Shampoo considered herself lucky to have stopped when she did. Something that came out of the vial tossed off the back of the van that had passed her crashed at her feet and sent a curious wave of dizziness all up her body that would have sent her tumbling in a crash that would have destroyed the food she was trying to deliver.
"Stupid van driver almost make Shampoo spill food," she said with a huff.
Delivering food, why should she, of all people be delivering food around some foreigner town. Not that she didn't enjoy Tokyo and Nerima in particular, but it was sometimes hard to remember here that she was the Champion of the Amazon village of Nyucheizu.
It wasn't Ranma, whatever was said behind her back. Ranma, even Ranma's girl form, was an outsider and her winning the last fight did not make her the Champion. She had not endured the entire round of fights, just one at the end.
Yes, that felt right. She wasn't sure why, but it did. Saying Ranma was the Champion because their last fight at the end of the tournament felt hollow.
The Amazon frowned as she got on her bike and started pedaling away.
The rest of the bike ride felt off somehow. Her center of balance seemed to be creeping up and forward and it threw her off every few minutes. Not to mention that things were getting just slightly fuzzy around her.
"Shampoo wonder if that stupid van have something to do with this," she muttered.
Maybe she'd just caught a bug or something. Yes, that felt right.
That should mean her vision would come back.
And that felt hollow.
She grumbled and compensated for the fuzziness of sight as she directed herself one way or another, looking for the address that ordered the food.
The amazon felt her ears twitching under her long purple hair as she arrived with a squealing of tires and a ringing of her bell at the customer's address.
It was a dorm house connected to some college or another. One of those pits of over generalized repositories of knowledge where masters and teachers tried to give out their secrets, such as these Barbarians had, to such a broad pool of listeners that it is a miracle any learning got done at all.
Really, didn't these people understand that one on one instruction was the best way to produce a real expert in a craft. Such mass produced lectures as these supposed centers of learning gave out.
Given the music that was pouring out of the building she was in front of, she assumed that this place would be an example of the sort of half-educated twits that the so-called modern world produced in and among all the glorious wonders that made things bearable out here.
Things like air conditioning, ice cream, daytime television and Oprah Winfry.
Sauntering up to the doorway, Shampoo smelled the varieties of perfume and incense and potpourri streaming out of the house and concluded that there were a going to be women here. Probably some of these barbarous outsider women who did not attend to their physical development past an admittedly worthy attention to physical beauty that even some of Shampoo's tribe members lacked.
Body, mind and soul.
A woman should be perfect in all three, not this sort of half-creature of beautiful vanity and impressive social cunning, but entirely lacking in being able to do anything for themselves.
Sighing expressively, she knocked on the door, squinting into the mirrored door as she waited.
It looked as if there were lines about her eyes, as if perhaps her make-up had run a little bit. Save that there were distinct and recognizable patterns and swirls around the slit pupiled eyes.
"Food's here," someone in the building called out. "Let's get the door."
For whatever reason, picking up the food seemed to require a small squad.
Under her mass of hair, Shampoo felt her ears flatten and she set aside the inconsequential worry about her eyes for the moment.
"Hell…oh," a disappointed voice said as the door was opened. "You're not the normal delivery boy."
The speaker, Shampoo could see as she leaned forward and squinted, was one of three girls that were jockeying for space in the doorway. They were all three quite lovely, in that slender, skinny almost nothing on their bones way that a lot of Tokyo women had.
"Shampoo assumes you are speaking of Mousse?" she said, setting down the box and taking the food out.
"Yeah, we sort of wanted him to settle a bet for us," another girl said.
"What bet was that?" Shampoo asked, not noticing the gradual shift of her grammar. "Perhaps Shampoo can settle this bet for you."
"Well, it sort of needs a man," the third said.
"There is little a man can do that a woman can't," Shampoo said.
"But we wanted him to say which of us was the best kisser," one of them said.
"In that case, Shampoo certainly wish that he were here," the purple-haired girl said. "Perhaps he would be less inclined to pursue Shampoo if he had other women to entertain him. I'll make sure he gets this delivery next time. But it does not change, I can still judge whether or not one of you is a better kisser than the others."
Actually, wastes of potential or not, the girls were, as said before, quite lovely and Shampoo couldn't help but admire them as she vacillated between squinting and taking a longer visual tour, or trying to remain polite. Eventually she decided that these were Japanese girls, and would be used to unsubtle advances of all manner of clumsy individuals.
She squinted for the better view.
"Are you some sort of lesbian?" one girl asked.
Shampoo arched an eyebrow and turned to face the girl, who flinched at the look.
"Mousse is a clumsy and overly forward male unworthy of Shampoo," she said. "But Shampoo enjoys the male body and is quite happy with her particular first choice in such matters. Though I suppose, women…have their own benefits."
"You go both ways," one of the customers said.
Shampoo considered that.
"Shampoo likes men," she said, and it felt right.
