Ranma woke up with the sort of stiff soreness throughout the vast majority of his body that would have left lesser men whimpering like kicked puppies. For him, however, it was less of an overriding agony and more of a 'must be Tuesday again' sensation, and did nothing to evade Suika's wake-up ravaging. By this point, he was fairly sure that not even the entire removal of multiple of his limbs would be enough to put the oni's slaking of her carnal desires on hold.
On the plus side, it had proven wonderful for getting the blood flowing to partially numb limbs, and he'd been up and moving about shortly afterwards to work of the lingering ache.
Suika had, naturally gone back to sleep. This was actually a good thing, as during the night some scavenger that had been brave enough to enter the camp, and smart enough not to wake them in doing it, had made off with the remnants of the bear, hide, organs, and all. Her continued sleep left him enough time to snatch a scattered variety of small fish from the brook nearby, privately thank Cologne for the foresight of the multipurpose chestnut speed technique, and get enough of a fire going again to cook them on as a substitute for the leftover bear.
A large, circular jog around the camp didn't turn up any hints about where the scavenger might have gotten to. It did, however, turn up signs of a boar passing through the area overnight, which decided his morning pursuits after he returned and ate his half of the fish.
After hunting it down and dragging it back to camp, Suika dropped out of somewhere and onto his shoulders.
"Are you going to make a habit of this?" He wondered dryly, and was answered with an immediate 'Drink!'. He did, and wondered when he would notice any increase in his alcohol tolerance, before remembering that this was magic sake and, therefore, didn't neccessarily have to play by normal rules.
Setting that aside, he had barely set the tip of his knife to the boars skin when he was interrupted by a low rumble of thunder. He immediately stood and scanned the horizon, not taking long to locate a slowly spreading dark cloud.
"Shit." He stated eloquently, remembering just in time to loosen his grip on the knife before the grip splintered in his hand. Wasn't that just typical... And he'd been enjoying maleness, too. It wasn't like he had expected to be able to avoid the change forever, but after taking such care to avoid accidental splashes, the building stormcloud seemed like it was nature itself going well out of its way to screw him over.
"Huh... Looks like it's going to rain." Suika noted blandly.
"We'll need to move to some form of shelter." Ranma said.
"Not really. Just a little water."
"... It looks like more than a 'little'. If I'm out in that for too long, I'll catch sick, and sick people are no fun to be around." Ranma said, evading talk of his little water issues for the moment to focus on reasons that the oni would more likely appreciate. "And the fire will go out in the rain."
"And then the meat won't cook. I see. I guess we need to move to some form of shelter, then." Suika decided, and dispersed into mist, flowing out between the trees. After a few minutes, she coalesced into one spot again. "There's a creepy shack that way, a big house that it doesn't look like anyone lives in over that way, a big hole in a small hill that way, and an out of the way shrine with a tiny, shriveled priest waay over there."
"I have serious concerns about these places." Ranma deadpanned. "Judging by past experience... the big house is haunted by the spirits of vengeful dead prostitutes from a brothel that burned down on that patch of land hundreds of years ago, a serial murderer is squatting in the shack and trying to figure out his next target, the hill will collapse from the rain and bury us alive in our sleep, and the priest is an S-class pervert that will try to make us pay for the shelter with our bodies. Yeah, that seems like it would be about par for the course."
"Yeah, okay. So which is it gonna be?" Suika asked, and Ranma spent a moment considering it.
"... You already fill my sex-fiend toleration quota, so the shrine is out. My clothes are in bad enough condition, no need to cake them with mud too. Ghosts are hard to hit, so that could be a problem... I guess it'll be the murderer's shack, then."
"Alright!"
Without a further word, Suika took hold of Ranma's chain and the boar, and the group dispersed. Ranma realized that he had probably experienced this mode of travel at least once, upon being taken from the Tendo household, but knowing that did nothing to prepare him for the actual experience. If he had to describe it in words, it was... well, it was like his body had come apart at small enough fragments to become mist, there was really no better explanation. It was unexpectedly completely painless, and the only sense that really seemed to be impaired by it was 'touch'.
In many ways, that made it quite a head-trip. Every part of him had become fundamentally identical, or rather, any given patch of mist could have eyes, nose, tongue, or spleen in it, or all of the above. As such, he saw everything within the area he had spread over, and in every direction outwards from it, similarly he heard, smelt, tasted...
