Miss Ranma

!SOUND EFFECTS! "THOUGHTS"

Chapter Three

"What do you want, Shampoo?" Ranma asked, upset with the fact her wonderful meal had been ruined.

"Ranma I kill!"

"Screw Off!" !ZAP!BLAST! Ranma tagged the amazon with an energy blast, knocking her out of the restaurant and the whole area. !SPLASH!

"You no escape Shampoo!" Shampoo called out from the sea.

Ranma flew out of the gaping hole in the broken window, regarding the water-treading amazon as she hovered over her just out of her reach.

"I understand that you feel the need to kill me, but must you attack me when I'm eating? If you keep pushing me like this I'm going to hurt you real bad. You understand me?"

Shampoo was shocked when she heard Ranma speaking in Chinese, but despite that, she responded. "I don't care what you are doing. I will kill you! It's amazon law!"

"Why does your amazon law say you have to kill me?"

"I must kill you lest you bear children that can come back and eradicate our tribe."

"I would like to think my children would have better things to do than commit genocide. Now listen up. If you want to fight me so badly. Knock on the door and wait for me to come outside. Lest I begin to think you don't have any honor. Now shove off!" Ranma called out as the current carried the amazon away. Then Ranma flew back into the restaurant.

"Who's going to pay for all this damage?!" Ranma turned around to see the restaurant owner standing there with his arms folded and a big frown on his face.

"I'm sure we have enough to pay for the damages. Right, Daddy? Daddy? Daddy!" Ranma turned to see that Genma had vanished without a trace.

"Well?"

"Um."

"I bet Daddy was planning to dine and dash all along. When I get my hands on him! Wait a minute. Who needs him? Fortunately, I have enough money on me to pay for the damages."

"Here you go!" Ranma answered politely, giving up much of the money she had.

"All right. We're square. Now get out of here!"

"Can't I finish eating?"

"No! You leave now!"

"At least let me take home a doggy bag."

"You leave now!"

"#*&!" "If I ever see Shampoo again it will be too soon!"

"Did you see that, Mousse?" An older woman said as Ranko made her way out of the restaurant.

"Yes, Grandmother. Should we try to help Shampoo out of the water?"

"No. She's as domineering as her great-grandmother, always wanting to control everything. Let her swim her way back. For now, we're going to lose ourselves in the crowd, following Ranma so we can find out exactly where she is going."

XXX

"What am I going to do now? I hardly have any money left." Ranma kept on walking through the streets, contemplating her situation.

"Oh, that's right. I can fly! I'll just take off for Japan. Somehow, someway, I'll get a job, maybe doing deliveries or something like that. I'm going to make good after all. Up, up and away!"

As Ranma took to the air she found that she had a passenger.

"Hold it, Ranma! Where do you think you're going?!" Genma demanded, leaping into the air and grabbing on to his flying daughter.

"To Japan. I thought you decided to ditch me, Daddy."

"Er, ah. I just wanted to see how you handled adversity."

"Oh, really? Let's see how you handle my flying."

"What? What do you..." !ZOOM! "Heeyaaahaa!"

"I knew Ranma could leap and even possibly glide in the air, but I had no idea she could fly. Quickly, Mousse. There's no time to waste. Follow them and contact me as soon as you can. I and the others will arrive in Japan as soon as possible."

"Yes, Grandmother." !SPLASH! Upon contact with the cold water, the young man had turned into a large, golden-brown colored hawk.

"Go, Mousse. Go!" With that, the hawk took off after Ranma and her hapless passenger.

XXX

"Blech!"

"You all right, Daddy?" Ranma asked, watching her father lose his lunch.

"Did you have to fly so fast?"

"I thought you were in such a big hurry to see your friend from old times," Ranma said innocently, looking askance as her father glared at her. "Anyhoo. We're in the Tokyo ward of Nerima. Now, where exactly is your friend's home? I want to get that visit with him over with as soon as possible."

"Huff! Huff! Silly girl! We need a place to stay for a while before we do anything else. So you'll have to let me do all the talking."

"How long do we need to stay there?"

"Never mind that, you dumb bitch! Don't question me!"

!RUMBLE! !PLIP!PLOP! !SHHHHH! As the rain came pouring down on them, Ranma found herself facing a panda.

