Author's Notes: It warms my heart that people don't hate Elizabeth! I will admit, I was a little worried about how she'd be received, but for some reason you really seem to not hate the perky goth/Fluttershy dragon.
Not gonna lie, I'd love to start getting this fic some artwork to go with it, but I have no idea how to clearly define Nabiki (and Elizabeth) visually... especially since I now have a Ranma/Teen Titans fusion fic going which also has Nabiki as a dragon-girl...
Oh, yeah, that's a thing now, so check it out! You just might like it!
I've also had a complaint that this story can be a little hard to understand, and I get where they're coming from; this is referencing some really deep-dive, old-school D&D lore, and Planescape was often considered the least "newb-friendly" setting back in the 90s due to its extensive use of the Cant, an in-universe lexicon of slang with terms like "berk" (analogous to "dude" in Surfer slang), "jink" (money), "bub and bubber" (liquor and drunkard), and "bonebox" (head - "rattling the bonebox" means talking). There's a reason I try to be sparse with it and use it more for flavor, and I still have to keep the original glossary open when I do it. Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that if you have any questions or need for more info about anything brought up in this story, then please just ask me! Leave a review/comment or even shoot me a PM, and I'll do what I can to help clear things up - I do try to work info-dump into my text, but I know that some things will slip through...
Chapter 8: Some Interesting Tails at the Bottle & Jug
Sigil had neither day nor night, with time instead being judged by the waxing and waning of the mysterious glow that emanated from the very sky of the arcane ringworld. Timekeeping, thus, was quite fluid outside of the six hours of peak and the six hours of antipeak, when that light was at its brightest and darkest respectively. It was about three hours till the first hour of antipeak - roughly six at night - when the exhausted quintet of newly fledged adventurers were finally ready to move on to the second phase of their little money-gathering venture.
"Alright gals... it's showtime," Ranma declared emphatically as he brushed aside the plates from dinner and placed a trapezohedron made of some unfamiliar crystal - it was dark yet translucent, almost like smoked glass, and yet strange ripples of color seemed to swirl within like water. Ukyo, Shampoo and Nabiki did the same, Nabiki chewing absently on a left-over bone as they watched Ranma cautiously cup the mystical mineral between his hands, pressing his fingertips against its sides as he furrowed his brow in concentration, briefly glancing aside at the wizard's journal laying open on the table
"Ia...Ia... Daoloth! Ia, Ia! Crystalline 'izzu Daoloth! Convoke Clauvius Rothbart!" Ranma cried, stumbling only slightly over the unfamiliar words, pouring his will into pronouncing the spell and seeing it made manifest.
Almost at once, the crazy-angled stone leapt up onto one of its long points and began to spin like a top as it lit up from within, oily iridescence shimmering in its depths as spiral helix rainbows danced and twined like serpents across its facets. Then, from amidst the iridescence boomed a voice, haughty and proud.
"Mordred?! You baseborn peddler of secrets and trinkets, you have some nerve contacting me after all this time! Where in the firepits of Imix have you been?!"
"Mordred is dead," Ranma interjected firmly, cutting off the voice on the other end before they could continue their rant. "But I have what you commissioned him to obtain, and I'm willing to sell it to you - all I ask is the same price you would have paid him..."
The crystal trapezohedron fell silent for several long moments, before the unseen speaker on the other end declared, "Describe what you have obtained..."
"A brooch made of gold/mithril alloy in the shape of a dragon's head and claws, clutching a black diamond in the mouth and a red diamond in each of the two claws," Ranma recited flatly. He even took the brooch out of his pocket and dangled it in front of the spinning stone, before realizing there was no sign that it was transmitting any kind of imagery and putting it back, a faint blush of embarrassment coloring his cheeks.
"...Then you speak truly. Very well... I will entertain your offer. Meet me in three hours at the Bottle & Jug tavern in the Hive. Know me by the sign of my house; a sigil of a wyvern with a wolf's head."
"Wait, hold on!" Ranma protested, but it was to no avail; the glowing colors within the trapezohedron faded away and it ceased its spinning, clattering onto the table.
The four teenagers (and one possessing dragon) stared at it in dismay as the weight of their prospective 'customer's' reaction fully sank in.
"...Typical rich asshole," Nabiki sighed, placing her elbow on the table and sourly resting her cheek on her palm.
"Well, ain't like we have a choice; we need that money more than ever, now," Ranma observed, solemnly shutting the journal.
"Yeah, but the Bottle & Jug? I've heard the customers talking about that place, Ranchan - they say it's rough, even for a place in the Hive!"
"Yes, why nobleman want meet us there?"
"Probably something shady connected to this fancy little trinket," Nabiki observed cynically, before her eyes shifted as Elizabeth took over.
"I didn't sense any particular magical emanations from the brooch, though..." The dragoness quietly observed.
"What he wants it for ain't no business of ours... y'know, unless it turns out he wants to do something really evil with it," Ranma amended himself. "Anyway, the deal's made, so all we need to do is show up and hand it over... if you girls wanna stay here and rest up, 'specially you, Nabiki...?"
As one, the three (technically four) females present fixed steely gazes on Ranma, waiting for him to flinch before they shook their heads as one.
"You ain't ditchin' us that easy, Ranchan!" Ukyo scolded him, a faint smile on her lips as she did.
"We is team, airen! Where you go, we go!" Shampoo added.
"Besides, we're safer in a group than alone, especially given what else went wrong today," Nabiki observed.
"I really am sorry..." Elizabeth mournfully apologized, before Nabiki stole back control of their body.
"Must you keep doing that? You'll make me look soft!"
Ranma rolled his eyes and shook his head, but he couldn't wipe the affectionate smile from his face as he did so. It was weird, but for some reason, their words made a funny warm feeling seem to pulse inside his heart...
Two hours, thirty minutes later...
Conventional wisdom amongst the denizens of Sigil - transients and true Cagers alike - was that when it came to considering how to get about the Hive Ward at night, there was only one truly useful bit of advice on how to do so: don't. Unpleasant and vile during the day, with its muddy, winding, maze-like streets, ever-present fog, looming yet dilapidated buildings that blotted out the already dismal "sunlight" of Sigil, and abundance of lunatics, criminals and actual monsters, the scenery after darkness fell could be compared to a vision of the Abyss or the Nine Hells of Baator.
In fact, it had been so compared, more than once, until both the tanar'ri and the baatezu, the fiendish denizens of those planes, had begun protesting that such comparisons were slander.
To walk the streets of the Hive Ward at night, where few light boys were to be seen and true touts were vastly outnumbered by thieves, you had to be either truly crazed or truly dangerous in your own right.
'Or, in our case, a little of both,' Nabiki contemplated with no small amount of amusement as she watched her companions deal with the latest band of Hive thugs that had thought a man and three women all dressed in nice clothes were an easy target. She could feel Elizabeth's emotions in the back of her own mind, her usual nervousness spiking, but also undercut with a strange medley of excitement, amazement, and a dark, hot, smokey kind of sensation as Nabiki's eyes rested on Ranma standing over the bodies of his fallen foes that, frankly, the reluctant dragon-host didn't wish to investigate further.
"What a bunch of weaklings," Ranma scoffed, extricating the head of the hobgoblin from the small crater he'd just punched in a nearby brick wall with its face and releasing it, letting the unconscious goblinoid collapse unconscious to the muddy street.
"Alright, goat boy! You're gonna be a good little goatie and tell us where we can find the Bottle and Jug tavern, or Shampoo's gonna show you first hand what she used to do with unwanted rams down on the farm," Ukyo cheerfully announced from where she was kneeling on the upper torso of the male bariaur who had been leading this band of idiots when they'd attempted to hold them up, using his own horns for leverage to force his face into the grimy dust.
The bariaur kicked frantically, but he might as well have been kicking at a mountain side before Shampoo's hand lunged between his back legs like lightning, eliciting a terrified bleat of pain.
"...She wouldn't really geld him, would she?" Elizabeth nervously whispered in Nabiki's mind.
"With Shampoo? I'd say the odds are fifty-fifty,'" Nabiki thought back, instinctively gesturing with her hand in emphasis.
"I'll talk-I'll talk-I'll talk-I'll talk!" Howled the bariaur, tears streaming down his grimy face.
Thirty minutes (and a dozen massacred muggings) later...