It was disorienting to an unbelievable degree, and he couldn't imagine doing this sort of thing regularly. As Suika reformed them at the target destination, completely unruffled from the trip, Ranma dropped to his knees, clutching at his head, where a splitting, pounding, stabbing and throbbing agony had set in from the sensory overload.
"Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow." He grumbled softly through grit teeth.
"Does take a bit of getting used to." Suika said absently. "Could have been worse, though. Before I got the hang of it, I kept putting heads back on backwards and arms and legs in the wrong places."
"Thank you for that pleasant mental image." Ranma groused "Just a second, I have to do something real quick."
He stood and walked to the door of the shack, hesitating only a moment before it. Then, instead of reaching for the doorknob, he punched directly through the wood and, as Suika watched casually, ripped a large man in a blood-spattered hockey mask out of the shack. The man immediately pulled the cord on the small, rusty chainsaw he was clutching, only for Ranma to kick it out of his hands and into pieces. He followed this up by grabbing hold of the man's head and smashing it into his knee multiple times, leaving several prominent cracks in the mask. Heaving a deep breath, Ranma flipped the man around and onto the ground, where he lay still and unconscious.
"I'd like to note that I totally called it."
"You totally did!" Suika said, agreeably. "Hey... can you cook that?"
Ranma hesitated, but his splitting headache and lack of sympathy for Mr. Bloody Chainsaw quickly got the better of him.
"Sure, why not." He said blandly as he opened what was left of the door and stepped into the shack, ignoring the sickening crack of bone from behind him.
Wasn't much to look at inside... sink, some cupboards, a stove and oven, though a quick check proved these to be nonfunctional, and a bed with a large chest at the foot. He opened it, expecting and hoping for spare clothes, but was instead greeted with the deceased chainsaw-man's extensive, and horrific, collection of preserved faces and genitalia. He immediately closed the chest back up, any lingering doubts about Suika's dinner plan firmly quashed, and decided that he would be hauling it outside to blast into dust later.
Thankfully for his sanity, the cupboards were more normally stocked, with some canned food, books, dishes and cookware, silverware and some few spices, a disturbingly large collection of kitchen knives. And three hand grenades, which Ranma decided for the moment to pretend he hadn't seen at all.
He took the biggest and heaviest knife and dragged the chest outside, where Suika had built a crude roofed enclosure and walkway to the door to keep the rain off of two firepits, all of which she had somehow created in the span of time that he had been inside. Out of what looked like solid stone. He didn't even bother asking, or thinking particularly long about the fact that if she could have done that at any time, she could have just built something right in the clearing.
"Sake?" She offered. "Helps the headache."
Ranma was dubious, but discovered that it did. It really did. In a much more cheerful mood, he tested the edge of the kitchen knife and found it acceptable.
"Keep in mind, I'm not eating this guy." He said as he set to work. "He's all yours."
xxx
The rain was an obstacle to the search, but had been alleviated when Nabiki had provided waterproof, hooded coats of some sort, which kept the rain off and prevented the change. It was still a frustrating endeavor, because the Oni had quite simply left no trail of any sort to follow in between points A and B.
It had seemed like the hunt would turn up fruitless until Ukyou had reported back from a search that, around midday, one of the magic 'Ranma-sensing' trinkets that Cologne had given out after smacking some heads and taking control had gone completely haywire as she passed through a patch of woods, and she had located a recently abandoned camp. As per usual for this chase, there was no trail to follow from there, or even any hint of how or exactly when the oni had left.
Essentially, it was the same as not finding anything at all, but it lifted morale somewhat, and the fiancees found themselves staying at it for longer than before, after the rivals had called it quits for the day. Shampoo, in particular, had stayed at it the longest, not having any pressing obligations in the way of studies, and not having to be at the restaurant if she had something more important to do.
As the tiny trinket went absolutely nuts, she was glad that she had.
She dropped out of a tree, slightly glad that there was nobody around to see her slightly awkward landing in the mud, and walked through the rain to the shack. Something had been cooked outside... whatever it had been, the scent was reminding her that she had skipped dinner, and it had long since gotten dark. She passed by and walked up to the door, which looked like it had been smashed apart and then pieced back together. She kicked it open boldly.
"AIREN! Shampoo come to-KYAAA!" She started to say, trailing off into a shrill scream.
