversationally.
"Hm?" Nabiki replied, looking over. "...Wait, that's right; that's around the area where you and your father got your curses, isn't it?"
"Yeah... that was our trip took its turn for the worst alright," Ranma scowled as the distinctly unpleasant memories paraded through his mind.
On screen, the images of a strange, primitive-looking village gave way to a reporter or documentary maker, who addressed the audience, "Well, the conditions at this Amazon village are really - gah! Look at that!" he yelled suddenly, pointing off to his side in astonishment...
Which was when, with incredibly dramatic timing, an enormous impact resounded against the ice cream parlour's wall to the right of the television set. Cracks riddled the wall before a second mighty blow smashed it down, leaving a gaping hole and a cloud of dust that framed the form of a strange teenage girl - Chinese, by the look of her and especially the clothing she was wearing. Long bluish-purple hair done in an odango style framed wine-red eyes that gleamed coldly as she scanned the room, two chui clutched in her hands.
As the dust parted, her gaze locked onto Ranma, and if anything her eyes grew even colder than before.
"Ranma," the strange girl stated simply.
"What?!" Nabiki blurted out, trying to understand what had just happened.
"Sh-sh-Shampoo!" wailed Ranma, whose arms twisted into elaborate warding gestures as if he was a Buddhist priest banishing a spirit, drawing Nabiki's attention back to her aquatransexual fiancé.
"Ranma? You know her?" Nabiki asked incredulously.
At this, the Chinese girl spoke again, lifting up one of her chui. "Ranma... die," she declared, in the same flat, icy tone as before.
Ranma leapt up in her seat, one foot on the floor and one one the chair, clearly ready to bolt but seemingly unsure of which direction to do it in. "Y-yo, Shampoo, when did you..." she rambled.
The girl evidently named Shampoo simply strode forward, her uniquely shaped maces in hand. "Die," she stated flatly, jabbing out with one chui - Ranma narrowly ducked it, allowing it to punch a circular crater in the wall behind it.
"Hey! Why don'tcha just get over it an' lemme alone already?!" Ranma protested, weaving around a second thrust before grabbing a wall hanging and flinging it in her assailant's face.
Shampoo swatted the obstruction aside, but in the time that it took her to do so, Ranma surged past her with a speed that, even after all she'd witnessed, Nabiki could scarcely believe possible. By the time Shampoo's eyes were clear, Ranma had hidden herself inside of a fallen locker... and with the crazed killer from China glowering at her, Nabiki wished she'd been able to do the same.
"She went thattaway!" Nabiki hastily proclaimed, pointing out the gaping hole that Shampoo had entered by.
The Chinese girl scowled, shoulders hunching in a bodily expression of rage. "Running again? Ranma!" she screamed, whirling on one foot and bouncing back the way she came, using the fallen locker where Ranma had hidden herself as a spring to propel herself out the hole, with the rebound leaving the doors visibly dented inwards.
Nabiki darted over, watching as the crazed Chinese assassin vanished off into the distance, then grabbed the dented locker doors and heaved with all her might. Her arms burning from the strain, she pulled them open, abused hinges snapping with the force as she revealed her formerly hidden fiancée, curled up into the top of the locker above where the door had been kicked inwards. "Ranma? Are you okay?" she demanded.
"Yeah... thanks, Nabiki; that was some quick thinking," the clearly overwhelmed aquatransexual declared.
"Just what the hell was that all about?! Who was that crazy girl?!" Nabiki demanded.
"It's... a long story," Ranma mumbled, staring off into space.
'I think he's shellshocked...' Nabiki mused, realizing she'd taken Ranma's confident nature a bit for granted.
"My restaurant!" the proprietor hollered, running over and grabbing Ranma by the front of her shirt. "Was that crazy girl a friend of yours? She's destroyed my place! I demand you pay for all the damages!" he snarled.
Ranma simply snarled back, batting his arms aside and grabbing his own collar, lifting the man clean off the floor in her fury. "Are your nuts?! That crazy chick ain't my friend - she just tried to kill me! I ain't paying you nothing!" she spat.
"Wh-who are you people?!" the cowed proprietor pleaded, flinching from the fury in Ranma's eyes. He was just a simple shop owner, this sort of wanton destruction was beyond his ken.
"None yer business!" Ranma spat, disdainfully tossing the man to the floor with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. "C'mon, Nabiki; let's scram," Ranma said, already heading for the door, with Nabiki hot on her fiancée's heels.
Once they were safely out of the ice cream parlor's doors, Nabiki put her hand on Ranma's shoulders. "So, who was that girl? Why was she trying to kill you?" she asked.
Ranma visibly slumped, sighing mournfully. "Like I said... it's a long story. Let's just get me back to being a guy first, okay? She's only a danger if I'm a girl," he explained.
'That makes no sense...? Whatever; get the facts, Nabiki, can't work things out without the facts.' Nabiki thought to herself. "Alright, Ranma; lead the way."
'Oh, man, I never thought Shampoo would catch up to me in Japan... what am I gonna tell Nabiki?' Ranma mournfully wondered.
A quick stop at a tea cart, and Ranma was back to his true gender. After that, he insisted that they head to the Tendo Dojo, and Nabiki was completely inclined to agree; that was yet another date down the toilet and Nabiki's well honed sense of intuition was telling her this was going to become a trend.
Once they were what Ranma obviously felt was a safe distance from the parlor, he sighed and began to speak.
"Alright, so, long story short; her name is Shampoo, she's from a tribe called the Joketsuzoku in China, and she wants my girl-form very, very dead."
"I kind of saw that," Nabiki dryly observed. "But why?"
"It all goes back to Jusenkyo. Me and pops getting cursed? That was kind of like the start of our troubles..." Ranma sighed. "We left Jusenkyo in a hurry - I didn't know why at the time, but now, I think pops was trying to escape from Ryoga after trying to make sweet 'n' sour pork outta him. No supplies, no rest, nothing; we just ran up the road, following the Jusenkyo guide. Eventually, we come to a village called Nyuchiezu, a place where all the women are taught martial arts. Sort of a tribe of Chinese Amazons, I guess you'd say."
"That sounds... a little weird," Nabiki noted, her mind half trying to figure out how that would even work.
"Hey, we just ran into a valley of springs that curse you to change shapes with cold an' hot water. Besides, you'd be surprised at how weird the world gets once you get off the beaten path," Ranma insisted. "Anyway, we arrive to what the guide says is this big once a year fighting tournament for the women. Shampoo was fighting as we got there - well, I say 'fighting', I mean 'winning the tournament for the year'," he corrected himself.
"She's good at martial arts, then?" Nabiki asked.
"Oh, yeah. Her last opponent was this big ugly bruiser of a woman - twice my dad's height and twice his girth, built like a brick outhouse. Shampoo took her down in just one good hit," Ranma explained in a distant, albeit almost respectful, manner.
"Great... so how'd you get on the bad side of somebody like that?"
"Well, I did say pops an' me didn't grab any supplies before we left Jusenkyo, right? So, by the time we hit Nyuchiezu, we were both starving, an' there was this table laden up with food - we figured it must be part of some kind of festival surrounding the tournament, cuz you'd be surprised how often that's the case, an' we started helping ourselves..."
"I'm sensing a 'but' here," Nabiki commented with morbid amusement.
"Yeah. Turns out the feast wasn't for the bystanders... it was the first prize for the tournament champion," Ranma sheepishly confessed. "Shampoo wasn't happy when she saw us gorging ourselves on it."
"And that's why she wants to kill you?" Nabiki asked incredulously. 'I've seen some rather petty people, but a death vendetta over food?!'
"No... well, kinda? See, once the guide translated why she was so mad, I offered to challenge her to a fight for the prize," Ranma elaborated .