"Well, ain't this a cheery lookin' place," Ukyo drawled sarcastically.
To give the Bottle and Jug some credit, it was actually in pretty good condition compared to the average structure of the Hive Ward. But with walls of black granite, barred windows, and steel spires, the building looked like it had obviously been intended to be a fortress of some kind before being dumped in the Hive and repurposed. The sturdy iron-studded wooden door only reinforced the impression, even if somebody had painted a stylized "B&J" and a notice that the opening hours were from 8 after-peak to 8 before-peak across the two doors.
Standing to either side of the door, which was set deep enough into the doorway that the arch of stone and steel would block out the ever-threatening rain of Sigil, were two hulking yet feminine figures that had to be eight or nine feet tall, easily. Before coming to Sigil, Ranma might have written them off as female oni; they had long arms that dangled almost to their knees, curled lips that exposed wolf-like teeth, and fingers that grew into claw-like nails, with one having pale grey-white skin like a granite boulder and the other's skin being the green-streaked brown of algae-smeared river mud. Yet, despite slightly elongated, sharply-pointed noses, they weren't really ugly - in fact, one might have even called them pretty, and their figures were implied to be shapely enough beneath the leather armor they wore over woollen dresses... if only their faces weren't twisted into contemptuous sneers that just dared anyone to try and start trouble.
With the crash-course provided by life in Sigil, Ranma knew them to be fensir; a fey race of giantish proportions and assumedly trollish origins, matriarchal, fierce and warlike, and one of the few races who actively sought out the Hive - for their curse was to turn to stone by the touch of sunlight, and whilst Sigil's eerie luminescence didn't trigger it, they still felt safer in the gloom of the Hive.
The two bouncers - for what else could they be? - stared sullenly at the quartet on their doorstep, one reaching into a pouch made from some unidentifiable small furry creature that had been skinned whole and withdrawing a cold roast rat, which she devoured whole, bones and all, without taking her eyes off of them. She gulped down the masticated rodent, smacked her lips and then belched lazily, as if she were contemplating what they would taste like for dessert.
Unfortunately for the fensir, their intimidation bounced off of the sheer wall of confidence projected by the four human teens. Ranma, Shampoo and Ukyo were all utterly convinced that, between them, they could take down a couple of mere bouncers without any trouble. Nabiki, well, her confidence lay in the fact she was with the others. The unflinching Ranma walked right between the two fensir and swung the door open without even a hint of effort, the girls following him inside with the same nonchalance.
The interior of the Bottle & Jug was, frankly, no more inviting than its exterior. Flickering oil lamps suspended on chains dangled from the ceiling at a height where only a fensir could hope to reach them, their grimy glass meaning they created an environment of shadowy gloom clearly oriented more for creatures with dark-adapted vision. The four teens (and their dragon spirit companion) walked along soiled red carpets, weaving between the clientele - a motley mixture of the cleaner sorts of Hiver guttertrash, Lower Ward rowdies, and what were obviously people from the Clerk's or even the Lady's Ward slumming it. Fensir could be spotted here and there amongst the crowd, clad in black cloaks emblazoned on the back with the stylized B&J symbol - whether they were bouncers or waiters or some combination of the two was anyone's guess. The interior of the Bottle & Jug was functionally a single large room, although wooden partitions - decorated with peeling yet still garishly painted scenes of extraplanar battlefields - served to crudely cordon it off into three distinct areas. At the center of it was the bar; a great solid construction of stone and steel, with two male fensir - smaller and daintier-looking than their womenfolk, yet still imposingly tall and strong - did their best to keep up with the thirsts and appetites of the hungry crowd.
As they watched, a shimmering silvery vulpine form ran across the bar, carrying a tray of what they hoped was food and drink. The metallic-hued fox - but since when did foxes move on their hind legs? - quickly stopped in front of one of the patrons and placed the tray down, before unfolding a bag from its back and motioning to it with a flick of its tail... no, wait, tails; it had two! The patron nonchalantly dropped some coins into the bag, with the fox taking their change out of what was likely a well hidden bag of holding, before picking up the tray and heading back the way they came.
"Interesting entertainment…" Ranma mused, "Who wants to look into what's going on there, and who wants to join me with our 'customer'?"
"I'll come with you, Ranma. Somebody has to make sure you don't get cheated into paying him for the brooch," Nabiki playfully joked, causing Ranma to poke his tongue at her in response.
"We wait at bar, airen. Maybe have drink. We be there instantly if airen need us!" Shampoo declared, causing Ukyo to nod her agreement to the plan before the quartet divided itself appropriately and set off.
Thus...
Ranma, Nabiki, and the dragon living in Nabiki's head wended their way through the crowd, intent on finding the mysterious Clauvius Rothbart. Ranma led the way, wrapped in an armor of confidence that saw most of the people in this first partitioned area turning away and giving him space. The one exception, a sootstained young bariaur buck barely starting to grow his beard, tried to stand in Ranma's way, but the martial arts headbutted him senseless before he could even get a word out. His pals, a mixture of young bariaurs and satyrs, brayed in amusement and dragged him over the bar as Ranma moved on without missing a step.
"Ranma, I think that's him over there," Nabiki said moments later, reaching out to take Ranma's arm so she could better point him in the right direction.
Looming through the crowd was a cyclops, a finely tailored silk tabard emblazoned with the symbol of a wolf-headed wyvern failing to hide the intricately crafted bright silver chainmail draping his powerful form, or the scars that criss-crossed across his face. He was leering lustfully at the fensir waitresses, not all of whom seemed offended by the attention, but he instantly snapped to staring at the boy and the half-dragon when they got close enough, his single great eye boring into their souls.
Overshadowed by the creature was a far smaller individual. A gnome, they recognized immediately, but a gnome with charcoal black skin, glowing yellow eyes, and fiery orange-red hair. In fact, it was hard not to notice the hair first and foremost, as the gnome had an enormous mane of flame-like locks (they were too used to Sigil to think the term "flaming" unless an individual actually had fire for hair) that had been sculpted into a towering pile of layered curls reminiscent of a Georgian periwig. Ranma would have called his entire outfit Georgian if honestly he knew what the term meant; a purple silk overcoat and knee, patterns of flame picked out with gold thread and studded with tiny rubies adorning it, diamonds the size of Ranma's thumb worked into its oversized and unfastened buckles, worn over a burning yellow ruffled silk undershirt. Green silk tights hugged the gnome's legs, ending in pointy little blue suede shoes. He clutched a walking stick made of stone that had been shaped and smoothed, whether by magic or artifice, into a triple-helix of interwoven serpentine shapes, with a golden cap sculpted into the grinning maw of a dragon.
"Mr. Rothbart, I presume?" Ranma cheerfully announced, smiling warmly down at the gnome.
The gnome's eyes flashed like a fire as he reached up and adjusted a monocle that adorned his left eye, primly correcting Ranma in a nasally voice and trilling accent, "That's Lord Rothbart to you, commoner. You would be Ranma Saotome."
"That's me! And this would be what you asked for," And here Ranma withdrew the necklace - placed in a cheap leather pouch to obscure it from prying eyes - from his pocket and casually offered it to the gnomish nobleman.
Rothbart wrinkled his nose, at which point Ranma realized that the gnome was clean-shaven, a stark contrast to most gnomish men, and jerked his head to the cyclops.
Ranma didn't even flinch as the much larger fingers reached down and plucked his offering from his grasp, the cyclops lifting it to his dinner plate-sized eye and gingerly opening it. An eyelid the size of a buckler slid up and down before the cyclops rumbled something in a language Ranma didn't recognize.
"Show me!" Rothbart barked, and the cyclops offered the now-open pouch to the gnome, who peeked inside and then instantly snatched it from his underling's massive fingertips.
"Well, I admit, I didn't expect you to actually deliver, but you did! Mmmyes, you have earned a fair price - five thousand gold pieces..."
He trailed off, watching Ranma and Nabiki expectantly. Although the Bottle and Jug was too noisy for a proper embarrassed silence to form, the sentiment was still there before Ranma finally asked, "Um... something you wanted...?"
"Well, I simply was waiting for you to try and haggle with me - or at least to try and threaten me for a higher fee," The gnomish nobleman confessed.
