Author's Notes
Hi there, everyone! *waves* This chapter kinda just came out of nowhere…I doubt my brain was working as I wrote it, but it flowed much better than I thought my brainless mind could come up with! Good job, zombie me! Anyway, I originally had other things planned for this chapter, but they never managed to make it in, so I'm splitting it up into two chapters, hence the title. Please enjoy the chapter!

"Quotes": dialogue
Italics: Thoughts
(In parenthesis): Panda signs
Bold italics: Sound effects

Disclaimer
I don't own Ranma ½.

Chapter 4: My One True Love – Part I

Ranma was sitting in a tree, wringing out her pants while muttering to herself. "Water, why does it always have to be water?" It just wasn't fair. Most people don't spend half their lives covered in cold or hot water, but it doesn't even bother them. But Ranma has a curse! Water complicates everything. Then again, most people don't spend half their lives as girls either. Ranma slapped her palm over her forehead. Damn Hisoka, why was he always so lucky? Spring of Drowned Man! Even though he has a curse, it just makes him change into himself, doesn't it?

As she twisted the fabric of her pants until they were nearly torn to shreds, a mysterious flying object whistled as it tore through the air, aimed directly at Ranma's head. Ranma jumped off the branch she was sitting on, dodging the offending projectile.

Kuno smashed head-first into the tree, creating a giant crater right beneath the sign that announced in large, bold letters, "TREES HAVE FEELINGS TOO".

Ranma recognized the samurai-wannabe as she landed in a crouch on the ground. Although she did not know him well, he annoyed her with his Shakespearean speech pattern. She couldn't even understand him half the time!

"A pigtail!" Kuno said, balancing on his head on the giant teetering tree. "Couldst it be Saotome? And just after I crushed the younger, too! What luck!"

"Crushed?" Ranma couldn't help but say out loud. No way, he could never have fought Hisoka! The multiple bumps and bruises on his head were totally not the younger Saotome's style. Besides, a real Saotome would never be defeated by someone as pathetically weak as Kuno!

"A girl?" The short-haired upperclassman fell to the ground as the tree finally toppled over. "My bad." Standing far too close for comfort, Kuno examined every detail of the red-haired girl with huge blue eyes, Chinese shirt, and no pants. "How daring of her, to not wear pants! Oh, what beautiful eyes! How exquisitely her exotically colored, moist hair framest her delicate face! I, Tatewaki Kuno, hereby declareth that I am in love!"

Freaked out could not begin to describe Ranma's feelings at this point. Delivering a swift kick to Kuno's face, she took off in search of hot water as she pulled her pants back on.

"Oh, hi there, Akane!" Hisoka piped up. "What are you doing with two crushed desks in your hands?"

"What did you say that for?" Akane roared. "What makes you think that I'll be ENGAGED to... that… that…CROSSDRESSER!"

Hisoka's grin froze for an instant. "You really don't have to be so harsh."

"FACE FORWARD!" Kuno charged at the opening in Hisoka's defense as he was distracted by Akane.

Hisoka expertly dodged the blade, but Akane, who was behind him, did not expect the attack to extend farther than the blade. Her hair was caught in the ki generated by Kuno's strike, and the blue-black locks fell to the ground. The desks dropped from her hands.

The noisy halls were suddenly dead silent. Hisoka's face rather resembled that of the Skrik, for he understood perfectly the horror of accidentally getting all of one's hair chopped off. After all, he had been subject to it many times in the past, what with having Ranma and Genma as his only consistent companions for ten straight years. They were idiots with no sense of style. Then again, long hair really did not suit Akane well. If anything, it would only get in her way, and this was absolute proof of it. No matter, Hisoka would take the matter into his own hands, for it was partly his fault anyway.

