An unusual disclaimer: Ranma ½ is a trademark of Rumiko Takahashi and VIZ Communications, and its characters have been borrowed without permission. And Son Turned Daughter was originally written way back in 2002 by the FanFiction author Tangent, and his characters Megumi, Yasushi and Ayane have, likewise, been borrowed without permission. Please see the first two chapters of this story under his pen name. This story is written for non-commercial purposes only.

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While a pigtailed redhead, Ranma Saotome had actually done it! Her guy brain wouldn't be happy when she had it back, but, then, her girl brain wasn't thrilled to have actually, truly, really done it, either. She had kissed a pig on its porky lips. Not his forehead. Not his snout. On its lips! Geez! Man! if a First Kiss was so freaking important, then she was determined that it not be with a guy! A guy guy, that was, a human guy! And especially not by Kuno! By kissing a pig she had taken something important and made it unimportant! But maybe it would weaken the debt that Something seemed determined to make her pay Kuno! Maybe she had defeated something of her curse!

Ranma could feel the little pig get suddenly warmer, her trained senses picking up a red glow beneath its bristly yet soft, black fur. "Are you getting a fever?" she asked, putting her forehead against its, her nose ending up near its snout. "Man, I'd like to help you for savin' me from Kuno, but I have girls of my own to rescue! And you might get in the way of my moves and get hurt. Sorry, uh…." It seemed right to give it a name. It deserved one for what it had done for her. But she didn't have any real time! It had to be the first thing she thought of! Bacon - No, a second thought, "Burin-chan.

"No, wait! You're a guy and I don't like to be called a -chan, either." She set him down and patted him on his way by his little butt. "Bye, Burin-kun!"

She didn't see Burin-kun stagger and collapse with a smile. It did not have a nosebleed.

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The redhead in the bloomers and the t-shirt tied up under her bust was on the run again!

She would check why that chair had been hurled so hard it had broken two windows separated by a hallway. In one leap, she was three stories up and on the sill of the window next to the outside hall window.

In the hall were two armies facing off. The girl army seemed to be made almost entirely of civilians, normally non-combatants who the Code required its adherents to keep that way for a number of sensible reasons. (And one that wasn't: [13] Protection of all innocent lingerie!) But their "general" wasn't a civvy; she was a martial artist, the best Ranma had seen in Nerima!

"Give me more desks, Shinobu!" Akane ordered.

"More desks!" the girl in shoulder-length hair cried out. And more desks were passed by a chain of girls, two girls for each desk, while girls on both sides of them protected them with anything-goes weapons, mostly of the long and pointy kind.

Shinobu would throw a desk if the other army made a move to attack before Akane could throw it. She was just about as strong as Akane, but she wasn't the trained martial artist.

Ranma rapped the window quickly, repeatedly, and at a certain angle, and the window that latched from the inside was no longer latched. "Akane!" she said, sliding it open.

"Ranma!" Akane smiled around her grunt as she threw yet another desk.

The redhead jumped inside and, having to reach, caught the desk with one hand.

"Ranma!? Akane was no longer smiling.

"Look!" and she wasn't talking to just one girl. "You're just creatin' a barrier to hide behind!" Although, there were a handful of boys buried under the pile of desks.

"That's what we want!" And the normies agreed.

"But you're a small group! Stuck in a small part of the school! A part without a girls room!"

"I wish she hadn't said that!" more than one civvy said.

"You need to join up with the other girls in the school! Take control of the school! Win the war!"

"Ranma's right!" Akane told the others. "The more of us, the more they have to respect us!"

"Yeah!" went the shout. There was only one small voice that said, "But what if they…."

"Where's Ikuko?!" Ranma demanded.

"She and the rest of the Truce Enforcement Club are making sure they control the bleachers in time for the raffle!" , "Is there even going to be a raffle?!" , "That's defeatist talk!" , "Akane and Ranma will go on those dates!" , "Yeah!", "Dates. When was the last time we were on dates?"

This was sounding too much like the curse making sure she did become a girl in more than just body to Ranma. But she had to go through with her date or break her word of honor. Would the curse help or hurt the chances of the girls winning?! "Then the bleachers are where you and all the other girls should meet up! Akane get them there!"

"M,me?" Suddenly she was faced with a great responsibility! The lives of, maybe, all of the school's girls depended on her!

"You can do it, General Mulan!"

"Are you calling me a boy!?" she reflexively yelled.

"Was Mulan a boy?" Ranma smiled and leaped out the window.

Wow! First the realization she should always try to wear something over her privates and now this helping Akane and the girls organize! Ranma was thinking strategically! She just hoped she wasn't as lousy at it as Nabiki thought she was.

Desks and broken window glass rained down as Akane and Shinobu removed the barrier! Screams were heard as girls met their group of boys head-on! Two armies clashed!

And the music of Shiva played on...

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Ranma in her abbreviated gym clothes started collecting any and all the girls she came across outside. Some were hiding in or behind the bushes, trees, posts, garbage cans, bookbags and some were not hiding at all, just clinging to each other and waiting to be captured or worse. She was the leader of about fifteen girls and Hiroshi, Daisuke and that scarecrow guy, Gosunkugi(? Was that his name? Why did she even bother caring if it was?), when they found a girl kneeling over a crystal ball. Girls recognized her, "Miyo!"

"What's she doing?" Ranma asked, and the low-grade perverts the girls of 1-F had earlier chased away answered.

"She's the school's fortuneteller," Daisuke said. "Thinks she's a psychic."

"She did say I would get a kiss from you, Ranma," Hiroshi smiled.

"It wasn't a real kiss! It wasn't my first kiss!" Ranma desperately hoped she wasn't under a debt to him, too!

"Miyo! Miyo! What's going to happen?!" the girls rushed to her.

"I hear…, I hear…"

"Doesn't a fortuneteller say "I see"?" Daisuke asked. "She's has a crystal ball."

Miyo frowned at the skeptic. "I hear. There are subliminal messages aimed at the males in the music."

"Subliminwhat?" Ranma asked, scratching her head.

"It's like hypnotism," a girl Ranma recognized from her class told her. Being late for school cost her and her friend more than just detention.

"And don't forget the incense!" another from her class told them.

"I don't smell any incense." Ranma wasn't the only one.

"Believe Makoto," her very short-haired friend said. "She has a very sensitive nose."

"Shikako's right!" more than one girl agreed.

"You can't smell it because it smells like girls. Girls are always smelling girl," the girl with long bangs suddenly sniffed Ranma. "You smell like a boy and girl. Have you been with a boy today?"

That got frowns from the girls who were feeling threatened by the boys.

But Ranma was thinking, "The HeadMaster! He's been messin' up the heads of the guys! It's not all their fault!"

"Don't make excuses for them!" , "Who's side are you on?!" , "She smells like a boy because she's been with boys!" , "She likes boys!" , "Do you remember the rumors about her?"

"She's not like that," Hiroshi told them, seeing an angle.

"We wish she was," Daisuke said glumly, not seeing it yet.

"She smells like boys because she's with us," and Hiroshi, and then Daisuke, stood on either side of, each hugging some part of her exposed, bare waist.

"Hands off!" Ranma ordered, elbowing both away at the same time.

"We have to trust Ranma!" Shikako told the doubters. "Who else has been helping us?!"

"I think she smells good," Makoto said. That was enough for the rest of them.

"Okay, we have to destroy to PA's and whatever's messin' with the guys' noses too. Get rocks, balls and - Hey! What do you girls think you're doin'!?"

What they were doing was trying to climb the wall that surrounded the school. Maybe, if one girl gave another a boost with her hands, then the one on top of the wall could then-

Ranma leaped on top of the wall and told them, all of them, "You can't escape! Unless you stop them here, they'll follow you out of school! The real enemy is the loon who runs this place! He's worst than my Old Man - He's worse than Kuno, jr!"

Man! First strategy, now this! Ranma was either changing or getting completely out of character! Well, a crisis can bring out qualities you didn't know you had.

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Just seeing a large group of girls with rocks, balls, sticks, and just about anything(-goes) else they could carry as a weapon moving along in a very rough formation encouraged other isolated girls from joining. Some of the girls saw boys not wearing sports uniforms they knew and wanted them to join them. This caused arguments in the ranks about letting the "enemy" stay with them, but Ranma, and Makoto and Shikako, won the word fight and they stayed. More girls saw other boys they trusted. And those boys had guy friends. Ranma's platoon was becoming a company of foot soldiers, their uniforms the Furinkan standard, girl and boy's.

"Don't worry about destroying anything that needs destroying!" , "Half the Furinkan budget goes to repairs!" , "Let Shiva pay for it!"

It wasn't random destruction for the sake of destruction, it was aimed mainly at the PA speakers, but also the outdoor machinery of the ventilation system that blew the manmade odor of woman throughout the school, and the small earthen ovens that they discovered tucked into out of the way places around the campus. They also trashed the kendo and any other club building that was separated from the main buildings. They took particular delight in smashing trophies awarded in any sports-as-martial-arts competitions.

To those on the outside, it looked like a rampage of militant, PMS women! The outsiders left them alone. For a while. But there could be only so much intimidation without the random destruction. The concentration of girl smells and pheromones - as well as their soprano and alto voices - kept drawing the attention and temptation of boys the girls would not, could not and should not trust.

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Many of them were in a line, waiting their turn.

"Sorry!" Nabiki grinned. "You should have bet on that ten minutes ago! The odds that the boys will win are now 5/3!" She checked her book, but it was more for show as she had the calculations in her head. "But I can give you 3/4 on Megumi being defeated! 4/1 on Miss Tanizaki's class surrendering before noon! And Mt. Kimura's...oh, wait, his class already defeated him." She frowned at something she noticed in the book. "Hey! Anybody willing to bet on Gosunkugi winning - Anything?! I'll give 44/1!"

Yes, this was going to be a Big Jackpot! Most people still thought the boys would win - even girls were betting on them! Nabiki was confident that Ranma and Akane would swing the tide and bring the gold to the girl's side of her ledger. She even thought the lesser lights of the female martial artists might pull their parts of the battle off. But it really didn't matter if the boys did when! She took enough strategic bets to help Vulcan Enterprises to at least show a modest profit at the end of the day. There was only one way, as she saw it, she could lose. And that wasn't going to happen, she had assured her fellow free enterprisers. It would take a miracle! ...Or magic, she might have said but was sure their belief in magic would get in their way of seeing the magic. It was difficult to piece out the strange logic of magic, that's what kept her from accepting it. Her interest was in seeing if it was working! If it wasn't, no great loss. She didn't make her plans on it. She could live without it but was ready to take whatever opportunity magic stupidly provided her with. Magic wasn't there to make her life better -

"Nabiki!"

...it was to make Ranma's life worse. There would be no miracle.

The little redhead in - she was too busy to bring out a camera! - a gym uniform that showed quite a lot of her perfect, female skin, landed before her. "What'dyou think you're doin'(!)?!" she demanded to know.

"What do you think you're doing?" Nabiki said, looking at the school rooftop Ranma had jumped down from.

"I'm scoutin'! I look for trouble before it can get to the girls! Then see it don't!"

"And I'm taking bets. I look for trouble and make money on whether or not it does reach the girls."

"You're not on the girls' side!? You're a girl! Wait 'til a guy attacks you!"

"Oh, guys have attacked me." Then she grinned. "But I win!" And take their wallets as punishment.

"You, you, win?"

"I win using the same strategy as I hear you've been doing, Miss Jiggly-Boobs, Miss Wiggly-Butt with her infamous Naturally Redheaded Hooha."

Ranma turned beet red. It was only then she began to realize just how low she had stooped to winning. Did it have to be anything-goes?! What she had done would never be taught by the Anything-Goes schools! There had to have been ways that would not have devastated her guy brain's sense of manliness.

"You lie!"

"I never lie, Saotome," she said, giving her the cold glare. But she smiled, "I just may not tell the whole truth." And to this truth, another could be added she would not tell: Trust others not to listen carefully enough.

"Yeah(!)?! Then do it! Jiggle, wiggle, and, no you don't have to take off your…. -Just go ahead and show me how a born-girl does it!" She was cursed to be a girl sometimes, but there may be ways to protect something of her manliness. Like her wearing bloomers now and not going without panties. Maybe it wouldn't be less bad on her manliness if she knew how to do all that stuff the way experts at being a girl did it.

"You should get back to scouting, Ranma. I need to get back to making money."

"No! This is important! Show me once and I copy it now! I can use it in this war! I don't want to do all those embarrassing things again!"

Nabiki lifted an eyebrow. "You'll pose for my camera? They'll be embarrassing to your manliness."

Ranma screamed in utter frustrated helplessness! Wasn't there any way to reclaim some dignity(!)?! "Private! Nobody else! Same deal with the maid pictures!"

"Done!" And she clipped her pencil and pen to her account book and gave them to the little redhead to hold. "You, Hitoshi, defeat me and we're even on all the gambling debts you owe me!"

The tall boy in a basketball uniform immediate rushed from his place in line!

A bag's worth of coins fell to the ground and rolled. Hitoshi, seeing a 500-yet coin, chased after it and the others. He didn't watch where he was going and banged his head into the side of the cinderblock building. The coins disappeared.

"I want that deal, too, Nabiki!" a sumo wrestler cried, rushing at her.

She met him with a fan of yen bills in one hand, of dollar bills in the other. The sumo didn't know which ones to look at as Nabiki moved them about before him. "If I squash you, I get them all!"

"Squash me, and the bills will go flying for the others to get!"

That made him change his mind. But he was too heavy to stop completely. Nabiki stepped aside and let him fall on Hitoshi.

"Would anybody else like to get in the bullring with me?" There was nobody else.

And The bills disappeared like the coins had.

"You tricked them! You tricked me: That wasn't nothin' like what I been doin' as a girl!" Ranma complained.

"I said I use the same strategy as you use. I didn't say I use the same tactics." And she chuckled, "And I rarely have to invest real cash!"

Ranma knew she had wasted enough time with Nabiki. She would confront her back at the Tendos'! How did she pull off that trick?! She said herself she wasn't a martial artist! But, then, Nabiki had also said, she didn't tell all of the truth! Or was it didn't she hear something that Nabiki had plainly said?

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Back up on the roof of the main school building, looked to see what had happened since she was last up here.

Akane's platoon of girls coming out of the building was only now meeting up with the ones she had left under the command of Makoto and Shikako (not they could actually be leaders, but they were the two girls who most trusted Ranma). The two girls were friends of Akane and were more than happy to follow her. Things were about to get worse of the boys.

Even though civvies, just the girls she had left under the command of Makoto and Shikako had left a trail of bodies. They had the advantage of numbers against sports-as-martial-artists so wedded to the game sense of their sports and the techniques of their martial arts they remained either individual combatants or joined in groups no bigger than the team members their sport required of them. A trail of male bodies in sports uniforms remained in their wake. And to add insult to their injuries, the girls had requisitioned their bats, lacrosse sticks, rackets, hockey sticks, croquet mallets, nets and wickets for their own use. They left the mitts behind.

Meanwhile, the boys were trying to group around a leader. Ranma had thought Kuno would've been their natural choice. But after a second of thought realized that the first was a stupid thought! Kuno was a lone-wolf bully with the martial arts skills - and the healing ability - and the money - and the constant yapping, irritating voice - to intimidate or wear down others. Those who had voluntarily followed him, he had just defeated, his kendo club. And now that everybody but Kuno himself knew that his dad was the even more insane - etc - Headmaster of Furinkan, nobody wanted him! It looked like the divided boys were going to be conquered by the girls.

Okay, there was one guy who could unite them."Dhe bachche must be listening to dheir beloved Maharaja!" said the adult-in-age-only dressed in an ornate but shoddily made costume through a cardboard megaphone from on top of a gaudily painted paper mache elephant that the little ninja guy was pulling as if it were a giant children's toy on wheels. "Dhe War of dhe Sexes is not being over! Oh, no, not by dhe longest of shots! Dhey must be showing dhe ladakee which be being dhe better half! Be acting like dhe aadamee! Dhen dhe ladakee be acting like dhe mahila! Dhen dhe birth-rate crisis of dhis Land of dhe Sunrise will be solving by dhere being more bachche for dhe Headmaster to educate!"

