Categories > Anime/Manga > Ranma 1/2 > A Game Is Fine Too
Chapter Three
0 reviewsRyoga goes ahead with Ranma’s plan, but takes it even more seriously than he does. One of the two is in for a shock.
1Funny
A Game Is Fine Too
A Somewhat Citrus-Flavoured Ranma ½ Fan Fiction
© 2008–2012 by gsteemso
Chapter Three
Not my characters. Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.
--===ooooOOOOOoooo===--
Ranma covertly steeled himself as the two boys walked towards Ryoga’s house. He didn’t want to remember what had happened there last time he’d visited. Still, he was reasonably sure it wouldn’t happen again, and that helped.
Ryoga’s attention was diverted by a bird or something on a roof across the street, and before he realized it, he’d taken a wrong turn. He was yanked to an abrupt halt as Ranma snagged his wrist and hauled him back into line. “Watch it, jerk! I’m not THAT bad. And quit wiping your hand off like that! I’m cleaner than you are!”
“Yeah, whatever. I’m just glad we’re getting this over with now, instead of dragging our feet until someone figures it out and starts being annoying about it.” Like damn Nabiki, he groused mentally. Seriously, she’s getting ready to graduate high school this year. Her classmates spend hours every day studying for their finals. Doesn’t she have anything better to do than make my life as hellish as possible?
“Shirokuro! Good girl!” Ryoga said unexpectedly, drawing Ranma’s attention back to the present. The Lost Boy knelt down to let the Hibiki family dog and her yearling puppies sniff all over him, full-body-wagging joyously at the all too infrequent return of one of their human charges. The Hibikis were possibly the only people ever to need Guiding Direction-Sense dogs as assistance animals.
Ranma wondered morbidly what the dogs ate while the Hibikis were all out lost, but decided he didn’t want to know. Shirokuro wagged her way over to greet him as well, though the puppies continued to clamber all over Ryoga. “Hey there girl, wanna lead us ‘home?’ Good girl!” He didn’t know why, but Shirokuro seemed to be paying him a lot more attention today. He vaguely remembered the pair of them meeting up with the dogs the night of the — he shuddered — Incident at Ryoga’s House, but he was nearly certain she’d pretty much ignored him in favour of Pig Boy then. Weird.
Without really wanting to, he tried to remember more. Let’s see, we were stumbling around like a pair of drunks, holdin’ each other up and the whole deal, and we saw Shirokuro by sheer coincidence. Then it started raining demons and dogs. We managed to get Ryoga’s umbrella up in time, which made Shirokuro happy, but I got soaked. Maybe the dogs stuck closer to Ryoga ’cause he had the umbrella? But they ignored me before that too, and he still got pretty wet, just not enough to soak through… Hm. I dunno.
Meanwhile, the dogs formed up around the boys and alertly began trotting home in formation, Shirokuro in the lead. Every so often one or another would check to make sure everyone was still where they were supposed to be, yipping sharply if Ryoga had started to go the wrong way. Despite the underlying tension, both boys had to chuckle at the dogs’ obvious pride in their task.
Soon enough, the eccentric convoy fetched up at the Hibiki home, and Ryoga dug out his house key to let them in. “Well, here we are…” he said uncertainly. “How do you want to do this?”
“Got a bucket?”
“Uh. I dunno. Let’s look.”
-=oOo=-
Some time later, they had settled in the bathroom with the largest mixing bowl from the kitchen, filled with cool water. They’d been delayed while they threw out the dried-up mess on the kitchen counter; apparently, Ryoga’s parents had somehow found their way home shortly after the boys had departed the previous morning, and Ryoga’s mother had — with touching futility — prepared a meal for him to eat when he came home.
Both boys were relieved that the senior Hibikis were all right, as their prolonged absence had been worrying, but the thought of what might have happened had the two groups crossed paths that particular morning made their skin crawl. At least they could be reasonably certain no one would disturb them today; the only reason Ryoga had made it back here so soon after the last time was that Ranma was leading him.
“Well, this is it. Last chance to wimp out.” Ranma, some of his customary even temper having reasserted itself in the hour or more it had taken to get to this point from the Cat Café, honestly wasn’t sure he could insist on this if Ryoga did try to wiggle out of it. The Drowned Girl curse had been the single worst thing that had ever happened to him, even including the horrible Cat-Fist training… especially if you threw in all the crap he’d only experienced because of the curse. Damn perverts, he thought venomously to himself, glowering slightly at Ryoga.
Ryoga himself was pale, but resolute. “Mix it in. I said I would and I will.” He was proud to have kept his nervousness out of his tone.
Ranma swallowed, but proceeded with sure, deliberate moves. Tearing open the packet, he poured the powder into the mixing bowl and stirred it with the handle of the disintegrated back brush, which had still been leaning in the corner where they’d left it the day before. “It’s ready. Strip down to your boxers,” he ordered curtly. Normally he would have just ordered Ryoga to strip, period, but Ryoga’s male organs were the last thing he wanted to see these days.
“…Yeah.” The stockier boy complied, and wordlessly gestured for Ranma to douse him once his clothing was well out of harm’s way.
Splash.
Ryoga was quite familiar with the sensation of a Jusenkyo curse acting on him. It was different when you stayed about the same size, though. After he’d settled into his new shape, he decided in a stunned sort of way that the rearrangement of his genitals was quite a bit more disconcerting than… she… had expected. Yeah, that’s probably the worst part. The new girl tried dazedly not to think about the disquieting alienness of her new body parts. The ragged edge of the seam up the middle of her boxers was just barely tickling some unfamiliar part of her in a most annoying way.
Ranma looked her over carefully. Her face was quite definitely Ryoga’s, but indefinably more feminine. If he carefully suppressed all knowledge of whom he was actually looking at, he had to admit she was actually pretty cute. Her hair varied from a medium to a dark brown, with lighter highlights, and its masculine cut gave her a pixyish look. Her neck was a little more slender, her still-sturdy bone structure was perhaps a bit finer, and her new bosom— Well. That’s not very fair. Girl-Ryoga’s breasts were at least a full cup size smaller than girl-Ranma’s, which would hinder her a lot less in a fight. They do get bigger over time. I wonder if mine started out that size? Heh, I bet I make a better-looking girl than Pork Butt here does, either way.
Ranma looked at girl-Ryoga’s general build again. She was still built like a tank, but a much more feminine and, he was forced to admit, stunningly curvaceous one. Still, no matter how nice she looked, this was still the damned pig-boy on the inside. She wasn’t the least bit attractive. Definitely not.
He couldn’t help feeling a bit ill when he thought of Ryoga as a pretty girl. However much he might wish otherwise, this was whom he’d given his virginity to; or her virginity, if you insisted on the technicalities. That complication made him feel even more twisted up inside. Taking the traditional view of things, the Incident at Ryoga’s House had promoted his number one rival from boy to man, but all he’d gotten out of it was a transfer from boyhood to womanhood. Insofar as Ranma had ever given any thought to his future — not very — becoming a woman before he ever became a man had not been in the plans. And now the damned tart was standing there being all cute at him without even trying. Geh. So wrong! Pigs are not sexy, damn it!