"Why would I? Mordred wrote that you promised five thousand gold for the amulet, you paid us that price, so as far as I'm concerned, our business is done. Unless you'll hire us again!" Ranma quipped, half-jokingly.
Lord Rothbart blinked, and then he snorted, and then he let out a surprisingly deep guffaw of genuine amusement. "An honest mercenary! Truly, Sigil is a wonder of the strange, the exotic, and the unnatural! Mmmyes, very good then! I may just have a use for you within the next tenday. But, for now, our business is concluded, and I intend to amuse myself with this evening's matches in the onsite-arena. It should be most amusingly bloody! Come, Reginald!"
Chortling to himself, the gnome turned and left, his cyclopean bodyguard stalking along behind him as they vanished into the crowd, leaving Ranma and Nabiki behind.
"...Well, that went surprisingly well," Ranma unthinkingly confessed.
"Congratulations, Ranma. You finally got somebody to listen to you for once," Nabiki playfully grinned as she spoke, robbing her words of some of their heat.
"But Ranma's so nice! Why wouldn't anyone listen to him?" Elizabeth asked Nabiki over the privacy of their mental link.
"Remind me to tell you a little about our past together tomorrow," Nabiki thought back to her, smirking to herself in amusement at some of the memories.
Unaware of the silent conversation being held behind him, Ranma made the sack of gold pieces vanish about his person with a martial artist's trick, then turned an ecstatic smile to Nabiki. "Score one for us! We're a step closer to gettin' you girls unstuck. Now let's go grab Ucchan and Shamchan and head home."
Delight at this victory in the face of a very long day buoyed Nabiki's spirits, and she couldn't resist indulging in one of her favorite games; teasing Ranma.
"What, you don't want to grab a celebratory drink first? Maybe check out the arena before we go? I've had some cheapskate dates before, Ranma, but you're something else," She wagged her finger at him in mock reproach.
"I-What?! But you don't drink! You hate - no, wait, you always enjoyed betting on the fights at school when you could, but... does that mean you actually like watching fights? No, wait, what am I saying?! This isn't a date! This is! We're! ...You're teasing me..."
Nabiki burst out laughing. "Took you long enough, Ranma! I swear, for someone who likes to lie and scheme as much as me, you're surprisingly bad at figuring out when you're being played."
Ranma grumpily looked away, only for shock to edge away his embarrassment when Nabik affectionately brushed the back of her hand over his cheek.
"But that sweet heart is one of your charms... and it doesn't hurt that you're adorable when you pout... Now come on, we better get the others before we go..."
Ranma could only stare at Nabiki as she turned and walked - no, sashayed away through the crowd, her hips swinging in a way that drew his eye almost magnetically to her butt (and also the serpentine tail playfully swishing in time, which was cute in its own right). Then he realized what he was thinking and he hurried after her, a blush on his cheeks.
Nabiki smiled triumphantly to herself as she heard Ranma stumble to catch up to her.
'Oh, yeah, I still got it...'
An onlooker to both the behavior and Nabiki's thoughts, Elizabeth blinked her non-existent eyes from her resting place inside of Nabiki's spirit.
'What a fascinating courtship ritual... It's just like in my romance novels! I wonder if the physical parts are like that too.. Oh, my, I'm blushing just thinking about it!' She giggled to herself, trying to keep from letting Nabiki hear it.
While that happened...
"Maybe this'll learn ya ta keep yer stinkin' paws to yerself! Ya don't get a lady by up'n grabbin' her rump, ya addle-pated sot!"
Ukyo's voice, Kansai accent thickened by sheer fury, was practically shouting to be heard over the howling of the orc whose fingers she was holding at just shy of dislocation. Once she was finished venting, she let him go and then punched him squarely in the face, dropping him to the floor in an unconscious heap as three or four tusks spilled from now-slack and blood-splattered lips.
A fensir bouncer loped towards them, with Ukyo defiantly staring at the large trolloid female. The interloper made no threatening gestures, however - indeed, she favored Ukyo with an appreciative smirk and a respectful nod before she grabbed the insensate orc by the ankles and began dragging him towards the door.
Ukyo turned her back, then blushed as she realized Shampoo had seen the whole thing. "W-Well? If you're going to tease me about my accent, Shampoo, then you might as well get it over with."
"Oh, yes, because Shampoo is eager to tease anybody about accents," the Chinese Amazon dryly drolled. She held an icy gaze on Ukyo long enough for her rival to hang her head in shame, before Shampoo smiled warmly and added, "But Ukyo do good work. Stupid mans try to grab Shampoo's butt all the time; Shampoo have her way of teaching them a lesson, but Ukyo's way look fun too."
Ukyo smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of her head. "Ah-heh, yeah, it's not something that happens to me often. Maybe I overreacted a little."
Shampoo made a wordless noise of interest before replying, "Boys at Furinkan High respect Ukyo that much? Shampoo impressed."
"I think it's more that none of them think I have a butt worth grabbing," Was the sour-tongued reply that a bitter Ukyo unthinkingly gave.
"Pfft. What, Ukyo expect taste from boys what think Akane Tendo is most beautiful girl in school? There nothing wrong with Ukyo's butt. Shampoo grab Ukyo's butt any day."
Ukyo promptly tripped on a particularly bumpy bit of carpet, and nearly wound up flat on her face. As it was, she bumped into one of the fensir waitresses, and only her martial artist's speed allowed her to catch the drinks the trollkin woman was carrying. By the time she had finished piling them all back on her serving tray and profusely apologizing, Shampoo had swept off to the bar, leaving Ukyo hurrying to catch up.
'What the hell was that?! No, no, don't read anything into it, Ukyo; it's just Shampoo being Shampoo. Crazy Chinese Amazons and all their weird customs and bizarre ways of thinking...'
And yet also...
'Ohh, Nabiki, wherever you are, I hope Ranma is keeping you safe. I certainly hope you're doing better than I am!' Kasumi Tendo morosely thought, flicking her two tails even as she staggered along the bartop with a pitcher of corn ale. It wasn't the biggest pitcher, but still, it was a heavy burden for someone currently trapped in the body of a fox!
'How did it all go so wrong? I didn't know what I'd done!' She lamented to herself.
She placed her burden before a scowling, blue-skinned, fat-faced goblinoid, trying her best to look cute and happy despite being so very, very tired and the grumbling of her stomach. She took her coin pouch between her little hand-paws and held it up, wagging it before the customer. The goblinoid grunted and sourly slipped two copper coins, one of them octagonal and one of them triangular, into the pouch.
Kasumi's ears flattened against her vulpine skull as a discordant note that only she could hear suddenly chimed from the pouch. Her hackles bristled as she grabbed the corn ale and dragged it away from the goblinoid that had tried to cheat her with fake coinage. She barked angrily at him in reproach, and when he failed to produce a full payment, let out a loud 'wow-wow-wow' call of alarm.
The goblinoid snarled and yanked a dagger from a sheathe under his worn, tattered overcoat, lifting it high into the air. "C'mere ya pikin'-!"
A fensir bouncer grabbed him by his greasy, slicked-back ponytail and smashed his face into the bar before he could finish his threat, never mind making the attack. Flinching, Kasumi reached into her pouch and dug out the goblinoid's counterfeit coins - which she could now see were merely crudely shaped chips of rusty iron. The fensir snatched them up in her free hand, a hateful snarl writ on her face as she began dragging the would-be cheapskate away.
Kasumi turned her back on the scene with a shudder, even as she grimly began to drag the pitcher of corn ale off to the side - one of the fensir would claim it for themselves, no doubt. As she worked, she felt another shadow fall over her, but she brushed it off... until she looked up and nearly fell over in shock.
[Shampoo?!] She cried - but, to anyone who didn't speak Fox, it was just a single sharp bark.
The Chinese Amazon looked at her and smiled hugely. "Aiyah! So cute! Hello, pretty thing - what you doing here? Hm?"
Before Kasumi could muster her thoughts, Shampoo's hand had shot out and she was gleefully scratching Kasumi behind the ears. Despite herself, the cursed woman leaned into the touch, sighing softly at the first bit of physical affection she'd enjoyed since... since...
'I can't remember when the last time was that somebody touched me...' Kasumi realized.
"Ukyo want drink? Shampoo feel like drink," Shampoo said aloud, and Kasumi realized that somebody else had joined them.