In her gym clothes, Ranma sat on the little space on the roof's rampart that the suicide chainlink fence allowed (there was room for her butt only because of its girl-size). She didn't need to attack the idiot. The boys were doing it on their own. They were tearing the paper mache elephant apart trying to get to the idiot.

When it looked like the wagon the wireframe was on couldn't hold any more, the ninja lit the rope-like fuse he had been pulling with and the rockets on the rear of the wagon sent them to all to crash into a tree yards away. The howdah on the back of the elephant the Maharaja was been in had detached and its roof had become a gyrocopter. Not that the little "house" had a soft landing. -Ranma made sure of that!

"Enough!" she said, picking up the large man by his tunic shirt before he could even get to his knees. "Why are you doin' this?! We have enough trouble without you addin' to it, makin' it worse!"

"Dhe Headmaster knows what he is doing. He knows because he is dhe Headmaster! Such is Karma! Karma is making him head of Kuno clan with very much money and power! Dhe kasaan must do what dheir Maharaja say because dhat is dhe way of Karma! Better luck next life!"

"That's Not how Karma's supposed to work! Karma is-OhmHHMahhnhh!" a bit gag had suddenly been put across her open mouth!

As if that weren't insulting enough, that little ninja jumped up on the standing pigtailed girl's back and held - tight - onto the reins attached to the bit gag.

But the ninja had neglected the bridle to keep the bit in her mouth - not that the martial artist would have ever given him the chance to, even distracted as she had been for the bit to be put in her mouth! She yanked the bit out and his hold on the reins sent the the ninja flying over her head.

The ninja landed on his knees and bowing. "Please, please, forgive me, Ranma-san Satome-san! I'm so ashamed of myself. But I was under orders from my master! He could not resist trying to rein in somebody called "Wild Horse"! It was a bit extreme, I admit. At least I made sure I did not have to be the groom to your bridle. I neglected that entirely!"

Ranma snatched him up and held him by the front of his tunic shirt. Her other fist was cocked, ready to punch! "I should…." Man! She hated beating up the pathetic. And a guy who made himself pathetic only so he had to follow his master said but not what he meant (but, then, it was difficult to figure out what a Kuno means). There was something about this little guy Ranma could almost...uh, not like, not respect, but...understand, that was it. His life was about duty. He (Sasuke, right?) was a guy trying to be honor even when he is put in dishonorable situations. Ranma could definitely relate to that. And to feeling pathetic. That's what her guy brain felt when he relived her memories as a girl. Today, after school and a hot soak, she was sure pathetic he would be something high above him.

Little did she know then the impact this incident would have on this day.

"Hey! Where is your master?!"

"I cannot tell! My family has served the Kunos as ninjas for thirteen generations now! I am loyal to both clans!" But when Ranma set him down, the little guy fell through the grass-covered trapdoor of a hidden tiger trap.

"It's dark in here," Sasuke's voice echoed. "Oh, here's the twine that leads me through the maze of tunnels."

Ranma wondered if she should follow.

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"Make way for the Alpha Male Club! We have found the leader we should all follow!" On their shoulders like a hero was that guy with the yellow bandana. "If he can beat us, he can beat girls!"

"I told you, I don't fight girls."

"You don't have to fight girls, Ryoga!" , "You just have to frighten them!"

"I don't frighten girls, either. Not on purpose," from the sad tone of his voice he had memories of when he had unintentionally frightened them. And probably more than just girls.

"I knew you were that kind of a guy! Ryoga, ain't it?!" Ranma had landed on the shoulder of one of the weightlifters.

"You're, you're the girl that, uh…." Ryoga's face grew red and shy.

"Yeah. I'm the girl these guys tried to attack," she said, stamping a foot on top of her guy's head.

"Hey! Don't go stepping on my head!" the weightlifter reached up for her.

