Ah My Goddess Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Two Wallets ❯ Mountain Girl ( Chapter 7 )

A Tale of Two Wallets

(An Altered Destiny)

Written by Jim Robert Bader

Proofread by Shiva Barnwell

"All right, Saotome," I smiled at my nervous opponent, "Let's see what you're made of."

"Take your best shot, Nabiki," Ranma responded with typical bravado, "I can handle it."

I grinned at his pretense of a confidence that I well knew he did not have. I had my opponent on the ropes and we both knew it. There was no way for him to back out without losing face at this point, and I knew his stubborn pride would not permit him to concede defeat without at least attempting to make a firm stand in this arena of our engagement. I had the advantage here and I intended to press my claim hard so that he would regret having underestimated me in accepting this challenge.

"Famous last words," I leered as I directed my weapon at the chalk board and pointed at the first problem, "Find the Square Root of thirty-six hundred, then divide by half, then multiply by twelve and add five to the total. What do you get?"

I could see the sweat bead upon his brow as he tried to work it out in his head, then finally straightened and said, "Three hundred sixty five?"

"Correct," I nodded, "The number of days in the year, minus the leap year, which is the answer to our first quiz question. Congratulations…that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Ah, no," he replied, which was tantamount to lying but I let it go at that and turned my pointer to the next question.

"In what year did the Empress Jingo assume power in Japan."

"Three sixty of the Common Era," he promptly replied, radiating more confidence now as history was one of his few specialties of interest, "More traditionally known as the year 1020 going by the Imperial Calendar, which is supposed to record the advent when Jimmu, the great-great grandson of the Goddess Amatarasu Omikami, founded the Imperial line among the clans of the Omi, although some sources claim Amatarasu was actually from some group called the Jurai. According to one source I know personally the Emperor Jimmu was half Jurai and claimed divinity through his mother…"

"That's…very interesting, Ranma," I said as I absorbed this semi-mythical version of what I thought was most probably just a bunch of hokum cooked up by the imperial court to justify the Emperor's divine right of authority, which had gone unquestioned throughout the vast majority of our nation's history. I wondered who Ranma's source was and why they filled his head with such patent nonsense, but knowing how he felt about ancient myth I just mildly said, "But a bit much to put on a high school test. I'd stick to the basics with your answers and leave the more scholarly stuff for term papers."

"Okay," he shrugged, "Next question?"

"Politics," I smiled, seeing him groan inwardly as I turned to a subject of far less interest to him personally, "What is the present nature of our government and explain the basic functions for each branch of the political system."

He started racking his brain immediately to come up with the best reply while I stood my ground and waited for the inevitable to happen. It really was not a fair question to ask, requiring more general knowledge than I knew he possessed about the complex parliamentary system that ruled the forty-seven prefectures that constituted the Japanese islands, which was really pretty much a hodge-podge of Western and Eastern systems combined together during the post World War II era.

He gave it his best shot but it was inevitable that he would slip up somewhere, and when he did I was ready to administer his punishment. I thrust the pointer-which was tipped with a sponge pad dipped in water-soluble yellow ink-at Ranma's face and lightly tapped his nose, leaving a small yellow mark on the tip, which prompted him to screw up his eyes in an attempt to look at it.

I smiled as I withdrew the pointer. Great martial artist that he was, Ranma had never seen it coming.

"Next question," I said, "What is the Atomic Weight of Osmium?"

"Huh?" he blinked, "The what of what?"

"AAAK!" I said, making a sound like a buzzer and thrust the pointer again, this time leaving a yellow mark upon his forehead, "That should teach you to study your periodic chart before you take your Chemistry exam. Honestly, Saotome, you'll never graduate Freshman year with this level of knowledge."

He made a face at that but said nothing in complaint. It was all part of our agreement that I tutor him for regular school in exchange for which he would help me re-learn the martial arts. Since I'm an Honor student it was natural that I quiz him first to learn just how much he actually did know so that I would know where to begin with his remedial education.

"Now then," I said, "Recite to me the basic rules for the use of kanji."

