The bear was strong, powerful. Master of the mountains in which it dwelt. Other, weaker animals fled before it, rightly fearing that they might become its next meal, though it was disinterested in regularly exerting itself in hunts and chases and so primarily took advantage of its omnivore status to gorge itself on nuts and berries, and the occasional honey-dripping beehive that wouldn't be too much effort to reach. Sometimes, it would barrel out of the woods, roaring at startled picnickers, having long since discovered that people would abandon their food when it decided they didn't need it anymore.
Yes, the bear was king of the jungle in this area, living the good life. As such, the brute was as surprised as an animal can really be when one morning a young man hurled himself, bellowing and wearing nothing but a very tattered, almost irreparably ruined pair of pants, some dirt, and the occasional trace of sauce that Suika had missed, directly out of a tree and into the bear, with enough momentum behind him to bowl it over.
It was, presumably, further surprised when rolling around and slamming into trees did nothing to dislodge the hairless monkey, who was carefully wrestling his way around the bear's body, careful to avoid the fangs and claws that the creature was just as eagerly trying to sink into him. Several minutes passed in the frenzied scuffle between man and beast before Ranma managed to wriggle into the correct position for his purposes and, locking his legs together, began to squeeze and twist with his arms and entire upper body. The bear was fortunate in that its neck broke before Ranma had to resort to simply strangling it to death, and with a great 'whumpf', its lifeless body collapsed to the ground as Ranma tumbled free of it.
After taking a minute to bask in his re-affirmed masculinity, and smirking at the new knowledge that yes, he could wrestle a bear to death, he took hold of one limb and began the arduous task of dragging it back to camp, having decided on taking the stance of prevention being better than cure, in that if he kept Suika well-fed and happy at all times, to the best of his ability, the odds of anything... unfortunate happening were lower. Of course, if he was rescued, that would be great and all bets would be off, but for some reason he didn't see anyone in Nerima pulling that off. Maybe, if they all ganged up all at once on Suika, they'd stand a shot... and again, maybe not. No point worrying about it, especially since the fact that there was only one Suika to worry about left the pros and cons of getting away pretty evenly stacked. In some respects, it was like being back on the training trip again, and he was wondering why he hadn't thought of something like this to deal with the fiancee mess long ago. Marry your daughter? Whoops, sorry, have to deal with being taken prisoner by a demon first. Priorities, you understand, right? I'll get back to you later, probably.
In others...
There was the willingness to eat people thing, of course, and she had very forcefully proven that, unlike the fiancees, there was really nothing he could do yet to prevent her from using him in whatever way she saw fit, which was depressing and emasculating... but then, nothing was perfect, and for some reason, away from everyone else he knew and outside of Nerima, he had yet to even once have the curse accidentally activate on him. So, it might be a balance of misfortunes sort of thing, and remaining one gender for the longest span he'd had in months left him a good bit more accepting of such quirks. Not totally, or even very much, all things told, but a good bit more than he would have been otherwise.
Idly, he put his thoughts on hold and took momentary pleasure in the fact that, apparently, magic sake didn't cause hangovers, as sunlight reflected off the waters of the gurgling brook he was passing. Doing anything right now would have been far less pleasant than it currently was, if it had.
Hm. His thoughts had wandered to last night. In all honesty... he was sort of disappointed. Given all the hype about... this and that, he'd really expected something... more, from the experience. Sure, it had been pretty interesting, in a new situations sort of way, but nothing like the incredible, best and most wonderful feeling in the world that Hiroshi and Dai had always hyped up the First Time as being, ignoring that he had technically been unconscious for his first time. It hadn't been much better the second, third, or fourth aware time around, and by the time Suika had kicked him awake an hour or so before sunrise for another round, it was really just something to put up with, more than anything else.
Some squishiness, enough limb twisting and 'love taps' to leave him very slightly battered, finished off with some messiness and the oni rolling off, usually snoring within moments. He was disappointed, to say the least. It was nothing like the adrenaline high of even your average classroom brawl...
And he was distracted from his thoughts as he entered the camp, if a patch of dirt next to an unstarted fire could be called a camp, and Suika dropped from somewhere onto his shoulders. In the same motion, she stuffed the mouthpiece of her magic gourd into his mouth.
