Sasuke and Naruto went after Haku while Hinata protected the bridge builder. Her newly developed Kaiten would protect the old man better than their meager taijutsu skills. Meanwhile Ranma and Kurenai were fighting off Zabuza.
Ranma was debating how the hell she was going to take this guy out while pinning the blame on Zabuza for any damage she gave to the bridge. Water was extremely difficult to use, since she had avoided it like the bloody plague since getting the stupid curse. She could do lighting, fire, hell, wind was one of her best, but water?
Finally, in a fit of annoyance Ranma (who had been hit by a water jutsu early on...though to be fair the amount of mist in the area would have activated the damn curse anyway) used something she rarely needed.
About three years before she ran into Naruto, Ranma came across the secret home of a summons clan. Specifically the Phoenix clan. All they needed to hear was that he was the same upstart who kicked Saffron's high and mighty ass and they gave him a rare KI-based summons scroll...as well as a chakra-based one.
They liked him not only because he took out Saffron (even if he did have a lot of help at the time) but also because he wouldn't call upon them unless he actually needed a hand or he was introducing a new summoner.
Plus they had a feeling that Ranma would be in the thick of a war they sensed coming within the next couple of decades or so.
The Phoenix clan had another name, one only used by other summons.
Keepers of the Sacred Flame. They maintained a large source of fire that is said to have come from Amaterasu herself from which they used to reincarnate in case of death. It was said by fire type ninja that to be granted permission to see the flames and learn senjutsu (sage arts) from the Phoenix or any of the noble clans was to learn how to become a full Master of the element the clan symbolized.
Needless to say the Uchiha clan would have given up a set of their precious eyes just for a chance to sign the scroll. If they had known Ranma had a chakra copy of the scroll they wouldn't have hesitated to offer their highest ranked female member just for a chance at it. Thankfully for the somewhat unkillable Martial Artist, the clan had been killed off by Itachi two years before he ever reached Konoha.
"SUMMONING!" scowled Ranma.
Kurenai paused from layering her genjutsu to actually look for the gender-confused boy. He could do summonings but not the Shadow Clone?
"DAMN YOU SAOTOME! YOU KNOW WE HATE THE WET!" came a pissed off trill.
"Not my fault! That jerk with the oversized butcher knife is the one who brought this stupid mist!" said Ranma annoyed.
"He did, did he?" said the voice again, sounding beyond irritated.
Seconds later you could hear Zabuza yelling at someone or something who was attacking him. From the sounds of it, it was a bird of some kind. After five minutes of Zabuza swearing like a sailor while something clawed the living hell out of him, he dropped the mist hiding him.
It was either that or get his eyes gouged out by a massive red bird with three inch long talons that were razor sharp. You could see where the bird had nearly clawed his face off.
It was because of this that they found out that Gato had decided to betray the missing nin. Apparently he hadn't been aware that a back up unit had been sent to help out Team 8.
Tsuki and Naruko paused in their tag team of Haku (who was beyond embarrassed that the two had hog-tied him with ninja wire and sitting on him to keep movement from occurring) to look across the bridge to see a red bird, a pissed off Zabuza, and a twitching Ranma.
"Oi Eyebrows. If I dealt with the goon patrol can you take out Gato and any blame for damages caused?"
"Deal. Oh, and call off this damn bird!"
"Twilight, you can go home. Say hi to Rein for me," said Ranma.
"Will do... Also, if you ever summon me in such a damn area again I will come for you next time."
"You can try you overgrown parakeet," Ranma shot back flippantly. If the phoenix had been human, it would have flipped him off. Instead it shot a ball of fire at his precious pigtail before vanishing. Ranma decided to use his irritation to deal with the thugs Gato hired.
"HITEN SHORYU HA!" he snarled, sending a twister at the bandits and thugs. The tornado took out a good three feet of bridge and well over three-quarters of the thugs Gato hired.
Zabuza looked annoyed that the girl...boy...whatever, was able to show him up and not look winded. He killed Gato in the hopes of at least redeeming his dignity. It didn't work. Ranma was too impressive a specimen for someone who used a f**king huge sword as a weapon to match.
It was something of a joke between Team 4 that most men felt emasculated whenever they heard Ranma's stories or saw some of his tricks.
Sasuke and Naruto never felt less than manly around him for three reasons.
One, they had barely hit puberty. Two, they were gender-confused kids who could turn into girls on request. And Three, which was their usual excuse: They were being trained by a god among men! Why should they care about their masculinity when the guy was training them to be just like him?