I knew that I had him yet again, and he knew that I knew it. He was sweating more profusely than before, but now he was trying to work it out, putting to use mental muscles that he probably had not exercised in many years, and the strain was telling.

In the end he gave me a correct answer and I almost felt disappointed. There were so many areas of his face yet to be touched upon, but the afternoon was young and I had only just started to quiz him.

Given that he could have avoided me altogether I thought he showed remarkably good behavior and took his punishment in good faith. I was inwardly touched by his trust and devotion and wished that I had chosen a less rough way of getting my point across, only I knew that I was doing the right thing. Ranma would only learn something if he felt challenged to know it. His competitive spirit would not allow him to back down once a challenge had been given and it was bound to make him try harder at remembering the things he already knew but had not bothered trying to remember.

It was my intention to make him into a better student, if for no other reason but that I wanted my iinazuke to graduate with a good grade point average. He might not ever really use it, and I didn't think he was the sort who would go on to college, but at least he would not bear the stigma of being a drop out ne'er-do-well, like his father. At the very least I would see that he got a diploma by the time he graduated.

So I quizzed him on the subjects that mattered: Grammar, Literature, History, Mathematics, Foreign Language Studies, Sociology and Business, each question asked being of general information level to determine his middle ground, the basis from where he could develop a stronger foundation of knowledge. Each time he gave a wrong answer I put another yellow mark on his person, and each time I did so he worked that much harder to answer the next question, sometimes surprising me with the resourcefulness of his solutions.

Of course some of his answers did not make much sense from what I knew about the subject in question, such as his daunting fascination with the mythological history of Japan, which sometimes conflicted with actual history, until we arrived at a crossroads where my vexation burst into full fledged frustration.

"You have got to be putting me on!" I declared, "The Tokugawa Shoganate was a brutal dynasty that closed Japan off from the rest of the world and locked us into a pattern of feudalism for over two and a half centuries! Ieyasu's so-called reforms were just a fancy way of consolidating his power by making a uniform culture in which all the daimyos had to tow his line. It may have pacified the country as a whole but it left in place a rigid social structure in which the Samurai class continued to lord it over the common people. That's not a very romantic picture overall, Ranma."

"I know," he shrugged, "I'm not saying it was a good or a bad thing, I'm just saying that the Shoganate was an improvement over the centuries of civil wars that came before him. Things weren't perfect, and I know it was pretty hard living if you were on the bottom of society, but you know what things were like in the rest of the world at the time. The Catholic Church was trying to undermine his power, and the European Missionaries…"

"All right," I conceded, "So Ieyasu didn't want anyone else calling the shots but him, and the Christians were clearly a nuisance. Maybe they would have subverted power over time, and maybe we would have been colonized like much of the rest of Asia and turned into just one more European franchise. You can't escape the fact that the isolation we suffered made Japan a backwater nation until the time of the Imperial restoration."

"Yeah, but we sure caught up with the rest of the world pretty fast," Ranma said, "And the Industrial Revolution here had a distinctively nationalistic flavor. Mind you I like Western stuff a lot…all except maybe their TV shows, which stink. Aside from the militarism that got us into two wars we've done pretty good over all, and we haven't lost our cultural identity with Modernization."

"I suppose that's true as far as it goes," I reluctantly admitted, "But it still seems like we've had to sacrifice a lot to make up for lost time. Who knows where we'd be if we maintained steady contact with the west during the late seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries…?"

"Probably got mixed up in a bunch of their wars and that revolutionary nonsense," Ranma shrugged, "I kind of like the way things turned out. Now we've got more freedom than at any time in our history, and besides that stuff about the Stock Market fluctuating we're still one of the richest countries on the planet. Things ain't perfect, but when have they ever been? I'm not saying all that stuff was right before…the brutality and such, but how we got here ain't always as important as appreciating what we got today. I'm sure if I'd lived in those other times I'd probably have felt different."

I found it very difficult to argue with that, almost frustratingly so since it meant he had just effectively out-argued me on a point of practical scholarship. I fumed for a few moments before I finally said, "So you're saying we shouldn't worry that much about our past? We should just be thankful for the present and get on with the business of living?"

"Don't seem like much point crying about the bad old days," he shrugged, "We can learn a lot from the past, but it's more important to remember that we're living in the present."