Ryoga finally managed to put off thinking about the alien sensations coming from her new body parts, and refocussed humorlessly on Ranma. He looked upset about something, not that she cared why. She almost hoped he would blow his stack, like he’d done in the dojo earlier; while a Ranma who was in control of severe anger was somewhere close to being outright frightening, she could use a good session of beating him up to help her mentally adjust to this weird situation she’d talked herself into.
Yeah, a good fight would feel way more normal. Wonder if he’s noticed I’m about the same size as I started? Heh, if he’s expecting me to have reach problems like HIS girl form does, I can SO beat him down! She grinned evilly, absently shifting her weight a bit in preparation for a possible surprise attack.
She was abruptly jarred out of these tentative plans when the shift in posture caused her new bosom to also shift position, badly surprising her. Belatedly, she realized that after moving like she had, she was now standing there displaying most of her new body to him. She knew academically that a boy seeing a girl was different from his seeing another boy, could even clearly remember the feelings that were the reason why, but she was having conceptual difficulty applying the knowledge with herself on the other side of the equation.
Trying to move casually, she straightened up slightly and wrapped her right arm around her bustline to grip the left one above the elbow. It was odd to have anything to hide in that part of her torso; boy-Ryoga had trained without a shirt on many times over the years, and barely thought about it most of the time. The only real parallel she could draw was to that business with the stupid Mark of the Battling God, and the trouble she’d had trying to keep it out of general view. Somehow this wasn’t very similar, though.
The motion apparently reminded Ranma of what they were about, as he abruptly calmed down. With a businesslike air, he gathered himself and pulled a little pile of folded cloth out of… somewhere.
Ryoga’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t know you knew that one!” she exclaimed, with the beginnings of an impressed smile.
“Yeah, with as often as Mousse uses it around me, it wasn’t much of a strain to figure out. Think about it — can you really see that goof learning something that’s too hard for either of us?”
“Point. He can’t even bring himself to beat Shampoo, and she’s not on our level eithe— OH HELL NO!” No trace remained of her nascent smile.
Ranma innocently folded the lacy, sheer lingerie back into a compact bundle and casually held up a tiny, barely-there sunbathing bikini instead. “What?”
“I’m not wearing sexy underwear! The only reason to put that stuff on is to seduce someone. No way!” she raged. Then a different observation suddenly forced itself to her attention, and she looked even more alarmed. “…Why do you even have that? Don’t tell me you raided Akane’s dresser again. What, are you taking lessons from the old perv now? She’ll kill both of us, and only you’ll deserve it!”
“Oh, come on. Can you really see her owning something like this and the old freak NOT stealing it? This is from when Mom thought I was a girl. Why she thought ‘Ranko’ needed help getting anyone’s attention I dunno, but you can’t take underwear back to the store — who’d wanna wear it after someone already might have? — and so I’m stuck with a whole pile of the stuff.”
Despite herself, Ryoga started snickering. “She must have thought you needed help feeling womanly,” she jibed.
Ranma gave her a long, flat look that instantly sobered her up. “I don’t need any more help with that, now do I, pervert? But you do.”
Ryoga blanched, and swallowed noisily. Being more or less the same height as her boy form made it all too easy to ignore the drastic physical change she’d undergone, but she kept being abruptly reminded of it. She wondered how Ranma had coped with all of this when he’d originally gotten cursed, a year or so previously. He’d been so uncharacteristically vindictive when they were setting all of this up… he must really hate being a girl. Ryoga wondered why — it was kind of weird, certainly, but when she got right down to it, being female didn’t really feel all that different to how she’d felt as a boy, before the temporary girl curse was applied.
Ranma’s flat gaze shifted to a faintly puzzled look. What goofy idea has she got in her head NOW?
Ryoga, meanwhile, was guiltily remembering the confrontation that had led to this moment. It was no wonder girl-Ranma had been so infuriated. How would he— uh, she, Ryoga, have felt? She wasn’t quite brave enough to imagine it in order to find out, and with her sudden awareness of that fact, the memory of the whole embarrassing confrontation suddenly resolved into one moment of clarity. Ranma had challenged him to see how much Ryoga liked losing his self-control and his virginity to another guy. Ryoga had answered, “You’re right, Ranma. …I’ll do it. You deserve that much.”
She swallowed heavily, again. What the hell had she been THINKING? It was true, though… She owed this boy a terrible debt. This boy who, somehow, was her best friend in addition to her fiercest rival, and whom she’d already lost one flavour of virginity with. Oh, crap. Why did I have to make such an over-the-top vow? It’s a matter of honour, now. Gods, I must be some sort of idiot. But I can’t break my word… I’d never live it down. Anyway, is it really such a big deal? I did want to get it on with Ranma again, it’s just the other way around this time…
She considered that for a moment. Naah, that really doesn’t help. But I did vow. She gave a quiet, shaky sigh.
Looking nervously at him, she unconciously set her jaw and stood up straighter, unwrapped her arm from her bustline, and deliberately dropped her boxers.
Ranma’s eyes bugged out comically. “Wha— Wha— Wha—” Despite himself, the falling cloth led his gaze down past her waist, and he froze up with an atomic blush staining his face crimson.
Ryoga felt a confusing mixture of crippling embarrassment and …heady empowerment? She stepped unsteadily towards him, a faint sheen of nervous sweat developing over her whole body, and was both relieved and annoyed when he retreated in lockstep before her, apparently without even realizing he was doing it.
Ranma still believed himself to be frozen with shock, and was therefore taken completely by surprise when he tripped over one of the wash stools and landed flat on his back. The shock almost brought him back to his senses, but his coalescing train of thought was immediately derailed as Ryoga high-stepped daintily, if unsteadily, over the wash stool, accidentally revealing more of herself to him in that moment than he’d ever seen of any girl, even with the aid of a mirror. Ranma promptly forgot to breathe. A stunningly curvy nude girl, skin aglow with a slight film of healthy sweat, was walking up to his supine form with the apparent intent that he see her in her entirety, and was not attempting to molest him. This was decidedly new and strange territory for the pigtailed boy.
Ryoga took the last step up to the side of her fallen rival, and hesitated, staring indecisively down at him. She REALLY didn’t want to go through with the sex part, and though she somehow knew implicitly that Ranma would never force her to, the idea of actually reaching out to take the arm of a boy who was staring at “his” unclothed groin went a little further than “he” could bring herself to go. She couldn’t decide how to proceed, and gave him a puzzled sort of, “Now what do we do?” look.
Ranma was still staring dazedly at the area between her legs, which she happened to have slightly spread for stability in her current unfamiliar shape, and didn’t notice her expression. With a small choking sound, he began to breathe again, raggedly and irregularly.