Ranma looked up from what he was reading for a moment.
"Oh, Shampoo. Hey." He said blandly, turning the page. "What're you screaming at?"
"What not to scream at!?" Shampoo countered immediately. "Ranma naked, there is person half-eaten on floor-"
"It's fine, it's fine. I didn't do any of the eating." Ranma said, having rapidly become jaded.
"Just because Ranma not eat, not make it fine!" Shampoo insisted. "Little demon also naked, and... and... with airen, and is not listening to Shampoo!"
"I'm -ah- listening. Just don't -mn- feel like stopping. Go ahead and talk."
Shampoo let loose a wordless howl of rage, and withdrew her bonbori. She took one step towards the offensive, then froze as Suika's eyes focused directly on her, as though she were something small and fuzzy that had suddenly found itself in front of a half awake predator, trying to decide whether or not the mouthful would be worth the effort of getting up. She broke out in a cold sweat, every natural impulse screaming 'Danger, Danger, Danger', but refused to simply crack and turn tail to flee. Her pride wouldn't survive the hit.
"Ah! This recipe... it looks interesting, and I haven't tried it before." Ranma said, having not paid the slightest bit of attention to the interplay. "Shampoo, do you know somewhere to get vegetables?"
".... Morino, at 43 Honda, have. Very fresh."
"Really? I suppose he'll want money, though." He said absently, turning the page, completely unaware that he had utterly destroyed all of the room's built-up tension. Suika punched him in the diaphragm, irritation showing.
"Anyway... I'll give you all one free shot at rescuing this one." Suika said, trying to regain the shattered atmosphere. "But only one. Once an attack is repelled, I'm gone from here... and taking this one with me. As Ibuki clan, I don't easily let go of my toys."
"Little demon assume Shampoo will fail." She grumbled darkly.
"Ah... but I'm a lot stronger than this one was. Can you win against him?"
"Have good point..." Shampoo growled. "But be easier for Shampoo to take little demon serious if stop moving hips while talking."
"..... That sounds like a personal problem to me." Suika replied, still in full motion. Shampoo hissed in disgust and turned.
"Airen... Shampoo be back, soon. Must prepare... but Shampoo rescue airen!"
"Don't worry, take your time." He advised, not looking up from the cookbook for a moment. "Seriously, I'm in no rsh-"
Suika's hand had clamped down on his jaw.
"Why don't you... shut up and focus on the matter at hand!" She said, hurling the book across the room and leaning down towards him.
Shampoo froze, turned around, and calmly filled a cup of water from the sink and drank it slowly. She refilled it and turned.
"Shampoo think... little demon and airen should cool off." She yelled, splashing the two of them with the water. Suika froze for a moment as she considered the new situation, then reached down casually.
"Huh. A girl..." She said, consideringly.
"Just so you know, you never actually asked if I happened to switch gender sometimes-" Ranma started to explain.
"... Is fine too." She finished, interrupting the conversation and resuming what she had been doing in the same breath.
"Hey, wha.... oh!" was all Ranma managed to say in response.
Shampoo's retreat was sped by the sounds of wanton debauchery, and her own bitter tears of shame and failure.
xxx
"I had no idea... that two girls could..."
"Live and learn." Suika said, taking a drink. "But seriously, you never... experimented, on your own?"
"I didn't have any inclination towards that sort of thing, in either body." Ranma answered. "Aside from that, just having a curse like this was perverted enough... taking advantage of it like that, if I got caught, would be enough to have me disowned, executed, and banned from my martial style, for fear of me turning to Grandmaster Happosai's side. Just not worth that sort of hassle."
"You humans are weird." Suika decided, taking a bite out of the leftover chainsaw-guy.
"That's your point of view." Ranma allowed, wondering if the water she'd set out to heat by the re-kindled fire was ready yet. "By the way, I thought of something a little while ago. How long does the sake from that gourd hang around?"
He was answered with a blank stare.
"As long as it takes me to drink it." Suika said slowly, as though explaining something to a very small child.
"Uh, yeah.... but if you didn't drink it, just poured it and left it sitting out, how long would it...."
Ranma fumbled to a halt under the uncomprehending blank stare, then sighed and fished a cup out from one of the cupboards.
"Alright, pour some sake into this, then." He said, setting it
Suika agreeably did so, and then immediately knocked it back before Ranma could say anything further.