"Shampoo likes women," she added, and that felt right.
She nodded and turned to look at the three girls.
"Yes, Shampoo goes both ways," she said shrugging as if it was hardly anything worth talking about.
"What's with this Shampoo thing, can't you speak properly?" one girl asked.
"Shampoo speaks this way because Shampoo is Shampoo and not a vapid 'modern' Japanese office-lady in making," Shampoo explained in a casual, cheerful voice. "Did you want me to judge those kisses or not?"
"Umm, that's, uh we'll just pay and have done with it," the first girl said.
And now Shampoo felt just insulted. They would have Mousse, Mousse of all clumsy and irritating males, judge their kisses but turn her down? She had kissed at least twice as many people as Mousse, maybe more than that. Or at least, twice as many times.
Had Mousse even kissed someone before?
In any case, Shampoo was clearly a masterful lover and kisser.
That rang hollow.
Shampoo was a masterful kisser.
That sort of felt vaguely opinionated.
Shampoo was a better kisser than Mousse.
Okay, that felt closer to right, but still not certain. Which was even more insulting.
If not, then Shampoo had infinitely more experience than the duck boy. Hidden by her hair, she felt her ears moving around, laying flat again.
They felt larger somehow.
"Now Shampoo feel insulted," no one had ever said that Shampoo was anything but direct and blunt force, even in her deceptions and manipulations. "Let us have a bet."
"A bet?" the girls asked, looking between each other. "What sort of bet?"
"Shampoo gives you three too-Skinny girls a riddle," she explained. "If you guess riddle. You eat for free. If you do not guess the riddle. Shampoo eats for free."
She crossed her arms proudly in front of her chest, where her breasts were pulling the fabric tight against her skin. Part of her idly commented that she was glad that she didn't wear a bra. The three girls in front of her blushed brightly at the wording .
"Fine," one of the three girls said, blushing furiously. "Give us this 'riddle'."
Shampoo smiled, tongue running under a set of sharp feline feeling teeth. And she would know what feline teeth felt like. Then she cracked her knuckles.
"Let's see," Shampoo said, thinking. "True story: a white horse jumped over a tower and landed on a priest who immediately disappeared from the landscape. Where did this take place?"
"Wh…what?" the first girl asked. "What kind of riddle is that? What about…umm…'this thing all things devours'?"
Shampoo frowned and looked at her.
"Shampoo wonders what silly Japanese girl wastes her heaven-granted brain on," she said.
"Umm, The Hobbit, by Tolkien," the girl said, hesitantly handing out a Japanese copy of the book.
"Shampoo still has no answer to her riddle," the martial artist said as she took the book and started to read through it idly at first, and then more intently.
As she flipped through the pages, the girls argued back and forth as to the answer of the story.
"Hey, Bi-Girl," one of the three said.
Shampoo sighed and looked up from the book.
"Shampoo is Shampoo, you do not refer to Shampoo with a diminutive nickname," she explained with equal parts cheer and overriding confidence. "That is what Shampoo does to you. Like Rose Girl, Spatula Girl, Pervert Girl…" and she started pointing. "Skinny Girl, Nervous Girl, Angry Girl."
"Whatever," "Angry Girl" declared. "We've got an answer."
"Okay," Shampoo said shrugging with a extremely self-superior smirk. "Answer."
"It happened on a picture or a movie," the girl said.
"That is two guesses," the purple-haired girl said. "And both wrong. Shampoo gets to eat for free now."
"Y…you don't seriously think we're going to let you…errm…eat us, do you?" "Nervous Girl" asked.
Shampoo darted forward in one of her proven mastered techniques to glomp the speaker and land a firm kiss on her, darting a tongue deep into the girl's mouth and exploring for several seconds. By the time she was done, the other girl was shivering in her arms and then, as Shampoo released her, trying to catch her breath.
"You can't just…"
And that made it "Angry Girl's" turn, especially when she reached out an arm to grab Shampoo's shoulder and got twisted into a lock before Shampoo kissed her firmly on the mouth again. Angry Girl pushed back against Shampoo for a few seconds and bit at Shampoo's tongue when she started participating, but still was out of breath when Shampoo backed off and turned toward the last girl.
The skinny girl was trying to sneak away in a rather clearly obvious manner as Shampoo reached out give her basically the same treatment she gave the other two women. In the background, several girls in the dorm house were watching, from a distance, and tittering somewhat.
"Shampoo won the bet, so Shampoo is taking her winnings in part right now," she explained, flipping her hair and smirking at the three girls. "And Skinny Girl is best kisser. She is still too skinny."
Shampoo reached out, with her typical lack of regard for personal space and held up the girl's arm.
"Shampoo can feel bone here, Shampoo should not be able to feel bone here," Shampoo said demonstratively, before letting her go. "Eat lots of meat and put lots of butter on your bread and vegetables."
"But I'm on a diet," the girl protested. "I'm trying to lose weight."