"First you bail on me and now you curse me out? Screw off, old man!"

[Come back here!] Genma took off after his daughter, grabbing a large traffic sign he easily uprooted from the ground with his increased bear-like strength.

"You can't hit me with that thing so easily, Daddy! I'm beginning to think you don't care anything about me. You know what? I'm going to go live on my own. I'm sure to get a job somewhere with the abilities I have," Ranma said tearfully.

"It would be nice if Daddy cared about me instead of using me and treating me like so much garbage."

"Maybe I'll join the underground fighting circuit. Goodbye, Daddy." With that Ranma flew off, heedless to what was waiting for her.

"Oh, no you don't! I may have taught you everything you know, Ranma, but I haven't taught you everything I know. You're not the only one with a ki blast. Get ready for the Saotome Stun Blast attack!"

The powerful panda primed himself, creating an energy ball made of ki. Then he floated the ball into the air, pointed the ki ball at Ranma and let it go. As the energy ball quietly closed in on Ranma, it got bigger and bigger until it struck Ranma, engulfing her in a blaze of energy.

"Aieeeee!"

Ranma came crashing down like a downed jet fighter. As she fell to earth her father ran over to her and slammed her on the back of the head with all his massive might, knocking her out cold.

"That will show her who's boss."

"Whoa! That panda took that sign out of the ground as if it was nothing!" a spectator called out.

"What is he going to do with that girl?" another person asked.

"Probably going to carry her off somewhere and molest her!"

"Grrrowr!" the panda growled, scaring the spectators off.

XXX

"His letter, it's here!"

"Kasumi!" the middle-aged man with long black hair and a mustache yelled, running to where his eldest daughter was and sticking his head into the kitchen.

"Yes, Father?" the matronly young woman answered. She was very tall for a Japanese woman, showing elegance and serenity few could ever hope to match. Her statuesque beauty was increased by her thoughtful eyes and long auburn hair which was set up in a ponytail. As she did her housework, Kasumi wore a beautifully sown apron that helped to make her look like a Japanese version of June Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver.

"Come into the living room. I have something important to tell you and your sisters."

"Nabiki!"

"Yes, Dad?" the girl answered lazily, lying down on her bed in her room with a book in front of her, eating a caramel candy-covered apple on a stick. The demure busty girl had shoulder-length, brown hair and pretty eyes. The shorts she wore showed off nice legs and a wonderful figure.

"Come into the living room. I have something important to tell all of you. Where's Akane?"

"I don't know."

"Find her quickly. What I have to tell you can't wait for long. Where is that girl? Akane!"

Just then. "Huff! Huff! I'm home!" Akane came running in from her morning jog. As soon as she got inside, Akane quickly threw off her jogging clothes and put on her karate gi, setting up some bricks for her to break. Akane was an attractive girl with long bluish, black hair that went down to her waistline. Her martial arts uniform helped to show off her slender yet muscular physique.

"Hyah!" !SMASH! "Whew!"

"There you go again, Akane. No wonder all the boys at school think you're so weird," Nabiki said, lazily leaning against the wall as she watched her sister train.

"Why should I care? Not everybody thinks the world revolves around boys, Nabiki," Akane answered, turning toward her older sister.

"Really? Then what's going on right now wouldn't interest you."

"What's it all about?"

"Dad got a letter from a friend of his. He wants us to meet with him in the living room right now," Nabiki answered.

"How do you know all about that?"

"You know me, Akane. I'm a snoop and a detective."

"Akane! Nabiki!"

"That's him now. We better get inside."

XXX

"Fiance?!" Akane shouted as she and sisters were gathered together around a table, facing their excited father in the main living room.

"Yes," Soun answered. "He's the son of a good friend of mine. His name is Ranma Saotome."

"If one of you three girls were to marry him and carry on this training center, the legacy of the Tendo School of Anything Goes martial arts would be secure."

"Now, wait a minute! Don't we have a say in whom we're going to marry?!"

"Akane's right, Father. We haven't even met this Ranma," Kasumi said calmly.

"That's easily fixed."

"What do you mean?" Nabiki asked, looking up from the soda she had been drinking.

"Ranma and his father have been on a training trip. They've recently been training in China."

"China?! Wow!" Nabiki exclaimed happily.

"What's so great about China?" Akane asked, uninterested.