Ryoga was actually kind of disappointed. If Ranma had passed out she could have put this off for a while. She carefully crouched down, cautious neither to overbalance nor to lean into his personal space, with the intent of intercepting his gaze with her own. Ranma, of course, remained fixated on the feminine treasure her stance was unintentionally revealing to him, with his eyes bugging out and his mouth slightly ajar. Annoyed, she cleared her throat noisily.
Ranma suddenly realized what he was doing, and with whom, and crab-scuttled hurriedly backwards on his elbows until he crashed into the tub. “Gah! Ryoga? What are you DOING?”
Ryoga’s nerve failed her. Happily, there was a convenient way to change the subject still clutched, forgotten, in Ranma’s hand. “You wanted me to put on that bikini, didn’t you? Well?” She stared at him challengingly, reaching out an expectant hand.
Ranma coughed. “Um. Right. Here.” He sat up and handed her the slightly crumpled bits of cloth, glancing away in embarrassment.
She held them up for a closer look, and grimaced. If Ryoga was any judge, wearing this scanty thing would probably feel more exposed than just going naked. Still, she guessed that was kind of the point, and reluctantly began trying to work out how to put the top on. After a minute or two of steadily increasing frustration, during which she accidentally pinched herself in the straps three times, Ranma finally took pity on her and began to help. Her ire gradually receding, Ryoga watched his efforts to guide the fabric over her bust without actually touching her with disbelief and a slowly growing sense of amusement. “Ranma? Are you actually being SHY? With ME?” she snickered incredulously.
Ranma froze for a second. “Of course not, Pig Girl,” he scoffed, suddenly moving more assertively.
“A-ah!” gasped Ryoga, as Ranma’s calloused fingers on the straps were suddenly brushing against her in a way that was both shockingly intimate and so impersonal as to make her feel almost rejected. That thought was so alien that she immediately disavowed it and resolved to never think of it again. She was surprised to note that it didn’t fit too horribly, which was rather unexpected considering how differently they were shaped as girls. Ranma had a bigger chest, but Ryoga was just enough stockier that her more robust frame took up the slack.
“There, done. I think you can work the other half out for yourself,” Ranma drawled. Ryoga scowled at him and quickly pulled on the barely-there bikini bottom, which — against all probability — was also more or less the right size. “Right. Turn around.”
She glowered at him suspiciously. “What? Why?”
He gave a particularly annoying smirk. “Well, if you want to flash everyone when we go out because you didn’t know it wasn’t on straight…”
Ryoga grudgingly shuffled around on the spot, thinking with dismay, We’re going out? …Of course we are. He must still be really mad at me. She was interrupted by loud snickering from behind her. “What now?” she growled over her shoulder, glaring.
Ranma tried to stifle his laughter, thinking idly that she’d REALLY be mad if she knew how adorable she looked scowling like that with the fangs and the bikini. “Well, this is a really small bikini, but it’s not a thong,” he explained with a grin. Before she could process that, he reached out and, with a single quick motion of one finger, straightened out the seat of the bikini where it had quite seriously ridden up.
She gasped in shock, and not merely from the sudden release of discomfort as the fabric stopped digging in. That had felt way more intimate than she was expecting. It wasn’t like anyone had ever lightly touched her backside like that even when she was a boy. Face burning, she choked out, “Anything else?”
“Nope, we’re good. Follow me!”
Like a man going to his execution in a clown suit, Ryoga did.
-=oOo=-
Ranma knew from the outset that going anywhere in or near his usual stomping grounds with a female in tow — even one that barely qualified as such, like the temporarily cursed Ryoga — would probably draw unwelcome attention from angry fiancées. That was why he led the blushing neo-girl, her hand firmly held in his own to avert disorientation, on a direct line away from Furinkan district and her family home — which happened to also be a fairly direct line southeast towards the more urbanized Nakano ward. This was not an accident.
“Uh, Ranma? Just how far will we be going to… wherever it is we’re going?” asked Ryoga nervously, eyeing the curious passersby mistrustfully. Ranma’d been quite happy to let her put her usual sandals on before they left, but since they fastened on with very long laces that wound their way up her bare calves, the net effect was mostly just to accentuate how little she was wearing, rather than making her look more dressed.
“Oh, not much farther,” he replied cheerfully, observing the increasing crowd density around them with ill-concealed glee. “Now all we need is a clear spot big enough to do a few kata in. Maybe on the rim of that planter thing?” He was pointing at a huge concrete bin adjacent to the sidewalk, with a few large but sickly-looking maples growing out of it. The space around the trunks was flat, bare dirt.
“Huh? Why?”
“Heh. People stare at a girl in a bikini, and they stare at people doing high-end martial arts. Putting the two together should have you sticking out like a pink tanuki among a murder of crows. I’m glad you accepted the bikini before I got to the bunny suit… this is gonna be way more revealing when you’re moving around a lot.”
Ryoga groaned. How had she talked herself into this? And this isn’t even the main act! She paused for a second. …Huh. Is Ranma sharper than I thought? Leave it to this jerk to find a way to make having sex as a girl seem like the lesser evil.
“Yup, this’ll do nicely,” concluded Ranma happily, turning back towards her from where he’d been glancing over the way the planter was situated. “Up you get!” he finished with a big grin, boosting her unexpectedly up with a single broad, callused hand under her barely-clad rump.
“Eeep!” She meant to glare at him, really she did, but the best she could manage was a wide-eyed gape of shock.
“May as well start off with the simple stuff. Good thing your family art’s nearly as ærial as the Saotome school is, those flying kicks are always a crowd-pleaser, especially when you’re wearing this little.”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” griped Ryoga, doing her best to focus on nothing but the opening stance of the first kata she’d ever learned. The still-unfamiliar weight distribution of her new body made even that into a small challenge, which at least helped distract her.
The sight of a stunningly curvy, muscular girl in an ill-fitting bikini making slow, uninhibited athletic motions soon drew a massive crowd of gawkers, each of whom if asked would have claimed they were just passing by. That they were STILL just passing by several minutes later was a mere coincidence on which no diplomatic individual would comment.
Ryoga found herself perspiring nervously at the attention, and finally hissed at Ranma, “can’t you come up here and spar with me or something? I’m running out of stuff to do!”
“Oh, all right. But we can’t do anywhere near as much as we usually do — we have to stay in one spot so people can gawk at you.”
“Yeah, whatever. What was supposed to be so bad about this again? It’s just people staring, and they’d do that even if I was a guy right now, at least if I had my shirt off.”
Ranma blinked. Ryoga had a point — it wasn’t being a spectacle that sucked, it was how people treated you afterwards, and they couldn’t do that to full effect today because it would have required people who actually knew Ryoga. Having the people you met every day form weird opinions of you was a special kind of torment, and if they had done this someplace it could happen, the other martial artists they knew would most likely have derailed matters in a spectacular and messy fashion.
“Damn. This isn’t gonna work. OK, I guess you can stop.”
“Thank you,” she deadpanned, winding down her last set of motions and hopping off the planter. Someone in the crowd spontaneously began to applaud, and within moments, Ryoga found herself basking in the mob’s acclaim.