"Drink!" She demanded imperiously. Not seeing any other real option, Ranma gave in and took a couple of deep swallows. She retracted the gourd after that and took a deep drag of her own.
"Breakfast?" She wondered, waving absently at the bear corpse.
"... Dinner, more likely." He disagreed, only the slightest slur to his words. "Need to start the fire. And a knife."
He patted himself down for a moment before remembering there was nothing actually in his pockets, and withdrew a small box of emergency matches and a pocketknife. Suika stared for a moment.
"I know you didn't have those on you...." She started, pausing in mid question for another pull of sake.
"Hidden Weapons technique. It's a... folded space pocket of ki or something, I don't really know how to explain it, but it's like having something in your pocket, and having empty pockets at the same time, so that what you want is there when you want it, and not otherwise."
"Neat." Suika said, seeming to have followed the explanation relatively well, despite it making no particular sense. He nodded absently as a small tongue of flame caught and began licking at the wood, put the matches away, and began skinning the bear.
"Heh... This's nothing compared to what the blind duck can do. I can carry about as much as would fit in a small backpack... he can basically pick up a house and everything inside and carry it around with him, nobody the wiser." He frowned as he wiggled the knife through a tricky patch. "Theoretically... so could I, but it would take a lot of dedicated focus and my other skills would get rusty in the meantime."
He set the knife aside for a moment and carefully peeled off the furry hide and tossed it aside, absently wondering if he wanted to go through the effort of curing it. It would be better than packed dirt to sleep on, anyway... He absently blasted a hole in the ground, slit open the bear's belly and let the organs tumble out into a smelly pile.
"Still have that sauce?" He wondered, glancing around until his eyes fell on the small barrel. Grunting, he impaled the bear and set it up above the by now crackling fire.
"Alright! Pants off." Suika demanded, grinning lecherously.
Ranma stiffened up, then sighed.
"Do we have to...?"
"Yes." Suika answered immediately and unambiguously. "We absolutely do. Pants off, or I'll tear them off."
Ranma sighed, and began to dispiritedly fumble at the drawstring of his pants.
"The bear might burn..." He noted.
"It'll be fine." Suika decided, picking him up bodily and moving him to a patch of ground that was slightly softer than the rest, free of roots, pebbles, and antpiles, and by now heavily used, before settng delightedly to work.
Not too terribly long after, she rolled away and chugged at her sake, satisfied for the moment, as Ranma awkwardly pulled his pants back on and began tending to the bear again.
"Hits the spot..." she sighed contentedly. "Hey! When's the food going to be ready?"
"It's a big bear." Ranma deadpanned, slathering sauce over it. "It might take a while...."
He was interrupted by Suika's stomach noisily growling, and sighed, then fished around in his not-pockets for a moment before turning around.
"Here. It's half a sandwich I made a couple.... days... ago..." He said, trailing off into a murmur as he stared absently at Suika, who was squatted next to the organ hole, one hand elbow deep and fishing around, the other holding something that might be a kidney or might be a liver that she had already ripped several large chunks out of with her teeth. ".... But it looks like you've already found breakfast for yourself." He finished, in a slightly strained tone. "I'll just leave this out... eat it later if you want."
He set the sandwich down and turned back to the cooking, doing his best to ignore the squelches, slurps, smacking lip noises, and occasional belches from behind him. It wasn't long before she walked up to inspect the roasting bear, chewing absently on a mouthful of sandwich.
"Please wash your hands and face."
"Squeamish." She grunted, but left after polishing it off, and some muffled splashes from the brook hinted that she had gone ahead and scrubbed off the gore.
"Sooo...." She said, once she returned. "Ready for another round?"
"Not really. Do I have a choice?"
"Not really." She agreed. "I'm doing this for me, not you. Take what pleasure you get from it and be grateful."
"I'm not getting any pleasure from it at all." He countered, fiddling with his drawstring and absently wondering why he'd even bothered. It wasn't until he turned around and saw how still and silent Suika had gotten that he realized how deeply he had goofed.
"Uh... that is...."
"So. What you're saying. It's that you aren't satisfied with my body?" She said slowly, dangerously.
"No, no, no, no, not at all!" He backpedaled furiously. "Your body is wonderful, fantastic even! What I meant was... uh...." He searched futilely for something to say, but found that he had drawn a very unfortunate blank.
