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 20
Darkness Galore
The white glowing eyes of Nega-Shantae were instilling dread, her entire figure oozing subtle impression of roiling darkness. Her crimson hair, flluttering in the sea breeze, was bright like flame under the rays of the setting sun. The balls of flame in her hands were boiling, spitting protuberances. Any sane person knew you had to back away slowly, carefully, without making sharp motions.
"Remember me?" The youngest Tendou wasn't any person. Sane, it seems, too. "Akane? Your friend?"
She began slowly, step by step, approaching the girl you'd want to run away from.
"Dumb tomboy!" girl Ranma hissed, beside herself from fear for the other girl. "Step away from the evil sorceress! She'll incinerate you!"
"She is not evil!" Akane retorted hotly as she kept inching closer to Nega Shantae. "Just drunk and confused...! Shantae, fight it! This is not your true self!"
"Sui.. what?" Nega Shantae frowned shaking her head. Her voice was the same, just shifted to a throaty growl. "Nonsense! I simply unshackled myself, at the long last! This form, not that other one, is the real me!" She raised the balls of flame boiling furiously above her head. "Behold my might, you worms!"
"But we are still friends, right?" Akane kept asking for it making the redhead sweat cold sweat.
"Me too?" Bolo injected.
"You are my friend!" Sky added nervously.
"And a friend of the tribe," Xian Pu reminded her.
"Friends..." Nega Shantae frowned extinguishing the balls of flame — making Ranma release her baited breath — to stand with her hands on her hips. "What friends are for, now, when I got such might!"
"Friends help each other to become stronger!" Akane disagreed. "And support each other in times of hardship!"
"You told me myself," Bolo added, "thank you for being my sparring partner and stuff."
"Friend also come to your help," Xian Pu reminded her. "Like you helped that trapped amazon, remember?"
"Bah!" Nega Shantae waved dismissively. "Nonsense for snotty brats! It's about time for me to grow up! But enough! I am above such childish idealism now! I have enough power to beat all baddies with one hand tied behind my back without breaking a sweat!" She made a wobbly sweeping gesture with her hand as if she really was drunk. "Friends-shmiends... Friends of the tribe... Maggots, that's who you are!" She glared at Xian Pu with those glowing white eyes. "That delayed challenge stuff... Don't even try, I'll cream ya! Yea!" She raised a finger in a condescendingly lecturing gesture, a random spark flying off its tip.
"The skill to apply the power achieving greatest effect is more important than raw power," the amazon deflected calmly. "The power you already had proved more than enough. Remember how many opponents you defeated. But as you are now, you'd burn out in a minute. It's very apparent. You can overpower one brutally powerful opponent. One. But after that?"
"A super form that exchanges endurance for might, you say?" Nega Shantae grasped the point. She winced rubbing at her temples.
"With treacherous side effects!" Nabiki injected. "You aren't feeling exhaustion, but it's there!"
"Side effects?" Nega Shantae growled. "I'll show you—" She tried lighting a ball of flame in her hand. It flickered out. "The demon's fake!" She grew angry at no one in particular. "Go back... I should go back... But I—"
"Will collapse, with a total exhaustion and won't be able to beat Risky," Ranma butted in with subtlety of a seductress.
The crimson-haired nega-Genie glared at the other girl fiercely... Closed her eyes... The feeling of roiling darkness coming from her began subsiding, then her hair changed color, change washing from the roots to the ponytail end, darkening to usual purple. Breath in, breath out. Shantae opened her eyes — the usual blue again — and nearly collapsed, her legs wobbly.
"Ah! I feel like I have awakened from a bad dream!" She gulped from a purple vial thirstily, recovering in moments. She met Xian Pu's eyes and started, blushing deeply to the tips of her ears. "I... I...! I said things so vile to you... To all of you..." She hid her face in her palms.
"Forget it," the amazon said categorically. "The inner folly is one of the most dangerous enemies a warrior can face. Many men never manage to defeat it til the end of their lives, submitting themselves to its wiles."
"Consider yourself having been poisoned with dark magic," Bolo nodded wisely. "And raving."
"Exactly!" Akane supported him. "You were simply drunk on dark magic!"
"I was sui-what?" Shantae did not understand her. "Sorry, an unfamiliar word did not translate by some reason."
"Not your fault," Akane simplified.
"Why did Risky do that, that's what worries me," Nabiki said. "She could just have go celebrating together, no one would've bat an eye. But no, she backstabbed us instead. Towards what goal?"
"Did she ever charge you with dark magic like that before?" the amazon asked a pointed question.
Shantae was frowning, humming, creasing her forehead. They thought it was no use, but then...
"Right!" She snapped her fingers. "The moments when Uncle Mimic invited me to the dynamo launch. So, we put the zombie hamster in the wheel, it started running, all that convoluted machinery began spinning... My clear memories end at that point, but! I can vaguely remember my friends' voices calling to me in darkness, urging me back to light. Sora, Bolo, Rotty... It's entirely possible she had made me fall into the darkness. But how...? By sabotaging the dynamo...? And what for...?"