"True," I smiled, and suddenly I stabbed him with the pointer, putting yet another yellow spot on his chin.

"Hey!" he protested, "What'd you do that for?"

"Just because," I smirked, "Do I need a reason?"

"Why you…!" he suddenly launched himself at me, which took me completely by surprise as he had failed to react so far to any of my proddings. This time he closed the gap between us in less than a heart-beat, snatching the pointer away from me before he turned it my way and began to stab me with the yellow marker on my chin and forehead before declaring, "Now let's see how you like it!"

I recovered from my surprise with an indignant, "Give me that!" and I launched back towards him, only to have him flow away out of my grasp. I turned to find him right beside me with that insufferably smug expression on his face that as much as declared that I could not touch him if he did not let me.

"I think I've had enough questions for today," he grinned, "Now why don't you show me what you've learned? Fair's fair, after all, we had an agreement."

"True enough," I smiled as I assumed a fighting crouch and raised my arms in a boxer's pose. I had not practiced the arts for many years but I still remembered Daddy's earlier instructions and found the stance came back to me like riding the proverbial bicycle.

He stood and watched as I took my first swing in his direction. Rather than dodge me he put up his hand and absorbed my punch with hardly any effort. He smiled encouragingly as I squared my hips and raised one leg to kick at him, which he also blocked without even flinching. It was just a couple of tentative moves on my part, but I put more force behind my next kick, then the punch I threw afterwards, feeling incredibly awkward to be doing this after such a long time, as though the muscles I was using were protesting against this abuse. Ranma stood his ground and blocked my thrusts, all the time watching me without looking at my hands and feet as I put more and more force behind my kicks and punches. I felt ridiculously outclassed and imagined what sort of a fool I was making myself out to be in his eyes, yet somehow I found that I was enjoying his attention.

"Not too bad," he said after a few minutes, "You've got the basic moves, but you're really stiff and you don't have near enough coordination. You're thinking of your hands and feet as though there were separate parts of you instead of being an extension of you. Try not to think about the motion and just let your body do its stuff by instinct. I'll worry about whether or not you're using the correct form, okay?"

"Sure thing, Sensei," I said with a mocking smile, but I was taking his words to heart and trying to do what he was telling me. It wasn't easy for me to forget about paying attention to what my body was doing, but I knew he was the expert here so I did not question his judgement and simply concentrated on visualizing a target before I threw the next series of punches and kicks, starting to feel more than just a little bit winded.

"Better," he said a little while later as I paused to get my breath back, "You're looking more natural when you move now. Try breathing through your nose and pace yourself a little, don't throw everything into your swings and you won't tire out as quickly. Take a minute to rest then let's go through some basic warming up exercises, then we'll try a few katas."

"Whatever you say," I smiled, but instead of straightening up or sitting down I instead took a step towards him and before he knew what I was about I threw my arms around and drew him into an embrace. As he was just starting to react to that I wrapped one leg around one of his legs and used my momentum to trip him.

We both fell back onto the floor of the dojo with me landing on top of him, exactly as I'd intended. I put a hand to either side of his head and used my position to straddle and hold him down in a pin, knowing full well that he could break loose at any time but relishing my momentary advantage as I looked down at him with a grin that I knew would leave him flustered.

"Got you!" I crowed, enjoying the confusion and panic I saw on his face, which still had the yellow paint marks I had put there, "The great martial artist. Honestly, Ranma, you mean to say you never saw this coming?"

"N-nani?" he squirmed, his voice two octaves higher pitched than normal.

All at once there came a thumping noise at the back wall of the dojo, and suddenly a form came crashing through the wood and plaster, causing us both to turn and stare in disbelief as a singular figure stepped into view wielding a pair of weighted metal spheres that I knew to be bonbori maces, a type of weapon once used in China.

This girl was really something to look at, almost five and a half feet tall wearing a Chinese-styled outfit very similar to but much more formal than Ranma's and with a build that put even his female half to shame. She had long purple hair that hung down below waist level with a couple of Odango hairballs held in place by matching white Jade ornaments. The overall effect made her seem very cute, almost like a China doll, except that the expression on her face was anything but doll-like.