'That's not Ukyo - she's wearing a dress,' Was the first thought that ran through Kasumi's head as she took in the strange girl sitting next to Shampoo, clad in something that was practical, but still hugged her curves nicely, in a way that Ukyo would never be seen doing back in Nerima.
"Oh, come on, you don't think Ranma-honey and Nabiki will be that long, do you?" The stranger asked.
'That voice - she really is Ukyo! Wait, my sister?! Ranma, too! They're all here?! I found them! But-But they won't recognize me - they can't even understand me... no, wait! I have something!'
A surge of hope welled through Kasumi's heart, chasing the fatigue from her limbs. She yipped loudly, drawing Shampoo and Ukyo's attention to her as she pirouetted in front of them. Once she knew they were watching, she swished her tails over the bartop, whispering the incantation she had been taught and causing rainbow-hued kanji to scrawl themselves in the wake of her twin furry brushes.
[Shampoo? Ukyo? Is that you? I'm Kasumi Tendo!]
The two girls looked as if they'd been punched in the guts out of the blue, their eyes going wide as they stared at the little fox in disbelief.
"Is...Is trick!" Shampoo breathed dumbfoundedly.
"By who? Why? An' how?" Ukyo argued without taking her gaze off of Kasumi.
[Where is my sister? Is she okay? What happened to her?] Kasumi wrote, new glowing characters flashing into life as her tails twirled like paired calligraphy brushes.
Ukyo and Shampoo looked at each other helpless, their expressions making Kasumi's heart beat a terrified tattoo against her ribcage.
[Where is she?! What happened?!]
"Hey, Ucchan, Shamchan! Things went awesome! Wow, cool, what's with the fox?"
Kasumi looked up as Ranma came sweeping into view with his usual cocky swagger. But then her gaze fell on the woman standing next to him and her elongated jaw fell open.
[Nabiki?!] She scrawled in disbelief, for whilst those were unmistakably her little sister's features looking back at her, the rest of her was almost unmistakable. The outfit was, honestly, nothing that new, Nabiki had always had a taste for the sensual that Kasumi often found embarrassing. But Nabiki had never had red hair before... wait, what was she saying? Nabiki had never had horns before. Or scales. Or wings. Or a tail...
Her sister - or, at least, the creature wearing her sister's face - glanced at the glowing kanji characters and frowned in a way that was half-puzzled and half-irritated, before she demanded, "Why'd you teach it my name?"
[Little sister, it's me! It's Kasumi!]
Now the altered Nabiki looked genuinely mad, bearing very sharp-looking teeth as she hissed, "This isn't funny!"
[Do you remember when you were six years old? You snuck into the house before the party and ate the entire birthday cake all by yourself, so mother had to cancel the party and you had a stomach ache for three days afterwards?]
Nabiki went white as a sheet, eyes seeming to almost triple in size as she stared at the two-tailed silver vixen.
"You-You promised to never tell anybody about that!" She whined in horror, even as Ranma, Shampoo and Ukyo all fought to stifle their snickers of amusement. Then Nabiki shook her head and leaned in close, equal parts horror and wonder on her altered features. "It...It really is you, Kasumi! What happened to you?"
[It's a long story...] Kasumi wrote, hanging her head and whimpering at the memories.
She was about to elaborate when a voice suddenly cut through the air.
"Oi, addle-coves! If you ain't gonna order, then pike it - there's bubbers wanting!"
Kasumi whimpered and wrapped her tails around herself as Ivar Mudfingers thrust himself forward. The male fensir may have only been seven feet tall, but he still towered over the Japanese teens (and one Chinese girl). A ruggedly pretty face that wouldn't have looked out of place in a romance manga was screwed into an ugly sneer that revealed long, sharp fangs, red eyes burning like coals in the gloom. Before Kasumi could apologize and leap back to work, she found herself snatched up and hugged protectively to Nabiki's bosom.
"Screw you! This is my sister - I'm not leaving her here!" Nabiki snarled, and had the lighting been better, one might have seen wisps of spectral green smoke curling from the corners of her mouth.
The fensir didn't even bother speaking, just sticking two sausage-like fingers in the corner of his mouth and whistling sharp and shrill. At once, eight fensir women came hurtling through the crowd, shoving aside or trampling over any too slow or drink-addled to get out of their way.
'No! Nabiki, stop!' Kasumi cried, but only a vulpine bark escaped her lips.
But she had forgotten exactly who her sister had vanished with.
The first fensir came for Ranma, swinging a length of knotty hardwood as long as a man's arm. The instant before it would have struck him in the head, Ranma seemed to vanish into thin air, causing the greatclub to strike the floor with bone-jarring force and nearly rebound into its owner's face. As she fought to control her own weapon, Ranma reappeared in the air behind her, twisting in a spinkick that caught her in the back of the head and sent her flying over the bar into Ivar, knocking the smaller male back into a rack of bottled spirits amidst the sound of shattering glass and clay, his twin brother Olaf leaping for shelter behind the bar proper.
Another fensir attacked Shampoo, striking out in a serviceable if crude straight-armed punch. The Chinese Amazon caught it effortlessly in one hand, despite the fact the attacking fist was twice the size of her hand at least, and gave a wolfish smile at the stunned trollkin before her own fist flew out and cracked her right in the chin, launching her backwards.
Ukyo, meanwhile, took a far less flashy approach, ducking beneath the swinging two-handed fist of her assailant and sweeping her legs out from underneath her, toppling the larger fensir woman like a felled tree.
Two of the remaining five fensirs tried to gang up on Ranma. Emphasis on tried. They might as well have been trying to catch water in a sieve as the lightning-quick, eel-flexible martial artist wove around their groping hands, his own smaller fists hammering into joints and nerve clusters with the efficacy of a master carpenter driving home nails, and within the time it took to blink, the two giant-blooded bruisers were semi-conscious heaps of pain on the filthy floor.
Shampoo had snatched up the club that Ranma's first attacker had tried to use and clubbed her second assailant down with a single overhead blow, whilst Ukyo doubled hers over with a well-placed elbow to the gut before wrapping her arms around its neck and yanking it up and over in a throw that slammed it into the floor so hard it was left stunned.
Which left the last of the bouncers rushing screaming straight for Kasumi and Nabiki!
Kasumi yipped in terror, but Nabiki suddenly snapped up her hand and stabbed in the fensir's direction, spitting slithery serpentine syllables. A sickly green beam of light lanced from fingertips and struck the fensir, whose mossy-green skin suddenly paled to the faintest of mint green, her expression going from bloodthirsty to 'oh-god-I'm-gonna-throw-up' in the flick of Kasumi's tails as she crumpled to the floor, skidding to a halt right in front of the altered Tendo sister.
Kasumi stared dumbstruck at the moaning fensir, whilst Nabiki let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Elizabeth..."
'Who?' Kasumi wondered, and nearly leapt out of her fur in shock as a stranger's voice suddenly came from Nabiki's lips.
"Don't mention it!" Chirped a cheery, if somewhat shy, voice that was completely and utterly alien to anything that her beloved if feckless little sister had ever said.
As the cursed girl tried to get her heartbeat back to a normal rate... whatever 'normal' was for a two-tailed fox... Ranma smugly dusted off his hands, a cocky grin on his face. "Looks like Kasumi will be going home with us, eh?"
And that was when the floor exploded.
Enormous hands of animate stone suddenly tore through the cheap, filthy red carpeting, wrapping their fingers around Ranma, Ukyo, Shampoo, Nabiki and Kasumi and pinning them fast against stony palms, crushing them in their cruel grip.
Squeezed tighter into Nabiki's breasts than she ever would have cared to be, Kasumi would have slapped herself in the face if she had a hand - paw, whatever! - free to do so. 'How could I forget that Ivar and Olaf are earth elementalists?!'
"What's all this ruckus?!"
Kasumi whimpered, the sound ironically one of the most human she'd produced in a good while.
Stomping through the crowd, who desperately scrambled to get out of her way, came a towering fensir woman - twelve feet tall if she was an inch, clad in a silken dress that in no way hid the bulging muscles that rippled along her limbs, in the same way the intricate make-up adorning her face failed the conceal the terrible, scarred emptiness where her left eye had been, or the gold-plated tusks that jutted from the corners of her mouth.