Once Gato was dead, Tsuki and Naruto untied Haku...and gave him a parting shot about liking bondage because they saw something poking up in the lower half of his body, which annoyed Haku to the point that he shot a few ice senbon at them for the comment. Zabuza had only heard half of it, but he filed that one for later.
Ranma was in for a bit of a surprise when he got back to Konoha with the others. Apparently Zabuza had brokered a deal with the old Hokage for a place in the Konoha ranks and the end result was that his apprentice (who was more like his son) was stuck on probation and given the option of joining Ranma's team or the hospital.
Haku correctly assumed staying with Ranma would give him more opportunities to work on his healing jutsu and learn something new as well.
Besides, he was so girly looking without the henge that he fit the theme of Team 4 rather well, to Zabuza's obvious amusement. He still froze his pseudo-father's underwear drawer for the laughter though.
"GET BACK HERE YOU DAMN FREAKS!"screamed the chunin. He was among those who hated Naruto and he had accidentally seen Sasuke turn into a girl earlier. They had been pranking him when the Uchiha got hit by the cold water. The two stopped cold, and looked at the chunin.
"Did you just have the gall to call us freaks?" demanded Tsuki.
"You two deviants are freaks and weirdos! Real men don't go parading around like girls!"
"Are you saying that girls are freaks?" said Naruto loudly, attracting the attention of every kunoichi in hearing distance, which with Naruto's voice was easily three blocks around him.
The chunin seemed to realize his predicament, because one of the kunoichi who heard Naruto's comment was Ranma's drinking buddy Anko.
Before he could explain what he had seen, Anko was on him like Tora on catnip. There was no escape as the kunoichi beat the man bloody. Anko waved them off...the man clearly wasn't going to give them the training run they usually went for by pranking people.
"Well this sucks... You know Ranma is going to make us girls all day because I was caught..." complained Tsuki.
"Yeah, but today is one of the Hinata-chan days, remember?" Naruto reminded her.
"Ah...forgot about that."
On their days off, which was every other day, Hinata came over to train with Ranma. The result was that the girl was slowly loosing her stutter, something Kurenai had been trying and failing to get rid of.
An added benefit was that Hinata was starting to hate her father, not because he called her weak, but due to Ranma's misinterpretation of his words. Apparently the martial artist believed the Hyuga clan head was a sexist bastard who assumed kunoichi shouldn't even be around.
That ticked off Hinata something fierce, and gave her a new goal to work towards aside from getting rid of the seal on the branch family. She wanted to kick her father's ass for thinking girls were weak.
(This misconception was not helped by the fact that he spent a lot of time helping Neji and not Hinata and Hanabi. Since Hanabi had yet to go through puberty, Hinata could only assume he was merely biding his time before he started in on her sister.)
They were about to pass the sector where the Hyuga clan lived when they heard a voice cussing out Hiashi, the Clan Head. The voice was rather eloquent and was about as creative as a woman who worked in the red lights district combined with the passion of a sailor on leave denied liquor or women.
Tsuki and Naruto paused in their walk and looked at each other.
The voice was Hinata.
Naturally the two jumped onto the wall hiding the scene, until a hand snaked and brought them onto a nearby roof. Ranma was recording the entire thing for later.
Hinata was skipping Jyuken entirely and using various forms of hand to hand combat to deliver the worst beating her father had ever received. Her voice delivered cutting insults and swear words that made the Hyuga elders cringe and the Branch members secretly cheering her on. Finally she kicked him up in the air in a manner very reminiscent of Lee's Leaf Hurricane to a horrified Neji who recognized the move in a heartbeat.
The damage delivered by the pissed off girl took over two weeks to properly heal. The psychological damage took six months and that was after Hinata chewed out the Elders who openly contemplated putting the curse seal on her younger sister.
Needless to say Hiashi never tried to train (read: beat the living hell out of) Hinata again. He also winced whenever Ranma came into view.
Kurenai was very happy about this for obvious reasons. Kiba sure wasn't, because thanks to the new confidence Hinata had she was extra bitchy during that time of the month.
Unfortunately for dog boy, when Anko saw the video she immediately started training the girl...
"Team Gender-Bender. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is laundry," said the Hokage.
"I have only one question. Who needs their laundry done and why can't they do it themselves?" asked Ranma.
"It's Gai and..."
"We accept!" said Ranma. As one the three turned to give him an odd look. They knew Gai. His clothes were horrendous and possibly had things growing from all the training he did.