Her reddish brown eyes flashed anger as she took the two of us in, then with an angry gesture with one of her bonbori she spoke in a high-pitched, girlish voice, "Where Ranma?"

"Sh-Shampoo?" I heard Ranma gasp as he flipped me off of him and managed to position himself between me and this funky wild woman, "What are you doing here?"

I was surprised at his gesture of gallantry, but more surprised at the note of fear in his voice as he regarded this bimbo as though she were a genuine menace (and judging by the hole she had just created I had a sense that this was an understatement). I also saw the girl's eyes narrow as she glared at Ranma, but there was no immediate recognition in her stare as she came to stand a short distance away looking the both of us over as if trying to classify our genus and species.

"Who you?" she asked in heavily accented Japanese, "And how you know Shampoo?"

"Who? Me? I'm nobody!" Ranma hastily declared, "I just…um…thought I…"

The girl waved the bonbori under his nose and said, "Tell Shampoo where find Ranma now or I pound you like ricepaper!"

"Easy," he declared as he edged away from the bonbori, using two fingers to push it to one side as he straightened up, "She's not here right now, but I can tell her you stopped by if you want to leave a message…"

"You no try hide her from Shampoo?" she declared with a suspicious glare that as much as accused him of every imaginable crime, "Shampoo find arrogant girl and she kill! You try hiding Ranma from Shampoo and she do bad thing to you. Tell Ranma that when you see!"

With that she turned around and stomped away like a maddened bull elephant, not even bothering to leave the way she came as she just pounded the ricepaper door off its hinges in her passing. It was not until she was finally gone that I heard Ranma sigh in relief, by which time I was starting to form my own suspicions as I glared angrily at his backside.

"Ranma," I growled in low menace, "Who was that?"

"Eep!" I heard him gasp as he started guiltily my way, "Uh…just somebody I ran into back in China…nobody you need to worry about, Nabiki…"

"Excuse me?" I said, reaching out and grabbing him by his collar as I got into a sitting posture so that I could shake him a little to rattle some brains loose, "Try running that by me again, Saotome? This girl wants to kill your female half, puts two big holes in my family dojo and you're telling me it's nothing to worry about?"

"Ah…well…" he winced, "It's kind of a funny story…well…not funny really, but…"

I drew him close until our noses were almost touching then stared him coolly in the eyes and said, "I'm willing to listen if you come clean now, otherwise…"

I let the words dangle to give him a sense of all kinds of things that I could have been implying. He got the point and gave up on trying to be evasive, so he sighed and said, "Well, if you must know, it happened right after me and Pop got cursed at Jusenkyo…"

And so he laid it out to me, how he and the old man had stumbled onto a village called Joketsuzoku that was inhabited by the Nyanchiczu Amazons of China, an ancient tribe dominated by women warriors who had lived there since the Bronze Age. I remembered reading about the legends of these people, who were known to be fiercely independent and not too congenial with strangers, possibly descended from the Scythian Amazons who once roamed the plains of Asia Minor.

It seems that their guide-a local man on good terms with these people-had explained that there was a great tournament taking place on that day where the best warriors of the tribe would compete for a prize, which happened to be a great feast that was laid out on a table. Ranma and Genma were hungry after having gone almost an entire day without food and did not wait to hear the rest of the explanation before digging in to fill their faces. The local Champion-who had just finished off the last of her opponents-was naturally outraged and challenged Ranma to a fight in which Ranma naturally came out the victor.

It was very soon after this that he found out why it was a bad idea to challenge and defeat an Amazon as the guide explained to Ranma that a female outsider who defeated an Amazon brought disgrace to the village. Their Champion gave Ranma a kiss that signified that she was now obligated to hunt her down and kill her. Ranma and Genma took their leave of the Amazons very soon after learning this, and Shampoo had been on their trail ever since, chasing them from one end of China to the other.

"But we managed to ditch her before we caught a boat ride back to Japan," Ranma finished explaining, "I never dreamed she'd be able to find me here! Now what am I going to do?"

"That's easy," I said in a neutral voice, "Avoid cold water until she leaves."