"This time around she hit you with this." Nabiki handed her the tinker gun dropped by Risky. "It had one more piece here, something small and whirring, she pulled it out and took it with her."
The half-Genie took the tinkertech gun, turning it in her hand this way and that, humming. Finally, she concluded: "Strong resemblance to Uncle's dynamo. If you flatten it and shrink it many times... Here are the colis, the accumulator crystals for dark and light magic respectively, it even has a horseshoe magnet. Then, that thing Risky took out matches the hamster wheel drive... But what's the point...? Even after returning to the past, repeating it all...? I do not get it."
"Testing you with darkness?" Xian Pu suggested.
"Unlikely," disagreed Shantae. "She had already 'tested' me like that, she knows I am able to return to the light, even if with the help of my friends. Thank you, guys!"
"So it was a part of some plot?" Nabiki began thinking aloud. "She did not do it for fun, she needed something from you. A sample of dark genie magic, maybe...?"
"The dungeon!" Shantae gasped jumping up as if stung. "Could she be...!"
She was struck so deep with horror they had to literally shake her to get any response.
"Tinker Brain!" the half-Genie shouted. "She again! We have to save!"
She then rushed away in a blind charge. Her friends followed her.
Ranma slowed down as she noticed Barracuda Joe who was about to drink his coffee, the ammonians already celebrating full tilt, out of their tank. She plucked the thermos from his hands, upended the cup on herself and pocketed the thermos. He then ran after the others, back in his native male form, followed by indignant screams of the blue-coated mustached man.
"There was one thing," the half-Genie was explaining on the run, "in the far corner that felt frighteningly familiar. But I thought I was seeing things. But that was it! The tinker brain! Only tiny!"
Alas, the road was too short to explain better. They barged into the underground hall where unsealing the lamp took place before, with battle against happoubats. This dungeon was almost next to the palace.
Risky Boots was exactly where they expected her to be: in the niche resembling a huge fireplace that was separated from the rest of the hall with a sea channel. She was crouching next to a nightstand-sized mechanism that looked like a brain made of twisting copper pipes. Its massive cylindrical base was bristling with glowing white crystals, a thick horisontal bar was sticking above the brain lobes, raised on a thin rod.
"Risky‼！" Shantae roared. "How could— Do you even understand what you are doing?"
The pirate queen straightened sharply, then hit the machine with her wrench a couple times. It whirred, crystals crackling with black lightning. The thick bar began spinning up on its rod, quickly blurring. A slightly flickering disc of purple light lit up above it.
The Nerimans made to catch and wreck, respectively, but the scimitar all but materialized in the pirate queen's hand, her smile making even Ranma back away remembering how dangerous she was with a sword.
"You are improving, girl," she complimented the fuming half-Genie. "Yes, I do, and much better than you... No, I am not going to destroy it. Never planned to."
"Yeah?" Shantae crossed her arms looking extremely skeptical. "What were you doing back then, then? Preparing for a kids' party?"
"Misleading you was so much fun." Risky smirked with superiority. "Until the moment you pulled out that polarity reverser. How could you be so phenomenally dumb...? A polarity reverser. On a plane made almost entirely of light magic."
Shantae stood ramrod straight for a moment, then her eyes widened. She stumbled covering her mouth with her palm.
"I... that myself..." It was painful to watch, the half-Genie's eyes reflecting the harried horror of realization — of the kind that usually makes people's hair turn gray. "I, with my own hands..."
"Don't worry," Risky reassured her patronizingly. "Everything you remember after your 'good job breaking it, hero' moment, you simply hallucinated."
"I...?" Shantae sniffed, tears flowing. "I..."
"Were wandering aimlessly, hair-whipping at empty air and crying like you were killing kittens," the pirate queen snapped out harshly. "You did not kill anybody except your own hallucinations. You put a damn big fly in their ointment, surely, but they quickly plucked it out..." She suddenly grew angry, her hand tightening around the scimitar's hilt. "And booted us both out, ruining the dream of my life...! I barely held myself from killing you, idiot... But you managed just fine on your own, running from a volcano about t o explode with all the grace of a pregnant snail."
"Burning sky... Falling..." Shantae whispered — stunned, crushed.
"I won't wish you back to life ever again," Risky said with finality, her eyes sliding across heroes eager to manhandle her neck for the suffering she just inflicted on Shantae — only held back by her extremely defensible position, only reachable via leap directly into the strike radius of a swordwoman who could imitate blender. "As for you, little teammates, I have something to make you busy!" Grinning , she pulled out the thrice damned lamp. She aimed it at the heroes, they scrambled to dodge. But the lamp erupted with tar-black jello that filled the channel forming a runny, bubbling layer on top of its water, heaping above the floor.
"Defend this device at any cost until I return!" she commanded jumping onto the glowing disc. A second later she was gone, having collapsed into a vertical lightning bolt. The disc dimmed, the bar spinning down, then it spun up again.
Akane rushed to comfort and reassure Shantae but the half-Genie was in full breakdown mode, her thousand-yard stare making one's hair crawl.
"What is this stuff?" Ranma eyed the moatful of slime with suspicion.
