"She has a cure?" Ranma asked excitedly.
Genma looked up from where he was inspecting a bit of plunder and threw the worthless hunk of thousand year old clay away. "A cure!?"
Ryoga suddenly realized that if he asked Gina any more questions that Ranma and Genma would get the cure and take it for themselves! He ran off into the ruins, and for once in his life, he ran in the correct direction.
Ranma followed Ryoga, right on his heels. It wouldn't do to overtake the Lost Boy until the cure was in sight. Following Ryoga was usually a recipe for disaster, but for once it looked like he was actually going where he thought he was.
Ryoga felt a rush of joy. A cure was nearby, and he wasn't getting lost! His dark and lonely life was soon to be ended! Sure, he lost Akane, but as soon as he had that cure he could go to Akari a whole man and live his life in happiness. Now if only Ranma wasn't trying to get in his way. "Ranma Saotome, because of you, I've seen hell!" he bellowed his usual challenge. He lashed out behind him with a kick.
Ranma ducked the kick easily and returned the favor with a lightning-fast jab. "Same old song, P-chan," he taunted.
Genma jumped over them both. "It's mine! Mine mine mine!"
Akane was back with the Diggers and had her hand over her face. "Is it too late to say I'm not with them?" she asked rhetorically.
Gina grabbed her hair and twisted it nervously. "Jinkies! They're going to destroy the site at this rate!"
"On it," Brit said. A blink of an eye later and she had joined the fray.
Ranma was surprised when the catgirl joined the fight. "There's a spring of drowned catgirl?" he asked, forgetting that Brit didn't speak Japanese. Whatever, she was a decent fighter. Her ki was untrained but focused and her forms were sloppier than they could have been, but her speed, strength, and stamina were all in Ranma and Ryoga's league. The three-way battle only lasted a handful of seconds before Ranma realized that Ryoga and Britanny were both capable of pushing his limits separately, and only the fact that they were fighting eachother as well gave him a chance to pull a win out of this mess.
Britanny was faced with a similar realization. She was well aware that her training in Shun Leep left a great deal to be desired. Luan could outfight her human form with ease and she couldn't touch Gar or her mother no matter what she did. But against some boys, not even adults, who didn't have any superhuman enchantments to speak of, she expected to be a dominant fighter. Instead, the bandanna-wearing one was taking blows that could stop a truck like they were feather-light caresses and the pigtailed one was moving so fast she couldn't touch him. That wasn't supposed to be possible! She was a were-cheetah! She was supposed to be strong enough and fast enough to have two human teenagers begging for mercy without breaking a sweat!
Gina stared at the fight in shock. "I didn't know anyone could move like that," she mumbled.
Akane tilted her head. A few weeks ago, she mused, she wouldn't have been able to follow the fight beyond counting the number of blows, at best. Ranma's training was already paying dividends, because she could see the fight. She couldn't predict the next move, she couldn't even think fast enough to try, but she was watching and thinking fast enough to keep up with the moment. "Your sister is very good," she told Gina. "She's already dodged a hundred blows, and taken nearly twice as many without slowing. And Ranma's going all out to keep up with her."
Gina looked to Akane. "You can follow that?" she wondered.
Akane shrugged. "Ranma's been training me."
Gina blanched slightly. If Akane had even a fraction of Ranma's speed, as close as they were standing, Gina wouldn't have any time to activate a defensive shield.
Ranma ducked a punch from Brit and parried the next, pushing her blow to one side. He added enough force to unbalance her for a splitsecond and create an opening. It was not enough to get a clean blow, but it was everything he needed to employ the Saotome Secret Technique: run away. He leaped backwards, spun around, and hit the ground running after Genma. Ranma saw no need to horde a cure for himself, assuming there was more than enough for one, but he knew his father better than that. Genma would use it all, or keep whatever made the cure for himself, or just destroy it so that no one else could take it from him. And he'd call it training if Ranma objected.
On the other hand, Ranma had long since outclassed his father. He caught up to Genma in the next room, which the panda was ransacking. The room was some kind of laboratory, Ranma decided. Ancient-looking flasks of liquid sit on different tables, many with much more recent notes written on them (in English). Genma was opening them up and splashing himself with them, which explained why he was a panda. "Oyaji you idiot!" Ranma yelled. "You don't have a clue what those are!"
Genma held up a sign. [Stupid boy!] Flip. [It's a cure!]
"And are you supposed to drink it or splash it?" Ranma snapped. This weird potion lab reminded him of chemistry class, and for perhaps the second time he wished that he paid more attention to his science teacher. The first had been when he was careless with a bottle of "water" that turned out to be acid. That had just burned a little. Ranma didn't want to know what a misapplied cure would do.
Ryoga wasn't about to let Ranma get ahead, but Britanny was too fast to get away from. The best Ryoga could pull off was to drag their fight into the potion room. Akane followed, hoping to find some way to stop the madness (or join in. She was a martial artist herself, after all.)