Akane was in shock. All those years, all those years she spent growing her hair for Dr. Tofu! They have all gone to waste, and now she's caught in public with the most humiliating haircut in the world. At least, that's what all the other girls were thinking. Akane was really only thinking about Dr. Tofu and his eventual reaction. Would he call her a tomboy again? He had always thought of her as just a child, and now she would look even more like one because of her hair. Akane needed to get home so Kasumi could fix it for her…but she didn't want to think of Kasumi. Seeing Dr. Tofu freak out every time he saw Kasumi was the most painful thing she could witness. Not that she wanted him to act stupid around her, but Akane wished she at least had a chance.

Kuno's face was frozen in surprise. He had not expected his attack to affect the beauteous Akane Tendo! Especially not her beautiful, long hair! Now he must compensate, but how? "That was a most unfortunate accident! As a result, I shall payeth thee back by allowing thee to date me!"

This was no time for badly composed running gags. Akane's anger suddenly flared up, and every spectator in the entire school building felt a shiver run down their spines. "SCREW YOU!" Apparently, Akane's shock was not complete enough to prevent her from ripping a giant piece of wood from the wall and bashing Kuno with it repeatedly on the head until he was unconscious. Feeling that that was not enough, she batted him out of a window using the pole. However, something was still missing.

If anything, the silence was even more complete. No one dared speak in the face of Akane's terrible wrath. No one, except Hisoka. "If you want, I can—"

Before he could finish, however, Akane had sent him flying through a different window. She sniffed a few times, and ran out of the school before anyone could see the tears come forth. The horror over, the rest of the school relaxed and felt it was time to go home.

"But school's not over yet," Hinako called desperately after her dispersing students. Unfortunately, Akane had destroyed one of the main support beams of the school, and as the entire school's population walked past the location of the Furinkan's biggest tragedy of the school year, the six-story building collapsed. School would probably not recommence until the building was reconstructed and students' and staff's injuries mostly healed.

Meanwhile, Ryoga was still lost inside a broom closet, which was now a pile of wood trapped beneath a bigger pile of wood. The worst part of it was, he was stuck under piles and piles of wood as a very small pig. It would take him days to get out.

Just then, a huge blast shook the ground, and a ball of chi blasted the wood away. Ryoga looked up to see a short construction worker, holding his hands out in front of him as heroically as he could manage, with tears running down his stubble-covered face.

"Bwee!" Ryoga squealed happily. My savior! But before he could say anything else, the short man disappeared and a huge geyser appeared out of the ground where the school used to be. "Eep!" Ryoga squeaked, naked and human again. Well, at least he was no longer stuck under piles of wood. His revenge on Ranma was long overdue.

Ranma finally found a kettle of hot water in the tool shed behind the track, but just as he walked back out, he witnessed the collapse of Furinkan High. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, but the school was still caving in. What just happened? But that wasn't important, because the fact that Furinkan didn't exist anymore meant that there wouldn't be school for a while. And just after the first day, too! He set out on a light jog toward the Tendo dojo.

Hisoka pulled herself out of the Tendo furo. She couldn't believe Akane had just punched her all the way home, and after she offered to help her with her hair, too! Doesn't she realize that that was probably the best thing that will ever happen to her? Some people just don't understand the meaning of gratitude. But since she was in the bathtub already, Hisoka thought it wasn't a bad idea to just take a bath then, since her hair was already wet and most likely dirty.

As she dumped the cold water over her head and reached for the shampoo, Hisoka couldn't help but think of the time they met a girl named Shampoo.

/Flashback

It was Ranma's turn to forage for food that day. Once upon a time, all three of them used to get their own food everyday, but it usually ended in tragedy as father and children fought over a single chicken or sometimes even a single mushroom, depending on their luck, and Hisoka usually ended up being the one going hungry. These days, The three of them take turns hunting.

Ranma never brought as little as Genma did, and Hisoka had the sneaking suspicion that their father would eat all the good stuff before bringing the "leftovers" back for his "sons." Big people need more food, but Genma was really only big because he ate more than he could use up in a day. Ranma brought an adequate amount, and no one complained.

