A frown crossed the girl's face. "Don't you recognize me, you idiot! I'm your partner, Yuri! AKA, Hibiki Ryouga!" Yuri pushed up her lip to reveal an enlarged fang.
Ranma blinked, then blinked again. This girl, Yuri, did look like Ryouga's twin sister, or if he had taken a dip in the Nyanniichuan. However, even for Ranma and his exposure to the cauldron of insanity called Nerima, that was hard to swallow. "Prove it!" he challenged.
*SOCK!*
*CRUNCH!*
"How was that?" Yuri asked evenly, cracking her knuckles.
"*Urg!*" Ranma yelped, pulling his head out of the hole in the drywall and nursing a jaw made sore by Yuri's hefty punch. "You certainly have the strength *ouch* to be Ryouga... but any gorilla girl could do that."
Yuri picked up a nice rock sculpture and tapped it with her finger. "Bakusai Tenketsu!" she whispered, and the rock made a *snap* as it shattered into itty bitty fragments. The fusillade of rock bounced harmlessly off her skin. "How about that?" she asked.
"Errr..." Ranma murmured, aware of the evidence beginning to mount.
"Or how about this?" Yuri asked, standing and taking the bedclothes with her, leaving nothing for Ranma to protect his modesty.
"HEY!" protested Ranma, covering himself.
"Ladies' modesty comes first!" she answered, sticking out her tongue impishly as she moved away from him, wrapping the cloth around herself and tying the ends over her right shoulder to make a crude toga affair. The blue-haired stranger closed her eyes and crossed her arms before her, concentrating.
"akane..." she whispered as a tear fell from her eye.
A sickly green aura flared about her, lifting her hair in the currents. Ranma had no time before Yuri thrust out her hands at him as she yelled the attack mantra:
SHISHI HOUKOUDAN!!
*ROOOOAAAARRRRR!!!!!*
"*GUEEH!*" gagged Ranma as he was slammed bodily into the drywall once again, this time making the room shudder in the impact.
"So, how about that, Ranma?" asked Yuri, arms akimbo.
Ranma groaned as he extracted himself from the drywall again, this time his whole body, saying, "*Ngh!* Yep! You're definitely Ryouga. No one does a *ow!* Shishi Houkoudan quite like you."
The girl that convinced Ranma that she was Hibiki Ryouga, but who shall still be referred to as Yuri, blew an exasperated breath to flip up a lock of her bangs. "Finally! So the legendary thickness of the Saotome cranium CAN be breeched after all!" she said in a tone of good natured ribbing. It didn't last long. Yuri's features became grave as she advanced on Ranma, crawling onto the bed. Ranma cringed, allowing Yuri to be somewhat above him as she held her face close to Ranma's. "Now, we have the same curse and we were locked the same way, so spill: how did you manage to unlock your curse?" she asked.
Unfortunately, the cloth was VERY loose about Yuri's body, and hung away under her front as she stood on all fours, exposing an indecent amount of her to Ranma's view. