This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, Matt Bozon, Erin Bell Bozon and the creative teams of Kity Films and WayForward.
( ｡◕ シーンブレイク ◕｡)
Chapter 6
Lively Monday Morning is Just Plain Wrong
The sky was growing lighter.
Early dawn silence was pierced by annoying trill of an alarm clock. Then a dull clatter of falling alarm clock. Then there was silence again.
Ranma who slept lightly had already finished dressing when a scream of terror sounded from a nearby room. The pig-tailed martial artist was going to fling open the door with the duck plate with Latin "AKANE" on it when he heard hushed voices. Discering half-Genie's "..eamt again that burning sky was falling towards me.." he trudged downstairs to the exit. Whatever suspicious stuff was happening with their guest, with recurring nightmares and selective amnesia, now was not the time to barge in. He just hoped her "friends", rivals and whoever else she gathered along the road of life would not start popping out of woodworks.
A couple minutes later two yawning girls skipped down the stairs. Akane was dressed for morning jog, in short shorts and sleeveless sports shirt. Shantae wore the same ensemble of Ranma's black pants and black sleeveless sports shirt with white "harpy" on the chest. Well, at least someone succeeded in convincing her to wear bras.
"Morning!" Akane greeted him. "What are you doing here? Decided to tail us, m?"
"First, I'm curious too," the pig-tailed martial artist started counting. "Second, if a rumble starts, with you there and me not, the old man Tendou would eat me alive. There is a beast wakening in him!"
"You mean, a protective father?" Akane quiped.
"Same thing." Ranma waved dismissively making Akane snort with suppressed laugh.
"So this is where you keep your shoes!" Shantae realized seeing Akane don running shoes in the rectangle of lowered floor at the doors. She put her pointy shoes on as well, dropping them out of her subspace pocket. Red shoes were clashing with her black clothing.
"How do you think, would we make it back for breakfast?" Ranma inquired, donning his kung-fu slippers as well.
"Mmm... Probably! There'is not much to do, figure things out then snap my fingers!"
"Heh, so simple to an outside observer." He smirked.
"Would you help me again with the log?" Shantae asked with some degree of hope.
"No, we go to school right after the breakfast. You'll stay here with Kasumi and the fathers."
"She comes with us!" Akane surprised him. "Yesterday we figured a way for Shantae to get into the school with us, using my spare uniform as disguise!"
"I'm so curious!" the half-Genie girl added.
"Have she warned you about the principal?" Ranma asked.
"The principal?" Shantae echoed.
"Oops." Akane winced shrinking in realization. "Oops!"
"I bet he'd start having another episdode," Ranma continued, "as soon as you show up."
"Episode?" the pointy eared girl asked warily.
"He's a harmless psycho usually," Ranma explained, "but one of his quirks is trying to give all students the same standard haircut. A buzz-cut for boys while the girls—"
"Better a buzz-cut than such a horror!" Akane injected.
"Eep." Shantae brought her ponytail over her shoulder to hug it protectively with both arms.
"His main weapon are hand shears," Ranma continued, mimicing the moves with his hands. "He dual-wields them with such swiftness that one lapse in attention and you're done for. For distraction he throws exploding pineapples or sicks something wild from the jungle, like trained attack lobsters."
"It's like hoplobster magic, right?" Shantae asked. "Well, when a magical kinda-lobster is flying up from a hole in the ground time and again, and when they forget to remove it, it keeps flying long after the castle itself had crumbled into ruin, right?"
"Uh, no, we meant living ones," Akane corrected her.
"That's not the point!" Ranma exclaimed. "What's important, he'll get overexcited as soon as he sees Shantae! He will jump her to cut her hair! Unexpectedly, without any warning!"
"Eep." Shantae hugged her ponytail tighter.
"That was a.. bad idea," Akane said in meek, self-recriminating voice as she realized the depth of pit trap she almost led her best friend to, due to pure inattention.
"Hmm..." Shantae drawled. "Or a very good one, as hard awareness training. I... decided long ago that if... something happens to my hair, that won't stop me. If devious enemies shave me, or I just get unlucky to catch an incendiary pot with my head... I won't even stop. I'll take the basaluk to continue fighting as a human!" She pulled a big spiky ball on a chain from her subspace pocket and dangled it from side to side with determined look.