Dammit! thought Ranma. Well, THAT didn’t work. I’m gonna have to come at this from a different angle. “Okay, Ryoga. Let’s keep walking. I need to think about this.”
“Aww, if we must.” Ryoga, smiling broadly, had just finished giving an autograph. This being-a-kickass-pretty-girl stuff was actually kinda cool. “Wait, what was that?” she asked someone behind her.
The tall young man who’d just caught her attention repeated himself, though Ranma couldn’t hear what he said.
“Uh, I’m not usually near a phone. Why do you ask?” she replied naïvely, giving the older boy an unintentionally winsome smile. Ranma’s eyes bulged and he had a hard time not bursting out laughing. Maybe this hadn’t been a complete waste of time after all.
-=oOo=-
The two teens walked briskly along the sidewalk, heading further and further into one of the more built-up areas of their part of Tokyo. “So, your admirer looked like a nice enough guy,” needled Ranma, who in his usual fashion was being far too childish to just let the matter lie. “Just imagine those arms around you.”
“I can’t believe he wanted to go on a date with me,” mumbled the Lost Girl, not really hearing him. She was sufficiently thrown by the whole experience that she’d have throroughly misplaced herself several blocks ago without Ranma leading her by the hand.
“It’s too bad we probably don’t have time for that,” opined Ranma. “Having to do the girl’s side of a date would be just the sort of thing I had in mind for you.”
For the first time in several minutes, Ryoga focussed her gaze on something, in this case Ranma’s expression. “You don’t want to take me out yourself?” she blurted in surprise. She’d thought that was the whole point of this!
Ranma tripped over nothing and faceplanted on the sidewalk, losing his grip on her hand. Sitting up, he stared at her in disbelief. He couldn’t figure her line of reasoning at all, and finally gave up trying. “Not one word!” he snapped, climbing back to his feet, and headed off again, his mind whirling.
Ryoga, her mind back on matters in the here and now, stalked confidently down the street after him. She still wasn’t sure just what Ranma was up to, but no cheap psychological tricks would get the better of this Hibiki!
“Yo!” came a confident voice from behind her. Startled — who would be talking to her this far from home? — she turned her head and saw a boy a little older than herself, suffering from a really severe case of acne. She absently stopped walking, staring in horrified fascination. It almost looked like the pimples were moving. She suddenly realized he’d said something, and said, “Pardon? Sorry, I was thinking about something else.”
“No worries, chicka. I’m-a thinkin’ we’s got all aftanoo’ to get betta… acquainted.” His exaggerated street language was made even more obvious by the way he dropped the last word of that in without the twist he’d given the rest.
“Eh? Why would you say that?” Ryoga was completely puzzled. Was she supposed to know this zit-encrusted dork from somewhere?
The pimply-faced boy looked a bit less at ease than he had started out, but remained confident. “Ye’z a-gonna help me wit’ ma new mattress, it smell’ good now and smell even betta afta’ you an’ me has some fun on it. I finkin’ a-t’ree hours’a’do it. Whass yer’ate?”
Ryoga stared at the unfamiliar boy in disbelief. “What did you just ask me? I’m sure I heard you wrong.”
The acne-ridden teen looked at her oddly, his easy smirk now a fading memory, and dropped his uneven attempt to speak in gutter dialect. “What are you, deaf? I said, ‘How much for three hours?’ Or should I be asking your pimp instead?” His eyes ranged a few storefronts past her down the street, to where Ranma had just worked out that Ryoga was no longer following right behind him and was looking around frantically.
Finally spotting her, Ranma had time to take almost a step and a half back towards the two, before having to stop as Ryoga’s shriek of outrage split the air (and threatened to do the same to everyone nearby’s eardrums). When he opened his eyes again from his split-second wince of pain, the acne-ridden stranger was nowhere to be seen, though some clue to his whereabouts could be gleaned from Ryoga’s infuriated, fang-baring snarl and the fist she was holding above her head in a follow-through position.
The pose did very nice things to her appearance — a painter of swords-and-sorcery pulp covers would have been ecstatic — but Ranma was too busy sprinting over, grabbing the outstretched fist and getting the hell out of Dodge to really pay attention. Well, that’s the second goal achieved ahead of schedule, he mused idly as he led her surly form across the rooftops, being sure to head in a different direction than Zit Boy had probably been sent.
-=oOo=-
Two hours later, in the most densely travelled part of Tokyo, the pair of teens had just disembarked from a jam-packed monorail filled with buttock-groping salarymen, and Ryoga was pretty nearly ready to kill something. If I’d had my umbrella—! she growled inwardly, ignoring the fact that she wouldn’t have had any more room to move that than she had her empty hands. Even breaking that one asshole’s fingers didn’t help. By this point, she was getting almost eager to have sex with Ranma, if only to make this overly-drawn-out exercise in getting very, very angry end sooner.
Ranma, of course, had no idea, and was merrily leading the temporary girl through the crowd towards a high-end lingerie shop. If this doesn’t embarrass her, nothing will! he thought gleefully.
Just before she would have caught sight of their latest destination — and, probably, blown a gasket because of it — Ryoga’s never very sizeable supply of patience finally ran out. Planting her feet, she braced herself and yanked on Ranma’s hand, halting him so sharply that he ended up facing her with a startled look on his face. “Dammit, Ranma, when are we going to have sex? Get on with it!” she bellowed in a carrying voice.
Ranma paled, his eyes bulging. Casting his gaze from side to side as best he could in the press of bodies, he saw that, yes, everyone nearby (a group numbering at least eighty persons) was staring at the pair of teens in astonishment, and most of them were also starting to mutter disapprovingly to one another. His attention was brought abruptly back to matters closer to hand when the Lost Girl, having caught sight of an establishment off to one side that looked relevant, hauled him determinedly towards its doors, her gaze fixed rigidly on the tastefully discreet sign visible above the crowd’s heads as she bulled through the densely packed pedestrians. “But-but-but that’s a love hotel!”
“Yup,” confirmed Ryoga, not altering her pace at all.
“Nice one, buddy!” smirked a loutish-looking older teen as they passed, very obviously eyeing up Ryoga’s bikini-clad form as she strode past and giving Ranma a thumbs up. Ryoga, her world-class single-mindedness dominating her thought processes for the moment, didn’t even notice. Ranma just gave him a sort of helpless deer-in-headlights look as he was hauled past, and tried to pretend he hadn’t heard the guy start sniggering behind him.
--===ooooOOOOOoooo===--
END PART THREE
Sat. 2012/07/07: Minor edits
Weds. 2012/07/04: Moderate rewrite
Thurs. 2012/06/21: Minor scene added
Thurs. 2012/06/14: First draft completed
Thanks are due to my most excellent prereaders, including among others J. St. C. Patrick, Deitarion, Kaoru Shimitsu, Baughn, and most especially Yarrow for her exhaustive efforts in spite of at times distasteful subject matter. Thanks are also due to the disparate groups of suspicious characters at the Temple of Ranma’s Senshi Seifuku C&C forum and The Fanfiction Forum’s Ranma section.
