Chapter No. 4
"Those people who disliked Ranma"

Many a day would pass by before Akane and Ryoga saw each other again. Ryoga left China very early in the morning and Akane received no word from him in the months that followed. She could only assume that he had forgotten her. There was only the note that he had left in the dojo where he knew she would find it.

It read: "I am sorry."

Earlier in her rage, Akane might have torn it up or thrown it in the dustbin, although by the time she discovered it, her ire had diminished somewhat. Akane was the type of person who got angry quickly, let it out on some hapless victim and then was calm until the process stared again.

But this time was slightly different from the other times. Akane might not have been furious but she held on to resigned disappointment in her heart. "Ryoga, you coward," she wrote sighing on the back of his note. Then she tucked the note away in her drawer and didn't look at it for quite a while.

Aside from nearly giving poor Kasumi a heart attack for having such a horrid haircut, the change over Akane was for the good. She never conceded to anyone that it had been Ryoga who had cut her hair; she only said that a change had been due. Lie or not, she seemed to take her words to heart.

Akane stopped 'hating' boys. That didn't mean to say that she stopped being violent when her temper flared up. The morning attacks gradually declined as the boys began to take notice of the real Akane. She was not always angry and pestering her wasn't the only way to get her attention. Not that Kuno took any notice of that.

As for Dr Tofu, Akane was shocked at how quickly she was able to move on. She had felt some hard feelings but it seemed as if Ryoga had cut them off as well. All she could think of Dr Tofu now was as an older brother and a friend. She still regularly came to him for help and advice.

So you could say Akane lived happily ever after. For a while.

The first time Akane heard that she had a fiancé was on a dewy spring morning. Her father told her of a young man named Ranma Saotome who was just coming back from a training trip in China. His father, a friend of Soun's, had written them a postcard.

"R-Ranma Saotome?" Akane repeated the name, paling visibly. Hadn't Ryoga mentioned someone named Ranma as his rival?

Indeed, the implications of having a fiancé failed to hit her immediately or even soon after. Something might have happened to Ryoga so he couldn't write and maybe this Ranma fellow might be able to tell her what had come to pass. Akane felt her knees buckle beneath her, weighed as they were with worry.

The story of Ranma's arrival at the Tendo Dojo is one worth telling for its own merit. Ranma and his father Genma were frightfully interesting people, being half-girl and half-panda respectively. Whatever the postcard Genma had sent to Soun contained, it bore no hint of that.

Ranma and Genma were cursed. I needn't go into too much detail over it, but cold water turned the teenage martial artist and his balding father into buxom girl and panda respectively, and hot water reversed the transformation. After the initial misunderstandings which arose from such bizarre circumstances, Ranma and Genma sat down to explain how the curse had come about.

"It was in China that it happened," Genma declared solemnly. "We were at the cursed springs of Jusenkyo and while training, we fell into two different springs. I hadn't known that there was a curse on those springs that made anyone who fell in take the form of the last thing that had drowned there."

"That was because you couldn't read the brochure, idiot," Ranma said tartly.

"Why, you…!" Then Genma fell onto Ranma and the two wrestled each other to the ground.

The tale had been a bit overwhelming, and to see father and son fight each other like two roosters in a cockfight just took the cake. Akane got to her feet.

"Stop it, you two!" she screeched. Genma and Ranma obeyed. "Now something's funny about this," Akane continued as she remembered where her real concerns lay. "Ranma, did you know Ryoga followed you to China? He might be cursed too now, thanks to you!"

And Ranma just stared at her blankly and said, "Who's Ryoga?"

He did not quite remember Ryoga's deep-seated grudge (I mean, friendly rivalry) against him. It dated back to their school days, when the two fought over the last piece of bread at the cafeteria. Ryoga had challenged Ranma to a duel and Ranma had chickened out. At least, that was Ryoga's version of the story. In Ranma's version, Ranma had waited at the appointed place of battle for five days on the sixth day, Genma had dragged him off to China.

It took a while for Ranma to remember all of this. When he did, he crossed his legs, rolled his eyes and muttered, "Who cares about Ryoga?"

Akane promptly whacked Ranma with a mallet she had conjured out of nowhere. "I do, you idiot! You've probably screwed up his life!"