[You just want it for yourself!] Genma signed. He picked up one of the unlabeled bottles and threw it at Ranma. After all, if the American girl had found a cure, it would be one of the labeled bottles, right? Right! Ranma ducked but the bottle still shattered against the wall and ice-cold yellow potion splashed far further than it had any right to, coating him, Britanny, and Akane. Ryoga was ready with his umbrella.
Gina entered around that time and stared at the now-female Ranma covered in yellow potion. "He made a potion that turn hunks into girls?" Gina whined, thinking that whoever once owned this lab had been responsible for Ranma's transformation.
"Huh?" Akane asked. "No, that's Ranma's curse. He turns into a girl when splashed by cold water."
Gina's hormones latched onto that thought. "So if we dry him, er, her off, she'll turn back into the hunk?"
"Hot water," Akane corrected. "What's a 'hunk?'"
"Nevermind," Gina said. Hormones later! "If that's his curse, the cure here won't help him, er, her, at all."
"Would someone explain why there's a panda here!?" Britanny yelled.
"Is Genma!" Akane yelled back in broken English.
Britanny frowned. So the old man was a were-panda. She didn't even know there were were-pandas. She'd have to be careful now that he was in his animal form.
Gina winced as the flask she had labeled "unknown high energy reactant" was smashed by the growing brawl. Quite aside from the continuing loss of the opportunity to discover, messing around with magical compounds was massively dangerous. "Stop it!" she yelled. No one listened.
Genma scowled. The catgirl was being more careful now, but that was almost making her more dangerous because some more training was coming out in her moves. Her Master was good, very good. Genma didn't know the style, but the punches were replaced with open palm blows and the girl's ki was more focused. All of which promised pain if he didn't find some way to get away, quickly.
Contrary to popular opinion, Genma was not a useless lazy sack of flab. He was a world-class martial artist, with excellent physical conditioning and a keen tactical mind. He knew that simply running away was useless; the catgirl's speed was well above his own. He had to get away…there were deeper areas to the ruin. He could go there and search for a cure after losing the catgirl…by distracting her! With…the boy! Why wasn't he going into the nekoken anyway? Ungrateful son, this was the perfect time to use the technique Genma suffered so much to teach him! Well, maybe a push was necessary.
Gina blinked at the panda which was now waving a rainbow-colored sign that read [Nyanyanyanyan nyan nyan nyanyanyanyan…] with one hand while fending off Britanny with the other.
In accordance with popular opinion, Genma was an idiot.
In accordance with the rules of such things, Ranma's foot intersected Genma's face with flawless accuracy. "What the hell are you tryn' ta do!?"
Britanny stared at the sign for a moment and turned to Gina. "Gina?"
"It makes no more sense if you can read it, Brit," Gina replied.
"I think Genma was trying to send Ranma into the nekoken," Akane said in Japanese. This was too complicated to risk to her English skills.
"'Nekoken?' What's that?" Gina asked.
Akane decided on the short version. "Ranma becomes an insane super-martial artist when threatened with a cat," she said. Experience had shown that the extreme violent reaction was the best one to tell people about. "Ranma is really afraid of cats" had a horrible tendency to invoke "ooo, I wanna see!" reactions. Then came the screaming and the blood and Nerima's average property values drop another precious notch (there were many reasons why Nabiki, shrewd investor and usurer, had no investments in local real estate.)
"Jinkies!" Gina yelped, switching quickly to English. "Brit! Don't turn into your animal form!"
"Huh? Why?" Brit was confused; she almost never went full-cheetah, especially in a fight, so why would Gina warn her off it?
"She has an animal form?" Akane asked, still in Japanese.
And so Akane joined Ryoga on the list of people who shouldn't have translated what Gina said.
Genma grinned. The catgirl was cursed after all! Foolish boy, to think he could get Genma to believe there really wasn't a cure here. Now, all he had to do was splash the girl and get out.
Ranma stumbled slightly as her own thoughts paralleled her father's. She also knew that she couldn't let the catgirl trigger her nekoken. So she had to get away quickly.
Genma succeeded in his goal first. A beaker of something green with a thick layer of frost shattered against Brit and drenched her in cold liquid. "YEEEEK!"
[Now, boy, attack the cat!] Genma signed as he turned to run. He made it three steps.
Brit ran up to Genma, still very humanoid and now very, very annoyed as her clothes were plainly ruined. "Stryyp got me this shirt," she growled.
Genma was too stunned by the failure of his foolproof plan to react, and within a few seconds Britanny had invented Panda Pretzels.
"One down," she said grimly. "Now for…the…kids. Gina? Where did they go?"
Gina looked around and noticed that Ranma, Ryoga, and Akane had all run off. "I have a bad feeling about this," she sighed.
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(Posted Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:40)
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