"Are you trying to die?" the Chinese girl asked, rolling her eyes.
Shampoo picked up her delivery box and started to walk back to her bike, body swaying sensually.
"Hey, what was the answer to the riddle?" "Angry Girl" asked.
Shampoo paused and turned around.
"The white knight jumps a rook and takes the black bishop," Shampoo said. "It happens on a chess board. Call Kat Kafe when ready to pay Shampoo the rest of the way. Oh, here is your book."
She smiled at them as she tossed the Hobbit up to them. Then she shrugged before mounting her bicycle and racing out onto the street.
Shampoo was on the way back to the Nerima district when she paused in front of a mirrored wall and frowned at her appearance in the mirror. Squinting to do so.
It was cute and reminded her of her home, and was quite appropriate to her current task, but it might explain why nobody really took her seriously. She did not even dress in a manner of maturity for her own people, much less amongst these Japanese fools. Especially since the men and women who did make use of their brains in this place dressed in a particular way.
Shampoo took a moment to think about that before taking out her cell phone.
"Kat Kafe," an old voice answered on the other end.
"Great-Grandmother," Shampoo said in Chinese. "I might be a little late in getting back."
"Is there something wrong, child?" Cologne asked.
"I am having eye trouble," Shampoo said, irritably, still in Chinese. "I am going to visit one of the underground fight rings on the emergency rent list and then go to an eye doctor. Maybe do some clothes shopping."
There was a pause.
"Tell me, child," Cologne said. "If I told you that Ranma was most likely permanently female, how would you react?"
Shampoo thought about it.
"I have already failed the Kiss of Death and been punished," she said. "Permanent transgender makes the Kiss of Marriage null and void. Would this be a lesbian female?"
She asked the last hopefully.
"Perhaps you should come home before you go get yourself some shopping money," Cologne said.
"All right, Great-Grandmother," the girl said shrugging.
It was a few minutes later that found Cologne sitting across from her great-granddaughter and seeing a second changed teenager for the day and sighed.
Shampoo's changes looked milder than Ranma's, at least until Cologne got close enough to note the furry, pointed lion's ears at the side of Shampoo's head, buried under her full head of purple hair. In addition, she'd interrupted Shampoo before the girl had gone on a shopping spree the way Ranma had.
Cologne wondered if the next time she let Shampoo out on her own she was going to come back with a load of tattoos and piercings like Ranma now had.
"What sort of clothes were you looking to get?" Cologne asked wearily.
Shampoo thought a moment, cat's eyes rolling upwards.
"Power suit, jacket, low-cut blouse to display the cleveage, short skirt, not quite mini, and stockings, pink stockings," she said excitedly. "Thigh-high, with red heels! And if I need glasses, I'd like the sort of half-lenses, not the monsters Mousse has. And books, lots of books. Starting with this one by an Englishman named Tolkien I found today. It sounded very much like those movies recently."
Or she could be looking to become a library patron's wet dream.
That was at least preferable.
"Hey, is anybody here?" a voice called from the front room.
"Spatula-Girl," Shampoo said.
Cologne had a sneaking suspicion that she knew something of why Ms. Kuonji was arriving. Sighing she moved to the front room, Shampoo following behind her.
"Shampoo wonders," the Chinese girl said as she switched to Japanese. "Why Spatula-Girl would be coming to this…."
Shampoo froze as she saw Ukyou walking in from outside, the black-latex form-fitting clothing moving over the cyber-girl's form so closely that it was easy to remember the features that Shampoo had seen in shared baths. And the girl's own skin had a strangely alluring shine to it, as well as blue lines tracing all over her exposed skin.
"Give me Ranma, her and maybe Pig Boy and I can die happy, in bed, over and over and over again," Shampoo said in Chinese.
"Shampoo, close your mouth," Cologne said. "Well, Ms. Kuonji, I see that Ranma and Shampoo are not the only ones afflicted."
"Uh, yeah," Ukyou said. "By the way, I seem to be sort of contagious, some girl I kissed was cha…what do you mean Ran-chan and Shampoo? She looks normal, her hair's not made out of metal or anything."
"Take a closer look," Cologne said to Ukyou. "Shampoo did you kiss or otherwise come into contact with anybody else while you were out."
"Hmmm," Shampoo said, shrugging and yawning to show her feline fangs. "They could stand to be more like Shampoo."
Cologne smacked her palm to her forehead in exasperation.
"Are your breasts actually bigger?" Ukyou asked. "And you still haven't said anything about Ran-chan."
Cologne rolled her eyes and turned to face Ukyou.
"She has cat's eyes and Egyptian facial markings and you notice the cup size increase?" Cologne said.
"The cat's eyes are less weird than the thought that Shampoo's chest could actually get bigger," Ukyou protested. "They were already close to ridiculous."
"This is true," Cologne agreed with a sigh.
"Metal-Girl is just jealous of a full-figured woman," Shampoo said shrugging and posing.
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