A Somewhat Citrus-Flavoured Ranma ½ Fan Fiction
© 2008–2012 by gsteemso
Chapter Three
Not my characters. Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.
--===ooooOOOOOoooo===--
Ranma covertly steeled himself as the two boys walked towards Ryoga’s house. He didn’t want to remember what had happened there last time he’d visited. Still, he was reasonably sure it wouldn’t happen again, and that helped.
Ryoga’s attention was diverted by a bird or something on a roof across the street, and before he realized it, he’d taken a wrong turn. He was yanked to an abrupt halt as Ranma snagged his wrist and hauled him back into line. “Watch it, jerk! I’m not THAT bad. And quit wiping your hand off like that! I’m cleaner than you are!”
“Yeah, whatever. I’m just glad we’re getting this over with now, instead of dragging our feet until someone figures it out and starts being annoying about it.” Like damn Nabiki, he groused mentally. Seriously, she’s getting ready to graduate high school this year. Her classmates spend hours every day studying for their finals. Doesn’t she have anything better to do than make my life as hellish as possible?
“Shirokuro! Good girl!” Ryoga said unexpectedly, drawing Ranma’s attention back to the present. The Lost Boy knelt down to let the Hibiki family dog and her yearling puppies sniff all over him, full-body-wagging joyously at the all too infrequent return of one of their human charges. The Hibikis were possibly the only people ever to need Guiding Direction-Sense dogs as assistance animals.
Ranma wondered morbidly what the dogs ate while the Hibikis were all out lost, but decided he didn’t want to know. Shirokuro wagged her way over to greet him as well, though the puppies continued to clamber all over Ryoga. “Hey there girl, wanna lead us ‘home?’ Good girl!” He didn’t know why, but Shirokuro seemed to be paying him a lot more attention today. He vaguely remembered the pair of them meeting up with the dogs the night of the — he shuddered — Incident at Ryoga’s House, but he was nearly certain she’d pretty much ignored him in favour of Pig Boy then. Weird.
Without really wanting to, he tried to remember more. Let’s see, we were stumbling around like a pair of drunks, holdin’ each other up and the whole deal, and we saw Shirokuro by sheer coincidence. Then it started raining demons and dogs. We managed to get Ryoga’s umbrella up in time, which made Shirokuro happy, but I got soaked. Maybe the dogs stuck closer to Ryoga ’cause he had the umbrella? But they ignored me before that too, and he still got pretty wet, just not enough to soak through… Hm. I dunno.
Meanwhile, the dogs formed up around the boys and alertly began trotting home in formation, Shirokuro in the lead. Every so often one or another would check to make sure everyone was still where they were supposed to be, yipping sharply if Ryoga had started to go the wrong way. Despite the underlying tension, both boys had to chuckle at the dogs’ obvious pride in their task.
Soon enough, the eccentric convoy fetched up at the Hibiki home, and Ryoga dug out his house key to let them in. “Well, here we are…” he said uncertainly. “How do you want to do this?”
“Got a bucket?”
“Uh. I dunno. Let’s look.”
-=oOo=-
Some time later, they had settled in the bathroom with the largest mixing bowl from the kitchen, filled with cool water. They’d been delayed while they threw out the dried-up mess on the kitchen counter; apparently, Ryoga’s parents had somehow found their way home shortly after the boys had departed the previous morning, and Ryoga’s mother had — with touching futility — prepared a meal for him to eat when he came home.
Both boys were relieved that the senior Hibikis were all right, as their prolonged absence had been worrying, but the thought of what might have happened had the two groups crossed paths that particular morning made their skin crawl. At least they could be reasonably certain no one would disturb them today; the only reason Ryoga had made it back here so soon after the last time was that Ranma was leading him.
“Well, this is it. Last chance to wimp out.” Ranma, some of his customary even temper having reasserted itself in the hour or more it had taken to get to this point from the Cat Café, honestly wasn’t sure he could insist on this if Ryoga did try to wiggle out of it. The Drowned Girl curse had been the single worst thing that had ever happened to him, even including the horrible Cat-Fist training… especially if you threw in all the crap he’d only experienced because of the curse. Damn perverts, he thought venomously to himself, glowering slightly at Ryoga.
Ryoga himself was pale, but resolute. “Mix it in. I said I would and I will.” He was proud to have kept his nervousness out of his tone.
Ranma swallowed, but proceeded with sure, deliberate moves. Tearing open the packet, he poured the powder into the mixing bowl and stirred it with the handle of the disintegrated back brush, which had still been leaning in the corner where they’d left it the day before. “It’s ready. Strip down to your boxers,” he ordered curtly. Normally he would have just ordered Ryoga to strip, period, but Ryoga’s male organs were the last thing he wanted to see these days.
“…Yeah.” The stockier boy complied, and wordlessly gestured for Ranma to douse him once his clothing was well out of harm’s way.
Splash.
Ryoga was quite familiar with the sensation of a Jusenkyo curse acting on him. It was different when you stayed about the same size, though. After he’d settled into his new shape, he decided in a stunned sort of way that the rearrangement of his genitals was quite a bit more disconcerting than… she… had expected. Yeah, that’s probably the worst part. The new girl tried dazedly not to think about the disquieting alienness of her new body parts. The ragged edge of the seam up the middle of her boxers was just barely tickling some unfamiliar part of her in a most annoying way.
Ranma looked her over carefully. Her face was quite definitely Ryoga’s, but indefinably more feminine. If he carefully suppressed all knowledge of whom he was actually looking at, he had to admit she was actually pretty cute. Her hair varied from a medium to a dark brown, with lighter highlights, and its masculine cut gave her a pixyish look. Her neck was a little more slender, her still-sturdy bone structure was perhaps a bit finer, and her new bosom— Well. That’s not very fair. Girl-Ryoga’s breasts were at least a full cup size smaller than girl-Ranma’s, which would hinder her a lot less in a fight. They do get bigger over time. I wonder if mine started out that size? Heh, I bet I make a better-looking girl than Pork Butt here does, either way.
Ranma looked at girl-Ryoga’s general build again. She was still built like a tank, but a much more feminine and, he was forced to admit, stunningly curvaceous one. Still, no matter how nice she looked, this was still the damned pig-boy on the inside. She wasn’t the least bit attractive. Definitely not.
He couldn’t help feeling a bit ill when he thought of Ryoga as a pretty girl. However much he might wish otherwise, this was whom he’d given his virginity to; or her virginity, if you insisted on the technicalities. That complication made him feel even more twisted up inside. Taking the traditional view of things, the Incident at Ryoga’s House had promoted his number one rival from boy to man, but all he’d gotten out of it was a transfer from boyhood to womanhood. Insofar as Ranma had ever given any thought to his future — not very — becoming a woman before he ever became a man had not been in the plans. And now the damned tart was standing there being all cute at him without even trying. Geh. So wrong! Pigs are not sexy, damn it!
