Shampoo in the time-loops.
Once again, Shan Pu of the Joketsuzoku found herself standing on the docks of Nobeoka seeing the first of the Ayu fishers coming in from the sea. She remembered the first time she had found herself back at this place and what happened afterwards.
It was shortly after her Airen Ranma and the violent girl Akane had tried to marry despite the fact that he was married to Shan Pu due to the laws of the tribe. She believed her transfer was just another magic trick by one of her rivals or his enemies since she remembered going to bed in her room in the Cat Café. Proud that she knew the fastest way to Tokyo unlike a certain pig-boy, she ran to the central station and jumped on one of the trains leaving for the main island.
The next morning she arrived just in time to see Ranma fighting „stick-boy" Kuno under a clouded sky that promised rain. She noticed a movement at her back and saw the panda-man, her airen's worthless male of a father, fleeing in direction of his friend's dojo. She thought that it must have been his plan to send her away from her Ranma and looked back to the school grounds for her husband, just in time to see him standing above a defeated and unconscious Kuno, changed by the rain into his cursed form. Then she jumped down to greet him.
"Oh, damn." Ranma complained. "I hope no one can see me."
Akane just silently pointed at the audience in the windows of the school.
"Okay, but the rain should make things hard to see, right?" He still heard them mutter above the light rainfall. "Oh hell, let's just go inside."
"Airen!" Came a happy voice from behind the two.
"Sh-sh-Shampoo!" Ranma paled, looked around, then stepped back. "You are the only one I cannot fight!" She yelled, kicked the unconscious Kuno in the direction of the Amazon, turned, and fled through the hole in the wall that Kuno's technique had produced.
After she had used her sousui maces to hurl the distraction to the side, she saw him gone. "Airen?" Shampoo wondered, then she turned to Akane, who – as she noticed then belatedly – had today very long hair that reminded her of the eldest Tendo daughter, the 'too-too nice girl' Kasumi. "What violent girl do to airen? Why he run away from Shan Pu?"
"How should I know? Who are you anyway?" Akane shot back.
"Violent girl want trick Shan Pu like fathers! What do to Airen?" Shan Pu pointed her left hand with her weapon in Akane's direction. "Speak!"
"I didn't do anything! Put that thing away!" Akane hit the sousui, but couldn't move it. Still ready for a fight, she got into a stance.
"Violent girl no can win! Tell Shan Pu or Shan Pu kill!"
"Leave Akane alone!" Came a voice from above. Ranma in his female form jumped between the two real girls and took a stand. "Your fight is with me!"
"Airen! Why you run away?"
"Why I…" Ranma shook her head irritatedly. "Because you want to kill me!"
"Kill you?" Akane interjected, then she got angry at him. "What did you do to that girl, you pervert? " After a moment's thought she suddenly paled and stepped away from the pair and asked anxiously. "You didn't… did you?"
"What are you talking about, you tomboy?" Ranma shot back. "I only fought her and won! And now she wants to kill me!"
The mutterings in the background were still audible above the ever louder rain.
"Shan Pu no want kill husband!"
"Husband? What do you mean husband?" Ranma followed up, silently relieved that he didn't have to fight her to the death. He knew that he would even win such a fight against her without a problem, but it was basically his fault that the Chinese girl would have to die at the end.
"Ranma defeat Shan Pu! Shan Pu give husband Kiss of Marriage!"
"What do you mean, Kiss of Marriage! The only kiss you gave me was that Kiss of Death thing!"
"Airen defeat Shan Pu in Violent Girl home," she pointed at Akane, "Airen kick Shan Pu best sousui and," she held the weapon up and hesitated. Looking at the weapon she sounded confused. "Sousui whole." Then she looked to the sky. "It rain. Shan Pu no cat."
Akane ignored the cat comment, thinking the obviously crazy foreigner had made some mistake learning Japanese. "What do you mean you fought in my house? Ranma arrived only yesterday and I've never seen you before!"
Shan Pu ignored her and said. "Shan Pu confused. Go to Great-grandmother." Then she ran away.
There was no Cat Café when she arrived there. The building was empty, waiting for a new owner. It was the same with the Ucchan's, the home of her – in her opinion – greatest rival for the heart of her husband. She snuck into the home of the Tendo family and found the room of the old pervert empty, another suspect for this kind of trickery couldn't be found. When she went back to the school, she listened to the pair arguing outside of the classroom. Peeking through the window she saw Ranma in his male form looking younger than the last time she saw him and so did Akane, now that she was used to her longer hair.
She had only one place left to go for help, her village in China. At the start of her long journey she found a newspaper and noticed the date. She was more than one year in the past and many things started to make sense. Finally at home she explained it all to her great-grandmother Ke Lun, Elder of the Joketsuzoku.