Somewhere in China, Ryoga agreed with her. The more his life became entwined with Ranma's, the more he chased him and the more miserable he would get. He became lost and people presumed him dull-witted. Akane had been the only one who had ever been kind to him. Considering his fragile mentality, it was understandable why Ryoga could not bear the thought of seeing her again after she had hit him.

And he had recently taken the descent into hell. Akane's fears were very real: Ryoga actually had fallen into Jusenkyo.

Not far from the cursed springs of Jusenkyo, Shampoo the Chinese Amazon warrior was wandering the land. This rather attractive young lady dressed in battle getup was obviously looking for something by the manner she was shifting her intense gaze around the tranquil landscape. There was nothing human to be seen in the hilly backdrop. There were just trees and grass and a small, still river. Shampoo tightened her grip on her Chui and grit her teeth savagely. The gods seemed to be mocking her by giving her such an eventless, bright and sunny day instead of what she really wanted.

Shampoo momentarily stopped seething when she noticed movement among the river reeds. Leering downwards curiously, she saw a little black pig scurrying frantically about. It looked lost. More than that, it looked irresistibly tasty. Other girls might have described the piglet as cute but Shampoo was a practical-minded young woman and could only think about one thing at a time. Right now, she was feeling frustrated and hungry so without much ado, she plucked the piglet from where it stood and set about boiling some water so she could cook it. She must have been so preoccupied with boiling the water that she forgot to kill the loudly squealing piglet. No matter. It would be like cooking a lobster. She wasn't sure whether it would work for piglets but it would probably taste better that way.

This method was destined to fail. The moment the piglet's skin fell in contact with the scalding water, it transformed into a naked man. Ryoga, to be exact.

Our pitiful hero let forth a mighty wail and jumped hurriedly out of the pot of boiling water. In his haste he upset the contents all over Shampoo. She was too shocked to feel vilified at all and merely stared at Ryoga for a very long moment. As her gaze was drifting lower, Ryoga went several shades of crimson and covered his important parts with his hand. No girl had ever seen him naked before and damn it - he wanted Akane to be the first one. However, thinking of her made him feel ill so he said nothing.

Shampoo at last found her voice. "You stupid idiot!" she shouted. "Where did you come from anyway?" Unfortunately, all this was said in Chinese (Amazon tribe dialect to boot) and Ryoga had no idea what she was saying.

"Sorry!" Ryoga gasped in Japanese, leaving the confused Shampoo without any answers.

The two stared at each again for a long moment. They already had trouble communicating with each other.

Shampoo suddenly tossed a handful of her spare clothing at Ryoga and while waiting for him to dress in clothes several sizes too small for him, she pulled a scroll, ink and brush out of her bag and started to write something.

Let no one say that Shampoo is not clever. She knew that though she could not speak to Ryoga she could write to him. The Chinese and the Japanese use a similar writing scheme. The language structure is different and the Chinese characters are simplified as opposed to Japanese Kanji but at the end of the day it is possible for the Chinese man and the Japanese man to communicate on a very basic level. Through this method, it wasn't very long before Shampoo learned all the essential details from Ryoga, such as his name and about his curse.

'Japan language... teach?' Shampoo wrote. When Ryoga expressed feelings of confusion, Shampoo wrote why:

'Shampoo… Japan … go … Ranma ... kill…'

Ryoga was baffled. If Shampoo's broken sentence meant what he thought it meant then it might be that he and that girl shared grudges on the same person!

'Ranma … Pig-tailed person?' He wrote the Kanji quicker than he had ever written them before.

'Ranma … know?'

Ryoga hastily wrote, 'Join together … Ranma … kill …'

And that was how Shampoo and Ryoga became friends.

Author's note: Shampoo's Chui are her weird weapons which I reckon vaguely resemble circus equipment. I hope you know what I'm talking about.

Another textual note: In the Japanese and Chinese language, the character for man is not gender biased. That means it reads as both 'man' and 'woman' and while it is easy to specify which, it's usually left to be figured out from context. This is an important fact, considering it's Ranma who's being talked about. Shampoo and Ryoga may not be thinking on the same wavelength in this matter…