"Liquid happoubats?" Ukyou suggested as she approached the obstacle with caution to poke at the jello-like mass with her combat spatula. "What else could she have had in her lamp?"
"Tar monsters?" Bolo suggested. "Well, the color matches."
"And substance too," Sky added. "Wrench...?"
The attack bird squawked voicing his doubts in his usefulness. Unsurprising: there was not enough space for flying, the ceiling not especially high, and there were no opponents suitable for a bird.
Ranma and Xian Pu approached the moatful of black jello assessing how to best leap over it and break the strange mechanism right as they landed — preferably in a single motion. But the mass suddenly grew a thicket of wobbly, runny tar-black tentacles. Both jumped away, Ukyou as well. A thread of jello-like substance stretched after her spatula, glinting like tar.
"ЯѦИⰌѦѦѦѦѦѦ‼！" a vaguely familiar shape gurgled, bubbling up in the center
"Don't tell me..." Ranma winced like he ate a whole lemon.
The tar-black blob quickly dashed his hopes as it took on a painfully familiar shape.
"I may refrain from telling you," Xian Pu raised her scimitars in a defensive stance. "But when you gather all happoubats together, what else could you get?"
"ჷШЭЭႵႣ!" confirmed the slime-tentacle-centaur Happousai as he eyed the girls present greedily. They shuffled away shuddering in revulsion.
"Here I should, kinda, heroically sacrifice my body again," Ranma cast a skeptical glance at the unresponsive half-Genie, "distracting him while you devise a way to bring him down... Hey!"
"ᚱѧդᚥѧ! Ⴕгჸ ᛭нᛙՖ ჩяѧ ჲդ!" the monsters gurgled as he stretched wobbly black snot between several pairs of tentacles, flowing into the forms of runny brasseries.
"Yeah, thanks, no thanks!" the pigtailed boy rebelled backing away involuntarily. "You may call me a coward all you like, but I won't be caught within cannon shot of this!" He gestured his refusal with crisscrossed arms. "I carried and carried, sticking my tits under this freak's sweaty grabbers! Well, I had enough!" He dodged several black wobbly balls launched by Happousai, those burst on the floor like balloons full of water.
"Ranma..." Akane herself was backing away from the thicket of writhing tentacles, many with eyes, others with mouths chanting "Sweeto!" in a maddening cacophony. "No sane person would want to be caught near that thing!"
"Simpy staying here instead of fleeing ahead of your own squeals counts as a heroic deed," Ukyou agreed.
"Forgive meeee!" Sky's receding voice echoed from the direction of the secret exit.
"What are you apologizing for?" Xian Pu shouted after her. "For being reasonably cautious? This opponent is the worst possible match for you, it would be suicidal for a war bird to fight such things!"
"Try it ooon...!" Happousai was stretching his unnaturally long arms with unnaturally long fingers towards Ranma, making his first step out of the channel, forming his first leg out of the black slime. "Stop being coy, become a woman and wear it! You have nowhere to— Are...? Are-re...?"
He froze dumbstruck without finishing his first step. The tentacles went rigid as well, then slumped, melting back into the tar-like mass.
"What...? The order...? No... No!" The monster was resisting, trying to crawl out, but that only made him weaken and melt into oozing, shiny black mass. In the end he gave up with a growling gurgle of disappointment, retreating to the middle of the channel to revert into a legless torso growing out of the black mass. Tentacles popped up again, writhing, growing toward the heroes like branching roots. "It seems I can't be free from my mistresses' order to guard her mysterious creation... Oh the cruel fate..."
The tentacles slowed, unable to grow longer than five meters. Lucky, too: a bit further and the girls present would have fled dragging Shantae with them.
"But!" Happousai perked up, the tentacles shortened writhing with redoubled energy. "You need to break that thing, don't you...? Order, shmorder... I can grow distracted... Overlook things... If, say, Ranma tries this bra on!" The thicket of tentacles repeated its trick with stretching brasserie-like runny forms between pairs of tentacles. "Ranma! Cm' ere!" Happousai began launching wobbly balloons full of water. The tentacles joined in, resulting in a veritable hailstorm of these projectiles, forcing Xian Pu to move away from the pigtailed martial artist.
Ranma was displaying his male form's great flexibility rivaling that of his female form. Bending at impossible angles, cartwheeling, making handstands, he avoided all attempts to soak him. The stone floor of the underground hall became wet from all the balloons bursting against it but wetness alone wasn't enough to activate the curse.
"Hey! Look!" Xian Pu tried attracting their attention. "This thing keeps spitting dark magic!" She gestured towards the micro-tinker brain or howzit. Formerly luminous, the crystals all blackened, surrounded by crackling coronas of black discharges, emitting puffs of dark vapors... The monster was soaking it all up like a sponge.
"Is he growing stronger?" Akane shivered. "Were there less tentacles before?"
"Hey, sister, get it together!" Xian Pu grabbed the other purplette by her shoulders and shook her. "What do we do? Should we wreck it as soon as possible? Or should we leave it alone...? Come on, you are strong, you are warrior of the light. You beat the main villain, you flattened your inner demon without breaking a sweat... Fight it!"