At this, Nabiki sighed, covering her eyes with one hand as she shook her head. "Oh, Ranma... why would you add fuel to the fire like that?"
"Hey, I was just thinking that if I won fair and square, then that settled any honor problems, y'know? Only... it didn't work out that way."
"She beat you?" Nabiki asked, somewhat incredulous. She knew that, abstractly, Ranma couldn't be invincible, but she'd yet to see him lose in an actual fight, either! It was kind of hard to contemplate the idea that somebody else could beat him!
"What? No, I won easily!" Ranma protested, pride clearly wounded by that suggestion. "But... no sooner was I declared the winner than she comes along and kisses me on the cheek."
"She what?!" Nabiki snapped, an uncharacteristic flare of jealousy rising like a cobra in the depths of her heart. Shampoo might be a crazy killer, but it would have taken a blind man to not see she was also very well put together, and that meant it was rather tricky for Nabiki to stamp down on the instinctive response.
Wisely, Ranma didn't answer that, instead hurrying on with his explanation. "Next thing I know, the Jusenkyo guide is freaking out. He grabs me by the wrist and drags me with him as he runs for the hills, pops hot on our heels. As we go, he explains that what I just got was something called the Kiss of Death; an oath by Shampoo that she'll kill me for defeating her, even if she has to track me to the ends of the earth!"
That snuffed out any petty feelings of jealousy in an instant, replacing it with the icy clamminess of sheer horror. "And she's serious about that?! No, of course she's serious about it - she's here in Japan and obviously still hunting for your head..."
"Yeah... she made our lives in China a misery. Chased us down everywhere we went. Even changing back into our real forms only let us give her the slip for so long," Ranma glumly concluded.
"That's a real problem... how can you make her stop?" Nabiki asked.
"Do I look like I know?" Ranma dryly shot back. "I mean, shy of killing her - and I'm not gonna do that!"
"Even though she wants to kill you?" the incredulous middle Tendo pointed out.
"Hey, two wrongs don't make a right and all that, right? Besides, pops always said that a real man doesn't hurt girls if he can avoid it, and killing a girl's pretty damn hurtful!" Ranma pointed out.
At that, Nabiki sighed, covering her eyes with her hand as she rubbed her temples with her fingers. "I feel I should be refuting your logic... and yet I cannot," she grumbled. As the gates to the Tendo complex opened before them, she asked, "So, what are we going to do about her?"
"I don't know... I figure the two of us will get together with pop and Mr. Tendo. Between the four of us, maybe we can figure out some way to wriggle out of this," Ranma sighed.
"We're home!" he called out, kicking off his shoes to enter the household proper from the (doorway). He led the way into the living room... and then let out a cry of horror, falling over in sheer shock!
Startled, Nabiki poked her head around the sliding door and gasped in horror as she saw none other than Shampoo, sitting at their table as if she belonged there, sipping from a hot cup of tea! "What the hell?!" she blurted out.
"Oh; Ranma, Nabiki, welcome home! Mr. Saotome brought home a visitor! Isn't that nice?" Kasumi chirped merrily from her position on the far side of the table.
It was about that moment that Nabiki noticed the distinct furry form of Genma the panda trying vainly to hide under the table. As did Ranma, who crawled over to his father with an understandably livid look on his face. "Have you gone crazy?! Well, have you?!" he hissed at Genma, who shook his head.
"Ranma?" Shampoo suddenly asked, bending around the table to look at Ranma.
The words 'Oh, crap!' rang through two teenagers' heads simultaneously, with Ranma slowly and reluctantly looking at Shampoo, sitting up as she bent forward until they were nearly face-to-face.
"Nihao," she said, her tone cool, but not impolite.
"Um... nihao?" Ranma hesitantly replied, waiting for the shoe to drop. But, instead of whipping out a weapon and lunging for him, Shampoo instead began to poke him in the chest with one finger, then graduated to rubbing his chest around the pectorals with a confused look. "Uh... what are you doing?" he asked her.
"Is man?" Shampoo observed, sounding rather confused about that fact.
At this, Ranma and Nabiki exchanged glances, with Nabiki watching as realization visibly dawned in her fiancé's eyes. 'This means something to him... but what? Well, I'll have to hold my tongue for the moment; he'll tell me when it's safe,' Nabiki mused.
"Uh, yeah, that's cuz I'm a guy," Ranma said, turning his attention back to Shampoo... who was still fondling him. 'Why is she still rubbing me like this? And why do I feel like I would be expected to be pissed if the genders were switched?'
Shampoo's own thoughts on the matter, incidentally? 'Ooh, nice... feels like a strong man. Good looking, too. Maybe I can get him to fight me? He seems nice... better boyfriend material than Mousse, definitely.'
"I'm home!" Akane's voice echoed up the hall, mere moments before she arrived on the scene. She took one look at what was happening and then turned an irked glare to her sister. "Nabiki, who is this weirdo, and why is she molesting your fiancé?"
At Akane's words, Shampoo suddenly stopped and looked up. "Nabiki?" she asked sharply, eyes fixing into slits as she glowered at the middle Tendo with obvious recognition.
This time, the "Oh crap!" was audible from both teens as Shampoo suddenly shot to her feet, whipping out a chui from seemingly thin air and brandishing it menacingly at Nabiki. "Girl-type Ranma! Where she?" the Chinese Amazon demanded in her broken Japanese.
"I don't know! I swear, I have no idea!" Nabiki protested.
At that, Shampoo drew back her chui, but her icy gaze remained fixed on the middle Tendo daughter. "You hide Ranma... you too must die!" she spat, before swinging at Nabiki.
Nabiki screamed in fright, calling on recently honed instincts and muscles to escape danger. If Shampoo had shown up a week earlier, she probably would have split Nabiki in half; as it was, Nabiki was only just good enough to leap backwards at the last moment, getting herself to safety even as her assailant's weapon carved a chunk out of the door she had been standing next to.
Unfortunately, Nabiki still didn't have Akane's level of instinctive grace and agility, so whilst she did manage to leap clean off of the patio and into the backyard, that meant the sudden drop caused her to fall flat on her rear.
"Nabiki! Okay, you; a fight with me's one thing, but you leave her alone!" Ranma snarled, leaping up from the floor and attacking his Chinese foe.
To her credit, Shampoo didn't yelp in shock at the sudden turn of events, but instead rallied in an instant, trying to ward Ranma off with deft twirls, thrusts and jabs of her twin chui, interspersed with the occasional kick. But Ranma's superior speed and strength, coupled with the advantage of surprise, meant that her resistance lasted all of a few seconds before Ranma snapped the head off of one Chinese mace with a deft kick... that the colorful spherical mass of steel spun through the air and then landed on Shampoo's head, knocking her out cold, was actually a fluke, but Ranma wasn't in the mood to protest it at the moment.
Instead, he sprang out into the garden and to Nabiki's side. "Are you okay, Nabiki?!"
Nabiki shook her head, trying to get her thoughts in order and her heart to slow down; even after her taste of combat on the ice, this martial arts thing still tended to move faster than she was used to. Registering Ranma's words, she gave him a shocked look. "How the hell did she recognize me and not you?!" she demanded, too ruffled to approach the matter with her usual calm delicacy.
"She's never actually seen me as a guy before today, but she must have seen you back at the ice cream place," Ranma explained meekly.
At his words, the memories flooded back, and Nabiki nodded absently. "Ah, yes, that makes sense... wait a minute - but you just beat her as a guy!" she blurted out.
As the realization sank in, Ranma visibly staggered, clearly gobsmacked by the weight of his actions. "Oh, no... oh, no!" he wailed.
"Would somebody tell me what's going on!?" Akane demanded.
And with perfect irony, that was when Shampoo slowly opened her eyes. Unspeaking, she rose to her feet, loping with eerie silence from her impromptu resting place on the floor into the garden and straight for Ranma, who waved his arms in a visible panic.