"Troublemakers, Mother Bloodoak!" Ivar said.
"Tried to steal from us!" Olaf added, finally rising from his hiding place.
Mother Bloodoak stomped towards Ranma, who simply glared defiantly up at her from within his stony prison. She looked down at him from her single eye, a faintly amused smile on her face.
"Hmph. Runty thing, even for a human, aren't you?"
"Big enough to handle you, lady. Your little knitting circle here found that out the hard way," Ranma shot back without even the slightest hesitation.
"Yes. You took down three of my little sisters all on your lonesome, boy. And why? To steal my new pet?" Mother Bloodoak put her hands on her hips in a way that was strangely reminiscent of an actual mother scolding a naughty child.
"She ain't yer pet! She's Nabiki's big sister! ...I don't know why she's a two-tailed fox, but still, you can't treat a person like a pet!" Ranma
"You clearly haven't lived in Sigil very long, boy. I spent twelve thousand gold pieces on that creature, and I'm not letting some basher walk off with it, no matter how tough they think they are," She poked Ranma in the head with a sausage-sized finger for emphasis, who blanched at the figure she named.
Unseen by Ranma, Kasumi's lip curled into an uncharacteristic snarl. 'You liar! You bought me for only four hundred silver pieces!'
"I-I don't have that kind of money - but I still can't let you keep her!" Ranma quickly rallied, forcing himself from his downbeat confession to a defiant assertion.
Mother Bloodoak smiled. It was about as warm and welcoming as a hungry shark sidling up to a swimmer just as the sun was about to dip below the horizon.
"Well, fortunately for you, I'm a betting woman. The Bottle and Jug has a long tradition of hosting nightly fights for sport, and I currently have a stable of six fighters. Fight them all, one by one, and if you win, you can keep the fox. Lose, and you and your little friends there work for me. Deal?"
Kasumi barked loudly from where she had her head stuck in Nabiki's cleavage. 'No, Ranma! I'm not worth it!'
"Deal!" Ranma spat back without hesitation.
And so...
"Ladies and gentlemen! Do we have a treat for you tonight! A bold young basher has dared to challenge the Bottle & Jug gauntlet - for your entertainment, this sod will challenge our six reigning champions in a fight to the finish! No rests, no respites, just good, bloody, fun!"
Cheers shook the stone walls as the crowd bayed in delight at the prospect of a fight. The Bottle & Jug's vaunted arena was a pit - fifty feet across and twenty feet deep, with seven holes carved equidistant around its walls, each blocked by a simple door of crude wood connected to a pulley system at the top of the pit. An eighth pulley connected to an equally simple elevator, which had been retracted. The whole array was bored into the center of a huge, dark room that stank of blood, sweat and cheap beer. Rows of wooden chairs on risers encircled the pit, filled with customers who were roaring in discordant delight at Mother Bloodoak, who had her hands raised and was soaking in the attention.
Down in the pit, Ranma finished pulling on the cestus - a pair of reinforced leather gloves whose knuckles and the back of each finger were adorned with a morbidly impressive array of blunted spikes, face grim as he waited for his first opponent.
"I don't trust her," Ukyo drawled, staring daggers at the fensir matriarch as she continued to work the crowd. She absently petted Kasumi on the head, the cursed fox-girl radiating pure embarrassment from her current position in the crook of Ukyo's arm - Mother Bloodoak hadn't permitted Ranma's companions to use the seats.
"Shampoo no thrilled either, but Shampoo know Ranma can win. How tough can fighters be if they hang out in this dump?" Her Chinese counterpart asked, but she was staring down at Ranma just as intently as Ukyo. Though that might have had something to do with the fact that Ranma had just whipped off his shirt and flung it dramatically aside, which a certain part of the audience certainly seemed to appreciate.
"Um... Are you sure you should be setting up a betting ring on Ranma? Isn't he... special to you?" Elizabeth meekly asked in the privacy of Nabiki's head.
"He's technically my fiancé. Which is why I should be the one making money off of him, and not some random stranger!" Nabiki glibly assured her through their mental link, even as she continued taking in the odds - seemingly stacked against Ranma, of course.
"And now, what you've all been waiting for! Give it up for our first champion - Lugbrash Jawbreaker!"
The creaking of rope pulling taut caused Ranma to twist to face his first opponent. A huge male orc, bare from the waist up and covered in scars, came stomping boldly out of the shadows of his den, waving his own cestus-clad fists to the cheers of the crowd. He grinned viciously at Ranma... well, he couldn't really do anything else. Somebody had evidently broken his jaw in the past, with vicious jagged scars stretching from the corners of his mouth across his cheeks, twisting his lips into a permanent rictus grin.
He lumbered towards Ranma, striking a pose that emphasized how his biceps were almost as big as Ranma's head, drool seeping between yellow tusks as he loomed eagerly over his smaller, unimpressed opponent.
"Begin!" Cried Mother Bloodoak, who struck an iron bell for emphasis.
Before the echo had even died away, Ranma struck, his fist slamming into Lugbrash's jaw and propelling the orc backwards like a rocket, his feet skimming through the air mere inches above the floor before he impacted into one of the sections of stone wall in between the gates. The rocky material audibly broke as the runaway orc slammed into it, cracks spider-webbing out from where his back had hit the stone before he fell flat on his face, clearly out cold.
The room went silent, stunned by the swiftness and savagery of the defeat. Then it erupted into noise once more - booing, for the most part, whether from loyalty to the fallen orc or, more likely, either anger at lost wagers or disappointment with the lack of prolonged spectacle. But there are cheers amongst them, from those here purely for bloodlust.
Mother Bloodoak's golden-tusked smile never faltered. "Well! A basher indeed! Our little challenger has stones! ...Let's see if his next opponent rips them off! Urgzak!"
A second pulley creaks shakily into life, this time behind Ranma, who spun to face the new threat. A figure came surging from the darkness, and at first, Ranma thought it was another orc. But this one was even bigger that Lugbrash, perhaps as tall as a fensir. He was naked, save for a stinking loincloth of badly tanned leather, but his body bristled with thorn-like horny growths of bone that jutted from under his skin. A forest of irregular, twisting spikes stuck from his head, making it look like somebody had stabbed thorny branches into his skull and face, framing a mouth of boar-like tusks open in a thunderous roar.
Unfortunately for Urgzak, Ranma wasn't so easily intimidated. He ducked inside the ape-like two-fisted slam of his larger opponent and punched him squarely in the solar plexus... at least, that's what most of those watching saw. In reality, Ranma used a trick he had pioneered to bring down Ryoga, what felt almost like a lifetime ago. His hand blurred, punching dozens of times in the span of a second, each blow aimed with pinpoint accuracy at the same spot on the armored orc-kin's abdomen. Osteoderms shattered, their spiky extrusions pulverized as waves of force rippled through Urgzak's internal organs with bruising force.
The spiky orc-blooded brute howled in agony, a spatter of blood spurting from his throat as he instinctively doubled over to clutch at his gut... an action that put his jaw at the perfect level for Ranma to deliver a mighty uppercut that launched him clear off of his feet. Urgzak hit the sawdust floor of the pit with bone-jarring force, one particularly long horn snapping off from the impact, and then he laid still as a corpse in the dust. Although his chest continued to rise and fall, Urgzak clearly had no stomach for further battle.
Ranma exhaled slowly, then looked straight up at Mother Bloodoak. He raised his hand towards her, palm up, and then gently bent his fingers twice, in the traditional "bring it on" gesture.
Once more, cries of rage, distress, amusement and bloodlust rang out from the onlooking crowd, and Mother Bloodoak reigned supreme over the chorus - which, this time, seemed to be more positive than before.
"And he's on a roll! But will he fare so well against Black Jenkins?"
Ranma twisted again, arms raising into a defensive stance as the third of the seven gates was raised. His next foe didn't charge out like Urgzak did, instead loping out, confidence oozing from every motion. He could have passed for a hobgoblin - Ranma had seen enough of those on the streets of Sigil, and even in the Chattering Mimir. But hobgoblins tended to have more of a ruddy reddish-orange complexion, and Black Jenkins was of a very different hue. Most of him was a pale green-tinged ashen gray, but his veins stood out underneath his skin, so black as to be blatant. From the elbows down, his forearms were putrescent black, and his hands were larger than normal for a hobgoblin, with unnaturally long fingers tipped with dagger-like nails. He also towered over Ranma, much as Urgzak had done; whatever he might be, Jenkins clearly wasn't pure hobgoblin.