Ryoga finally managed to put off thinking about the alien sensations coming from her new body parts, and refocussed humorlessly on Ranma. He looked upset about something, not that she cared why. She almost hoped he would blow his stack, like he’d done in the dojo earlier; while a Ranma who was in control of severe anger was somewhere close to being outright frightening, she could use a good session of beating him up to help her mentally adjust to this weird situation she’d talked herself into.
Yeah, a good fight would feel way more normal. Wonder if he’s noticed I’m about the same size as I started? Heh, if he’s expecting me to have reach problems like HIS girl form does, I can SO beat him down! She grinned evilly, absently shifting her weight a bit in preparation for a possible surprise attack.
She was abruptly jarred out of these tentative plans when the shift in posture caused her new bosom to also shift position, badly surprising her. Belatedly, she realized that after moving like she had, she was now standing there displaying most of her new body to him. She knew academically that a boy seeing a girl was different from his seeing another boy, could even clearly remember the feelings that were the reason why, but she was having conceptual difficulty applying the knowledge with herself on the other side of the equation.
Trying to move casually, she straightened up slightly and wrapped her right arm around her bustline to grip the left one above the elbow. It was odd to have anything to hide in that part of her torso; boy-Ryoga had trained without a shirt on many times over the years, and barely thought about it most of the time. The only real parallel she could draw was to that business with the stupid Mark of the Battling God, and the trouble she’d had trying to keep it out of general view. Somehow this wasn’t very similar, though.
The motion apparently reminded Ranma of what they were about, as he abruptly calmed down. With a businesslike air, he gathered himself and pulled a little pile of folded cloth out of… somewhere.
Ryoga’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t know you knew that one!” she exclaimed, with the beginnings of an impressed smile.
“Yeah, with as often as Mousse uses it around me, it wasn’t much of a strain to figure out. Think about it — can you really see that goof learning something that’s too hard for either of us?”
“Point. He can’t even bring himself to beat Shampoo, and she’s not on our level eithe— OH HELL NO!” No trace remained of her nascent smile.
Ranma innocently folded the lacy, sheer lingerie back into a compact bundle and casually held up a tiny, barely-there sunbathing bikini instead. “What?”
“I’m not wearing sexy underwear! The only reason to put that stuff on is to seduce someone. No way!” she raged. Then a different observation suddenly forced itself to her attention, and she looked even more alarmed. “…Why do you even have that? Don’t tell me you raided Akane’s dresser again. What, are you taking lessons from the old perv now? She’ll kill both of us, and only you’ll deserve it!”
“Oh, come on. Can you really see her owning something like this and the old freak NOT stealing it? This is from when Mom thought I was a girl. Why she thought ‘Ranko’ needed help getting anyone’s attention I dunno, but you can’t take underwear back to the store — who’d wanna wear it after someone already might have? — and so I’m stuck with a whole pile of the stuff.”
Despite herself, Ryoga started snickering. “She must have thought you needed help feeling womanly,” she jibed.
Ranma gave her a long, flat look that instantly sobered her up. “I don’t need any more help with that, now do I, pervert? But you do.”
Ryoga blanched, and swallowed noisily. Being more or less the same height as her boy form made it all too easy to ignore the drastic physical change she’d undergone, but she kept being abruptly reminded of it. She wondered how Ranma had coped with all of this when he’d originally gotten cursed, a year or so previously. He’d been so uncharacteristically vindictive when they were setting all of this up… he must really hate being a girl. Ryoga wondered why — it was kind of weird, certainly, but when she got right down to it, being female didn’t really feel all that different to how she’d felt as a boy, before the temporary girl curse was applied.
Ranma’s flat gaze shifted to a faintly puzzled look. What goofy idea has she got in her head NOW?
Ryoga, meanwhile, was guiltily remembering the confrontation that had led to this moment. It was no wonder girl-Ranma had been so infuriated. How would he— uh, she, Ryoga, have felt? She wasn’t quite brave enough to imagine it in order to find out, and with her sudden awareness of that fact, the memory of the whole embarrassing confrontation suddenly resolved into one moment of clarity. Ranma had challenged him to see how much Ryoga liked losing his self-control and his virginity to another guy. Ryoga had answered, “You’re right, Ranma. …I’ll do it. You deserve that much.”
She swallowed heavily, again. What the hell had she been THINKING? It was true, though… She owed this boy a terrible debt. This boy who, somehow, was her best friend in addition to her fiercest rival, and whom she’d already lost one flavour of virginity with. Oh, crap. Why did I have to make such an over-the-top vow? It’s a matter of honour, now. Gods, I must be some sort of idiot. But I can’t break my word… I’d never live it down. Anyway, is it really such a big deal? I did want to get it on with Ranma again, it’s just the other way around this time…
She considered that for a moment. Naah, that really doesn’t help. But I did vow. She gave a quiet, shaky sigh.
Looking nervously at him, she unconciously set her jaw and stood up straighter, unwrapped her arm from her bustline, and deliberately dropped her boxers.
Ranma’s eyes bugged out comically. “Wha— Wha— Wha—” Despite himself, the falling cloth led his gaze down past her waist, and he froze up with an atomic blush staining his face crimson.
Ryoga felt a confusing mixture of crippling embarrassment and …heady empowerment? She stepped unsteadily towards him, a faint sheen of nervous sweat developing over her whole body, and was both relieved and annoyed when he retreated in lockstep before her, apparently without even realizing he was doing it.
Ranma still believed himself to be frozen with shock, and was therefore taken completely by surprise when he tripped over one of the wash stools and landed flat on his back. The shock almost brought him back to his senses, but his coalescing train of thought was immediately derailed as Ryoga high-stepped daintily, if unsteadily, over the wash stool, accidentally revealing more of herself to him in that moment than he’d ever seen of any girl, even with the aid of a mirror. Ranma promptly forgot to breathe. A stunningly curvy nude girl, skin aglow with a slight film of healthy sweat, was walking up to his supine form with the apparent intent that he see her in her entirety, and was not attempting to molest him. This was decidedly new and strange territory for the pigtailed boy.
Ryoga took the last step up to the side of her fallen rival, and hesitated, staring indecisively down at him. She REALLY didn’t want to go through with the sex part, and though she somehow knew implicitly that Ranma would never force her to, the idea of actually reaching out to take the arm of a boy who was staring at “his” unclothed groin went a little further than “he” could bring herself to go. She couldn’t decide how to proceed, and gave him a puzzled sort of, “Now what do we do?” look.
Ranma was still staring dazedly at the area between her legs, which she happened to have slightly spread for stability in her current unfamiliar shape, and didn’t notice her expression. With a small choking sound, he began to breathe again, raggedly and irregularly.
Ryoga was actually kind of disappointed. If Ranma had passed out she could have put this off for a while. She carefully crouched down, cautious neither to overbalance nor to lean into his personal space, with the intent of intercepting his gaze with her own. Ranma, of course, remained fixated on the feminine treasure her stance was unintentionally revealing to him, with his eyes bugging out and his mouth slightly ajar. Annoyed, she cleared her throat noisily.