"Is he cute?" Nabiki asked with her eyes widening in anticipation.

"How old is he? You know full well how much younger men bore me, Father," Kasumi stated sternly.

"What kind of guy is this Ranma?!"

"I don't know," their father answered, smiling.

"You don't know?" Nabiki stated, getting in her father's face.

"I've never met him. Heh, heh."

"Let me go, old man!" the Tendo family heard from outside.

"Hm?"

"We have visitors," Kasumi said.

"Oooh! It must be Ranma!" Nabiki exclaimed with excitement as she got up, running towards the entrance with her father right behind her.

"Saotome, my friend! We've been waiting in anticipation for you and your son!"

"I hope he's older," Kasumi contemplated, touching her hair and slowly making her way to their entrance.

"Boys. How depressing," Akane contemplated.

But as soon as father and daughter opened the door, they beheld a most frightening sight. Carrying someone like a sack of potatoes was a huge, powerfully built panda who barged his way in.

"Yeow!" Nabiki screamed as she and her father came back, running faster than they had been running just a few moments earlier.

"Take it easy, Daddy! You're frightening them!" the person being carried by the panda said.

"Father, is this your friend?" the eldest daughter asked, trying to calm the situation.

"No. No. No!" Soun exclaimed, shaking his head violently, his hair going all over the place.

"Oh, I see. This panda just up and decided to visit us. Stuff like this happens all the time!" Nabiki stated with more than a tinge of sarcasm.

At that moment, the large panda dropped the person he had been carrying and shoved him towards Soun. For a moment they looked at each other.

"You wouldn't be..."

"Ranma Saotome. Sorry about this," Ranma said, looking downward.

"At last, you've come!" Soun said, putting his arms around their new guest.

"Ooooh! He's cute, bordering on pretty," Nabiki said, getting a good a look at Ranma from behind her father.

"It's so good of you to come! We've..." But as the Tendo patriarch held his guest closer to himself, he felt something amiss. Letting her go to get a better look he and his daughters noticed Ranma's stand-at-attention bosom.

"He is a girl," Nabiki stated, coming closer to Ranma, poking her chest for emphasis. !CRICK! "Ow! They're harder than rocks!"

"Don't do that; it's annoying," Ranma said coldly.

"I think I broke my finger! What are your tits made out of, anyway?" the middle daughter asked, rubbing her aching finger.

As the winds caused some nearby hanging chimes to ring, Soun Tendo promptly fainted.

XXX

"Poor Father. He's so disappointed," Kasumi stated as she tried to comfort the prone patriarch as everyone was seated around him including Ranma and the panda that brought her.

"He's disappointed! Some fiance this is!" Nabiki stated angrily.

"Stop it, you two. He, she is our guest!" Akane replied, happy that she wouldn't have to get married to anyone.

"This is all your fault, Dad. You should have made sure Ranma was a guy before telling us we'd have a fiance to marry!"

"Well, he said he had a son," Soun answered from his lying down position.

"Do you see a son here? Well, do you?"

Nabiki made another attempt to grab Ranma's bosom to further emphasize her point, but this time before the middle daughter knew what was happening, Ranma had grabbed her hand, holding it fast. "Look, miss thing. I don't know what you think you're doing, but I don't swing that way."

"Ow! What the..."

"She's right, Nabiki. We shouldn't be so rude to our guest," Akane replied as Ranma let the offending hand go, giving Nabiki an intimidating glare. Nabiki shied away from the glare as she tended to her hurting hand.

"How about joining me in the practice hall?" the bluish black-haired girl said with a smile. "My name's Akane. Would you like to be friends?"

"Yes. I'd like that."

A few moments later, the two girls were in the dojo facing each other. "You do karate, don't you?" Akane asked.

"A little."

"Then let's have a friendly little match together, all right? Don't worry. I won't hurt you." Akane got in a stance that didn't impress Ranma at all.

"All right."

"I can tell from here that Akane isn't very good. All she has is some power and a little bit of speed. She even has less skill and finesse than either Pan or Bra had. It would have been better for Akane if she had been born a Saiyan. What kind of martial arts has she been learning all this time? I strongly suspect she's been doing the same kind of training over and over again."