"This is... Different," Shantae mumbled averting her eyes, her right hand tightening around her left elbow. "We must hurry to... But what if, I, again...? I... I think I know what to do, but what if I am wrong and my decision would bring doom to us all...?"
"Overthinking strikes with vengeance!" the amazon tsked in irritation.
"Ranmaaa!" the monster howled in an eldritch voice. "Weeear it!" Gathering his strength he launched one tentacle that stretched out sweeping half across the hall uncontrollably only to rebound back like a rubber rope. The pigtailed martial artist jumped over it easily. "How dare you disobey your Master!"
"Master?！" Ranma snapped. "You never were my master! More so now! Look at yourself you stinky freak! Yer' crap with eyes!"
"Happou Dai Karin!" the offended monster howled forming painfully familiar firecrackers in his hands and the coils of his tentacles.
"Ran-cha, you're total idiot!" Ukyou voiced the overall consensus. "What did you rile him up for?"
Everyone tensed desperately, readying themselves to dodge, knowing it was useles: he was going to knock them out with this technique — and what would happen when they are all unconscious?"
Happousai launched his innumerable projectiles, hitting the heroes despite their best efforts, predicting their movement with uncanny foresight.
It was like being hit with rotten apples: the firecrackers broke apart with wet splorches.
"Wha-wha-whaaat?" the monster whined with a pout, seeing the girls shaking gelatinous blobs off with disdain.
"Even your Ki is now crap," Ranma summed it up angrily as he flicked black droplets off his pigtail. "Don't bother bluffing, not a single technique of yours would work. You are not a master of the Anything Goes school anymore, you are a runny pile of... Self-importance. Bet we can beat you up with one hand tied behind our back and weed your tentacles out?" He turned to his allies. "Girls, Bolo, this isn't Happousai anymore. This is a snot shaped like the old lecher. We have nothing to fear!"
"Snot..? Snot...?！ Why, you...! Just you...!" the monster went livid, tentacles whipping around, black mist billowing. "I am full of energy! I am... full of... Dark magic!" Happousai grinned as he lit a small orb of pulsating darkness in his right hand. "Oooh, the powah!" He began swelling up, growing in size, while tentacles were retracting, pulled back into the black ooze. His torso doubled in size approaching average human proportions. "Hmmm... How should I... I think there was a manuscript... Hmmm..."
"Stupid Ranma!"
"I am beginning to have second thoughts, oh husband of mine!"
"Sugar, stop acting dumb!"
Triple punch at the back of his head courtesy his three fiancees enriched Ranma with three new lumps sending him face-planting in the floor.
But it was too late.
"I am so going to do sorcery!" Happousai proclaimed with sadistic glee as he mimicked rolling up his non-existent sleeves. "Now, how was it... Kagome, kagome... Bird trapped in a cage... When will you fly out...?"
"Ant you call that a spell?" Ranma sneered. "A children's counting rhyme?"
Triple Megaton Punch added tree more lumps planting his face back in the floor.
"Should we wait for your demise?" Happousai meanwhile continued, distorting the counting rhyme into something more and more ominous. "Dark power, dark power is flowing... Who is there, right behind you?！"
Ranma was rising from the floor, did not even finish standing up. The fiancees and Bolo lunged to dodge, their effort proved meaningless. A projectile of darkness flicked in a blur of motion, slammed into Nabiki and knocked her off her feet in a burst of black flame. The middle Tendou landed with the back of her head against stone floor... And lay motionless, smoldering with oily black smoke. Her hat rolled away, smoldering, then fell flat.
"Wrong, wrong, wrong," Happousai was babbling in frustration.
Ranma went to close distance into melee range, dodged a wave of water-filled balloons, punched the freak's head off in a single hit... And barely dodged a second wave of balloons when the beheaded torso melted, a new one forming in a different place.
"Բзᚥѧլᛊ вჲdγ...!" the unkillable semi-liquid Happousai gurgled as he stretched his hands towards the pigtailed boy. And tentacles. Lots of tentacles.
High pigtail sticking straight up, Ranma retreated.
Akane did not. She assaulted with fury, throwing herself right into the monster's embrace. The tentacles coiled around her, began writhing and cocooning around her with showy dark promise - but she didn't care. She was ripping and tearing in blind rage like a wild beast. She was biting, thrashing and kicking. Not to get away, no. To reach the body and rip the head off. If that doesn't work, gnaw it off.
And here, at this moment, Ranma felt himself useless weakling of a coward.
"Meh, you are no fun," the monstrosity pouted. "Kagome, kagome, bird trapped in a cage... Stay in!"
A blast of dark magic threw Akane away... A second later she was encompassed inside a huge hourglass. The youngest Tendou lay on her back in a three-meter wide circle, staring in shock at the sand pouring onto her belly quickly forming a conical pile.
"I am... All right," Nabiki croaked as she raised her legs in smoldering pants. She kipped up. She stumbled rubbing at the back of her head. "How's that for a change! That breakthrough definitely made me... Sturdier."