"That wasn't what..." Ranma said awkwardly, under Suika's curious stare. "Okay... let's try this again. Pour some sake into this cup."
Suika shrugged, not seeing the point, but did so. She would have then once more immediately chugged it, except that Ranma had snatched the cup away before she could.
"Hey! Rude. You could have asked, and I would have let you drink some." Suika grumbled.
"Yes... but this isn't for drinking." Ranma said, setting it on a counter and leaving it.
".... I don't get what you're saying." Suika admitted. "It's sake... sake is for drinking."
"Er, yeah... how should I put this?" Ranma wondered aloud, idly yanking the cup away from a grasping hand. "Alright, you know how that's a magic gourd, that never runs out of sake that doesn't give you hangovers."
"Yes, obviously." Suika said, making another dodged swipe for the cup.
"Okay, so if you pour it out, it's still sake, and it will never stop pouring because it's always full."
Suika nodded distractedly, frowning at the cup that Ranma kept moving out of her reach.
"So... I was just wondering, given that this is essentially magic sake, if it was left on its own and not drunk, would it just disappear on its own or anything?"
"You've lost me." Suika said, making another swipe for the cup. "Look, are you going to drink that or not?"
"No, and I just explained why. Look, spices and food costs money if you aren't going to just settle for whatever you can hunt or forage, right?"
"Yeeaaah...." Suika said, making another, more irritated grab at the cup.
"So if you want me to cook better stuff for you, I need to have money to pay for it."
"Okay.... so....?"
"So if the sake sticks around for any reasonable timeframe, we can sell it. For money. To buy stuff with." Ranma said, starting to get somewhat irritated by this point as well.
Suika froze in place as she computed that.
"But I don't want to sell it. I want to drink it." She grumbled. "If I sell it, then I can't drink it."
"You can sell it and drink it." Ranma countered.
"I can't drink what I sell away!" Suika barked back. "And I want to drink it all!"
"Look, it doesn't matter because you'll never run out of sake."
"It's the principle of the thing! Now, if you don't drink that sake right now, I'm going to take it from you and drink it myself!"
"You can try!" Ranma said, eyes narrowing as she slammed the cup down onto the counter almost hard enough to crack the glass.
Suika hurled herself at Ranma with a wordless roar, tackling her to the ground and tried to push off for a further leap towards the sake cup. She got halfway there before Ranma's hand latched around one of her ankles and pulled, slamming her around through a flimsy cupboard, sending flatware spilling out onto the floor, and hurling her through the far wall and outside, into the mud, where the rain had slackened into a thin drizzle.
Ranma leapt out through the hole immediately, and was met in mid-arc by a howling, thrashing little demon. The battle rapidly descended into a flurry of elbows and knees, hair pulling, biting, scratching, and assorted dirty blows. It didn't take terribly long for Suika to get sidetracked from the original purpose of the scuffle. As Ranma reflected much later, in a collapsed heap of entangled limbs, caked with mud and blood beneath the slow sunrise, there were some good and some bad things about that.
"My boy, I am impressed." came an unfortunately familiar voice from the nearby trees. "And all this time I'd thought something that idiot Genma had done somewhere along the way had accidentally left you impotent. Why, I've never been so proud to have been proven wrong!"
Ranma twitched, and would have moved to cover her modesty, except that it would do little more than the mud already did, and the fact that she wasn't really sure she could actually move.
"Who are you?" Suika wondered aloud, in the same state as Ranma, more or less, and still making no effort to conceal anything. Oni probably had no nudity taboo, Ranma decided. Or shame.
"Why, my dear, I am Happosai!" The little man said, hopping down from the trees, tucking away something that Ranma very much suspected was a camera of some sort. "And may I say that it is a pleasure to meet you?"
"... You're the pervert Ranma was talking about earlier, the grandmaster!" Suika said, putting two and two together.
"I have been called that, yes." Happosai said. "Ah, but can you blame an old man in the twilight hours of his lifetime for enjoying the pleasures that life can bring?"
"How long have you been watching?" Ranma hissed dangerously.
"Hm... how long? If I had to say... probably about when... no, that wasn't it. Just a moment." Happosai pulled out a video recorder and began fiddling with it, much to Ranma's dismay. "Hm... ah, yes! It was just shortly before you tried to bite off the Oni's ear, here, you see?" He said, flipping the machine around to display the small screen, where the incident in question was displayed in full color and sound.