"Hyah!" Akane moved in on Ranma, using a textbook forward martial punch which the pigtailed girl avoided by leaping up. Akane followed up her previous attack with a powerful roundhouse kick while her opponent was still in the air, but Ranma simply somersaulted a couple of times forward, getting behind her and crouching low, using a leg sweep to knock her off of her feet before Akane knew what was happening.

"Oof!" Akane moaned, getting up and attacking again.

"You need to work on your balance, Akane," Ranma stated as she easily avoided her opponent's clumsy attacks.

"Grrrr!" Akane immediately renewed her offensive, attacking with volleys of punches and kicks which only found air. "What are you waiting for? Take me seriously! Oof!"

Akane lurched forward as her stomach felt the impact of Ranma's snap kick. "You all right there, Akane?" Ranma asked as she shuffled back.

"Never mind me! This time for real! Hyah!" Akane attacked Ranma again with a flurry of punches and kicks that had even less finesse and direction than her previous offensive had.

"You need to relax, Akane."

"Don't distract me! Hyah!" By this time Akane had begun to attack even more wildly, her punches and kicks having no cohesion whatsoever.

Ranma kept on backing up, practically gliding on the ground at an even faster pace, prompting Akane to extend herself with wild roundhouse kicks that left her even more open to attacks than before as she moved in, kicking with the right leg then the left. "Huff! Huff!"

As Akane kicked in her predictable fashion, Ranma ducked hard and fast, nailing the blue-haired girl with another leg sweep, knocking her on her ass. "Ow!" But despite this, Akane quickly got up and came at Ranma, flailing her arms and kicking in the same fashion without any sense of strategy.

"This has gone on far enough. Time to put Akane out of her misery." Picking one of the many openings available to her Ranma zipped right through her opponent's clumsy punch and kick barrage and struck her in the jaw with a right cross that she held back on, knocking Akane to the ground, stunned.

As Akane broke out of her stupor, she looked up at Ranma. "Golly. You're pretty good."

"I try," Ranma answered, giving Akane her hand to help her up. "But you need to watch your defenses when you attack. You leave yourself open when you kick without any kind of focus."

"All right already. Anyway, I'm just glad you're not a boy," Akane stated, accepting the offered hand and standing up on her feet.

"Why is that?"

"It's just that I'd hate to lose to a boy," Akane answered angrily.

"Hmm. Why do you hate boys so much, Akane?"

"All the boys at my school attack me, thinking that whichever one of them beats me gets to have his way with me. I practically have to fight for my life whenever I go to school. Those perverts. I hate them! I hate them! I HATE THEM!"

"What those boys are doing to you just isn't right, but not every boy is a pervert or rapist. Even though some guys are rotten, some guys are pretty decent. Don't judge every male by the jerks that go to your school, Akane. And another thing."

"What's that?" the blue-haired girl asked, looking at Ranma with her arms folded on her chest.

"You need to control your anger better. You started our match with good textbook forms but in time you got frustrated and began attacking me without any focus. Your defenses had more holes in them than a golf course."

"My temper's just fine!" Akane snapped.

"How about if you try a breathing exercise with me?" Ranma took a breath, her breasts heaving with every breath as she utilized a taichi breathing technique. "Aah! Whew!"

Akane looked at Ranma as if she were crazy for a moment. "There's no need for me to do any breathing exercises. My breathing is just fine, thank you. You win one little match and you start getting delusions of grandeur." That being said, Akane walked out of the training hall in a huff.

"Sigh. I hope I can help Akane to get better. I'd like to have a decent sparring partner to train with," Ranma thought to herself as she watched Akane leave.

XXX

While Akane and Ranma were having their spar, Genma-Panda had gotten into the furo, filled it with hot water, initiating the change that turned him back into a man.

"Now to meet my old friend as the real me," Genma thought to himself as he dried off and got out of the furo. Then he made his way back to the living room.

"Saotome! You've finally made it! It's so great to see you! But how did you get in?" Soun exclaimed, giving his old friend a brotherly embrace.

"It's a long story, Tendo."

"Please, sit down, Saotome and tell me all about it," the Tendo patriarch said, motioning to a sitting cushion.

"Kasumi!"

"Yes, Father?!"

"Bring my friend and me some refreshments and a couple of beers!"

"Yes, Father," Kasumi affirmed, getting started on her father's requests.