Unfortunately, Ranma also had a strange tendency to also bring back hordes of angry villagers about half the time. This was one of those times. With a plate of pork buns balanced on her head, Ranma was fleeing from an angry purple-haired girl wielding dangerous-looking mallet things, screaming at her in Chinese. It probably roughly translated to "I KILL YOU I KILL YOU."

"Quick," she yelled, "run!"

Genma and Hisoka took off at a sprint in the direction from which they came.

The next day, it was Hisoka's turn. "Where the crap am I supposed to get enough food to feed those two? I swear, they have black holes for stomachs or something." As he mumbled to himself, he came across the cursed springs again. "How did I get here?"

Just then, two shapes flashed by, and Hisoka ducked behind a nearby tree. The shapes were that of a man with long, shiny hair, wearing a white Chinese robe, and the girl with purple hair he saw the day before. What're they doing? He wondered to himself as the girl hopped onto a pole sticking out of a pool.

"No!" The guide shouted, popping out from nowhere. "Most honored customers, this no place for play!"

"Shampoo!" The man cried, stepping on the guide's head as he leaped onto another pole. "Why won't you accept me?"

The girl known as Shampoo scoffed, throwing one of her chui at his face. "Shampoo no marry Mousse until Mousse beat Shampoo!"

Hisoka almost fell on his face. Who was she, to be so strong, agile, and even somewhat cute, but to refer to herself in such horrible syntax? Wait, why were they even speaking in Japanese?

"Why are we speaking in Japanese?" Mousse asked in a pleading voice as he blocked the chui with various weapons that appeared from his sleeves. Shampoo took the opportunity to leap from the pole, kicking Mousse in the face, breaking his glasses and knocking him into a spring.

"That teach him to shut up!" Shampoo turned around, not realizing she was still on a pole, and walked through the air for about two steps before falling into another pool.

Even though Hisoka was technically a girl, he was so brainwashed by his father over the years that he felt it should be his duty to save a damsel in distress—although the distress was past and the curse was probably irreversible. With a grunt, Hisoka got to his feet and—

/End flashback

"Hey!" Hisoka complained as the door to the bath slid open, "Don't you know it's rude to interrupt other people's flashbacks? I was getting to the good part too."

But as he looked up at the offender, he froze in fear. Akane? What was she doing home already? But as he looked more closely, he saw that Akane's ruined hair had already been fixed, most likely by Kasumi. A shame, really, because her hair was quite plain. Hisoka was right, though, since the shorter hair did suit the girl better.

Akane just stared. This was far too much shock to take in just one day. "AHHHHHH!"

A few minutes later, both of them had gotten dressed and were sitting next to the pond. Hisoka was pissed, mostly because he technically WAS a girl, although not at the moment. He wished life would be easier on him sometimes. Soun, surprisingly, laughed it off.

"Why aren't you screaming at me? You should be screaming at me. Why aren't you screaming at me?" Hisoka prodded, as he combed through his hair with his fingers in order to fix it back into a perfect ponytail.

"What's the point?" Soun continued laughing. "I guess the engagement problem is finally settled! You'll marry Akane, won't you?"

Hisoka and Akane stared at him in horror. "You can't be serious!" Hisoka complained. "She just threw me halfway across a city, then bashed a giant stone statue over my head!"

"He just saw my BODY," Akane added.

"My point exactly!" Soun grinned, before his giant demon head filled up the living room. "Unless you plan on taking a good look at my daughter in the clothes she was born in, then moving on to someone else? I take it that you wouldn't be a disgusting PIG like that?"

"But Ranma did too!" Hisoka dared to protest.

"Ranma is half girl! You, on the other hand, are all male! TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS!" The demon head roared as the ceiling disappeared into the gloom.

"Eep!" Hisoka squeaked, and that was the end of the discussion. He wanted very badly to hit his head against something as hard as he could. This could not be happening. While everyone watched, Hisoka slowly began to turn pale, until he was but a piece of white paper.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading, everyone! Remember, it's never a bad thing to review!