Five minutes after they left the tower, Naruto said what was on their mind.
"Ranma, what the hell?"
"We burn the spandex and refill his closet with clothes that don't make us gouge our eyes out after hiding the fact under a genjutsu only Gai and Lee will see," he explained.
"SOLD!" said the trio.
A week after that mission, and they were still getting thank yous from people forced to work with Gai. Apparently he had yet to figure out his spandex outfits had been burned, buried, and the soil dropped in an acid jutsu to prevent his 'youthfulness' from spreading through the water table.
All of this was immediately topped by what happened two weeks after Ranma's gender-bent team gave Gai's closet a total revamping. Right as they were about to head to a farm just outside the village for a mission (wearing weights and heading out to clear out an entire field with no clones) something with dark raven black hair the same shade as Ranma's guy form tackled the martial artist with a cry of "DADDY!"
Needless to say everyone within earshot stopped what they were doing to see who was calling the guy daddy.
"Naginata! You finally pass that test the old hag gave you?"
The child looked up from their glomping victim to reveal a very pretty girl wearing Chinese clothing in red, blue and yellow with a well used Naginata on her back. Her hair was the exactly same shade as Ranma's guy form, and she had all the telltale signs of a martial artist.
"Grandma Cologne said I could finally live with you!"
In order to be allowed out of the Amazon village without Shampoo or worse Cologne following him, Ranma had to add to the Amazon gene pool by having a kid. This had the added effect of finally getting Shampoo off his back after he introduced her fanatical fan boy to a previous unknown form of martial arts just so he could beat her in a 'fight'.
And ever since then Shampoo had been stuck with the idiot who turned into a goose when wet. It was a match made in hell.
Ranma had at least been given the dubious honor of naming his two kids. One of which was with his mother learning from her to carry on the line and hopefully strangle that damn panda.
His daughter had stayed with the Amazons until Cologne pronounced her ready to leave the village. Dealing with Ranma for all these years told the village elders they needed new blood for the gene pool, since an outsider could go toe to toe with one of their best elders.
Naginata (daughter) and Tachi (son) were Ranma's only contributions to the collective gene pool that is Earth. After all the pains he went through with the various fiancée he had to deal with, it was a miracle that there were only two.
"Ranma-sensei, who is this?" asked Sasuke carefully.
"Meet Naginata, my daughter."
"WHAT?!"
(Elsewhere in the Hokage tower, the old man was banging his head against something. It was bad enough with just one of them, but what would happen now that the daughter had joined the fray!?)
"So let me get this straight. Your daughter, who is roughly the same age as your genin, followed you all the way to Konoha after passing some old crone's test...and you want her to join your team?" said the old Hokage, rubbing his forehead.
"Independent contractor under orders of Saotome Ranma," he said quickly.
"Is she as bad as you?"
"Don't make fun of her name/anime addiction/daddy issues or the fact that she hates dealing with idiots, and you should be fine."
"Daddy issues?" said the Hokage faintly.
"She has some serious problems, and I've used her repeatedly to deal with the fiancée that still crop up from time to time. You wouldn't believe the looks I get when my kid beats the hell out of them."
"What about her mother? Shouldn't she be more attached to this Shampoo?"
"Mommy and I are on speaking terms, but that's it. Besides, Daddy has better bedtime stories," said Nagi-chan flatly.
"She has trouble with people trying to take me away because of her grandfather's complete stupidity and stinginess," said Ranma with a shrug.
"If someone who actually wants him not because of that damn panda comes to claim him and beats me, then they are welcome to have him. Until then, they are target practice," said Nagi-chan flatly.
"See why I love my kid?" cackled Ranma.
"She isn't cursed is she?"
"Are you kidding? I've never been near that stupid training ground!" said Nagi-chan insulted.
"Saotome, you owe me weekly allotments of sake for allowing this. That being said, welcome to Konoha Naginata Saotome. Oh, and that allotment starts now!"
Ranma tossed him a bottle of high-grade sake that had a suspicious bag of dried leafy greens taped to the side. Sarutobi raised an eyebrow.
"This what I think it is?"
"Yup. Took forever to get that greenhouse set up, but thankfully there ain't any laws against that here."
"Unless you're under 18 or chunin rank. Scratch the previous demand. Sake and your garden plants once a week."
"Deal."
And like that, Ranma's thirteen-year-old daughter came to live to Konoha.
That poor ninja village...