"I wouldn't touch her, if I were you," Ryoga warned, pulling the red-haired girl over onto the shoulder of a bodybuilder next to his weightlifter.

"He should know better! I have a reputation!"

"She certainly does! She drinks at booze wagons with adult men!" , "And doesn't wear panties half the time."

"And kisses pigs?" Ryoga said, his fragile heart cracking.

"You saw that?" Ranma was not proud of herself now. "It was for a good deed."

"You kiss people for good deeds?"

"It wasn't a people!"

"Did you hear that?!" , "And here everybody's been wondering if she's bisexual." , "She's not only bisexual?"

Ranma really didn't have a clue what they were thinking about her now.

But she wanted it to stop! It had to be unfair to her! After all, these were Alpha Male Club jerks!

But it was Ryoga that acted first. He bent down and grabbed the last one to speak by his chest hair and pulled him to the guy he was squatting on. "Do you have a problem with her kissing a pig? No? I didn't think so!" And he released his grip.

Ranma froze. Then relaxed when she didn't feel that Something. Ryoga hadn't done something that would put her in debt to him. Maybe he was just the kind of guy she, and he, could be friends with. There was something about him that reminded her of the very few friend-like people she had known in her life. Friend-like because, like with Sasuke, she could understand them, even when they did no-holds-barred fighting during their martial arts training.

She was being lowered. Or, rather, the guy she was riding on was sinking. She was barely 100 pounds, 45 kilos, and the bodybuilder was fatiguing already. Some martial artist!

She got off him and looked up at all the tall, very brawny guys, and was reminded again just how much height and muscle she had lost. She felt like a kid again. Or would have, if she didn't have boobs, and ass, or all these other soft girl parts.

Ryoga leaped down to stand beside her. "I think you all owe this little lady an apology."

The Alpha Male Club looked at each other. None wanted to be the first to challenge again the guy who had so easily beat them. Since Taichi was their leader, it was he that had to apologize for them all. "We're sorry, Ranma."

"Ra,Ranma?" Ryoga repeated.

"Ranma Saotome of the Anything-Goes School," the cute, little redhead did a little bow while holding out her hand to be shaken.

It wasn't shaken? Ranma looked up from her bow. That's the first time she saw that kind of reaction from anybody. The guy looked...what? Maybe devastated? Or was it an emotion she did not understand, yet.

Suddenly, the heartbreak was replaced with anger bordering on hate. "My first kiss! Die, Ranma, die!"

Ranma was barely able to use her outstretched hand to absorb some of the impact of the blow! Even then its force sent her back off her feet!

She landed against a weightlifter. She transferred as much of the momentum as her surprise let her into the 6 foot 3 inch, 190 cm, all-muscle guy. He fell, but she dropped to her feet upright. She was automatically in her fighting stance, ready to give better than she got.

"What'd'you do That for(!)?!"

"First you steal my bread! Then you steal my humanity! Now. Now-" He was so enraged he was at a loss for words! That would require more rational thinking than he was capable of at the moment! He ran at her with murder in his eyes.

Ranma had made one mistake in sizing him up earlier. His fighting technique depended on his upper body strength, but his legs were just as powerful. She could feel it in the ground shaking beneath his treads. Any hit, even at a full run, would have the same force behind it as if he had been solidly fixed to the ground. In fact, even as a guy, she would have a difficult time knocking him off his feet, by attacks below the waist or above!

She ducked and, her feet against the ground, delivered a powerful blow to his gut. And another and another, in quick succession! By the time she had to stop her elbow was as bent back as much as it could go without breaking. He was still running! She hadn't slowed him down!

But she had stepped around his body. She spun and was ready to attack another weak spot. Or maybe the same weak spot. As this Ryoga-guy was stopping himself, he was bending over some. He had felt her strikes to his gut! Not too much, but enough to promise that if she continued hitting the same spot, she could get him to puke and be made vulnerable!

The bodybuilder in front of Ryoga helped him from stumbling into him, turned him around and pushed back towards the redheaded, pigtailed girl.