Ranma suddenly realized what he was doing, and with whom, and crab-scuttled hurriedly backwards on his elbows until he crashed into the tub. “Gah! Ryoga? What are you DOING?”
Ryoga’s nerve failed her. Happily, there was a convenient way to change the subject still clutched, forgotten, in Ranma’s hand. “You wanted me to put on that bikini, didn’t you? Well?” She stared at him challengingly, reaching out an expectant hand.
Ranma coughed. “Um. Right. Here.” He sat up and handed her the slightly crumpled bits of cloth, glancing away in embarrassment.
She held them up for a closer look, and grimaced. If Ryoga was any judge, wearing this scanty thing would probably feel more exposed than just going naked. Still, she guessed that was kind of the point, and reluctantly began trying to work out how to put the top on. After a minute or two of steadily increasing frustration, during which she accidentally pinched herself in the straps three times, Ranma finally took pity on her and began to help. Her ire gradually receding, Ryoga watched his efforts to guide the fabric over her bust without actually touching her with disbelief and a slowly growing sense of amusement. “Ranma? Are you actually being SHY? With ME?” she snickered incredulously.
Ranma froze for a second. “Of course not, Pig Girl,” he scoffed, suddenly moving more assertively.
“A-ah!” gasped Ryoga, as Ranma’s calloused fingers on the straps were suddenly brushing against her in a way that was both shockingly intimate and so impersonal as to make her feel almost rejected. That thought was so alien that she immediately disavowed it and resolved to never think of it again. She was surprised to note that it didn’t fit too horribly, which was rather unexpected considering how differently they were shaped as girls. Ranma had a bigger chest, but Ryoga was just enough stockier that her more robust frame took up the slack.
“There, done. I think you can work the other half out for yourself,” Ranma drawled. Ryoga scowled at him and quickly pulled on the barely-there bikini bottom, which — against all probability — was also more or less the right size. “Right. Turn around.”
She glowered at him suspiciously. “What? Why?”
He gave a particularly annoying smirk. “Well, if you want to flash everyone when we go out because you didn’t know it wasn’t on straight…”
Ryoga grudgingly shuffled around on the spot, thinking with dismay, We’re going out? …Of course we are. He must still be really mad at me. She was interrupted by loud snickering from behind her. “What now?” she growled over her shoulder, glaring.
Ranma tried to stifle his laughter, thinking idly that she’d REALLY be mad if she knew how adorable she looked scowling like that with the fangs and the bikini. “Well, this is a really small bikini, but it’s not a thong,” he explained with a grin. Before she could process that, he reached out and, with a single quick motion of one finger, straightened out the seat of the bikini where it had quite seriously ridden up.
She gasped in shock, and not merely from the sudden release of discomfort as the fabric stopped digging in. That had felt way more intimate than she was expecting. It wasn’t like anyone had ever lightly touched her backside like that even when she was a boy. Face burning, she choked out, “Anything else?”
“Nope, we’re good. Follow me!”
Like a man going to his execution in a clown suit, Ryoga did.
-=oOo=-
Ranma knew from the outset that going anywhere in or near his usual stomping grounds with a female in tow — even one that barely qualified as such, like the temporarily cursed Ryoga — would probably draw unwelcome attention from angry fiancées. That was why he led the blushing neo-girl, her hand firmly held in his own to avert disorientation, on a direct line away from Furinkan district and her family home — which happened to also be a fairly direct line southeast towards the more urbanized Nakano ward. This was not an accident.
“Uh, Ranma? Just how far will we be going to… wherever it is we’re going?” asked Ryoga nervously, eyeing the curious passersby mistrustfully. Ranma’d been quite happy to let her put her usual sandals on before they left, but since they fastened on with very long laces that wound their way up her bare calves, the net effect was mostly just to accentuate how little she was wearing, rather than making her look more dressed.
“Oh, not much farther,” he replied cheerfully, observing the increasing crowd density around them with ill-concealed glee. “Now all we need is a clear spot big enough to do a few kata in. Maybe on the rim of that planter thing?” He was pointing at a huge concrete bin adjacent to the sidewalk, with a few large but sickly-looking maples growing out of it. The space around the trunks was flat, bare dirt.
“Huh? Why?”
“Heh. People stare at a girl in a bikini, and they stare at people doing high-end martial arts. Putting the two together should have you sticking out like a pink tanuki among a murder of crows. I’m glad you accepted the bikini before I got to the bunny suit… this is gonna be way more revealing when you’re moving around a lot.”
Ryoga groaned. How had she talked herself into this? And this isn’t even the main act! She paused for a second. …Huh. Is Ranma sharper than I thought? Leave it to this jerk to find a way to make having sex as a girl seem like the lesser evil.
“Yup, this’ll do nicely,” concluded Ranma happily, turning back towards her from where he’d been glancing over the way the planter was situated. “Up you get!” he finished with a big grin, boosting her unexpectedly up with a single broad, callused hand under her barely-clad rump.
“Eeep!” She meant to glare at him, really she did, but the best she could manage was a wide-eyed gape of shock.
“May as well start off with the simple stuff. Good thing your family art’s nearly as ærial as the Saotome school is, those flying kicks are always a crowd-pleaser, especially when you’re wearing this little.”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” griped Ryoga, doing her best to focus on nothing but the opening stance of the first kata she’d ever learned. The still-unfamiliar weight distribution of her new body made even that into a small challenge, which at least helped distract her.
The sight of a stunningly curvy, muscular girl in an ill-fitting bikini making slow, uninhibited athletic motions soon drew a massive crowd of gawkers, each of whom if asked would have claimed they were just passing by. That they were STILL just passing by several minutes later was a mere coincidence on which no diplomatic individual would comment.
Ryoga found herself perspiring nervously at the attention, and finally hissed at Ranma, “can’t you come up here and spar with me or something? I’m running out of stuff to do!”
“Oh, all right. But we can’t do anywhere near as much as we usually do — we have to stay in one spot so people can gawk at you.”
“Yeah, whatever. What was supposed to be so bad about this again? It’s just people staring, and they’d do that even if I was a guy right now, at least if I had my shirt off.”
Ranma blinked. Ryoga had a point — it wasn’t being a spectacle that sucked, it was how people treated you afterwards, and they couldn’t do that to full effect today because it would have required people who actually knew Ryoga. Having the people you met every day form weird opinions of you was a special kind of torment, and if they had done this someplace it could happen, the other martial artists they knew would most likely have derailed matters in a spectacular and messy fashion.
“Damn. This isn’t gonna work. OK, I guess you can stop.”
“Thank you,” she deadpanned, winding down her last set of motions and hopping off the planter. Someone in the crowd spontaneously began to applaud, and within moments, Ryoga found herself basking in the mob’s acclaim.