"Yeah, right," Ranma snorted, "Like I can do that! Problem is that she won't go away until she's satisfied that I'm dead. The guide said that Amazons like her are relentless, only she doesn't know about me and the curse. That's the only thing that's saving me now…"

"Can't you challenge her and make her leave?" I asked, "You beat her one time."

"I beat her as a girl," Ranma said, "Only I didn't have to kick her too hard to do that. She was pretty tired from fighting all day so she wasn't at full fighting potential. I don't like hitting girls, and besides that, beating her up won't work, I'd have to kill her. I won't do that even if she is kind of violent."

"She's also very cute," I coolly noted.

"Yeah?" he blinked, "So what? You think I'm interested in her? No way! She's even crazier than the tom-I mean, your sister."

"All right, Ranma," I sighed, "I'll go with you on this for now. So this girl thinks she has to kill your female half. Maybe if we convinced her that you were dead then she might leave?"

"Yeah," Ranma considered the point, "That might work, only…"

"Only?" I frowned as I regarded his reluctance.

"Well," he looked at me a bit sheepishly before saying, "It's not really very honest, and besides that…I don't think she'd buy it. She's not as stupid as she sounds, you know, even if she can't speak Japanese very well."

"Point taken," I mused, realizing that he had a point and that it was always a mistake to judge someone on first impressions and appearance. I considered the point carefully before saying, "Why does she have to kill you? Is that some tribal custom of her people?"

"I think it's some kind of village law," Ranma declared, "She's honor bound to bring my head back, which ain't gonna happen if I have any say in the matter."

"I should hope not," I shuddered, suddenly very fearful for him. Ranma's refusal to fight all-out against women was a definite disadvantage here, nor could I expect him to resort to murdering someone, even if it was technically in self-defense.

Still I could not stand aside and let my iinazuke come to harm, regardless of his personal inclinations. I resolved to find out more about these Amazons and their laws to find out if there were a clause or a loophole that I could use to get this Shampoo person to lay off on her vendetta.

I have to admit looking back on the events of the last few days that my initial feelings towards the Amazon were tinged with more than just a bit of envy on my part, although what exactly it is I'm envious about here is difficult to say because I'm pretty sure that Ranma doesn't favor her over me. For one thing she is stunningly beautiful with a body that you could die for, and she is extremely limber being a martial artist of a caliber rivaling that of Ranma himself. When I'd seen her in action I'd been enormously impressed, not to mention depressed when I think about the gulf that exists between her and me when it comes to the fighting arts. I'm hobbling on crutches while she runs the Marathon in just under two hours, which means in terms of threat I'm like a candle in the wind if it ever comes to a physical confrontation.

All right, but that's her specialty, my specialty is using my wits to get ahead, and I'm not about to concede a prize like Ranma to some bouncy piece of fluff who either didn't know what a door was or probably didn't much care, so I set to work researching the matter using my personal home computer, an innovation I've only started to make use of since acquiring it a short time ago. With it I found my fact-finding search greatly enabled beyond the bounds of what I could discover through my usual methods of inquiry.

How I got a home computer is quite a story in itself, and you may wonder how I could afford it when it's usually enough of a struggle just to keep food on the table and make repairs for all the stuff that gets damaged in the fights that are always going on around here. Truth is I got a great deal in a trade-off, actually more like the repayment of a favor for somebody who owed me big time. I had taken computer courses in High School, but Furinkan doesn't have that big a budget for its Computer Sciences division so most of my education had been acquired at the homes of friends who were computer literate. Being a quick study I naturally had learned the mysterious joys of the Internet and resolved to become its mistress. Having a system that had the best hardware and software components that could be afforded on my modest means I began my search to determine the roots of the Amazon society that Ranma said existed in the Qing Hi province, beginning my tireless search for this village he called Joketsuzoku.