"Kasumi, who is that old guy in the living room talking with Dad?" Nabiki asked, walking into the kitchen.

"I don't know. Excuse me," Kasumi said politely as she left the kitchen with the snacks and bottles of beer for her father and his newly found friend in tow.

XXX

After Kasumi had served her father and his friend, she went to the dojo and found Ranma there doing complex katas and taichi movements at the same time. "I've seen Father do martial arts exercises like that but it seems as if Ranma is a lot slower than the others I've seen."

"Oh, hi," Ranma said, shutting down her mind over matter workout.

"Hi, Ranma. Since you're all sweaty from your workout I figured you'd want to take a bath."

"Um. OK. I was going to go take a dip in the koi pond or something. I haven't had a real hot bath in a long time."

"Well, it's time you've had one. The furo is right this way. Take as much time as you like."

"All right. Thanks."

Ranma made her way to the furo, took her clothes off, scrubbed, washed up and then took a dip in the hot bathwater. "Oh, that feels so good. Oooh!" The girl had already undone her pigtail so her long hair was loose by the time she immersed herself in the water, coming up after a couple of minutes.

"Now that I'm calmed down from hearing Ranma preach at me it's time for a soak in the furo." Akane walked inside, doing everything she needed to do in preparation for her bath.

"How my body needed that!" As Ranma came out of the furo refreshed Akane walked in on her, seeing Ranma in all her glory. "I'm about done now, Akane. It's all yours. Akane?"

"Gasp!" Akane did an about-face and walked out of the furo.

"Was it something I said?" Then Ranma took a hard look at herself to see if there was anything amiss. "What's the deal with Akane? You'd think I was a guy or something."

"Oh, that arrogant showoff!" Akane exclaimed, slamming the door behind her, screaming so loud that everyone in the home had heard her.

"What's wrong, Akane?" Kasumi asked. "You look as if you've seen a threat of some kind."

"Does she have to go out of her way to show me up in everything?!"

"Isn't Ranma in there? I had her take a bath right before you did," Kasumi explained.

"Of course she was there!" Akane snapped back.

"Then what's the matter?" Nabiki asked calmly, wanting to know what the commotion was.

"Not only does she show me up with her crazy martial arts, but she has to show off a body that puts me to shame! Sheesh! Can't I have self-esteem over anything?!"

"Let me get this straight, Akane," Nabiki said circumspectly. "You're angry at Ranma because she beat you in your little martial arts match and because she has a better body than you?"

Akane turned angrily at her sister, seething with rage.

"Gee, Akane. I have a better-looking body than you and so does Kasumi. Get over it. The only one of us you can beat when it comes to being pretty is Kenji."

"Come to think of it, Ranma does have a huge rack and a hard body. But I had no idea she'd be so intimidatingly gorgeous! I bet I can make a fortune off of selling pictures of her."

"Nabiki!" Kasumi scolded. "Look, Akane. Ranma can't help it if she happens to be built the way she is. So there's no reason to be angry at her just because she happens to be better looking than you. Now let me see how she's doing."

"I'm right here and I'm fine." Ranma had already dried herself off and was dressed up in another set of clothes, that being her usual red shirt and green pants with her pigtail tied up. "Let me get this straight, Akane. Do you hate me because I'm beautiful?"

"I was the greatest martial artist in Nerima until you showed up. I was also the most beautiful girl in town. Now I have nothing!"

"I can help you with your martial arts, Akane, but as far as your looks go, you're pretty much stuck. Wait. Tell you what. I know some mind over matter body control exercises that when done right can increase the size of your bust-line a little bit. There's no reason for you to be as flat-chested as you..."

"Shut up!"

XXX

A few minutes later everyone was in the living room. "Let me explain this once more. This is my old friend, Genma Saotome," Soun motioned to the hefty middle-aged man he had been talking old times with for the last hour or so.

"And this is my daughter, Ranma," Genma explained, motioning to the pigtailed girl beside him.

"What happened to the panda who was here?" Kasumi enquired, looking around and not seeing hide nor hair of it.

"Let me start from the beginning." Out of nowhere, Ranma found herself being picked up and thrown into the koi pond.

"What'd you do that for?!" Ranma protested to her father.