"Ranma, he's a thoul! He regenerates and his claws will paralyze!" Elizabeth suddenly screamed out through Nabiki's hijacked mouth, her words eliciting a wave of curses, profanities and mocking jeers from the audience at her giving the game away.
Ranma nodded absent thanks to the blight dragon currently riding around inside his sort-of kind-of fiancée's skin, then twisted like a reed in the wind as Black Jenkins suddenly lunged at him. Long, ebony fingers with razor-sharp talons whistled a mere hair's width past Ranma's face before the thoul stabbed for Ranma's eyes with his other hand, which likewise failed to connect.
"Not bad, buddy; you might have hit me! ...If I was asleep!" Ranma quipped, weaving around a flurry of attacks that might just about have matched up to how fast Tatewaki Kuno was when he'd first arrived at Furinkan High School.
"All it takes is one touch..." Hissed the thoul, thin lips peeled back into a grin so tight that green blood seeped from splits, blackened, cracked and rotting teeth filling Ranma's nostrils with a stink of decaying flesh and mold.
"Yeah, no," Ranma flatly declared. He ducked beneath a swipe that would have opened up his throat and lunged forward, seizing Black Jenkins around the middle. A flex of his legs and Ranma exploded into the air, carrying the thoul with him as he leapt the seventy feet straight up to where the arena's roof was. Jenkin's head slammed into the wood of the ceiling hard enough to leave a small crater, before Ranma twisted around and kicked off of the roof in a rocket-propelled suplex that ended when Black Jenkins slammed headfirst into the pit's floor with enough force that sawdust blasted up into a cloud that washed over the audience.
When the choking, blinding cloud of pulverized wood dust finally settled, Ranma was crouching over the insensate thoul, poking him in the cheek. He grimaced as Black Jenkins sighed painfully, filling his noses with the fetid reek of his breath, before standing up and punching at the sky with both fists.
This time, everybody cheered. Even if they had lost money, evidently, they had to respect Ranma's sense of style. Mother Bloodoak's smile became visibly fixed as she cried, "And that's three! The basher's gone halfway! Let's see how he does against Laughing Robin!"
Ranma watched as the latest door was pulled upwards and his next opponent strode out. Seven feet tall, with mint-green skin and features there were just a bit too muscular to be properly elfin, Ranma couldn't identify the race of this one. But he knew that their moniker was clearly given in mockery, looking at their glum features.
"Wow, you look more depressed than Ryoga," Ranma bluntly declared.
The green-skinned humanoid sniffed disdainfully. "As if you would be smiling in my shoes, bound by oath to fight drunks in this pit. Now let's get this over with so I can go back to my room..."
"Buddy, I just took down an orc, a thoul, and a... whatever the hell he is-"
"Ogrillon."
"Right, that, without breakin' a sweat. So what makes ya think you're going ta do any better?" Ranma cockily asked, jabbing a thumb at himself for emphasis.
"Because I'm a verbeeg," Replied Laughing Robin, who raised his hand and gently spread his fingers, causing a sudden blinding flash of light to fill the arena.
Ranma cried out in shock as the searing incandescence stabbed into his eyes, instinctively covering his face to try and reduce the pain. For all his skills, and the power they brought him, Ranma was still ultimately human - and that fact was hammered home quite pointedly when Laughing Robin's fist caught the stunned martial artist in the back of the head, flinging him across the arena to the floor until he struck the wall and fell at its base.
"And that makes me better then you," Laughing Robin continued as cheers, and a few boos, rang out from the ever-fickle audience above him. He turned his back on Ranma and began to lazily shuffle his way towards the door he had entered the arena from...
And that was when he felt something fasten onto his wrist, clamping down so tightly his bones creaked, dragging him to a halt faster than if he'd been petrified from the knees down. Beads of sweat broke out on his head as he slowly, reluctantly turned to see what was holding him.
"Ya hit just like Ryoga too. A'course, Ryoga would know it takes more than one love tap like that to put me down..." Ranma's tone was light, conversational. But there was ice in his eyes, and a predator's leer in his toothy grin.
To his credit, Laughing Robin tried to repeat his magical flashbang attack. But Ranma was faster. An Amaguriken-inspired volley of punches slammed into the verbeeg's face, with only Ranma's vice-like grip keeping his victim from flying off... until the third hundred or so blow, whereupon Ranma finally let go. Built-up kinetic momentum launched Laughing Robin across the arena, slamming brutally into the wall before flopping flat on his face in the sawdust and lying still.
Thunderous cheers split the air, Ranma's skills having won over his audience through sheer promise of bloodlust. Though... some of them seemed to have... different... motivations for cheering.
"Hey, human! You come out of this alive, and I'll show you a better way to wrestle giants! In my bedroom!" Whooped one of the fensir women, pumping her fist at the air.
"Hilda!" Scolded a second fensir, looking utterly mortified - especially since it was obvious they were identical twin sisters.
"Aw, pike it, Heidi - he's cute and strong! Besides, don't tell me you don't want a 'rematch'," Hilda chuckled lecherously, elbowing her blushing sister in the ribs so hard she nearly knocked her over.
Ukyo slowly blinked as what she was seeing and hearing finally sank in. "Does Ranchan have some kinda crazy chick magnet curse or somethin?'"
"Knowing Genma? Shampoo not be surprised... wait, who you calling crazy chick?!"
"Um...Nabiki? You're going to overstoke your fundamentum if you don't calm down? Please?"
Elizabeth's sheepish mental whisper snapped Nabiki to reality, causing her to realize her claws were painfully pricking her palms and she had a very unpleasant tightness in her guts that felt almost, but not quite, like a really bad case of gas. She took a deep breath and then exhaled, again failing to notice the plumes of sickly green smoke that wisped from between her lips when she did so, too focused on regaining her calm and alleviating the hot, burning, bloating sensation in her stomach. Though that didn't stop her from asking the obvious question...
"What's a fundamentum?"
"Oh... um... the organ my blackfire breath comes from. And now yours too... sorry..."
As the shy dragon gave her hostess a quick rundown on half-dragon anatomy, Mother Bloodoak was trying to continue the facade that she was in control of the situation. "And into the stewpot for Laughing Robin! Just two more to go! This young basher's bashed his share of heads in, but can he take Voghiln the Vast?!"
Once more, a gate creaked upwards, and Ranma stood defiant in the face of whoever - or whatever - may emerge from the depths. Only to then choke as the absolute stink of stale sweat, rotting grease, body odor, vomit and, most overwhelmingly of all, raw alcohol washed over him like a tidal wave of olfactory offensiveness.
"Gah! What the hell!?" Ranma moaned in dismay, clamping a hand over his nose in sheer disgust.
Lurching out of the gloom came a firbolg - like the fensir, one of the giantkin races native to the Feywild, Ranma had learned through his weeks in Sigil. Proud, strong, warlike but also known for their sense of honor and their detestation of oath-breakers, they were often associated with the Wild Hunt. This firbolg - Voghiln - looked like a young European man, with flame-orange hair and a vast bushy beard that dangled almost to his waist. As tall as Mother Bloodoak, he might have been handsome, once. But clearly he had fallen far from grace. A naturally thick, muscular frame was quickly slipping to fat, a huge beer-belly protruding from under a too-small shirt and hanging over a straining belt. His florid red cheeks and crimson yet blotchy nose told the tale of a man...being... long fallen into the clutches of drink. His clothes were filthy; they didn't look like he'd washed them or even changed out of them in a week. Spilled ale, sweat, scraps of food and smears of vomit matted hair, beard and clothes alike.
"Voghiln ze Mighty iz here! Let's all have a drink! Two drinks for ze womens! And three drinks for Voghiln!" Chortled the firbolg, who then belched thunderously.
Ranma stared at his opponent in dismay. "...This is the guy I'm supposed to fight? Ah, ferget it, lady! This poor jerk's clearly had it - I ain't the kind'a bully-boy to beat up somebody like this!"
Voghiln's face somehow went even redder as his features twisted themselves into a knot of fury as he roared, "Nobody iz talking about Voghiln like thats! Voghiln will rip off little mans head and give it to beautiful womans to piss in!"