"You're burning!" Ukyou warned her seeing the girl was still smoldering with oily black smoke.
"I..." Nabiki patted herself down. She reached with her hand into her collar making more smoke billow out. "I am not. This is my clothing evaporating. Starting, notably, with my underwear."
At a detailed look, her pants and shirt were frayed at the edges, turning very slowly into black smoke like smoldering paper. The sleeves and the hat laying aside were already full of holes.
"Three hundred thousand yen," the middle Tendou declared calmly as she addressed the enemy, making him choke on his gloating in surprise. "And from you, Ranma-kun, too."
"Why me too?" he was indignant.
"For moral injury." She lifted a brow. "For the view. I don't think you know how to stop this curse, don't you?" She patted her smoking sleeve, squeezed its fraying edge between her fingers. No use, the fabric still unraveled into smoke regardless of her pinching it.
"I am not looking! Not looking, honest!" Bolo awakened with a start from ogling her. Intimidated by her calculating greed he chose the company of the enemy, attacking with his spiky ball on a chain, dashing in and out cautiously.
Akane finally came to her senses as she saw her sister alive and well. She thrashed freeing herself from the sand, she jumped to her feet and tried punching through the glass, but just bruised her hand. She tried shouting, they could not hear her. She looked up. The hourglasses' neck was too high to reach, sand streaming like a small waterfall.
"Kagome, kagome, bird trapped in stone," Happousai was chanting.
"Tiger domineering!" Ranma interrupted him splashing the torso growing out of the tar bog apart.
"Hmm, this body isn't half bad!" he just formed on the other end of the channel. "Why was I clinging to my humanity, again...? Oh, where was I...? When will you fly out? A hundred years to wait! There is no hope at all!"
Bolo did not even have time to blink, he turned to stone instantly together with his spiky ball on a chain raised for a strike.
"You bastard!" Ranma grew furious. "Tiger domineering!"
"A disaster!" Ukyou exclaimed. "I hope there is a way to turn him back?"
The statue fell onto its side with a dull thud. Thankfully, it did not break.
Xian Pu was wracking her brain trying to think of a way to defeat the enemy, meanwhile harassing him with hit and run tactics, loping a couple tentacles with her scimitars here and there. It was no use: anything cut off just melted to reunite with the main mass, new tentacles springing up.
Shantae was still standing motionless, her eyes filled with horror staring into infinity.
"Kagome, kagome," Happousai was chanting, popping back up time and again like this was some sort of whack a mole. "Body trapped in clothing. When will you show some skin? Should we wait for the night? Naked, naked you become! Who is there, just behind you?"
"Hhah!" Ukyou slammed the incoming dark magic with her battle spatula, catching it with the flat of the blade. She burts into black flames... And collapsed into a pile of empty clothes. The spatula clanged as it fell.
"No fair!" Happousai pouted. "It should have worked the other way around!"
"Ucchan!" Ranma screamed. "Die, you scum!" Now angry beside himself, he assaulted the semi-liquid vile with everything he got, dodging the water-filled balloons on pure reflex. He went ripping and splattering, not noticing that he was gradually submerging in the roiling black mass, like sinking in a quagmire. Every next step was slower, only his fists kept flickering, tearing a bubble of open space around him. But the layer of Happousai wasn't that thick, and below it there was water.
"Shantae!" Xian Pu barked hitting the other girl with heavy, resounding slaps. "Pull yourself together!" Right, left, and again, and again. "We are being killed here, if you haven't noticed! You are our only magic user!" The half-Genies cheeks were puffing up rapidly, her face beginning to resemble a ripe apple. "Come on, you wuss!"
"Awff!" Shantae finally came to, blocking the next slap with her bracer by reflex. "Wfat afe fou.. Of wo...!" She was horrified by what she saw.
Akane, thrashing in a huge, rapidly filling hourglass. A statue of Bolo on the floor. Smoldering Nabiki clad in short sleeveless shirt and short shorts. A pile of empty clothing.
Girl-Ranma, slumped in tentacles coiling around her, mumbling "as you wish, Owner" with a silly smile not reaching her empty eyes as Happousai was pulling her vest off.
"No!" Shantae started towards them, then faltered not knowing what to do.
Something moved in the okonomiyaki chef's thighs' leg squeaking "Hey, up there, don't you step on me!"
The half-Genie let out a breath of relief as she concentrated and began a slow, peaceful dance, her hips swaying.
Too engrossed with Ranma, the enemy failed to notice.
"Full Restoration!" the half-Genie shouted, a wave of purple light washing from her across the hall.
There was a pandemonium of sounds bursting all at once: the screech of a scalded Happousai, the growl of Ranma as she came to her senses, the yelp of Bolo who turned back and immediately hit himself with his spiky ball, and the shout of surprise from Ukyou.
The okonomiyaki chef was writhing on the floor hog-tied with her own clothing: both legs stuffed into the same thighs leg, it already stretching with tearing sounds, while her overall got pulled over her head pressing her hands to her sides but baring her toned sixpack for the world to see.