"W-wait! You didn't lose! It was an accident!" he protested, trying to back away from the advancing Chinese assassin.
"Ranma, the pond!" Nabiki cried out, seeing that Ranma was about to back right into the water.
Immediately, Ranma froze, and Shampoo promptly lunged! ...And wrapped her arms around his shoulders in a gentle hug. She stared straight into his eyes and smiled softly. "Wo ai ni," she said, her words so soft that they were more an exhalation than speech.
"'Wo ai ni'? It's you I love?" Kasumi interjected from the patio, where she had meekly stuck her head out to observe what was happening.
"...Wait, what?" Nabiki blurted.
In fact, Ranma was thinking the exact same thing. He remembered his first kiss all too well, and the icy-eyed, stony-faced Shampoo of China was a very different thing to this doe-eyed, lightly blushing and softly smiling Chinese Amazon now wrapping her arms around him. "Beats me, this ain't what happ-mph!"
Before Ranma could finish, Shampoo cut him off by suddenly latching onto his lips.
"What the?!" shrieked a bug-eyed Akane, hair standing on end as she watched Ranma, the boy she had however reluctantly started to accept as her sister's fiancé, seemingly cheating on Nabiki with the girl who had just tried to squash Nabiki like a bug!
"The Kiss of Death! A vow to kill Ranma, even if she must chase him to the ends of the earth!" Nabiki cried out, swept up in the drama of it all. A moment later, she then hesitantly added, "But... is it supposed to take this long?"
An apt question, since Shampoo was still latched onto the frozen Ranma's lips like a hungry leech and showed no sign of letting go anytime soon. Instead, she flagrantly wriggled against him, soft murmurs and sighs of delight making it sound like she was very much enjoying being right where she was.
It was anyone's guess when she might have stopped, but Ranma forced the issue as his legs suddenly gave out under him like a pair of overcooked noodles, visibly collapsing into a boneless heap so that Shampoo barely saved from falling backwards and landing headfirst on one of the boulders that marked the periphery of the koi pond. "Airen!" she cried.
"That two-timing pervert!" Akane thundered. "How dare you string my sister along like this, Ranma?!"
Nabiki simply hurried over to her fallen fiancé, getting as close as she dared to the volatile and clearly unstable Chinese Amazon. "What happened?!" she demanded.
Shampoo waved a hand in front of Ranma's eyes, and then looked up from his face to Nabiki's. "Airen faint!" she explained, sounding very confused by that turn of events.
"What, that isn't normal with the Kiss of Death?" Nabiki mockingly asked.
Shampoo simply blinked at her, looking even more confused than before. "Kiss of Death? Shampoo no give airen Kiss of Death."
"Wait, what?!" Nabiki blurted out, blinking rather rapidly. "What do you mean?!"
"What Shampoo say," the Chinese assassin replied primly, practically embodying the old phrase "Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."
"Hold on just a second... you lost the fight with Ranma... ignoring that it technically wasn't a fight and more Ranma giving you a spanking," Nabiki amended.
Shampoo glared at Nabiki, obviously sensing an insult even with her evidently limited capacity with Japanese. "Yes...?"
"And you kissed him," Nabiki continued.
"Yes...?"
"So, you gave him the Kiss of Death," Nabiki concluded triumphantly,.
"Nope," Shampoo chirped , briskly shaking her head with a cheerful smile.
"Rrrgh!" Nabiki growled in frustration, pinching her temples in an attempt to stave off a sudden headache. 'She's either worse with the language than she sounds, or she's an idiot... and I don't think she's an idiot.'
"Nabiki, what is going on here?! What did that pervert do?" Akane demanded, repressing the urge to stamp a foot in emphasis.
And of course, that was when Soun suddenly burst onto the scene from elsewhere inside the house. "That's enough! What's the fuss? What's going on?" He demanded from his position at the newly opened door.
Nabiki now pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to stave off the migraine she could feel hammering at her skull, she was going to have bruises after this she could tell. "Can we all just calm down and give me a moment to think, please?!" she pleaded.
"Nabiki, who is this girl? And why is she holding your fiancé like that?" Soun brusquely asked, padding over to the patio.
In fact, Shampoo had just taken that moment to lay Ranma down on the ground, but since she had then hunkered over him and started gently batting his cheek in an effort to coax him awake, one could forgive Soun the technicalities.
Slowly inhaling and then exhaling, Nabiki looked over at her father. "This is Shampoo," she explained, pointing at the blue-haired foreigner.
"Nihao," Shampoo interjected, still not taking her eyes off of Ranma, who was finally stirring back to life. She beamed with joy as Ranma opened his eyes, though the smile wavered when he visibly flinched and tried to scuttle away from her on his elbows and feet.
"She's a Chinese Amazon assassin, and she just gave Ranma the Kiss of Death, which means she's vowed to hunt him to the ends of the earth and kill him," Nabiki elaborated.
"She's what?!" Soun barked in outrage.
"No Shampoo didn't!" the Joketsuzoku warrior indignantly protested, giving Nabiki an indignant pout.
"You didn't?" Ranma asked indignantly, although he was ignored.
"Ranma beat you, and then you kissed him unconscious. What else could it be?" Nabiki dryly asked.
Now, Shampoo frowned, clearly growing annoyed at the communication barrier. She stood up and advanced on Nabiki, who stared back defiantly at her, doing her best to make it seem like she wasn't concerned. At arm's length from the middle Tendo daughter, Shampoo thrust a hand into her cleavage and withdrew a battered old booklet. Deliberately ignoring her audience, Shampoo flipped through the pages, and then handed the open booklet to Nabiki.
Nabiki gingerly accepted the book, and then began reading the section that Shampoo tapped on with her finger, finding Japanese kanji instead of the expected Chinese characters. Silence reigned as she took in the contents, only to be shattered when the wide-eyed Nabiki suddenly blurted out, "You've got to be joking!"
"What?! What is it?" Ranma piped up, staying still in case of more trouble in a moment of rare foresight.
"Yeah, Nabiki, tell us what's going on!" Akane insisted.
Still staring at the book, Nabiki swallowed hard. "The Kiss of Death only applies when an Amazon loses to an outsider woman. But there's another law for when an Amazon loses to an outsider man..." she trailed off, clearly finding it hard to believe her own eyes.
"What? What is it?" Ranma demanded as he pulled himself up.
"According to this book... if an Amazon is defeated by a non-Amazon man... then she has to marry him!" Nabiki revealed with a justified dramatic flourish.
A chorus of "WHAT?!" poured from the throats of Ranma, Soun and Akane; Kasumi simply covered her mouth, letting out a shocked, "Oh, my!", whilst Genma went and hid himself somewhere in the house, hoping to escape attention. Shampoo simply smiled proudly and hugged Ranma whilst he was distracted.
"You must be joking, daughter!" Soun blustered, looking at his middle daughter like she was giving a bad show.
"Would I joke about a thing like this?" Nabiki dryly quipped back.
"Besides, read it for yourself - it's right here in Japanese," she said, passing the book over to Soun.
He held it up to his face, then nodded sagely. "Well, I'll be... it is right here in Japanese," he marveled.
Then he blinked, before his eyes grew wide with outrage. "What am I saying?!" he protested. "Ranma! How dare you two-time my sweet little girl like this!" he bellowed, whirling on Ranma with a thunderous expression of rage.
"Hey, I had no idea of this! I'm innocent!" Ranma protested, waving an upraised palm at arm's length in an instinctive effort to ward off the angry patriarch.
"You leave Airen alone!" Shampoo snapped, standing angrily in front of Ranma like a human shield, hands on hips as she glared at the bombastic Tendo elder.
Suddenly, the sunlight seemed to dim, even as as a monstrous, ukiyo-e version of Soun's head loomed over the Chinese Amazon. "You stay out of this, you little homewrecker! Ranma is going to marry my daughter!" he roared in a voice like a demon's, an elongated tongue lashing out like a whip from beneath a wild mustache and bulging eyes.
"Daddy, watch out!" Nabiki cried, but it was too late. Her father's Demon Head technique had succeeded in scaring countless souls who had dared to oppose or enrage the Tendo patriarch, but Shampoo was different to the various bullies and jerks whom he had targeted in the past.
In Soun's defense, Shampoo's eyes also bulged out as she shrieked in fear... but unlike Genma had done when Soun used the move on him, she chose fight over flight, lashing out with an instinctive punch that sent him flying to land in an unconscious heap on the ground.
"Daddy!" Akane cried, racing to her father's side. "How dare you do that to him, you jerk!" she spat at Shampoo.
"You want some too?" the Chinese Amazon sneered back, the effect undermined by the fact she was visibly fighting to steady her legs and banish an army of goosebumps. She evidently hadn't been completely immune to the technique.
Nabiki pinched the bridge of her nose yet again. "Ranma...?" she asked in a quiet, long-suffering tone. "Would you kindly take Shampoo around the back and keep her out of mischief? I'll sort things out here," she asked.
"Sure thing, Nabiki. C'mon, Shampoo," he said, figuring he would catch more flies with honey and wanting to try and de-escalate things a little. It paid off as his former assassin turned self-proclaimed fiancée simply smiled and nodded, following Ranma off to the other yard... although he could have done without her latching onto his arm like a lifeline...
Akane watched them go with a sour look on her face. "Perverted jerk... Nabiki, what is going on?" she demanded.
"Later, Akane. Help me get daddy inside. I'll explain it to all of you when he wakes up," Nabiki declared.
Soon afterwards...
Whilst it might have been a while since Soun Tendo's life-and-death combat days, the Tendo patriarch was still surprisingly adept at taking a punch. So, he woke up in surprisingly short order. Wearing an icepack that Kasumi had provided for the bruise, he smoked ferociously on a cigarette to try and calm his nerves.
"Alright, daughter," he declared, and the brusqueness of his tone showed how strained his mood was. "Would you mind explaining why your fiancé is fooling around with some other woman? And you don't seem to mind?"
Akane nodded her agreement, whilst Nabiki sighed.
"Alright, it's a long story, but let me try and sum it up. Her name is Shampoo, and she's from a tribe of Chinese Amazons that Ranma and Mr. Saotome stumbled across shortly after Jusenkyo. Ranma beat her in a challenge match, and because he was a girl at the time, she gave him the Kiss of Death. She's been hunting him ever since, and today, she found him - or, rather 'her' - whilst we were on a date at the ice cream parlor. Ranma got away from her there, but by the time we got home, she'd somehow beaten us here - I don't know how, but apparently it's Mr. Saotome's fault," Nabiki detailed in her usual clinical tone, hiding her own anxiety in her familiar cold manner.
"I'm so sorry, Nabiki, I didn't know any of this," Kasumi apologized from her seat by the temple, looking downcast.
"Don't be sad, sis; it's not like Mr. Saotome told you what was going on. So I'm going to blame all of this on him," Nabiki declared.
"Shampoo didn't exactly look out for blood when she was kissing Ranma unconscious," Akane wryly pointed out.
"That's because she's never seen Ranma as a guy before. She has no idea the two of them are the same person. She attacked me because she remembered seeing me with 'girl-type' Ranma, and then Ranma tried to protect me," Nabiki laid out, pushing down the handful of stomach butterflies that stirred their ticklish wings at the memory of Ranma leaping to her protection. "Next thing we know, she's declared him to be her chosen husband," she finished, shrugging.
"I must admit, I find this hard to believe," Soun grumbled, wincing as he pressed the icepack on the bruise too hard.
"Harder than a son-in-law who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water?" Nabiki asked flippantly.
"I... see your point," Soun sheepishly admitted.
"You can't be taking this nonsense seriously, Nabiki!" Akane protested.
"You read the same book that I read. It's right there in black and white, and I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary... admittedly, I don't like the way the rest of the book is in Chinese, so we can't get a greater context," Nabiki grumbled.
"I still don't like it," Akane muttered with a black expression.
"Well, until I think of a way to get rid of her, we're stuck with her hanging around... speaking of which, anyone know where she went?" Nabiki asked nervously, not wanting to let the dangerous Chinese warrior go unsupervised at all, let along for long.
"Oh, Ranma took her out to the back garden. Maybe they're still there?" Kasumi suggested gently.
"Thanks, sis," Nabiki replied, getting up from the table and casually dropping the Book of Joketsuzoku Law on it before heading outside.
The sun was setting by this point, painting the sky into a beautiful tapestry of oranges, golds and pinks, but Nabiki didn't really notice. Her attention was focused on finding any sense of her fiancé, or in a pinch the Chinese assassin who had barreled into their lives like a runaway wrecking ball. Her pursuit was quickly rewarded, the sounds of Ranma's voice drawing her to the birdfeeder in the back garden.
"Okay, Shampoo, let me put this a different way..." Ranma said, holding up a finger in a teacher-like manner that was quite at odds with the way he was squatting atop the birdfeeder to give himself an added bit of height over Shampoo. "That Amazon junk might work when you're in China, but you're in Japan now, understand? You gotta forget about that 'kill the girls, marry the guys' stuff here... do you understand, Shampoo?"
The object of his lecture, who had been staring up at him raptly, simply smiled, nodded, and then hopped up onto the birdfeeder with him, nuzzling up close.
"Ah, man, you ain't listening to a word I say!" Ranma complained as he tried to wriggle free without hurting her.
Nabiki felt torn by the sight in front of her. Abstractly, she knew she should be jealous of the way Shampoo was acting, but at the same time, intellectually, she knew the Chinese Amazon wasn't a threat - even beyond the fact Ranma had never evidenced the kind of wandering eye or loins-first thinking of other boys at Furinkan, the simple fact that Shampoo had tried to kill him not hours ago rationally precluded any real attraction to her.
With those factors cancelling each other out, she was actually left kind of amused by the sight of Ranma trying to smooth-talk somebody who so clearly wasn't going to buy it... Ranma might have been a great martial artist, but she was definitely the silver-tongued one in their little relationship.
Add to it that Nabiki didn't really want to pick a fight with a girl who punched through walls and was ready to kill anyone who got on her bad side, and the result was that she felt no shame in sitting back and enjoying the show. It was kind of petty, she knew, but it was also a cathartic to see that Ranma wasn't the best at everything.
Shampoo suddenly placed a hand on each of Ranma's cheeks, staring tenderly into his eyes. "Woda, airen," she crooned.
Nabiki blinked. "What's that mean?" she wondered, cursing that she hadn't taken that Chinese course in the previous grade.
"It means something like, 'My Beloved Husband', Nabiki," came Kasumi's gentle voice from behind her.
Nabiki nearly leapt out of her skin. "Where!? How?!" she hissed, narrowly keeping from shouting as she turned around and found herself confronted by her sisters; Kasumi holding a simple Chinese-to-Japanese phrase translation book, and Akane glowering.
"Honestly! Why aren't you stopping him, Nabiki?" Akane growled.
"Stop him from what? Try to talk some sense into Shampoo?" Nabiki dryly shot back, forcing her racing heart under control.
With perfect timing to emphasize Nabiki's point, Ranma aggressively pulled away from Shampoo's hands and firmly declared, "Stop it, Shampoo! I know you don't wanna hear this, but listen!"
Unfortunately for Ranma, he made the mistake of continuing to stare into Shampoo's eyes, wide and doe-like with adoration, a beatific smile on her face as she stared back at him. He liked Nabiki - he liked her a lot! He couldn't yet say that he loved her, but then, that was more because Ranma was kind of slow to open up his heart to anyone. But Shampoo... Ranma would have had to have been a eunuch to not notice how attractive she was, and Ranma Saotome was no eunuch.
In fact, he'd actually felt the seeds of a crush plant themselves back in that fateful day in China, when he'd first seen the gorgeous Chinese Amazon on the challenge log, and the way she was looking at him now was bringing back memories of the way he'd first felt when she'd kissed him on the cheek... before they'd been crushed under the realization of what that kiss actually meant.
The result? Ranma's cursed tongue chose that moment to start tripping over itself. In truth, aside from Nabiki, Ranma had never actually been that good at talking to girls. In fact, Nabiki would have stated that Ranma actually wasn't that good at talking to her, either, which was why he was so much fun to tease. So, he found himself starting to babble like an idiot, despite his best intentions.
"Y-you... you and I... we..." he rambled, unable to find the words he wanted when she just kept staring at him like that. 'Why does she have to be so damn good at acting cute? She tried to kill me!'
"Looks like he forgot what he was going to say," Akane drawled, smirking at her sister.
"Yeah, Ranma seems to have a problem with keeping his lines straight when girls turn up the cute charm. Kodachi screwed him up the same way," Nabiki nonchalantly replied. "Doesn't mean anything beyond the fact that he can't handle talking to women."
"M-marry you? I mean, I can't! I got somebody!" Ranma blurted out wildly, oblivious to the Greek Chorus watching him make a fool of himself.
Shampoo simply thrust herself between Ranma's arms in a hug, eyes closed as she cheerfully announced, "Wo ai ni!"
"That means, 'I love you', Nabiki," a nervous Kasumi pointed out helpfully.
"She's obviously desperate for a date, and I suppose I can't fault her for having good taste," Nabiki lightly replied. 'Well, alright, I really wish she'd stop snuggling up with my Ranma... but, at the same time, this is hilarious; even Kodachi didn't freak Ranma out so much! Whoops!' she winced as Ranma promptly fell off the birdfeeder and landed flat on his back, legs still up in the air. 'That looked like it hurt...'
If it had hurt, however, it wasn't enough to jar Ranma's tongue off the track his unhinged mind was scribing. "S-so... we, uh, well, that's why we should, y'know, get ta know each other first and junk...y-yeah, that's what..."
By this point, Soun and Genma, the latter still in panda form, had arrived on the scene, and were staring mournfully at the upside-down and rambling aquatransexual. "Stop and listen to yourself, son; it's sad," Soun sighed, whilst Genma held up a sign with the kanji for Pathetic scrawled on it.
"Airen," Shampoo simply said, staring at the fallen martial artist with concern.
"Aren't you going to go out and tell her off?" Akane asked.
"In case you've forgotten, Akane, she's a martial artist who even Ranma wants to tread lightly around, and I'm very much not a martial artist, recent crash course aside," Nabiki scolded her. "No; the safest place for me is under her radar..."
That night...
The full moon hung low and full over the night sky as Ranma sat on the Tendo roof, chin in hand, elbow and knee, and misery radiating from him. 'This is just great... I think I was better off when Shampoo just wanted to kill me! Crazy thing is, I'd almost think she was sincere about this whole engagement nonsense... oh, man, Nabiki must be so upset by all this. I gotta talk to her...'
Determined to try and make amends for this latest burst of chaos in their lives, Ranma casually dropped the two stories from the roof to the ground and went in search of his official fiancée. Landing in the garden, he wandered around to the pond, where he spotted Akane doing some exercises.
"Hey, Akane? Where's Nabiki?" he asked as he approached her.
At his words, the youngest Tendo turned to face him, scowling hatefully at him. "Why? You want to go and stomp on her heart some more?" she spat.
"What're you talking about?!" Ranma replied, staring incredulously at Akane.
"I can't believe you! Two-timing my sister, and then convincing her to lie about it to protect your own skin! You make me sick!" Akane hissed.
Ranma recoiled at the venom in her words, his own metaphorical hackles bristling at the implications. "Two-timing her nothing! This whole mess is all because of Shampoo and those stupid tribal laws!"
"A likely story!" Akane scoffed. "What, I'm supposed to believe that there are actually such things as the Kiss of Death? Puh-lease!" she mockingly declared. "And even if it is real...you should take it like a man and put Shampoo in her place, not just stand there and let her kiss you in front of my sister!"
Quicker than Ranma had expected, Akane grabbed a bucket, scooped up some water from the koi pond, and flung it at him, drenching him from head to toe and triggering his gender-bending curse. The newly-made redheaded girl gagged, waving her hands and spitting pond-water that she'd unwittingly caught in her mouth, before she fixed her own baleful glare on Akane. "Whaddya do that for?!"
"For being a two-timing perverted jerk, that's what! Kiss of Death... I bet it doesn't even exist!" Akane sneered.
And, with perfect timing, that was when a chui flew between the two girls, splitting one of the largest boulders ringing the koi pond in half even as both Ranma and Akane instinctively screamed in fear. In a further feat of unrehearsed synchronization, their heads turned to see the source of their attack...
"Girl-type Ranma!" Shampoo cried, brandishing a massive dao sword for emphasis, the wicked blade gleaming in the moonlight. "I kill!"
Ranma screamed again as Shampoo came rocketing towards her, and immediately ran for her life...that she happened to bump into Akane in the process, sending the youngest Tendo plunging into the pond, was a complete accident. Really. It wasn't like she pushed her deliberately as she ran past her or nothing like that. Running to the compound walls that divided the Tendo estate from the streets beyond, she hopped onto them and began racing along the top, with Shampoo hot on her heels and now dual-wielding dao and chui.
"Ranma!" Shampoo cried, brandishing her weapons with wicked intent.
"W-wait a minute!" Ranma pleaded, only to have to spring forward to evade a vertical swipe from the Chinese Amazon's mace that smashed a deep crater into the wall.
From the living room, Soun and Genma watched the proceedings, the former dumbfounded. "When he's a boy, she just wants him... but as a girl, she wants him dead. Just like Nabiki said," he marveled... which turned to a fear-fueled scrabble for safety as Ranma led Shampoo right into the living room as part of her desperate attempt to escape.
They bounded back and forth around the room, the dining table being cloven in half by a stray swing of Shampoo's sword, and then they were off as Ranma smashed through the traditional shoji walls in her flight to escape.
Kasumi, who had been sitting at the table, stared in mild shock at the carnage, trying and failing to put on a smile. "Well... they certainly do need to get to know each other better, don't they?" she observed, a statement that drew a nod from the still-pandafied Genma.
"Stay! Stay away! Stay away from me, I said!" Ranma wailed, over the cacophony of walls being smashed and broken.
Whilst all of this had been going on, Nabiki had been in her room, trying to get ahead of the backlog of homework from the Golden Pair and their stupid interference in her life. Of course, when she'd heard the screaming, and the crashing, she'd known something was up. Normally, she would have remained where she was, hoping to stay safe, but she'd heard Ranma's voice in that chaos, and so she jogged down the steps to the dining room, staring in shock at the destruction she saw there. "What happened?! Where's Ranma?!" she demanded
"Oh, Nabiki! Ranma turned into a girl, and then Shampoo saw her and... well... they did this," Kasumi said, gesturing helplessly at the room.
Nabiki stared incredulously at her elder sister. "How in the world did he get splashed with cold water? He knew something like this would happen!" she asked, dumbfounded.
Akane blushed and steadfastly avoided looking at Nabiki. Unfortunately, Nabiki heard the water dripping onto the patio as Akane wrung out her gi, and the youngest Tendo shivered as she felt Nabiki's gaze biting into her back.
"Akane..." Nabiki growled, in the icy tones that her family knew signified when she was well and truly pissed.
Outside, Ranma leapt onto the dojo roof, but that proved no impediment to her assailant, who simply followed her right up there. Narrowly dodging a tiles-shattering chui jab, Ranma ran for the other end of the dojo before leaping back to the wall around the estate, and from there to a neighboring roof, all the while with Shampoo hot on her heels.
"Somebody help me! Help me, please!" Ranma begged - normally an unthinkable act for her, but nobody would have said she was unjustified.
"Ranma! I kill!" Shampoo spat, in between gasping for breath as she followed her victim in leaping from roof to roof.
"Go away! Help!"
Back inside the Tendo house, Nabiki turned an icy glare on Genma. "Well? Why aren't you helping him?! He's your son!" she snapped.
'Penma' simply held up a sign. The boy must fight his own battles.
"...That is the laziest, most pathetic excuse I've ever heard," Nabiki scornfully observed. She glanced out into the distance, feeling a rare pang of guilt at her inability to help her fiancée... but, realistically, what could she do? She couldn't even hope to catch up to the two of them, never mind actually interfere if she did. Reluctantly, she turned and headed for her room, pausing only to spit a bitter observation over her shoulder at Genma.
"You do realize; the engagement is off if Ranma dies, right?"
Rather than wait and see if her words had any effect, Nabiki left the dining room and began climbing the stairs to her room. 'Please, come home safe, Ranma...'
The next morning...
When Nabiki woke up to the sound of her alarm clock instead of the by-now expected sounds of the Saotomes sparring, she wondered if yesterday had all been a dream. Unfortunately, once she made her way down to the dining room and saw the smashed walls and splintered table (both halves now being supported with an impromptu brace made of books), that idle hope was squashed. "Morning, daddy, sis, Akane," said, looking at her three family members. "Did Ranma come home last night?" she asked. 'That Shampoo was really out for blood...'
"Oh, good morning, Nabiki! Yes, Ranma came home very late last night... poor boy was exhausted; he's still asleep. Would you go and wake him up?" Kasumi asked.
"Thanks, Kasumi," Nabiki said, smiling in relief. 'He's okay! I know he's escaped her all the time until now, but that was too close!'
Back up the stairs she went, sliding open the door to the guest bedroom. "Ranma? It's time to get - up!?" Her voice unconsciously rose and her eyes went wide as she took in the sight before her.
Now, the sight of Ranma and Genma, the latter still in his panda form, laying sprawled on their backs in their futons was normal enough. But Nabiki's attention was rather focused on the third body in the bedding. At some point in the night, Shampoo had snuck not only into Ranma's room, but right into Ranma's futon; she was laying there under the covers and partially atop Ranma, her right arm draped across Ranma's chest and a faint smile visible on her lips. As Nabiki watched, she rolled over further atop of Ranma, with a gentle sigh of "Oh, airen," as she moved.
'...Wow. And people call me shameless. Blue-haired vixen isn't joking around. I'd laugh if she were chasing any boy other than mine...'
Walking over to the futon as quietly as she could, Nabiki knelt down and began to poke Ranma's cheek. "Ranma? Ranma, wake up," she whispered.
Ranma didn't even bat an eyelash, but considering the way Genma was snoring, Nabiki couldn't really blame him for that. Of course, she couldn't just let him sleep, either. After a moment's thought, she reached out and pinched Ranma's nose as hard as she could. That got her a response, as Ranma's eyes finally fluttered open.
"Mmgh... Nabiki? Wha's going..." he began, speech slurred in his slumber, until his dream-fogged eyes fell upon his bedmate. At once, his eyes sprang open and he shot up, pulling away from the still-slumbering Shampoo as a thin, high-pitched whine teased Nabiki's ear.
'Wow, I didn't know you could literally swallow a scream...' she wondered.
"I didn't! Nabiki! I swear! It's not! This isn't!" Ranma hissed frantically, pupils shrinking to pinpricks in his panic.
Nabiki promptly cut him off by pressing the tip of her index finger against his lips. "Ranma... do you think I'm stupid?" she sighed. She watched as guilt visibly shoved some of the panic aside in his eyes and he shook his head in desperate denial. "Then why do you think I would blame you for this? Shampoo literally was out for your blood when I saw you last night - would I really expect you to have let her into your bed? Honestly?"
Ranma simply shrugged helplessly.
"Okay, I will admit, I'm not exactly thrilled by the way she's hanging on you, but I'd rather that then watch her chop your head off," Nabiki explained, to Ranma's obvious relief.
Unfortunately, any further heartwarming conversation was cut off by Shampoo suddenly stirring; she yawned, stretched, opened her eyes and then sat up, still smiling as she reached out and placed a tender hand on each of Ranma's cheeks. "Woda airen," she crooned, leaning forward in an obvious attempt to score herself a morning kiss.
Nabiki could literally see the shiver run up Ranma's spine at that, before she blinked and Ranma had somehow gone from being in his futon to hiding behind her.
"Cut that out, Shampoo!" Ranma protested.
'Wow, not a lot of guys would say that...' Nabiki noted, the sweet warmth of pride filling her at the display of Ranma's loyalty.
"Airen!" Shampoo protested, pouting indignantly.
"Hey, hold on, the pair of you!" Nabiki interjected. "It's time for breakfast! So come down and eat, okay?" She could literally feel Ranma's confusion mixing with his gratitude. Shampoo still looked dismayed at not getting her kiss, but to Nabiki's relief she nodded, obviously content to eat peacefully if given the chance.
Still, hesitant to risk the clearly volatile temperament of the Chinese Amazon, Nabiki promptly turned and headed back to the dining room, with Ranma hot on her heels and Shampoo padding along behind. Genma, they left snoring to himself, since none of them really thought about - or cared about - waking him up.
Nabiki could feel the tension mount as the three of them entered the dining room, and Ranma's fidgeting made it obvious he felt it too. Shampoo, by comparison, clearly didn't give two yen for what anyone else thought, and pointedly sat down next to Ranma, even as Soun glowered sullenly at her from his own position. Kasumi, dutiful hostess as ever, simply dished up a serve of food for Shampoo, who began politely eating with obvious enjoyment. Sadly, the tentative truce didn't last for long; after about five minutes, Shampoo began trying to coax Ranma into accepting food from her own chopsticks, with Ranma politely trying to hold her at bay. This was the final straw for Soun, who slapped the tabletop and glowered at Shampoo.
"Enough! Young lady, this farce has gone on long enough!" he thundered.
"What farce? Shampoo make nice with husband. What old man want?" the Chinese Amazon retorted.
"He is not your husband! Ranma already has a fiancée! He's going to marry my daughter Nabiki!" Soun bellowed, pointing a triumphant finger at his middle child.
'Daddy, you idiot! Don't put me in the crosshairs!' the wide-eyed Nabiki mentally wailed.
"Airen marry who?" Shampoo replied, frowning darkly at the suggestion. She then turned her baleful gaze on Nabiki, who did her best to give her a cool, calm stare right back. "You? You claim Shampoo's airen for self?"
"Yes, she does! Her engagement predates yours - it is a matter of honor, forged between Ranma's father and myself before either of them were born!" Soun boasted proudly.
"Shampoo see... in that case... Shampoo challenge you, Nabiki!" the Chinese girl declared, thrusting her chopsticks at Nabiki in obvious provocation.
"To what? An eating contest?" Nabiki dryly quipped back, hoping to break the tension.
"Joketsuzoku law is clear; obstacles is for killing! You want marry Ranma, you fight Shampoo!" the lavender-haired girl declared.
"...Yeah, no," Nabiki flatly.
"What?!" an indignant Shampoo blurted.
"I'm neither a martial artist, nor an idiot. You'd slaughter me in a duel. Pass," Nabiki proclaimed.
"You... no can fight?" Shampoo asked suspiciously. When Nabiki shook her head, she smirked. "Hah! You not even obstacle! Shampoo no have to worry about weaklings like you... Ranma belong Shampoo now. We be too-too happy together. Smart girl stay out of way, and Shampoo leave alone," she bragged.
And that was the last straw for Nabiki. "Sure, I can do that... you're no obstacle to me, either," she purred darkly.
"What you say?" Shampoo asked slowly, glowering with menace.
"Well, you may be hot, lady, but Ranma's no idiot - he's never going to go for a girl who spends half her time trying to kill him and the other trying to kiss him," Nabiki jeered, now fully swept up in the breaking dam of her emotions, all the resentment and frustration and fear and spite built up since Shampoo had thrust herself into their lives the previous day finally breaking through her icy shell.
"What you talking, crazy girl?!" Shampoo demanded, by now looming over Nabiki, who scrambled to her feet in turn.
"Nabiki?!" Ranma blurted out, trying to find the words to stop this impending madness.
"Kasumi? Go and get some hot and cold water. It's time we showed Shampoo the truth, and did what Mr. Saotome should have done back in China!" Nabiki spat, never once taking her eyes from their deadlock with Shampoo's. She began to head towards the garden, with Shampoo following like an iron filing being led by a magnet.
Reluctantly, Ranma scrambled to join the two girls. 'Oh, man, I hope Nabiki knows what she's doing...'
Once they were on the grass, Shampoo spoke up again. "What crazy girl stupid talking?! What this?"
"Shampoo... who is Ranma?" Nabiki replied simply.
Now Shampoo finally blinked, confusion edging aside aggravation. "Which one?" she asked warily.
"Both of them," Nabiki explained.
"Girl-type Ranma is enemy. Humiliate Shampoo. Ruin most special day of Shampoo's life, stain honor, ruin name! Shampoo give her Kiss of Death - never can go home unless girl-Ranma dead!" the Chinese Amazon spat, eyes gleaming with the passion of her emotions.
Ranma winced, both at the reminder of his ongoing death-sentence and Shampoo's perspective of their little duel back in China. 'I just wanted to try and make amends for what me 'n' pop did... great job, Ranma...'
"And the male Ranma?" Nabiki asked conversationally.
Here, Shampoo's frown faded like a dewdrop in the sun, replaced with a beaming smile. "Airen! Shampoo husband, now. Shampoo not looking for one when come to Japan, but not complaining!"
"Why not? You're being forced to marry him, after all," Nabiki pointed out.
At that, Shampoo stared, and then laughed. "So what? Shampoo love Ranma! Airen strong warrior, and handsome, too. Shampoo get good feeling from him," the Chinese Amazon explained.
"Martial arts and looks? Are those all you care about?" Nabiki asked.
"No. They important, but not whole story. Shampoo love Airen because he have strong heart, good heart! He sweet boy; want protect others, gentle, kind... he good husband, Shampoo know it," she said, beaming proudly.
Now it was Ranma and Nabiki's turn to stare, both feeling a little awkward at this. '...Well, I can't say she lacks good taste...' Nabiki admitted to herself. Giving herself a metaphorical pinch, she pressed on. "Okay... what do you know of Jusenkyo?" she asked.
This time, Shampoo did something that neither of them expected. She blanched. "Um... not much," she confessed. "Is evil place. Dark magic there. No Joketsuzoku ever go there. Is place of punishment for bad people. It... change people, somehow? Shampoo not remember more than that," she concluded.
"Huh... well, you know the basics, it seems," Nabiki conceded. With perfect timing, Kasumi and Akane arrived, each bearing either a pair of buckets or a pair of steaming kettles. "Jusenkyo is full of cursed springs. If you fall into one, you are cursed to change into whatever drowned in that spring when splashed with cold water. Hot water changes you back to normal, but only until you ge splashed again," Nabiki explained.
"Uh-huh... what this have to do with Shampoo and Ranma?" her counterpart demanded.
Now, Nabiki smirked darkly. "You can't guess...? Ranma! Before you came to Nyuchiezu, where had you been?" she asked crisply.
"I went to Jusenkyo," Ranma replied, a little uncertainly.
"And did you fall in a spring there?" she continued, not even looking at him, but staring at Shampoo across the garden. 'Let's see how you handle this...'
"Yeah, I did," Ranma quietly admitted.
"Airen!?" Shampoo hissed. 'What's the point of all this? Where is this 'Nabiki' going? Wait... no...no, it can't be?!'
"And the spring you fell into? What was it?" Nabiki asked, in a tone as sweet as poisoned honey.
"...It was the Spring of Drowned Girl," Ranma confessed.
The words hit Shampoo like a knife in the heart; the Chinese Amazon visibly reeled at Ranma's confession, clutching her hands together. "No! Is not possible! You lying!"
"Afraid not, China girl. There is no 'girl-type' or 'boy-type' Ranma. There's just one Ranma. Now he's a boy..." she clicked her fingers, and Akane gleefully splashed Ranma with a bucket of cold water.
"Wagh! Cold!" Ranma squealed, shaking like a dog to try and get rid of the excess water.
"And now he's a girl," Nabiki continued unabated. "Boy," she clicked her fingers, and Kasumi gently poured some hot water on Ranma's head, who sighed in relief at being returned to his true form. "And girl," another finger-snap, and Akane splashed Ranma with the second bucket, the disgruntled aquatransexual spitting out a stray mouthful in resignation. "Do you get it now, Shampoo? The girl you were trying to murder just last night is the same person as the boy you claim you want to marry!" Nabiki crowed, making a dramatic flourish at her fiancée.
"Aiyah!" Shampoo wailed, looking truly crestfallen. In the blink of an eye, she had hurtled across the intervening space, Ranma leaping back with a shocked yell as Shampoo seemingly materialized in front of her, unshed tears starting to glisten in her eyes. "Ranma?! Is true?! Boy and girl - you both Ranma?"
"Uh-yeah, yeah, it's true," Ranma replied unthinkingly. Any possible concerns for the consequences were wiped from her forebrain by the sight of a pretty girl in tears - a weakness that she had no idea how to begin training against.
At that, Shampoo did something neither he nor Nabiki ever would have expected; she burst into tears and then latched onto Ranma as if the redheaded girl-boy was a lifeline. "Shampoo sorry! Too-too sorry! Shampoo not know! Never would have done if Shampoo know! Swear it!" she wailed, burying her face into Ranma's bosom.
Ranma cast a desperate look at Nabiki, silently pleading for help, but her fiancée was of no help... in fact, she was snickering at the sight. 'Gee, thanks, Nabiki, leave me to do the hardest part...' Ranma mentally grizzled to herself. "Um... it's okay, Shampoo. I'm still alive, ain't I? Just... cut off the trying ta kill me stuff and everything's okay, alright?" she said.
Now it was Nabiki's turn to direct an incredulous stare at Ranma. 'Wait, what?! She nearly made mincemeat out of you all that time, and you're just going to let it go?!'
Shampoo sniffled loudly, and then cast a teary-eyed yet hopeful look up at Ranma. "...Really? Ranma forgive Shampoo?"
"Yeah, I will," Ranma replied.
She sniffed again, and then beamed with joy. "So happy! Shampoo promise - no more kill girl-Ranma! Kiss of Death not valid anyway..." she admitted, but only after she'd squeezed Ranma in the tightest embrace that the Japanese aquatransexual had ever felt.
"Great! So, this means you're going to give up on him for my little girl, too?" Soun interjected from his position on the sidelines.
Nabiki felt a flutter of hope, but it swiftly died when Shampoo lifted her face from Ranma's shirt, looked Soun right in the eye, and flatly replied, "Nope."
"Why not!?" Soun demanded.
"Kiss of Marriage still valid. But... Shampoo must do thing now," the Chinese Amazon declared, releasing Ranma and turning back to Nabiki.
"What must you do?" Nabiki asked, fighting down the urge to take a step backwards.
"Nabiki do too-too good thing for Shampoo. Stop Shampoo from make too-too bad mistake. Shampoo owe Nabiki much honor. Have special thanks for Nabiki..."
At that, Nabiki allowed herself to relax. As weird as these Joketsuzoku laws had been so far, she didn't think the Chinese Amazon had it in her to try something nasty and sneaky. Shampoo marched over to her, placed a hand on either of Nabiki's shoulders, and began to chant in her native tongue. It had the feel of something solemn and sacred, but because Nabiki couldn't speak a word of the language, it meant nothing to her. She glanced over at Ranma, but the redhead's quick shake revealed that she had no idea what Shampoo was saying either.
The next part, however, rather transcended language barriers the world over. Shampoo stopped speaking, and the next thing she knew, the Chinese's Amazon's face was filling her vision as she suddenly kissed Nabiki right on the lips!
There might have been some reaction from the onlookers, but Nabiki was a bit too preoccupied to pay much attention. She tried to push Shampoo away, but it was like trying to shove aside a truck. Shampoo's lips were hot as coals against her own, a strange floral fragrance completely foreign to Nabiki's palate filling her nose, and she was helpless to resist being smothered with Joketsuzoku passion.
'...I am so, so sorry if I got jealous at you for being floored by Shampoo's kiss, Ranma...'
And then, as suddenly as it had happened, it was over, Shampoo stepping back from the panting, flushed Nabiki with a smile on her face. "All done!" she chirped.
"What did you do to my sister, you pervert?!" Akane roared, charging right at Shampoo. The blue-haired Chinese girl dodged Akane with such ease that the youngest Tendo might as well have been moving in slow motion. For added measure, Shampoo tripped her, causing Akane to tumble into the koi pond.
"Who you calling 'pervert girl'?" Shampoo indignantly asked.
"Explain yourself! What were you doing with my daughter?!" Soun roared.
"Solving big problem," Shampoo replied chipperly.
"What problem?!"
"Your law say Nabiki marry Ranma. Joketsuzoku law say Shampoo marry Ranma, and kill Nabiki if she get in way," Shampoo explained, slowly and patiently, as if she were talking to an idiot. "Shampoo not want kill Nabiki. So, Shampoo use law - old law, special law. Now Nabiki Shampoo's sister-wife," she explained.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Soun asked suspiciously.
Shampoo beamed proudly. "It mean Shampoo and Nabiki both marry Ranma!" she chirped.
Silence fell... and then, moments later, Genma was finally jolted back to the land of the living in his second-story guest-room futon by an enormous, incredulous chorus of "WHAT?!"
Chapter End & Closing Notes
Now, I can foresee this being a big thing in the reviews to come, so let me just try to explain things here. Is Ranma going to end up wedding Nabiki AND Shampoo (and Ukyo too, you're doubtlessly wondering, from the Characters tags on this story)? Not necessarily. But that doesn't mean that Shampoo's not going to use an obscure Joketsuzoku matrimonial bylaw to make Ranma's life complicated by trying.
See, a good romance story needs a bit of drama in it. If everything is smooth and hunky-dory, whilst it can make for a nice little feel-good read, it can't go on for very long, and it quickly becomes boring if it tries. In canon, Ranma & Akane's main source of romantic drama is the way their mutual personalities clash against each other, as each grates on the other's most sensitive emotional contact points - this keeps them from just spitting it out and admitting they love each other, but unfortunately it also makes them look like a really bad couple in the first place. But here, we don't have that element - Ranma and Nabiki can communicate much better than Ranma & Akane could, so they're not constantly 1-step-forward-2-step-backing due to interacting with each other.
But, we also have the weirdness that Ranma inadvertently brings to the relationship. Regardless of whom he's affianced to, and how they feel about each other, Shampoo and Ukyo are going to arrive anyway, and they're going to want to stake their claim on his heart. You could make an argument for Ukyo deciding against it, since initially she was out to beat Ranma up for revenge, but it's pretty clear she was still nursing a crush on him all along, so once he revealed his innocence in the theft and made it clear he didn't hate her, she'd still switch tack again. And that's going to add drama... but, at the same time, not necessarily the same drama, because we have different characters involved in the love dodecahedron.
So, Shampoo whips out the obscure bylaw and decides to sort out the "conflict" between herself and Nabiki with, in essence, "we'll both marry Ranma!" I hope folks realize that doesn't mean Nabiki or Ranma will accept her proposal!
But why is this happening, you ask? Well, for one thing, the idea that the Joketsuzoku would support polygyny is not really hard to swallow - they already mandate that their women marry men who can beat them in battle, so they're clearly breeding for "strong blood". And in that case, marrying multiple women to the same man is sensible - one man can impregnate multiple women simultaneously.
For another thing, we have to look at the differences in both the characters involved and the resultant situations. If the existence of this bylaw came up in canon, the rest of the girls would naturally ask Shampoo about why she didn't suggest this in the first place - none of them would go along with it (or so they say), but its existence would still make them curious. Shampoo's reply? That she didn't want to share Ranma with Akane. And, really, can you blame her? From Shampoo's perspective, Akane's "tsundere" activities boil down to repeatedly both verbally insisting she doesn't want Ranma at all and beating Ranma up - why would she want to share her husband with a girl who both says she doesn't want him and treats him so badly? Furthermore, Shampoo does not like Akane, she does not respect her (Akane is, in Shampoo's eyes, a bad martial artist), and in fact Akane has actively endangered Shampoo on at least one occasion (the time when Maomolin was going to turn Shampoo into a cat).
In comparison, what's different here? Nabiki is clearly bonded to Ranma; she is also an explicit non-combatant and thusly held to a different set of standards than a "rival warrior" like Akane or Ukyo; and she has also actively helped Shampoo by clearing up the nature of the two Ranmas before Shampoo could do something like kill the man that Shampoo wants to marry. That last reason in particular is why Shampoo is willing to make this offer: Nabiki just earned a lot of brownie points with Shampoo by what she did, and in Shampoo's alien culture, this is a pretty major way to thank her.
So, yes, this little swerve of canon is not coming out of nowhere; we thought about it extensively before we decided to implement it and use it as a major building block for the rest of the story. I'm not saying we're going to have a harem ending, but we are going to exploit Shampoo & Ukyo's engagements to add as much mischief and mayhem to the story as we can, in the spirit of canon. I do hope that you will enjoy seeing how our soon to be trio of leading ladies can butt heads, work against each other and, dare I say, even learn to work together?
And for the curious... no, I don't think that Shampoo is bisexual. She has even stated explicitly in the anime that she wants to return Ranma to his all-male form so she can enjoy having a 24/7 husband (the Japanese Nanniichuan arc, episode 3, for the curious). Just because she's wedding Nabiki doesn't mean she expects to sleep with her. But she's also subject to what TVTropes calls "If It's You, It's Okay"; if she cares for a person, she will express that care physically, and she's indifferent to gender when she does that.
Now, I have a request, my readers...back in chapter 4, I mentioned that I was plotting a Ranma/Resident Evil crossover fanfic. In honor of the release of Resident Evil 3's remake in April, I'd like to have the first chapter to that fic published on that day... the problem is that I can't decide upon a leading lady. Nabiki, Kasumi, Shampoo, Ukyo or Kodachi; any of these girls could offer her own unique traits that would allow for a special spin on the basic concept. So, I'm turning to you readers for help: which girl (or 2 girls, because I feel like I can make a trio of protagonists work with this story if I must) do you most want to see me use as the female protagonist for "Resident Evil: The Wild Horse Chronicles"? The one(s) with the most requests will win the poll, and help me get started on that first chapter.