My search, of course, began with the history of this remote area of Mainland China that is as shrouded in myth and legend as any place in the modern world. It is governed with surprising leniency by the Communist authorities, who are not known for their tolerance of indigenous tribal cultures. The people known as the Nyanichiczu Amazons have lived in that region since before the beginning of historical records. There is some evidence that they are indeed descended from a tribe of Scythian nomads who migrated there near the beginning of the Iron Age. The Amazons reported in Western mythology were thought to be just myth until recent excavations had turned up the burial remains of a matriarchal race of women warriors who lived a largely nomadic existence at about the same time as the Aeolian Greeks who spoke about them in their oral traditions.

According to the legend of Herakles a Greek expedition from Athens was sent to the area near the Black Sea to obtain a magical girdle said to have been a gift of the Earth Mother Gaea. Hippolyta, then Queen of the Amazons, greeted Herakles and the Greeks with open arms and was willing to give up the girdle but for the intervention of the Goddess Hera, who stirred up trouble with the Greeks and allegedly caused Herakles to either kill or take captive the Amazon Queen in order to win safe passage back to Greek held territories. After that the legends get murky, but one point is clear that the Amazons abandoned their capitol city of Themiscrya and fragmented into different tribal groups. The sisters of Hippolyta were said to have each headed a different tribal grouping, which sounds pretty much like any dynastic squabble ever recorded in history but may have resulted in one group finding refuge in the remote vastness of China.

The Chinese Amazons appear pretty early in the first millennium BC and seem to have won the respect of Princes and Emperors in the centuries following. They were mostly ignored or left alone to their own affairs and seldom interfered in politics, which was probably a large part of the secret of their having endured this long, one of the longest surviving cultures in the history of the world as it so happened.

A large part of that history and tradition seemed to revolve around their being in the possession of occult lore and knowledge that predated even the Taoist and Buddhist mystics of later centuries. It was alleged that they were the masters of both armed and unarmed martial combat over fifteen centuries before the founding of the Shaolin Temple, and even the great Boddidarma himself respected their prowess. With that sort of mystical and martial arts lore at their disposal it was little wonder that they had maintained their relative independence for so long a time, which meant that anyone who trained there was likely to be very, very good. Yet another incentive to further my researchers.

It took some time but I finally was able to find and download a translated copy of some Missionary reports that predated the Boxer rebellion, along with a annotation by the Cleric who had written it that the Amazons were to be given wide berth and not subject to attempts at conversion. Considering the missionary zeal that predominated at the time this was a rather surprising and ominous notation, and as I read the report itself I came to see why the author had considered them off limits. The Amazons were only mildly tolerant to outsiders and fiercely zealous of their traditions, ruled by a council of Elders who had supreme authority in all local decisions. Their rules were simple and few but had harsh penalties for violations and minor infractions, not the least of which was having an Elder visit you in the privacy of your den. No details were given as to what the consequence of this were exactly save that the author implied rather harshly that it was a fate not to be coveted.

I finally found the list of their rules dealing with Ranma's situation, and that was when I came across a sub-clause that made my hair stand on end. It was indeed true that Ranma, in defeating an Amazon-no less than the tribal Champion at that-had gained a powerful enemy for his girl form, but in regards to his male half the issue was another form of danger altogether. That was where I determined to have a long and serious talk with Ranma in which I meant to outline his peril in full graphic detail so that I could get his total cooperation in the counter-measures that I was then devising.

Rather than seek him out that night I decided to sleep on it instead, which was a mistake I now know, but at the time I was still recovering from hours of frustrating Net Search and the closing of many dead ends. It was late and I needed rest, and had I been clear minded enough I would have realized the urgency of my warning, but instead I waited to discuss it with Ranma at school the next morning.

Breakfast turned out to be a disaster as I badly overslept and would have been late for school altogether if Ranma himself had not come to get me. A hasty bath and a quick dress later I started to try to explain to him what I had discovered but he was impatient to get moving, and so he picked me up and carried me to school, leaping from roof to roof in that incredible way of his while I held on for dear life and forgot all about everything but the pounding of my heart. By the time we had arrived I was still recovering my breath in amazement of my iinazuke, but we had to part for our separate classes, so I did not see him again until lunchtime.