"You... So far...?" Akane gasped. "I can't..." She fell into shocked silence.
"What sort of enemy was there," Ranma thought, "that made her want to be stronger so desperately? It's obvious that this is not her. She is... Airy, flighty and cheerful. But training that hard, like breaking a wall with your head, it more suits Ryouga... Those nightmares too... Pity I wasn't there to... talk with whoever he was."
Akane, judging by her expression, was thinking along similar lines.
"Come on, why are you so gloomy all of a sudden?" Shantae tried cheering them up as she put the iron ball away. "Let's go already."
Nabiki descended the stairs, also dressed for morning jog. Uncharacteristically awake as she was swallowing something from a mug, her face stony. Unsurprising: yesterdays cold coffee is quite disgusting stuff.
"I hope," Akane bristled, "you aren't going to tag along as well?"
"Why, can't I just jog together with my Little Sis?" the mercenary girl said in mock surprise.
"We won't wait for you!" the youngest sister replied combatively but then P-chan popped from somewhere and she mellowed immediately. The piglet was taken with them.
Four people jogged out of the house. Beyond the first turn they stumbled into Ryouga who should, in theory, have been still sleeping in the storage closet.
Akane said "I'll show you the way!" as she dashed full speed ahead.
The guys shrugged and followed her.
Nabiki pushed herself, going all out to keep even with her sister. Ranma suspected the mercenary girl sometimes subconsciously used Ki-reinforcement. Spirit of curiosity in this particular case. Not to mention she simply liked running.
Although, the not particularly handy piglet probably served as a good handicap.
Against all expectations it was Shantae who began falling behind. Her running speed proved quite unremarkable for someone so good at jumping. A quick belly dance corrected that, the monkey caught up with Akane quickly. Despite her short paws she was running faster than the human form. Probably because her gait was a cross between small leaps and springy gallop.
"Hey, you got a prehensile tail!" Ranma noticed for the first time.
The monkey chirped inquiringly looking at him. She held her tail curled up and forward in a half-spiral. The last third of it was pink, hairless.
"Well, its end is bald - it's for grabbing better, right?"
She chirped something cheerfully affirmative as she flexed her tail in some abstract zigzag during her next leap.
"And it is so long," Akane added, so curious she forgot her intention of outrunning her sister.
"It's a... New... World... primate..." Nabiki caught up with them, huffing.
The monkey let out a puzzled squeak looking up at her.
"The species, similar to... your monkey form... live only on the other... side of the planet," Nabiki explained.
"Yeah, our monkeys got short tails," Ranma agreed. "Wait, you mastered grabbing with your hair so fast because you're used to grabbing with your tail...? Why haven't you invented that technique by yourself?"
The monkey replied with a short, frustrated "Ki!". It seems she was asking that question herself and not finding an answer.
They then crossed paths with a yawning Ukyou carrying a box of cabbage. She immediately ran after them on general principle despite the box being unwieldy and well over thirty kilograms.
Akane snorted increasing her pace.
Ranma was expecting Mousse to pop out any moment to spark a brawl as merciless as it would be meaningless. But they reached their destination without further interruptions.
Shantae transformed back into herself piquing Ukyou's curiosity somewhat fierce.
"As one should have expected," Ku Lung said flatly as she observed the crowd of people who invited themselves along the half-Genie. "Well, you can come in. Just sit quietly and don't interfere."
Mu Su was still nowhere in sight, either sleeping or away on some errand to safeguard the event from his blind stupidity. Xian Pu slid the doors shut and locked them after the company entered. She was already in her waitress uniform: a colorful knee-length dress with a white apron.
"So, everyone sat down?" Ku Lung began commanding. "Now stand up and sit further away... No, even further, at the walls. And try not to look at the cursed item too intently. Watch it from a corner of your eye if you can. It shouldn't affect you at this distance but the vile thing is attractive. Believe me, there are magical items best treated like a live cobra."
"That's rich from someone who played with a lifelong pill of love at the first sight!" Ranma couldn't help quiping.