"So. What you're saying." She repeated, eyes seeming to spark with building fury. "Is that my technique is no good for you?"
"No, no, no, no, not at all!" He insisted. "I mean... it's good? I just don't enjoy it...?" He finished feebly, realizing that he had dug himself a hole that there would be no easy escape from.
Suika slowly exhaled a long, deep breath, rolling her neck and cracking her knuckles with a series of dull pops.
"Alright then." She said flatly. "I guess I have been keeping it pretty vanilla. Teach me to go easy while breaking you in. So. This time... I'll be going full out. You're going to enjoy this if it kills you!"
xxx
In the end, the bear burned. By that point, however, neither of them particularly cared.
Suika had worked him over for most of the day. At the end of it, he had taken a laundry list of injuries. Both shoulders had been dislocated, one twice, his ribs had been cracked in several places, his legs were cramped enough to temporarily be near useless, the muscles of and around his hips had been pulled and strained painfully, he was heavily bruised around and beneath the neck manacle, Suika had bitten in a handful of places deeply enough to draw blood, and had left long, deep scratches with her fingernails just about everywhere she could reach, and had used a fire-heated stick on him in all manner of imaginative ways. At the same time, she had raised him, over and over, just almost to the peak of ecstasy before moving away and letting it fade and then raising it again, until the final peak, a crescendo of conflicting pleasure and the most exquisite torment.
The average person would have found it nothing less than simple torture, and been broken through it. Ranma had never been considered average, and had since the earliest days of his youth been taught that everything enjoyable would hurt, beginning with his martial arts and fatherly affection shown with deliberately hurtful words, continued until the introduction of an arranged marriage, something he hadn't known exactly how to deal with until Akane had slammed the table into his head. By this point it was a psychological link. Many of Ranma's senses of pleasure were particularly dull and stunted, unless they were accompanied by a near-equal amount of pain.
What he had just gone through, then, had left Hiroshi and Daisuke's explanations as far behind in the dust as those explanations had left what had seemed to be the reality of the experience. If Ranma had been in the shape to put a word to it, it would have been something along the lines of 'transcendent'.
"Wooooow......." He gurgled through a goofy, bloody grin and glazed eyes.
"'S bett'r." Suika remarked through a mouthful of bear before swallowing. "Weren't bad yourself, once you started to really get into it." She admitted. At some point along the way, something in Ranma's head had switched on, and he had given back much of what he had gotten. Suika had responded by redoubling her own efforts, and things had escalated from there, slightly blurring the line as to who, exactly, was ravaging whom, despite the fact that she was so much physically tougher and stronger than he was that for most of it he might as well have been hitting her with a feather. it was the thought that counted, after all. And trying to bite through her lip when she had leaned down to leer in his face had been a masterstroke, almost worthy of Oni.
"Can you move?" She wondered aloud, prompting Ranma to frown as he considered just that question, the afterglow having begun to slowly fade. There was a pair of popping noises as he re-located his shoulders, followed by a few longer moments of silence.
".... No." He eventually answered. "Not yet, anyway. And I think a couple of my tendons might have torn, so it might be a while before I can. Not till tomorrow morning at least."
"Shame. Bear's not bad."
There was a long patch of silence, broken by Ranma's stomach, after which Suika grunted, rose, and drug him back next to the fire by his hair. She took another bite of bear and chewed thoroughly, then leaned down. After a moment, she moved her head back away and Ranma swallowed.
"I..." He started, before hesitating. 'Can chew by myself' was what he'd intended to say next, but something about the way how Suika had rested his head on her lap, in easy crushing reach, and was deliberately not meeting his eyes as she ate suggested that he should very seriously rethink his words. "... Thanks." He decided on, instead.
"Don't mention it. To anyone. Ever." Suika replied, tearing off another chunk of bear with her teeth. After a moment she leaned down again.
Several further hours were spent this way, in silence, as the sun slowly lowered, and most of the bear disappeared, washed down with Suika's magic sake.
"So... wher'ere y' plan on goin', af'the Tendo's, if I hadn' come straaight back fr'm school?" Ranma wondered aloud, drowsily and drunk.