".... I have never wanted to kill you as much as I do right now, Happosai." Ranma growled darkly.
"Oho! Then why don't you get up and do something about it, my boy?"
"Because both my hips are dislocated and I think my knees are broken." Ranma answered matter-of-factly, calling a halt to Happosai's teasing.
"Hrm.... yes, I suppose that would put a damper on business as usual." The old man admitted. "In any case, it would probably interest you to know-"
"You aren't human." Suika interrupted, staring pointedly at the old man.
".... No. No I'm not." He grumbled. "I became a youkai a long time ago, of my own volition. Can this wait? I was about to say something important."
"Sure, no rush."
"Thank you, my dear. As I was saying, it would probably interest you to know that Cologne is organizing a rescue attempt for noon tomorrow."
"How nice of you to tell us, old man. So, are you getting involved?"
"Not at all, my boy! Personally, I think this situation is better for you. You're getting laid regularly, after all." Happosai said crudely. "Far be it from me to obstruct the youth's enjoyment of carnal pleasure."
"You'd much rather peep on the act, right?" Ranma said dryly.
"Guilty as charged, my boy! But don't worry.... I'm not Nabiki. All of my recordings and photographs are for my personal use only."
"That doesn't help." Ranma barked, as Suika stood and stretched.
"So, plenty of time between now and then. I think I'll get a drink." She said, heading into the shack. Taking advantage of her absence, Happosai stepped closer and leaned in.
"Ranma, my boy." He said, softly and seriously. "Cologne is preparing a secret weapon for the rescue. Left alone... there's no way that the oni can win."
"... So why are you telling me this?" Ranma asked.
Happosai chuckled.
"Because I think you should know. In the end... it comes down to you. If you want to be rescued... then just keep out of things. She'll be defeated, and inside a week it will be as though none of this had ever happened in the first place. Back to square one. Of course, if you get involved... that'll have repurcussions all of its own."
"Get out of my face, old man." Ranma spat.
"Heh. I figured you'd say-"
"HEY!" Suika barked, coming out the door. "No touching! Watching, whatever, but if you want to play with my toys you have to go through ME, got it?"
"Of course." Happosai responded, drawing away. "Then again, I don't really even have to touch anything. Just being in this place, so soon after your frenzied exertions... any hundred of my silky darlings couldn't even compare."
"Good for you. 'Cause if you do touch anything without permission... I'll eat you."
"Duly noted, my dear." Happosai said blandly, taking another step away from Ranma, hands carefully placed in his pockets.
"... Hey, Suika." Ranma said, postponing thought of the rescue attempt to come aside for a minute. "Was that cup still there?"
"Yeah. I drank it." She said immediately. "You have a problem with that?"
".... No, that's fine. I've already figured out what I needed to know."
xxx
A.N. Lessee.... 4121.... and total 11697 of 15000. Looks like the next chapter will be it for this story until the sequel, folks!
OOC-Ranma: Headache... cramped toes... dehydrated... dislocated hips.... fractured pelvis... heavy bruising... broken kneecaps... and a sprained wrist. JUST AS PLANNED!
Hm, what else can I make note of?
Ranma was correct about all of the places. See, what I actually did was take them, half form a plot with that in mind, and roll a d4. It came up on the shack, so that was what I went with. I might later cut this story apart and put it on an Addventure thread to see what happens if someone takes another path, though. Anyway, story explanation, he's just gotten that good about predicting what will happen next, given that I'm going to say this is post-Saffron. Genre-savvy to himself, or something? Or maybe just pessimism in action?
Jason- And I was trying so hard to avoid any other crosses, too! Still, I guess he's more like a cameo, so he doesn't really count?
Suika- A Girl Is Fine Too. 'Nuff said. Also, obsessive alcoholic. I re-read some bits of Guardian involving Seras Tuko in order to draw inspiration for that scene, I'll admit it.
Happosai- he's a youkai. Something something, lust, panties, you know? He looks like a shriveled old man because he was a shriveled old man when he became a youkai, and he hasn't as yet really bothered to find a way to change his apparent age. Also, if he was still human, he would have died when he was sealed into that hole into the ground, but being a youkai he could survive off of the energy from his secret panty-stash and hibernate until he was released, nicely semi-tying this to canon.
The secret weapon should be obvious, so I'm not even going to say what it is.