"Huh?" the old lady said in mock surprise. "You meant the week-long one...?" She cackled archly. "Lifelong, ka-ka-ka... You should have seen your faces!"
"What pill?" Shantae asked in puzzlement.
"It's youkai-baba's way of having fun," Ranma explained. "She lets her granddaughter see some sorcerous trinket or other, waits for the girl or Mousse to snatch it then watches us shoveling at the pile of resulting problems. Like a free circus show, yeah."
"Ka-ka-ka. But that way is more fun than making boring speeches about the dangers of magical items, no?"
"Great-grandmother teach us that way?" Xian Pu only now realized.
"Why teach?" the old lady corrected her archly. "When you are more than capable of burning yourselves? Nothing beats hands-on experience!"
Waiting until the youngsters stopped grumbling, Ku Lung hopped to the center of the hall to address Shantae: "Are you ready?"
"Yes!" the girl replied decisively.
"Are you sure you don't want payment?"
"Yes." Shantae paused, searching for the right words. "I do not know why, but taking payment for fulfilling a wish... It feels wrong. I make a living as Guardian Genie, but this is... different."
"I understand," Ku Lung reassured her. "It's always better to trust such feelings."
"Right!" Shantae's confidence returned. "Pull it out, let's see what sort of evil it is."
Ku Lung pulled an elaborate pendant on a fancy chain from her sleeve. Shantae gasped stumbling away as from a strong gust of wind. The other six young people shuddered.
The pendant was entrancing. It was glinting and glittering and attracting your eyes like a magnet dipped in honey. The central big jewel was twinkling promisingly — and yet, after averting your eyes you could not tell what sort of jewel it was or even what color.
Forewarned, they met this visual Siren's song with just shudders, averting their eyes forcibly.
"I... ungh... Put it away for now..." Shantae was feeling unwell.
Ku Lung put the ensorcering thing away and everyone sighed with relief.
"Such concentated evil!" Shantae said recovering from shock. "Even all twenty parts of dark magic were just a slight stench compared to this."
"But can you make it cease to be?" Ku Lung asked.
"Mmm... Yes, I can!" the half-Genie girl said confidently. "There are only three things required: five minutes for me to concentrate, an empty space two fathoms wide and that someone wishes from the depth of their heart for the magic of this thing to... mmm... unravel reverting to the neutral natural form...?" She frowned looking like she was listening to something. "Yes, for it to scatter becoming a part of the world. It is kind of... wrong?" The girl fell silent failing to find words to describe the indescribable magical sense in limited human tongue.
"Unnaturally twisted?" Ku Lung sugested.
"Yeah, right!" Shantae snapped her fingers. "It feels like a part of nature twisted into a wrong, unnatural knot that shouldn't be! If you wish head-on for the thing, or the knot itself, to disappear, it would surely return someday. But if you wish for it to unravel..."
"Have one question," Xian Pu piped in. "How much are two fathoms?"
"Well..." Shantae was thrown off the loop with a sudden unfamiliar task. "It's from here," she poined with her hand, then walked several steps maneuvering between the tables, "to about here."
"Some four meters," Ranma concluded. "We will move the tables, all right?"
"Go on," Ku Lung approved.
They quickly moved the tables aside freeing a circle of floor.
Shantae walked out to its center, nodded in acceptance then sat down cross-legged.
"I'm ready!" she proclaimed in heavily accented English, for some reason. "Umm, and if you can hang that thing on something up, right about here..." She pointed with her hand in front of her face.
"All right." Ku Lung jumped down from her stick, walked forward then pulled the cursed piece of jewelry out to hold it on the end of her stick stretched towards Shantae.
The pointy eared girl shuddered. Then she closed her eyes, concentrating.
The vile magical thing was still attracting. But it was swaying now, glittering in an entrancing rhythm like a snake hypnotizing its prey.
Nabiki's pupils shrank into dots.
Akane was glaring at the thing with stubborn anger.
Xian Pu looked like she was having some terrifying epiphany.
"I want to puke," Ukyou whispered shielding herself with her giant spatula.
"Be... free... of the pig?" Ryouga succumbed, his arm reaching forward.
And then Shantae snapped her fingers, loud as thunder.