"Let me help you." Nabiki hurried to her aid. "Since the striptease got canceled. So much free money lost..."
Her clothing stopped evaporating but it did not get restored as it should have been while using healing magic. So she was left in very short ragged shorts and a midriff-baring ragged top frayed on the edges that could barely be called a sleeveless shirt. Only her shoes, belt and whip haven't suffered any damage.
Happousai was being pruned by the enraged girl-Ranma like she was a blender. Working him from one side to another — the droplets were just beginning to fall and everything she splattered around to flow back — the redhead broke the distance with a backwards leap, splashed herself from the thermos and launched "Lion Roar Blast" with both his hands. The Ryouga's signature trump was executed flawlessly: Happousai haven't even finished flowing back together as he was splattered again by slamming him into the back wall behind the channel, next to the niche with the mechanism emanating clouds of dark magic.
Unhurt Akane in a healed gi — even the patch became just a red strip on the solid fabric — tried attracting their attention by hitting the hourglass wall. No use: not a sound reached out. The bottom half, meanwhile, was almost full making her write in a rapidly dwindling space between the sand and the narrowing cone of glass overhead. Sand was pouring into her eyes, into her collar. She tried plugging it with her hand but the curvature was so narrow she couldn't reach, only got a full sleeve of sand for her effort and nearly choked.
"Ranma! I got this, go save Akane!" Shantae noticed her peril. Running up to the channel she began sweeping it with a stream of flame from her index finger. Happousai was howling and thrashing, his tentacles writhing and melting in fire. Some tried grabbing her legs but she was very quick to change her aim. He tried using his mojo on her, chanting his counting rhyme. She used the bubble of "Mirror" and he was smacked with his own curse.
Ranma was next to the hourglass in an instant. He tried punching it but even his fist could not break this glass. Xian Pu joined in, slashing at it with her scimitars. The glass suffered its first chips and gouges. Akane was squeezed into the narrow part, sand reaching up to her chest, her shoulders pressing against her cheeks. She was disappearing under the pouring sand. Ukyou and Bolo joined in raining blows, chipping and crumbling the side of the glass bottle slowly. Too slowly!
Ranma grabbed the bottom edge of the base and strained, groaning and growling. The multi-ton construct began tilting. Xian Pu joined, helping him without a second thought about "getting rid of a rival": they were all battle sisters right now.
The hourglass began careening. The pigtailed martial artist and the amazon straightened up lifting its edge over their heads and finally toppled it. The hourglass hit the stone floor with its upper bottle and shattered in the middle. Sand poured out in a wave, carrying shards of very thick glass and a coughing, sputtering Akane.
It didn't take long for the youngest Tendou to dust herself off. Blinking sand from her eyes she glared vehemently at the moatful of vile stuff fighting the half-Genie. Akane picked up a handy glass shard.
Alas, Happousai was under a good quality spell. Even without seeing the projectile, without realizing what he was doing, he shielded Risky's thingamabob with his body.
Others joined in trying to get the thing that was the root cause of this all. Ranma and Xian Pu were as good at throwing, they were breaking new chunks from the edge. Ukyou finally had a target for her throwing spatulas.
Happousai was fighting desperately like possessed, growing rapidly, sucking the jello-like substance into a single giant body, completely shielding the niche with himself. Any holes and dents in him were filling rapidly, even the flame was becoming ineffective.
"I am Happousai the Nasty! You shall not pass!"
He took a huge breath in sucking all the dark magic permeating the air. And turned into a giant snake!
Countless coils no less than a meter thick clad in bluish black scales, a cobra-like hood... And the same Happi face with silly eyes and a beak of a lip.
"Turning into a snake," Xian Pu lectured, her index finger upraised, "never helps. Even Sun Tzu mentions this."
Just as she predicted, the Happou-snake couldn't do anything to them. Even as he turned out to be fire-breathing. The martial artists were leaping across his coils, hitting him unopposed, dodging his streams of flame. Shantae, especially, as she looked positively bored while dodging them.
But, they could not break the steel scales either. All they achieved was ringing in their ears from strikes with Ukyo's combat spatula and the amazon's scimitars.
"By the way, weren't we going to break something?" Xian Pu reminded everyone.
They got carried away, they forgot about the Tinker Brain! Which was still puffing out dark emanations the Happou-snake kept happily absorbing. They tried shifting their focus to the mechanism... And found out the hard way that on the defensive, turning into a snake not just helps but helps greatly. He dove into the channel and was coiling under the surface, his coils springing up to deflect any projectiles, his fire breath suddenly very effective at discouraging anyone trying to get into melee range.
They tried all sorts of strategies but all they achieved was nearly drowning Akane in the channel. Ranma tried hitting with "Tiger Domineering" but couldn't gather enough confidence, his Ki blasts simply fizzed out.
They dawdled for too long. The Happou-snake took a mighty breath sucking in all the dark magic suffusing the air... And turned into a dark Genie!
His body was massive, bulging with muscles, about three meters tall, thinning into a long tail below the waist. His hammy arms sported bluish-black bracers. And all of that was crowned with the same old Happi mug: silly eyes, beak of a lip...