I made certain to get his attention the moment he showed up at our favorite spot in the cafeteria, and as usual we were given wide berth by the majority of our fellow students. This time I did not mind the isolation as it gave me a chance to confer with him in relative privacy, but just as I started to acquaint him with what I had learned about Amazon tribal law there came a tell-tale pounding at the rear wall, which was heralded a moment later by yet another explosion of bricks as Shampoo appeared again and angrily demanded to know the whereabouts of Ranma.

Naturally our fellow students were only too glad to point in our direction.

Shampoo recognized us with an angry glare and came storming over to our table with her bonbori at the ready. She gave me a look of dismissal before turning her full attention on Ranma as she declared hotly, "You lie to Shampoo and try trick her yesterday! You know where Ranma is, tell Shampoo now or you get hurt!"

"Hey, easy with those things," Ranma said nervously as he edged away on our bench, "If I knew where she was don't you think I'd tell you?"

"You think Shampoo believe stupid boy who try to trick her?" Shampoo glared in a way that would have been cute if she did not look so deadly serious, "Boy outside say you know, say you cousin's protector, only cousin's name Ranko! Shampoo not know what you try to pull here, but she get truth now or else!"

And to make it crystal clear that she was serious she brought her bonbori down on what she must have supposed would be Ranma's head, only to find that he had moved out of her way as quick as an eyeblink. She seemed surprised at this but came at him again, swinging those heavy maces of hers with great speed that proved far too slow to actually nail him. Ranma glided out of her way with the same ease he used to dodge the most vicious sword attacks by Kuno.

"Look," he said, "I'd like to help, really, but you're going to have to stop attacking me. I mean, I don't want to fight you…"

"Stand still and let Shampoo pound you!" the girl angrily demanded, continuing to attack Ranma, who just as persistently avoided her maces.

"Ranma!" I called out, which was a mistake I now know but at the time I was sincerely worried about the Baka's welfare, "You're going to have to fight back! She won't stop coming after you, but whatever you do try not to actually beat her!"

"What?" Ranma blinked and almost let himself be nailed before he recovered, "What do you mean don't beat her? What do you think I'm trying to do?"

"Just trust me on this," I said, "Try to work it so you get a stalemate with no obvious winner, okay? Try taking the bonbori away, that should make her think about it…"

"You no interfere!" Shampoo growled at me as she turned from Ranma and started waving her bonbori in my direction.

I at once raised my hands to try and deflect her anger, "Hey, don't look at me, I'm not looking for a fight…"

"Then you stay back and let Shampoo punish boy!" Shampoo growled, taking one angry step in my direction.

"Nabiki!" I heard Ranma cry out as I saw Shampoo wave a bonbori in my face, not actually threatening me but trying to make me back off, although to him it must have seemed as if I were in immediate danger. I wasn't watching him so it came as a surprise when Ranma swept me up into his arms and kicked the bonbori out of Shampoo's hand, which caused it to arc upward while my eyes followed it, feeling a certain sense of inevitability when its downward descent brought it hard upon the head of my purple haired assailant.

The next thing I know is that she is flat on the ground, good and stunned by the accidental blow while Ranma is holding me close to his breast and looking towards her in concern. I was aware of his powerful frame holding me close to him like some character out of a Romance Manga but I was also looking towards Shampoo, albeit for very different reasons.

"Uh oh," I heard him exclaim, "I beat her again."

"Uh oh is right," I murmured, "Now we're really in trouble."

"Now she's gonna be after me in both my forms," he groaned.

"Oh yeah," I replied, "Only not the way you're thinking."

"Huh?" he looked down at me in surprise, "What do you mean?"

"You know what happens when an outsider male defeats an Amazon, Ranma-kun?" I asked him simply.

"What do you think?" he snorted, "That's what I've been trying to avoid…"

I shook my head, "That only applies to female outsiders. When you beat her as a girl she was obligated to come after you for vengeance, but what happens when a male outsider defeats her like you just did?"

"The same thing?" he asked, and I noticed that his tone was almost hopeful.

"Guess again," I said as I heard Shampoo groan softly, then push herself up to a sitting position.

She felt her head as though to discover whether or not a goose really had laid an egg there, then slowly looked up towards Ranma without a trace of the hostility that had been there a moment before. I saw her actually smile at him before she got to her feet, leaving her bonbori clubs where she had dropped them.