Dammit! thought Ranma. Well, THAT didn’t work. I’m gonna have to come at this from a different angle. “Okay, Ryoga. Let’s keep walking. I need to think about this.”
“Aww, if we must.” Ryoga, smiling broadly, had just finished giving an autograph. This being-a-kickass-pretty-girl stuff was actually kinda cool. “Wait, what was that?” she asked someone behind her.
The tall young man who’d just caught her attention repeated himself, though Ranma couldn’t hear what he said.
“Uh, I’m not usually near a phone. Why do you ask?” she replied naïvely, giving the older boy an unintentionally winsome smile. Ranma’s eyes bulged and he had a hard time not bursting out laughing. Maybe this hadn’t been a complete waste of time after all.
-=oOo=-
The two teens walked briskly along the sidewalk, heading further and further into one of the more built-up areas of their part of Tokyo. “So, your admirer looked like a nice enough guy,” needled Ranma, who in his usual fashion was being far too childish to just let the matter lie. “Just imagine those arms around you.”
“I can’t believe he wanted to go on a date with me,” mumbled the Lost Girl, not really hearing him. She was sufficiently thrown by the whole experience that she’d have throroughly misplaced herself several blocks ago without Ranma leading her by the hand.
“It’s too bad we probably don’t have time for that,” opined Ranma. “Having to do the girl’s side of a date would be just the sort of thing I had in mind for you.”
For the first time in several minutes, Ryoga focussed her gaze on something, in this case Ranma’s expression. “You don’t want to take me out yourself?” she blurted in surprise. She’d thought that was the whole point of this!
Ranma tripped over nothing and faceplanted on the sidewalk, losing his grip on her hand. Sitting up, he stared at her in disbelief. He couldn’t figure her line of reasoning at all, and finally gave up trying. “Not one word!” he snapped, climbing back to his feet, and headed off again, his mind whirling.
Ryoga, her mind back on matters in the here and now, stalked confidently down the street after him. She still wasn’t sure just what Ranma was up to, but no cheap psychological tricks would get the better of this Hibiki!
“Yo!” came a confident voice from behind her. Startled — who would be talking to her this far from home? — she turned her head and saw a boy a little older than herself, suffering from a really severe case of acne. She absently stopped walking, staring in horrified fascination. It almost looked like the pimples were moving. She suddenly realized he’d said something, and said, “Pardon? Sorry, I was thinking about something else.”
“No worries, chicka. I’m-a thinkin’ we’s got all aftanoo’ to get betta… acquainted.” His exaggerated street language was made even more obvious by the way he dropped the last word of that in without the twist he’d given the rest.
“Eh? Why would you say that?” Ryoga was completely puzzled. Was she supposed to know this zit-encrusted dork from somewhere?
The pimply-faced boy looked a bit less at ease than he had started out, but remained confident. “Ye’z a-gonna help me wit’ ma new mattress, it smell’ good now and smell even betta afta’ you an’ me has some fun on it. I finkin’ a-t’ree hours’a’do it. Whass yer’ate?”
Ryoga stared at the unfamiliar boy in disbelief. “What did you just ask me? I’m sure I heard you wrong.”
The acne-ridden teen looked at her oddly, his easy smirk now a fading memory, and dropped his uneven attempt to speak in gutter dialect. “What are you, deaf? I said, ‘How much for three hours?’ Or should I be asking your pimp instead?” His eyes ranged a few storefronts past her down the street, to where Ranma had just worked out that Ryoga was no longer following right behind him and was looking around frantically.
Finally spotting her, Ranma had time to take almost a step and a half back towards the two, before having to stop as Ryoga’s shriek of outrage split the air (and threatened to do the same to everyone nearby’s eardrums). When he opened his eyes again from his split-second wince of pain, the acne-ridden stranger was nowhere to be seen, though some clue to his whereabouts could be gleaned from Ryoga’s infuriated, fang-baring snarl and the fist she was holding above her head in a follow-through position.
The pose did very nice things to her appearance — a painter of swords-and-sorcery pulp covers would have been ecstatic — but Ranma was too busy sprinting over, grabbing the outstretched fist and getting the hell out of Dodge to really pay attention. Well, that’s the second goal achieved ahead of schedule, he mused idly as he led her surly form across the rooftops, being sure to head in a different direction than Zit Boy had probably been sent.
-=oOo=-
Two hours later, in the most densely travelled part of Tokyo, the pair of teens had just disembarked from a jam-packed monorail filled with buttock-groping salarymen, and Ryoga was pretty nearly ready to kill something. If I’d had my umbrella—! she growled inwardly, ignoring the fact that she wouldn’t have had any more room to move that than she had her empty hands. Even breaking that one asshole’s fingers didn’t help. By this point, she was getting almost eager to have sex with Ranma, if only to make this overly-drawn-out exercise in getting very, very angry end sooner.
Ranma, of course, had no idea, and was merrily leading the temporary girl through the crowd towards a high-end lingerie shop. If this doesn’t embarrass her, nothing will! he thought gleefully.
Just before she would have caught sight of their latest destination — and, probably, blown a gasket because of it — Ryoga’s never very sizeable supply of patience finally ran out. Planting her feet, she braced herself and yanked on Ranma’s hand, halting him so sharply that he ended up facing her with a startled look on his face. “Dammit, Ranma, when are we going to have sex? Get on with it!” she bellowed in a carrying voice.
Ranma paled, his eyes bulging. Casting his gaze from side to side as best he could in the press of bodies, he saw that, yes, everyone nearby (a group numbering at least eighty persons) was staring at the pair of teens in astonishment, and most of them were also starting to mutter disapprovingly to one another. His attention was brought abruptly back to matters closer to hand when the Lost Girl, having caught sight of an establishment off to one side that looked relevant, hauled him determinedly towards its doors, her gaze fixed rigidly on the tastefully discreet sign visible above the crowd’s heads as she bulled through the densely packed pedestrians. “But-but-but that’s a love hotel!”
“Yup,” confirmed Ryoga, not altering her pace at all.
“Nice one, buddy!” smirked a loutish-looking older teen as they passed, very obviously eyeing up Ryoga’s bikini-clad form as she strode past and giving Ranma a thumbs up. Ryoga, her world-class single-mindedness dominating her thought processes for the moment, didn’t even notice. Ranma just gave him a sort of helpless deer-in-headlights look as he was hauled past, and tried to pretend he hadn’t heard the guy start sniggering behind him.
--===ooooOOOOOoooo===--
END PART THREE
Sat. 2012/07/07: Minor edits
Weds. 2012/07/04: Moderate rewrite
Thurs. 2012/06/21: Minor scene added
Thurs. 2012/06/14: First draft completed
Thanks are due to my most excellent prereaders, including among others J. St. C. Patrick, Deitarion, Kaoru Shimitsu, Baughn, and most especially Yarrow for her exhaustive efforts in spite of at times distasteful subject matter. Thanks are also due to the disparate groups of suspicious characters at the Temple of Ranma’s Senshi Seifuku C&C forum and The Fanfiction Forum’s Ranma section.
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