"Mwa-ha-ha-ha!" the Happou-Genie laughed, his voice low and rumbling. "Such incredible cosmic power! All might is mine!"
He proceeded shooting black lightning bolts from both his index fingers akimbo!
The Nerima Wrecking Crew found their opponent-reading and dodging skills very, very useful all of a sudden.
Shantae began hitting him with lightning in return, but hers was simple electricity only making the enemy twitch a little.
"Ranma!" Xian Pu shouted as she recognized the tactical window of an enemy carried away with a shooting duel. "With me! Let's break it before he grows even stronger!"
Because the accursed machine kept shitting out dark magic and the Happou-genie kept absorbing the stuff.
Both dashed towards the sea channel, intent on jumping over and smashing... Alas, the unconditioned response of following his mistresses' order worked regardless. Tropical rain crashed down like a wall filling a good third of the hall making the water in the channel foam white with splashes and turning the two matrial artists into a girl and a cat respectively.
Shantae got distracted paying attention to them, missed an incoming lightning bolt — which went through her protective bubble like it wasn't there — and her body became a marble statue clad in unaffected clothing.
"Shantae-chan!" Akane exclaimed.
"Shantae!" Bolo grit his teeth.
"We are done for," Nabiki added. "Fighting a magic user without a magic user of our own..."
Wincing and averting her eyes, Ranma splashed the cat with coffee. She then dashed back into the rain to bring Xian Pu her scimitars and bikini back.
"Now, my dear," Happou-genie rumbled floating closer to the half-Genie statue, "we could try on every—"
A silent flash!
"How dare you transforming me without my permission!" Shantae shouted in outrage, alive again, violet sparks fading around her. She then went jumping, hair-whipping the lecher while he was floating in place mumbling "but, but, but..." in stupefaction.
"Take that, you ass!" Ranma echoed pummeling his back and his neck.
Xian Pu saw a tactical opportunity and hurried to break the hourglass further, to lob the shards at the mechanism. She had lots of potential ammo, two three-meter wide bottles of thick glass. Alas, Happou-genie got jerked around like a pupped on strings, so sharply that Ranma got shaken off. All the shards slammed into him, his body shielding the machine without conscious action on his part.
"If that's how you want to play!" The enemy grew angry as he plucked out huge glass shards stuck in his body. Alas, his regeneration was even better than when he had been a slime. "Bite me!" He launched lightning bolts akimbo. Ranma and Xian Pu dodged but he wasn't aiming at them but rather at he broken hourglass. The glass remains melted into a mass of living eels who immediately stampeded towards the sea channel in a carpet making the floor slippery and treacherous.
Ranma slipped as she landed, tumbled uncannily back to her feet, but that small pause was enough for him to hit her. Turning her clothing into black lacy combination with barely a postmark worth of truly opaque fabric. A choker, a bra, panties, pantyhose with garter belt, high-heel pumps — all the jazz.
The redhead roaring in outrage hit him with both projectiles provided, each heel to an eye with unerring precision, then polished it up with a "Lion Roar Blast". She shishihoukodaned him into a wall with such force she smashed masonry with his carcass.
Bolo dropped out of the fight: first he was ogling her, transfixed. She then glared and he was completely paralyzed by the horrible realization of whom he had been ogling.
"And me?" Nabiki waved attracting the enemy's attention.
"Big sis!" Akane cried out in shock.
"What?" Nabiki turned to face her. "Do you have any idea how much such a combination costs?"
Instead of lace she got a full set of black leather, all belts and studs, with tall boots and a service cap. Probably, because of the whip. She waved dismissively commenting "Well, this will do" and began making flashy poses. Which required serious guts, in all other girls' opinion, under ravenous stare of such a creep. She distracted the enemy so well that Ranma, Xian Pu, Akane and Ukyou could whale on him unopposed for half a minute while Shantae managed to hit Risky's machine with lightning, the first hit during the whole fight.
Alas, both without visible signs of damage.
The hit to the Tinker Brain shocked Happou-genie awake like she hit his bare nerves instead. He proceeded focusing all his attention on the half-Genie ignoring all others.
Pop! Shantae got turned into a puppet, a wooden facsimile of herself with ball joints, dancing on strings of dark magic
Poof! She was herself again in a cloud of violet sparks, swearing, dodging and hitting with lightning in retaliation.
Ranma shuffled sideways, aiming to slam him into the niche with a Ki blast, to break the machine with his body.
Pop! Shantae got turned into purple panties with a red bow, flopped down onto the floor like a rag.
Poof! She was a girl again, yelling indignantly, pouring a stream of fire point-blank.
The stone floor under Ranma came to life, opened into a giant mouth, living chains with manacles erupting from its darkness. She got away by miracle, having to jump out across the very chains grabbing at her.
Pop! Shantae fell to the floor as a human-sized pillow with her life-sized image.
Poof! She was a girl again, going in close and personal to punch him in the face.
The chains were rattling, flowing after Ranma. She was dodging them with ease but could not spare a moment to stop and launch another "Lion Roar Blast". While no one else had ranged attacks.