"Hm. Gensokyo." Suika answered.
"Nev' heard of't. Course... lotsa places I'd nev' heard of..."
"I'd have been surprised if you had. It's not someplace that's easy to get to."
"Shoulda guessed. Still gong?" He slurred.
"Yeah."
"Hrm. Mind...." He paused and yawned absently before continuing. "Mind waitin' a li'l while, 'fore starting off? Have'ta... gif th' fiancee's an' all at least a teeeny li'l chance to rescue me 'tleast."
Suika's fingers tightened in his hair, unnoticed.
"Why?" She wondered, sharply.
"Whyyy...?" Ranma wondered right back. "'S'th....way 'tworks, righ'...? St'ries... al's happ'ns. Some rescues work... some don'. Somt'ms th' rescuee'sb'n eaten. But's al's 'tleast one try."
"...Stories." Suika grumbled. "This isn't a story. What if I've decided that I want to keep you?"
"Nev' s'id tho'ght they'd pull't off. Jus'they had t'getta shot."
Suika took a long, deep pull from her gourd, thinking to herself.
"What's a 'fiancee'?" She asked, instead of anything else she might have said.
"Hm? 'S'a... 'sa word, thing... means p'ple wh're boun't'get married'n become husband 'n wife. Wifey-wife. Got's fiancee's y'know." Ranma said, as though confiding a deep secret that he hadn't already revealed not long before. "Di'n wann'm. Pops' doin'. Jes' one day out'th blue, 'ge'readdy t'meetcher new wife-t'be, boy'. Tri't'run, but got me w'sign t'th'back'th head. Hurt. 'n th'n ucchan turn't outt' be girl, an chinese n' rose girls, n'... " He trailed off into incomprehensible drunken grumbles.
"Huh. So... what are a husband and wife?" Suika wondered again.
"Mm.... s'like... two p'ples th' get t'gether, liv'n, sleep'n, hav'n kids. On'spusst'be two. Pops'a idit."
"Oh. Something like that, huh." Suika said, deciding to save further questions for a time when the other half of the conversational equation would be more coherent. "So.... were they anything like as good as me?"
Ranma chuckled sleepily at the question.
"D'nno. Doin' tha'... be like pick'n t'at'n. Catch all kind' hell fr'm o'th'ree. Nev'risk'd it."
"Then I was your first?" Suika remarked, clearly emphasizing a sense of 'predatory leer' with every word. "Hm! If I'd known, I'd have made it sp-e-cial."
"Gess bett'r?" Ranma murmured softly, clearly on the verge of sleep.
"You'll just have to wait and find out."
Suika glanced over to the moonrise, taking another deep drink as she did.
"Oni don't have 'fiancees' or 'husbands' or 'wives'." she remarked. "We have 'special victims' and 'regular victims' and 'favorite victims'."
"S'nice." Ranma murmured, as his eyes closed.
"Isn't it." Suika said dryly. She took one final pull from the gourd and settled herself down fully on the ground, watching the stars as her eyes slowly drifted shut.
xxx
A.N. This chapter was 3099, so... in total so far, 7576 of 15000 words. Halfway-ish point. I might just finish this yet.
I am astonished at how my plot points got called in reviews. Well, some of them, anyway. To the guy who suggested that Ranma had M tendencies... Oh yeah. I took that idea, cranked it up to eleven, and ran with it, completely rewriting this chapter from dragging the bear back onwards. One hundred percent improvement, I think. In the end, it wasn't entirely M.... just really, really violent. They bonded. Waff, etc.
Also, Ranma as DOMESTIC MAN, da da da daaaah. He is a REAL MAN. He doesn't cook WAFFLES or PANCAKES with SYRUP and BERRIES for BREAKFAST, like a PANSY. He goes out AT DAWN and WRESTLES BEARS and BREAKS THEIR NECKS so he can CARVE THEM UP and COOK THEM OVER A CAMPFIRE.
Suika is fine with this.
Aaand anything else, oh right! In case you couldn't guess from the end of this chapter, this is set BEFORE IaMP. Important! Anything that involves the duo after they get into Gensokyo will be Another. Story. Entirely. Juuust making that clear.
COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE, how does one get mentioned on TvTropes? (Future goal hint) We all need something to aim for.