A wave of white light washed the haze of compulsion away. The pendant grew dull in an instant, losing its treacherous shine, turning into a cheap piece of crudely fashioned jewelry. The chain tore with a quiet plink, the rounded trinket clanked on the floor, falling apart, losing fake glass jewels with lacquer flaking off them.
"Finally. It is d—" Ku Lung began with relief but she then saw Shantae still going strong. "Stop! Stop! Enough, girl, you already did—"
"I can't... leave it like this!" the half-Genie grit out without opening her eyes. "I know! I feel it! Aha, I see her!" She tensed, beginning to glow. Everyone present possessing even modicum of self-preservation dove for cover. Ku Lung rushed forward to stop her. "HAAAAAAAAAAH‼！" the walls trembled from Shantae's shout, her aura blazing like a snow-white bonfire. "Come ooooon...!" Ghostly contours of a female figure appeared in the air. Waves of white light were rolling off the cross-legged girl shaking the cafe and throwing Ku Lung away time and again. The white glow flowed around everyone present surrounding them with brilliant outlines easily visible through tables and, in Ukyou's case, through her giant spatula.
Then Genie's eyes flung open, shining pure white, and the world was consumed by light.
( ｡◕ シーンブレイク ◕｡)
"Gung-ho youngsters at their finest," Ku Lung concluded as she lifted herself off the floor to take a look around. There was no trace of her great-granddaughter, nor her husband — ha! — teasing whom with the title of "Son-in-Law" is so much fun. In fact none of their gang was around. On contrary, there was a lavender-haired amazon in traditional clothing lying out cold in the center of the empty hall: all tables were piled along the walls.
"That girl got muuuch more magical might than common sense..." The old lady jumped up to her stick. "I wonder where they got swept away to...? But that's their adventure, it is for them to deal with it. I will have my hands full with this... grabber of things she shouldn't. Who could have thought? Such a troublesome turn from such pure heart..."
The old lady hopped up to the prone girl to poke at her with her stick. While staying in the air.
"Hey, Shao Pu, wake up!"
"Huh? What? Where?" she jumped up. "Elder ummm...?"
"So here `ummm`," Ku Lung grumbled good-naturedly as she dangled the battered pendant on broken chain in front of her. "Do you recognize this trinket? We snuck in there to get it despite Lao Hun having strictly forbidden us."
"We?" the lavender-haired girl asked uncomprehendingly. "Huh?"
"Well, it took me a while to find a way of freeing you. Genies are hard to come by, you know, even such young and green ones with overabundance of heroic urges."
"Genies...?" The girl could pose as a model for fish out of water. "A while...?"
"Have the Elder warned us that this thing can steal one's soul...? She have. Did we listen to her? Nooo, we were the smartest warriors around, we had already grew tits...! And I... " She sniffed wiping a tear with a napkin. "And I brought flowers to your mound for almost three hundred years after."
"What..." a dawning realization reflected on the girl's features.
"I don't know how she managed this, Genies have no power over life or death. Probably found a loophole in you not being technically dead as your soul was locked in this vile thing..." Ku Lung threw the pendant at the wall making it shatter. "I only asked her to free your soul so that it could continue the cycle of reincarnation. But she returned you alive. Stupid, boundless power of the youth..."
"My soul...?" the girl was beginning to get it. "Oh... Oh!"
"Right, you always were quick thinker, Sis. If only your danger sense was half as good!"
"K.. Ku Lung...?" the girl gasped.
"What Khu Long?" the old woman cackled good-naturedly. "It's three hundred seventeen years as I am called Khu Long. Better help me restore my cafe to order. We have to open soon but the cute waitress is gone to parts unknown... Ah! How is your Japanese? I can't remember in my old age."
"Huh...?"
"Why are you standing there with eyes like saucers. Yes, this is my cafe... Eatery, in other words, in a quiet corner of the Japanese capital. And no, this isn't Kyoto, it's a new one they built just a century ago."
"What...?"
"What am I doing here? Airing my great-granddaughter. I mean, I was airing her until she got spirited away. I wonder when will she return? Or would she return at all...? Well, enough sitting around. We can talk while we work."