He charged towards Ranma, who lashed out in a devastating jab, expecting to catch the belligerent drunkard cold as he had done his first foes. He was rather surprised when Voghiln suddenly drunkenly staggered, causing Ranma's fist to whistle harmlessly past the firbolg's face. Ranma was even more surprised when Voghiln lashed out with a haymaker that came so fast and furious that even Ranma was legitimately pushed to dodge it in time.
Voghiln lurched unsteadily towards Ranma, tottering back and forth, swaying like a reed buffeted by the craziest winds Ranma had seen whilst launching sloppy but savage punches in return. For the first time since the fights had started, Ranma found himself on the backfoot, retreating in the face of Voghiln's advance as he studied the drunken firbolg's movements.
'No way... True Drunken Fu! The one style pops said I was never to learn! C'mon, Ranma; you've fought Drunk Fu fighters in the past, this ain't no different!'
"Voghiln not feel so - bleeeurrrgh!"
Ranma squealed in disgust as the firbolg suddenly launched a stream of projectile vomit straight at him, leaping aside as if he'd been confronted by a fire-spitting dragonborn. Voghiln charged forward, moving with surprising speed for such a big, fat, drunk guy, sloshing through the puddle of his own puke without a moment's hesitation as he aimed a haymaker that would have knocked the head off of a grizzly bear squarely for Ranma's face.
"You're gross, but that ain't enough to beat me!" Ranma spat, dodging around the strike at the last second and delivering his own mighty (but far more precisely executed) punch right into Voghiln's solar plexus.
The firbolg staggered back, swaying exaggeratedly from side to side, his gut rippling like waves on the ocean, a big dumb grin on his face that radiated malice. "Pah! Little mans is having baby punches! Little man cannot hurts Voghiln! Voghiln will crush you, then fuck all the pretty womans!"
'...Great. It's like Ryoga 2.0. Except worse, because I think all that fat gives him extra absorption. Well, the Bakusai Tenketsu didn't save Ryoga, and being a big stupid fat drunk ain't gonna save this asshole!'
The audience began to shout and holler as they watched the two fighters circle each other. Ranma was on the defensive, unwilling to let the giantkin put his own monstrous strength to the test and, frankly, just not wanting to be bearhugged by a man whose beard was spattered with rotting vomit. Despite being so drunk that the fumes of souring alcohol could be smelled by those in the stands, Voghiln was still aggressively pressing his assault, dodging some strikes and absorbing others, swinging wildly and erratically in an attempt to crush Ranma with sheer brute force. Being both incredibly fast, incredibly agile, and just plain not drunk, Ranma was impossible for Voghiln to hit. Catcalls, curses, cheers and contempt in equal measures rained down on the two combatants as they fought, looking for that vital moment of weakness that would ultimately spell victory for one and defeat for the other.
"C'mon, human! Kick that stinkin' drunk's fat, useless ass! You beat him, and you can play with my tits, win or lose!"
"And you called me shameless, Heidi!"
Ranma couldn't help it, glancing up from his opponent at the twin voices. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as he saw the catcalling fensir yank up her shirt, the sight of a pair of boulder-like gray breasts, each bigger than his head, reaching deep into the teenage male's brain and trying to yank primordial levers before he desperately called on his training to shut the unwanted feelings off.
Fortunately for Ranma, the sight was distracting to more than just him. Voghiln leered lecherously up at the topless fensir, fumbling to grab his crotch in an obscene gesture before giving up, unable to find it under his swollen gut.
"Hey, little womans! Don't wastes those beauties on weak little humans! Voghiln will give you many more pleasures!" He brayed, laughing loudly before cutting himself off with a belch.
"Ew, gross, dad!" The fensir shouted, yanking her shirt back down, cheeks burning red.
"Voghiln has no children, stupid womans! Voghiln is young, handsome, and virile enough to sire an army of babies, but Voghiln has no children!" The firbolg roared back, shaking his fist belligerently at the fensir.
"So you're disgusting and demented, huh?" Ranma asked, but even as the words left his mouth, he was leaping into the air, delivering a jump kick version of his 'drill blow' technique squarely into the back of Voghiln's skull. Hundreds of kicks hammered the drunken firbolg, and even a giantkin as sozzled as he was had to feel that!
Impossibly, Voghiln still stood, swaying in a non-existent breeze. "V-Voghiln feel sleepy... Voghiln go nap now... drink later..."
He collapsed face-first into the sawdust, farted like a thunderclap, and then went still.
"H-He beat Voghiln!? I mean, our young basher triumphs again! We may have to start calling him a cutter, eh, ladies and gentlemen? But first, he's got just one last foe -"
A sudden almighty crashing sound snatched Ranma's attention forcibly back from Mother Bloodoak, the fensir bar-owner clearly unnerved by Ranma's string of victories, to the two doors yet to be opened. A second monstrous crash, and one of the doors visibly jolted from the impact.
Mother Bloodoak began shouting something, but Ranma's attention was fixed on the crude door as a third blow shattered it into flying logs, some of them as thick as his wrist. He batted aside those that would have struck him, watching as an enormous hand reached through the now-yawning space. A fensir woman of enormous stature - at least twice as tall as Mother BLoodoak, maybe more - painfully uncurled herself from within the relatively small, cramped space. Her shriveled skin clung to her bones, as if every possible scrap of flesh had been sucked out from beneath her, exaggerating the long, spidery spindles of her clawed fingers. Red eyes burned with madness at the depths of deep, sunken hollows over gaunt cheeks, dry lips parting as her mouth unhinged like a snake's, drooping down until her chin rested against her chest, unveiling a mouth like a pit of pulsing wet flesh ringed in hooked teeth.
The monstrous fensir screamed, an agonized howl of hate and fury and overwhelming hunger. The cacophony struck Ranma like a physical blow, and he staggered backwards, clutching his ears. Ironically, it saved him as the she-beast lunged forward - instead of grabbing the stunned martial artist, its long clawed fingers snatched up Voghiln from where he lay comatose in the strawdust.
"No!" Ranma cried out instinctively, but it was useless - before his horrified eyes, the monstrous fensir stuffed the drunken, defeated firbolg into her mouth and bit down. The only possible consolation was that Voghiln was probably too comatose to even register as his head and roughly a third of his body was sheared away in one sickening, crunching bite. Blood spurted as the monster messily devoured her victim, cramming meat, organs, bone and clothing alike down her gullet with ravenous desperation. Within a heart's beat, all that remained was the blood dripping down the fensir's chin and seeping into the sawdust.
Then the beast surged into motion again, half-lunging and half-dragging herself from her cave, scraping her long, bony knees through the sawdust that lined the pit's floor. Drool and gore ran like rivers down her bony chin, long, hooked nose snuffling wetly as she fixed her mad gaze on Ranma.
'I can run... but could she climb out after me? And besides, if I go - they're defenseless,' Ranma's mind raced, eyes instinctively flickering to the bodies of his former opponents, still out cold and vulnerable.
'No- I ain't gonna let her just eat 'em! I can't - I won't!'
"Ya want desert, ya overgrown freak?! Then try takin' a bite outta me!" Ranma roared defiantly, before leaping over a monstrous hand that snatched at him faster than an untrained eye could follow. In an act that simultaneously embraced and defied gravity, he spun around in midair, arresting his ascent before hurtling downwards in a double-footed stomp that pinned the hand to the ground with a crunch of breaking bones.
The fensir monster howled in agony and violently yanked its hand back, a move that allowed Ranma to ride the momentum and turn it into a flying punch straight into the creature's temple. Another roar of pain and fury split the air as she blindly clawed at her face, trying to swat Ranma. Tiny by comparison, Ranma vaulted over her skull at the last moment, causing her to instead viciously rake her own talons over her face. The shriek of agony was deafening, the creature slapping its hands to its maimed visage, blood and the jellied remnants of its own eyeball clinging to its fingers.
'Got one shot here - gotta take it! All or nothing!'
Planting his hands on the giant she-ghoul's shoulder for stability, Ranma twirled his body at impossible speed, using the momentum to transform his whole body into a whipping strike that delivered all of his inhuman strength, concentrated into the tips of his iron-reinforced boots, squarely into a single tiny spot at the base of the mutant fensir's skull.