Pop! Shantae got turned into a catgirl, went clawing at Happou-genie with an outraged yowl, her ears pressed flat against her head.
That was really bad thinking on his part.
Pop! Shantae got turned into a tiny hamster, white and fuzzy.
"Enough... slave!" Risky Boots commanded. Turns out she got back at some point and was now standing next to her machine holding the lamp in her outstretched right hand while her left hand was supporting a big, bulging jute bag slung over her shoulder.
"No!" Happou-genie turned around to face her. "You can't...! I just... My power...!"
But he was already being sucked in by his tail, his bracers growing chains that pulled in likewise, twisting his arms behind his back, into a small vortex narrowing into the lamp's spout.
The rain was dying down rapidly, the stone mouth in the floor closed, the living chains slowed down and could only twitch a bit.
The dark genie was holding out of sheer stubbornness until the vortex began sucking in the chains from the floor. Wrapped in them like a fork in spaghetti, he rumbled out one last, long and thunderously-dramatic "Noooo!" and then he was finally sucked in with a loud gargling sound. The lamp shuddered in Risky's hand and turned bluish-black.
Nodding with satisfaction, the Pirate Queen kicked something in her machine turning it off. The discharges of dark magic ceased, the warp platform spinner dimmed spinning down.
"Get her!" Ranma called to action after he had poured the remaining coffee onto herself, inadvertently traumatizing Bolo with the resulting spectacle. "Let's stop her before she brings more trouble!"
But Risky was ahead of them, having replaced the lamp with the scimitar. Come, get some. Not that the martial artists found that insurmountable, they were just waiting for her to leave the ultra convenient defensive position in the niche and let herself be flanked. But she was in no hurry.
"What did you do to the Genie Realm?" Shantae demanded.
"I robbed it!" the pirate queen grinned shifting the bag on her shoulder. Something angular was stretching the rough fabric from the inside glowing faintly through, like the bag was full of big crystals. "I absconded with a heap of their Genie magic! Oh, the possibilities...!"
"Only, you can't get away with your ill-gained loot!" Shantae declared with hands on her hips. "You can't put those thing into your Ki pocket, don't you...? They're too magical. But you need both hands to use the pirate items, ha! Checkmatter!"
"True." Risky grinned, not worried at all for some reason. The Nerimans tensed. Without letting go of the scimitar in her right hand, she carefully put the bag down freeing her left... To pull out the lamp!
"When will we smash this blasted thing already!" Ranma growled.
"I command!" Risky shouted imperiously as she released Happou-genie whose tail was streaming from the lamp's spout. "Transfer me and my booty — including the lamp in my hand — to my lair!"
"Yes, Mistress!" he rumbled with discontent.
Empty clothing fell to the floor. Happo-genie floated there for a moment longer, with a lecherous grin, then got pulled away by his tail in an impossible direction perpendicular to reality.
"Here's an evil literal genie for you," Xian Pu commented instructively as everyone stared at the pile of trousers, top and a red-and-white kerchief.
"I suppose, the pirate hat and boots still fit the definition of `booty`," Nabiki added.
"I feel trouble coming." Shantae sighed as she took the golden magical tiara with salad-green inlays off with great relief. "But that won't be today. And not even tomorrow... Let's go celebrate?"
"Let's," Ranma agreed. He had already pulled Risky's pants on and was now shredding the lacy bra to pieces with great joy, which left him bare-chested.
( ｡◕ シーンブレイク ◕｡)
Published in Russian December 10, 2022. Translated to English September 26, 2023
A.N. #1: The counting rhyme really rhymes in the original Japansese: you, tube MFRq4DxqaMo ?t=167
A.N. #2 In the fourth game, Super Revive Dance heals 100percent HP at the cost of 50percent MP. During world building I, for specific reason, postulated it being the equivalent of Greater Restoration, which removes one negative status effect — with a caveat that missing HP count as one (meaning it falls in-between the hard core DnD version, which does not restore HP at all, and the pedal-to-metal NwN version that heals everything all at once). But unlike those, it excludes curing diseases because it heals everything: you, your equipment, pathogenic microorganisms) I also postulated that this dance has an AoE healing effect for the whole party — which Shantae was unavare of because she always adventures alone. This in fact is grossly OP as it makes Shantae the equivalent of a Lv 20 cleric with epic spell slots. But I require this for the sequel — and, am I the author here or what? By the way, healing magis as per fifth game (although it's a power borrowed from Vera) works radically different from the DnD healing. It heals zombies, it heals mummies into zombies, it inflicts fun-sized damage on skeletons and shreds ghosts.
A.N.#3 Let us just assume that Risky had met Angela "Engie" from the NerfNow‼ cafe when the latter was on a vacation at the Sequin Land resorts. And learned from her how to build TF2 style teleporters.
A.N. #4 The total number of chapters increased from 22 to 23 when I cut the tail of this one into a small separate chapter. Well, this makes better pacing and simplifies translating them to English. The finishing chapters are quite short anyway.
A.N. #5 Finally the English version catches up to the Russian original. Currently: writing the next chapter.