After long deliberation and a meeting with the Jusenkyo guide the wise old woman came to a conclusion. "It must have been a vision to warn you, child. You haven't given the young Saotome the Kiss of Marriage, correct?" Shampoo nodded and the Elder continued. "The Kiss of Death was wrongly given and now there is no other promise that you are bound to follow. You avoided the terrible curse of Jusenkyo and despite a small mistake your honor is intact."
"But what about Ranma, Elder Ke Lun?"
"He is honor-bound to marry this Tendo girl and – if your premonition is correct – this young cook, too." Cologne shook her head and said sadly: "You shouldn't pursue him. He is already dead thanks to the foolishness of his father." Cologne gathered herself and continued. "The only thing to consider is Happosai. According to your vision, he still has some of the treasures of our people and he will come to live with the Tendos. If this comes to pass, we will be able to get them back. This will be another proof of your vision and strengthen your position as a future leader of our people. I will ask warrior Culi Pa to accompany me to this Nerima place, while you will stay here and lore-mistress Xiso Es teaches you other future visions that your sisters have received." She stood up and finished. "The Goddess must have great plans for you, young Shan Pu."
Shan Pu stayed obediently back in the village and learned what was asked of her. When her great-grandmother returned, there was a feast to honor the two returning Joketsuzoku and the new prophet. She learned that Ranma was still fighting the old pervert and that the Amazons had also retrieved the artifacts Happosai had stolen from others, like the Moxibustion chart. They also brought back a young man named Ryu Kumon who had managed to defeat Culi Pa and was given the Kiss of Marriage. She continued to learn the lore of her tribe and the techniques of the warriors since she still hoped it was her destiny to become one of them instead of a prophet.
One year later she was staying up late learning in the cave of the prophets and without warning she once again stood on the docks of Nobeoka. She had not felt any change in the temperature as if she had stood there for some time. Neither did her eyes have to react to the change in brightness, nor did her body react to the change in position. Pensively, she moved once again to Nobeoka's central station and rode a train to Tokyo.
In Nerima, she watched Ranma's fight with Kuno from a different position. Just before he could strike the swordsman down, the panda arrived to move Ranma away before people would notice his change. When she returned to her village this time, she had both an easier and a harder time to convince the Elders of her story. It was easier since she remembered things that would happen the following days and harder since she also knew of the prophecies that only select few were allowed to study. Despite this, Ke Lun and the other elders came to the same conclusion as before. She would further study the prophecies and the fighting arts, while Ke Lun would travel to Nerima, this time accompanied by three other Amazons and they brought back Happosai as a prisoner.
This was repeated many times, until she knew all prophecies of her people. After she had demonstrated her full knowledge of the prophecies and her fighting prowess to the council, they came to a different conclusion.
"It seems the goddess wants you to learn more before she will reveal your destiny. We think there is nothing more that you should learn here before you find your path. Go out into the world and do not return until this repeating year of yours is over."
And thus, she was banned from her home.
She set out to meet the other tribes of the Byankalaya mountains, but when the year was over, she decided to stay in Japan. Starting in Nobeoka, she investigated every nook and cranny of the strange land. She broke into businesses, homes and temples to find her destiny. She was amazed by the number of magical trinkets she found, especially the dozens that were connected to Jusenkyo. After a hundred loops she was finally finished and set her sights back to China. Among other arts, she had learned the best way to search and finished investigating her homeland after only another hundred loops. And she was sick of it. Sick of the dust in abandoned ruins and antique shops, sick of policemen and cultists following her, sick of the monsters, sick of the loneliness.
Then she remembered her dream. Before all of this, it had been her life-long goal to become the greatest warrior of the Joketsuzoku and only the loss of face at the tournament made her stray from that path. So she went out to formally challenge any martial arts master she could find. Many of them saw only her youth and beauty so she made a habit of breaking the walls of their homes and the bones of the master's students that would rise to stop her, before she would announce her challenge.
But she had already learned too much. The grandmasters of the art were no challenge to her might, even the ancient master Happosai had to admit defeat when she fought him.
Talking to one of her last targets, she realized there was something else that masters of the art would never challenge and which could test her might as a warrior.
The army.
Her first fight was a mistake. She attacked barracks directly and defeated every single man until she stood in front of the garages containing the tanks and other vehicles of war. Then she realized where she had gone wrong. Armies would not fight in the barracks the same as martial artists would not fight in their homes. Both would meet formal challengers in their training halls and warriors on the battlefield with their weapons in their hands. So she had to create a battlefield and the city of Nobeoka was the first available target.