With an awful CRACK, the giantkin's neck broke, a vertebrae simultaneously dislodging and shattering into razor-edged fragments, cutting her spinal cord and killing her near-instantly. Those awful eyes rolled up and her jaw fell open as she collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Ranma rode the toppling giantess, springing off at the last moment as she smashed into the ground, kicking up a cloud of sawdust.
Ranma stood over the fallen, lungs panting with the exertion of what he'd done as he wiped at his brow with one forearm.
'That was too close. One wrong move, and I'd'a been dead! Huh? Whazzat?!'
It was then he finally realized that the pit was nearly shaking from the cheers, laughter and applause from the audience. Between his laser-focus on the fight and, let's be realistic, a touch of temporary deafness, he literally hadn't noticed.
"Amazing! He's done it, ladies and gentlemen! Give him a big hand! And then the next round of drinks are on the house, whilst our new champion gets what's coming to him..." Thundered Mother Bloodoak, who was grinning so widely it looked like her face might crack under the strain.
Ranma sighed in relief, watching as the elevator finally began its slow, creaking descent to the pit floor. Eager to be out of there, he skipped it and instead leapt clean up to the floor of the arena, the feat of strength earning a smattering of applause that Ranma couldn't really focus on. Not when Shampoo and Ukyo latched onto him like a pair of starving snakes grabbing the same blind mouse.
"Are you insane!? You should have run!" Ukyo sobbed, burying her face in Ranma's chest.
"What you thinking!? What if you die?!" Shampoo wailed as she likewise buried her face in Ranma's back, not to be outdone.
"Aw, c'mon, girls! Not in public!" Ranma protested, blushing in mortification at their overreactions.
Perhaps it was fortunate, then, that Mother Bloodoak's considerable shadow fell over the trio, causing them to look up at her (and Kasumi to slip inside Ranma's shirt to hide, which was rather ticklish).
"Well, color me surprised. Didn't think you'd do it. The piking furball's yours," The fensir matriarch declared.
"We coulda skipped this whole song and dance, y'know," Ranma dryly pointed out, instinctively petting Kasumi when she tremulously peeked out of his sleeve.
"But then you wouldn't've raked in so much spare jink, would you?" Mother Bloodoak shot back, gesturing to where Nabiki was busily collecting her take from the wagers.
"And talking of jink... how'd you like to earn some more?" She asked, giving them a sly, knowing smile as she did.
"Are you mad?" Hissed Ukyo.
"No chance!" Spat Shampoo.
"...Alright, we'll hear you out," Ranma grimly declared.
"What?!" Bellowed the two girls, causing Ranma to jerk away with a pained grimace.
"Ow! My ears!"
"Green ogre-thing scramble you brains?!"
"Give us one good reason to hear her out!"
"I'll give ya three! Kasumi, Nabiki, an' getting home. That good enough for ya?" Ranma dryly asked in response, watching as Ukyo and Shampoo's eyes went wide in realization before they too adopted resigned expressions.
Satisfied that they saw his point, Ranma turned back to Mother Bloodoak. "Once Nabiki's done, then we'll talk, okay?"
"Oh, believe me, I wouldn't dream of not having all of you involved," she assured him, with what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile.
It took nearly ten minutes for Nabiki to finish up, by which time the audience had filed out of the arena and back to the Bottle & Jug proper to resume their carousing. The half-dragon bookie strutted confidently over to join their little group, marching right up to Ranma and coyly taking his arm in hers, pressing herself against him in a manner that would have been seductive if Ranma didn't know Nabiki better (but frankly, still was, on some level).
"You beautiful, crazy, savage bastard - I could kiss you! Do you know how much money I just made? I almost doubled what we got from Lord Rothbart!" She laughed unabashedly, nuzzling Ranma's cheek in the moment.
"Then I guess you want to hear what she has to say about getting even more, huh?" Ranma asked, the question rhetorical and, to his credit, only slightly stammering in the face of Nabiki's physical affection.
Nabiki's eyes lit up with an all-too-familiar light as she turned a hungry look on Mother Bloodoak, pushing Ranma away without a second thought to advance towards her. "Oh...? And what kind of payout are we talking, here...?"
"Follow me; this is not something suited for prying ears," The fensir replied, turning and loping away without even waiting for them to answer..
The quartet (well, technically a sextet) exchanged looks, but they quietly followed Mother Bloodoak. She led them across the arena to a small, unobtrusive door on the far side, just big enough for a fensir to fit through. She unlocked it with a key she pulled from around her neck, swinging the door open before stepping aside and gesturing for them to step inside, which Ranma obligingly did so.
"What is this place?" Ranma asked as he stepped through the door and beheld the interior; empty, save for a cluster of five arches wrought from red granite, each of which was about six feet tall at its peak.
"Just a little architectural oddity - it's been here since before the Bottle & Jug was built, could be over a thousand years old," Mother Bloodoak answered as she stepped into the room after them and shut the door.
"Huh. Well, no surprise, Sigil likes to rebuild old stuff into new stuff... anyway, what's this about us making more money?" Ranma asked her.
"It better not be about fighting another giant monster!" Ukyo warned her, stepping protectively in front of Ranma.
"What even was that thing anyway?" Nabiki asked, voicing the question that all of them had been considering.
"She was my sister," came the grim response from the fensir. "Poor Brynhild... Every fensir knows she may become a rakka when she first gives birth, but Brynhild wanted to be a mom so badly. She rolled the dice, and came up snake eyes. So we kept her here, locked up in the pit, trying to help her live as long as she possibly could... and then you came along."
Ranma hung his head in shame, shoulders slumping as he guiltily replied, "I didn't know..."
"You couldn't. She would have died by year's end anyway - it's amazing she lasted this long," Mother Bloodoak said, and her tone was almost conversational, save for the impression of underlying chill. "But she was still blood, and blood demands blood..."
As one, Ranma and the girls snapped back to reality, but it was too late! The fensir simultaneously spat a word they couldn't make out and gestured in their direction, a jeweled ring on her finger unleashing an invisible tidal wave of force that slammed into them like a runaway truck. All five teens were swept up like leaves in the wind, plucked from their feet and hurled backwards across the chamber... where they disappeared through a glowing, shimmering veil of energy now dancing inside one of the five arches...
Chapter End & Closing Notes
Poor Ranma... he just can't catch a break, can he? I'll be honest, I debated on whether or not to go straight from one adventure to the next or to give them some down time, but I figured you guys were probably itching for some more action. In fact, you have a chance to dictate the next chapter!
See, in 2e canon, the Bottle & Jug's portal chamber links to five undisclosed locations; one each on the Prime Material Plane (where all the "normal" D&D worlds coexist), the Elemental Plane of Earth, the Elemental Plane of Air, the Elemental Plane of Fire and the Elemental Plane of Water. The crooked owner of the B&J would send anyone who beat his in-house boxing champion through a random portal rather than pay them. Since "Love Opens Many Doors" is set centuries after the events of the Faction War, I've decided to move the five portals to five new locations, and you guys can vote through your reviews to choose which one they end up on. And if I get no votes, well, I'll randomly roll for it.
1: Giantshire. A sprawling farm estate belonging to a clan of shire giants. Ranma and the girls will have to either sneak into the manor and find a portal without getting eaten, or lead a revolution amongst the humanoid livestock.
2: Vermithrax. A savage world of sword and sorcery, where nations of scalykind battle empires of bugfolk. Ranma and the girls will need to win a prize in the arenas of a race of hedonistic cannibal crocoids to return home.
3: Kaldheim. A rugged realm of Ice Age plains and rugged mountains, where Stone Age tribes of beastfolk climb the bloody road to civilization. Ranma and the girls will need to find a portal at the heart of a forbidden holy cave.
4: Valravnheim: Fight for glory and gold in this Viking-esque world of reavers and runesmiths. Ranma and the girls will need to win the trust of a clan of rattatoskr to be permitted to climb their World Sapling, and thus travel back to Sigil.
5: Murkroot Trade Moot. A great goblin merchant-city in the Murkendraw Swamp in the Feywild. Ranma and the girls will have to beg, barter or steal to find a portal back to Sigil, but may find useful things in this great black market.
As always, reviews help motivate me, and there's a TVtropes page for this fic that's just begging for some love!