"Here is the main problem. Ranma disappointed me greatly by being born a girl so I did everything I could to raise Ranma to be a man among men. After years of breaking my back to do this, she lets me down by refusing to become the man I wanted her to be."

"You're only telling them half of the story, old man!" Ranma exclaimed, flying out of the water towards her father. "Let me show them what you tried to do to me. Hyah!" !SPLASH!

The Tendo girls gasped in shock when they saw the huge panda whom they had seen earlier appear again, coming out of the koi pond.

"What Daddy wanted me to do was fall into the Spring of Drowned Boy while we were at Jusenkyo so I could marry one of you. Joining the schools he said. Well, it didn't happen that way despite the fact my old man had me hypnotized from when I was a little girl to believe I was a little boy. Thus I thought I was male up until I fell into that spring in Jusenkyo. But I had some doubts even during..." !WACK! "Ow!"

"Here, Saotome. Let me help you," Soun said, dousing him with hot water. "As you can see when he gets hit with cold water he turns into a panda, but with the application of hot water he turns back."

"Thanks, Tendo. But it needn't be quite so hot."

"Wait a minute! Are you saying Ranma is a guy? If so, then why doesn't she change?" Akane demanded.

"It's a long story. As I was saying before. When I fell into a spring, I..."

"Silence, Ranma! If only you had done what I wanted you to do and fell in the right spring we wouldn't be in this mess!" Genma stated angrily.

"Oh, yeah?! You know what that guide said! After coming out of the spring I did, none of the springs would work on me anymore. And you did throw me in the Spring of Drowned Boy later on, but then it was too late. And at any rate, I enjoy being a woman and I'm not the least bit ashamed of that!"

"Is that so!" Genma grabbed Ranma and attempted to toss her in the koi pond again but Ranma executed a reversal, putting her father in a full nelson. But the wily older man escaped the hold and attacked his daughter with punches and kicks. In a matter of seconds, the two were going at it in a free for all, fighting with countless strikes and counter-strikes faster than the untrained eye could see.

"Stop it, you two!" Kasumi yelled, stepping in and grabbing Genma by the collar of his gi. "Mr. Saotome, you went too far even for the sake of joining the schools! You had no right to force Ranma to become something she wasn't. In addition to that, you have the gall to get angry at her when things didn't work out the way you had planned."

At that point, Nabiki chimed in. "This is all very interesting Ranma, but I have a question for you."

"What's that?"

"As amply endowed as you obviously are, hypnotized or not. How could you not have noticed that you had body parts the boys didn't have and were missing certain body parts the boys had?"

"I didn't know what a boy's body looked like."

"Really?"

"Yes. That's because I didn't get any kind of sexual education until I fell into that spring in Jusenkyo. The girls there were so shocked at my ignorance when it came to the sex and boys that they gave me all the information I was lacking. And besides that, I had straps that held my breasts in."

"I see. But if you were ever at school, what did you do in P.E. class when you had to change clothes in front of the boys? How could the others not notice there was a girl among them?" Nabiki asked, wanting to know how Ranma was able to fake everything. "I might be able to use this information later."

"That's a good question. I don't know," Ranma said, giving her father a look.

"Those straps as you called them weren't just to keep in your oversized bosom. They were magical bindings I borrowed from a Buddhist temple," Genma answered.

"More likely you stole them from that temple," Ranma interjected.

"Anyway," Genma continued. "Those bindings were magical, making a female look like a man in every way. They were supposed to be invisible. I'm surprised you were ever able to figure out that they were there, Ranma."

"I didn't. The friends I trained within that spring figured it out. What was the big idea with all of that, old man?!" Ranma demanded, getting more than a little angry.

"Why would Buddhist monks even have bindings like that?" Kasumi asked as her interest peaked a little.

"As some of you might know, some Buddhists abstain from women. But those that do, don't restrain themselves from young boys."

"Oh, I've heard about that!" Nabiki interjected. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Not all Buddhist monks wanted to be with young boys. Some of them would have rather been with young girls. Therefore one of them used his mystic knowledge to create bindings such as these so that he and a few others could indulge in women without anyone else being the wiser, taking off and putting on the bindings as was needed," Genma explained then he turned angrily towards Ranma. "That was a very expensive mystical object you destroyed, Ranma. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I enjoy being a woman and that's that."