She got rid of the police and the local masters and declared herself ruler of the island of Kyushu. She announced her further campaign on national TV and the army obligingly tried to stop her on the way to Kitakyushu. It was a massacre. Tanks were destroyed using the Breaking Point. Planes were caught in sudden hurricanes using the variants of the Ascending Sky Dragon. Bullets were plucked out of the air using the Advanced Chestnut Fist. Explosions were cut in half by invisible ki techniques.
Among the single challengers on her way was a lonely red-haired pigtailed girl. She didn't recognize her at first or when the Japanese tried to talk to her. Only afterwards when she lay in the dust with broken bones she recognized her former husband whom she hadn't seen in over two hundred years.
After the battles of Kyushu, she continued her campaign on Shikoku and after that when she landed on the main island a barely healed Ranma got in her way again, using some of the moves she had used against him and other techniques that were documented by the Japanese war correspondents. But she knew the counters and once again he was defeated and once again she spared his life.
Even the great battle of Tokyo was a test of her stamina, not her strength. There were a priests trying to exorcise the demon and cultists trying to appease the new goddess of war. Ranma got in her way for the third time and his new knowledge of her moves was the biggest challenge of the whole campaign. But she knew many other styles and many other moves and even a prodigy couldn't learn fast enough. After that fight, the last of Tokyo's defenders fell without even making her breathing hard.
On a whim she seated herself on the Chrysanthemum Throne and ordered some of the cultists to bring Ranma to her.
When they had found and brought him, she took some time to look at him. He was pale from loss of blood, wrapped in bandages and his arms were put in plaster. Despite his injuries, he glared at the stranger occupying the seat reserved for the descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu and Shan Pu was pleased to find his spirit unbroken.
"It's nice to see you alive, Ranma Saotome." She greeted him in Mandarin. Insisting that everyone spoke a foreign language in the halls of the palace was yet another deliberate insult to the Japanese pride.
"Who are you?" Ranma asked belligerently.
"You don't recognize me? Oh, I see. Your eyes are injured. I am Shan Pu, warrior of the Joketsuzoku."
"No. You fight in China and I win. I run and you not win." His grasp of Mandarin was poor,since he had spent the year in China in all of its provinces and had barely enough time to learn the basics of the varying languages and dialects. "In Japan you win fight with better than me. You is not Shampoo. You is… something in body of Shampoo."
"I guess I learned a lot in these past years and that has changed me too much to be recognizable to you. Still, I am a bit angry that you think I am some kind of demon. I think I will kill you for this insult." She said conversationally. She was disappointed that he would believe that something could possess her despite all her mental discipline that she had gained during her decades of training in the martial arts.
When she walked up to him and lifted her sword above his head, he didn't flinch. Then she brought it down and the only movement in the room was his head falling on the immaculate floor. She looked at it for a few seconds, then she found herself at the intact docks of Nobeoka watching the ships in the harbor.
She was stunned. The loop had ended earlier. This was certainly not the first time it had happened, during her travels in Japan the loops had sometimes ended earlier and they did that again during the time she had investigated the treasures of the other tribes of Jusenkyo. But this was the first time she could connect one of her actions with the phenomenon. She remembered that she had met some of Ranma's rivals and fiancées during those times and it was conceivable that these encounters had somehow altered their fights with Ranma, leading to his early death and the restart of the loop.
Still, she had to test this hypothesis. She used the Step of the Martial Messenger to travel instantly to the roof of the Tendo Dojo in Tokyo and saw the Panda-man arriving, carrying the redheaded girl on his back. Not caring for the situation, she jumped down and beheaded the unconscious Ranma and shortly after she found herself back in Nobeoka. To make sure she killed him again. And again. As a girl and as a boy, at day and in the night, alone and in front of others, from behind and in a fair fight, with her weapons, her fists, her poisons, her potions, her amulets, her jewelry. The result was the same. After the last bit of life had left the body of her former Airen, she found herself back at her starting point without variation.
With this new information she visited those she had consulted before to find a way out of the repeating year. Wise women and sages, priestesses and cultists, witches and warlocks, madwomen and philosophers. Following their advices she tried many things. She cured and cursed Ranma, loved and hated him, forgave him and took vengeance, carried his child and once at the urgings of a lunatic she used the darkest potions she knew and ate him alive while he watched helplessly.
And at the end she found herself back in Nobeoka, watching the fishermen.
And she had enough. Enough of Ranma, enough of advices, enough of magic. She wanted to be a warrior! Not some mystic! She wanted to fight! She hated this mystery! She wanted to destroy something!
She looked eastwards at the grand Pacific Ocean. Far away was a land that in its history had never been conquered by invaders from outside. The United States of America. A worthy target for Shampoo: Warrior Princess! Ai-YAH!
Yet another girl going crazy from centuries in the loop. I used the Pinyin Romanization system to spell the names to emphasize that this was written from Shampoo's POV.