The bodybuilder behind her grabbed her arms and tried to keep them behind her back.

"Hey!" she cried, before stomping on his boot. She rode his knee as his pain made it automatically raise. Grasping it with her bare thighs, she used one of her mid-air techniques to keep it rising. A hip-bump and the jerk could no longer remain standing on one foot! Her arms were released as the jerk tried to keep his balance.

As his fall made him lower than her, Ranma backward-walked up and over him. Even as she was dropping behind his back she kicked him away.

Ryoga delivered the blow that sent him crashing to the ground. "Don't interfere!"

The bodybuilder had a bodybuilder friend. He attacked Ryoga. Ryoga fought him! A weightlifter joined in. And another!

Ranma was left there neglected, watching the gang-up on one guy. "Geez! Even knowin' I can beat them up, this hentai horde'd rather fight a guy."

She walked up to the dust cloud and started pulling and tossing the muscles-for-brains.

But when the dust had settled down, there was no Ryoga. He was gone.

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Ranma reached the bleachers and became a scout again. She did not like what she saw.

On the football-etc field, half the boys of the school were trapped, surrounded by the girls of the school. They were all unarmed and unprotected. The girls had all of their sports gear. There was fear in their eyes. Anger in the girls'. All they need was something to happen to set them off and they'd beat the crap out of the boys who had become their enemies.

Hiroshi, Daisuke, Gosunkugi and the boys not in uniforms sat in the bleachers, eating popcorn the girls from Amanda Enterprises, a subsidiary of Vulcan Enterprises, were selling.

"See, I told you not going out for a sport would be the best way to be with the girls, Daisuke."

"In this school, yes. But we still have to find a club with girls that will take us."

"And how would you like to place your bets?" Nabiki asked. "The odds still favor the boys!"

"How can you say that?" , "Yeah, the girls are going to win!"

"Not necessarily. What do you see down there?"

"We see guys from every sports club in Furinkan!" , "And some others, like ballet and billiards, too!"

"What you see are trapped animals. Do you know what happens to animals when they feel cornered? And these are not just ordinary trapped animals. These are boys who want to be champions so badly they'll put themselves through time-consuming, vigorous, painful training! They risk bodily injury every time they 'play'. And when it does happen, they will play hurt. And why? Their lust for male pride."

"That's not my kind of lust." , "It's safer not to be too proud."

"They," Nabiki pointed, getting worked up, feeling the adrenaline of the sales pitch, "don't believe in playing it safe! All it will take for them to turn into raging, hormone-driven, male creatures without a conscience full of blood AND sex lust is for one thing to set off the bomb that will destroy the girls! Shiva is ready to awake!

"Better hurry and get the bets down!" she smiled. "That one thing is about to arrive."

Hiroshi and the others hearing her looked where she was looking. Then they realized that only half the boys were tapped on the field. Other boys were approaching from behind the girls. They weren't the other half, or even a third or a quarter, but they were enough. And first among them was Tatewaki Kuno.

"Akane Tendo, I am the President of the Truce Enforcement Club!" Ikuko said on the platform high enough for all to see. "The name says it all: Truce! This has gone far enough!"

Akane was also on the platform. "No, it hasn't!" she yelled. "These stupid, jerk boys have to be taught not to attack girls! We've been lucky! Next time, girls will be hurt - Or worse! We need to hurt them back - No! Not Back: Before they can hurt the weak girls! This is our one chance!"

"No, Akane. Ikuko is right. This has to end. And end now, before both girls and boys are really hurt. And from a hurt martial arts techniques can't heal." It was Ranma's voice, and yet, and yet…

"No," Nabiki said, barely able to breathe. She had dropped her account book. Her hands were digging into the shoulders of both Hiroshi and Daisuke. She was in total, nerve-wracking suspense. "The miracle can't happen. The magic won't allow it."

Akane turned to see Ranma land lightly, even, to her, gracefully down onto the platform. He was a male again. And he wasn't dressed in bloomers. He was dressed in a drama class costume. And the characters on the costume read, Romeo.

Romeo swept his Juliet up in his arms. "The Lysistrata rule is over." They kissed.