"Uh, look," Ranma said as he set me down on my feet once again and attempted to shield me by placing himself between me and the approaching Shampoo, "I'm really sorry about that, I didn't mean for you to get hurt-what? OMMMPHHH!!!???"

The latter was said because Shampoo reached out and drew him into her arms, then before he could even think to react she kissed Ranma full on the mouth, then murmured, "Wode Airen. Wo ai ni."

"Huh?" Ranma replied with a stupefied reaction.

"Beloved husband," I translated into his ear, "You I love."

Ranma looked at Shampoo and uttered a very mild, "Nani…?"

So that was how Ranma gained another suitor, and this time the threat I face is genuine. Shampoo lost to an outsider male and was bound by her laws to marry Ranma, a man skilled enough to beat her in combat. Apparently the law was designed to discourage losing to anyone but the fiercest male fighters, no doubt also intending to recruit new blood into the tribe that was worthy of their long policy of Strength as a virtue. Ranma is now betrothed to Shampoo by the laws of her society, in effect already his wife in all but name regardless of a lack of formal declaration on his part. To say that Ranma objects to being considered this would be a considerable understatement but the law is pretty plain and has almost no loopholes or exceptions to work through. Shampoo must either marry Ranma or return home in disgrace while simultaneously obligated to hunt down and kill his female half. Logically the two laws should contradict in his case, but until it becomes plainer which way Shampoo will go we're going to have to keep Shampoo guessing until the plan that I'm still forming hatches.

Ranma is in a miserable state right now and I'm going to have to go and offer him my comfort at some point if only to reassure him that I'm not blaming him for getting into this crisis. I don't really, but I'm also worried about what Shampoo is going to do to me as soon as she starts to consider me as a rival for Ranma's affections. I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't last two seconds against her, so whatever I do is going to have to be done intellectually, maybe taking advantage of her provincialism and lack of knowledge of our culture. Knowledge is a kind of power and I'm fairly confident that I have the advantage in that field.

Not that I'm saying Shampoo is a fool simply because she speaks very poor Japanese-far from it! In fact I'd say that she has at least as much animal cunning as Kodachi herself, only slightly less psychotic.

What am I going to do about her? Just when things seemed to be settling into a nice and tidy pattern everything suddenly is in a complete shambles, and all because Ranma and his father had to go and pick the wrong village for a food raid. I don't want Shampoo to either kill or marry Ranma, and I certainly don't want to wind up on the receiving end of her jealous anger either. A pretty mess indeed, but there has got to be a way to satisfy her wrath without anybody actually dying.

Tricking her to think that Ranma-chan has either been badly hurt or injured is certainly out while I'm positive that Shampoo is going to court Ranma with even more determination than she used to try and kill him. I'm wondering if maybe there might be a solution in playing one problem against the other? Maybe I'll figure it out by the morning.

I find myself sitting here wondering if Ranma is really worth all this trouble, but then I think back to what it felt like when he was carrying me and I find that question much easier to answer. Ranma is worth the world to me and I won't let anything happen to him, just as I won't let anyone else have him either. I may not have wanted this iinazuke stuff to affect me as badly as it has, but like it or not I care too much about Ranma to let some hair-dyed floozy have him. Tomorrow I'm going to search the Net again and see if I can find what I need, maybe some clause to these Amazon rules that I've yet to consider.

You know writing this stuff down really does help me think things through more clearly, but maybe in the future I'll transfer my thoughts into the computer. There's less danger of somebody reading this without my knowing, like Akane or Kasumi. Not that I don't trust my sisters, of course, but re-reading what I've written down here I could almost get the impression that some lovesick girl was drooling about her stupid boyfriend who can't seem to manage to stay out of trouble for as long as five minutes. Imagine.

On the other hand, whatever else you can say about Ranma and his troubled fortunes, life sure has been anything but dull, and somehow I find myself looking forward to the challenge of tomorrow… provided we both somehow by some miracle survive it.

Too tired to write now, maybe I'll just get some rest and start all over in the morning…

Continued

Comments/Criticism/Historical Notations Department: Shadowmane@msn.com