"You should have become a boy the way I wanted you to!" Genma demanded.

"I am not male. I never have been a male," Ranma stated. "It wasn't until I fell into the spring that took me to another dimension where I learned a lot of wonderful martial arts techniques that I figured out who and what I was. The girls I trained with didn't hate me just because I had a better body than them either," Ranma explained, giving a sharp look at Akane for a moment.

"Now I get it. Because you were raised to be a guy, you're some kind of pervert! No wonder you liked showing off your body so much," Akane said, standing there as if she had won some kind of victory. "You're not a real girl at all!"

"I am a girl! When I came out of that spring I told my father that and that's what I'm telling all of you!"

"You were raised to be a boy so you're a pervert! That explains everything! No wonder you stuck up for boys earlier. You make me so sick!" Akane screamed.

"Listen here, princess. Don't get mad at me just because my appearance here has burst your fragile little bubble of self-esteem. Besides, as flat-chested as you are and as busty as I am, if anyone's a boy it's you not me," Ranma stated with a chuckle, her hands clasped behind her head as she walked away from Akane with her back turned to her.

!SLAM! "How dare you say something like that?!" Akane yelled, pinning Ranma to the ground with a nearby table.

"So it's like that?" Ranma countered, getting up and throwing the table off of herself. "If you want a fight, let's fight. But this time I won't hold back on you as I did before."

"Ranma, Akane! Please don't fight in the living room; it's very improper," Kasumi admonished, calming things down.

"I have to admit that your ideas about making men out of women are really out of this world, Mr. Saotome," Nabiki said. "What possessed you to indulge in such ridiculous notions?"

"It was all about the joining of the schools!" Genma answered. "Oh, that I could have had a son. Why, oh why didn't I have a son?!"

"It's not the end of the world, Saotome," Soun said with a smile as an idea popped up in his head. "But for now let me properly introduce my daughters. The oldest one is Kasumi; she's 19 years old. The middle one is Nabiki; she's 17 years old. And last but not least is the youngest one, Akane who's 16," the Tendo patriarch stated, pointing at each of his daughters in turn.

"What are you saying, Tendo? Do you want me to take one of your daughters to Jusenkyo and have them fall into the Spring of Drowned Boy? That is so noble of you."

"No, not at all," Soun answered as all of his daughters showed shocked, overt disapproval at the idea.

"But what about the joining of the schools?!" Genma carried on. "What will we do? Oh, the humanity!"

"It's not a problem."

"It's an insurmountable problem, Tendo, a problem that has defeated all of our dreams!"

"Saotome."

"What can we do? The schools! The schools! They will never be joined!"

"Saotome."

"Would that my child wasn't so ungrateful and had done what I wanted her to do! The insolence of the young!"

"Saotome."

"Why would the gods be so unkind as to give me the daughter instead of a son?!"

"Saotome."

"I must apologize, Tendo. My worthless child has failed you miserably! What else can I say?!" the balding man carried on, crying crocodile tears.

"Saotome."

"It's the end of everything! There's nothing we can do! What will we do, Tendo? What will we do?!"

"And I thought I was the one who cried for no reason." "Saotome!"

At that moment, a voice was heard from outside. "I'm back from my training! Is anybody home?!"

"I'll go get that." Kasumi got up and went to the door.

When Kasumi returned there was a strapping young man with her. Standing at six feet tall, weighing 200 pounds with long bluish-black hair. The powerfully imposing-looking young man with roguish good looks resembled a Japanese version of Conan the Barbarian except that he had more muscular definition and less bulk.

"Saotome. Let me introduce you to my son, Kenji Tendo," Soun announced with a smile as he patted his son on the back. How was all the training you've been doing, Kenji?"

"It was great, Dad. Some of it was painful but I've finished it!"

"That's my boy."

"The guy looks like Akane's twin brother. And here I thought Akane was the manliest person in this family," Ranma thought as she admired the handsome young man, standing before them as her father face faulted and fell to the ground.

XXX

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Things really heat up in the next chapter. We'll see you there! Now, I'd like to give props to those who gave me reviews for the last chapter.

Julianmon, chm01, AshK, deathgonous, luger 7, John Tannius, Cat on a Schtick, DrTempo, sayalovesdiva, primedirective, They call me Bruce, Radio Driver, Sir Thames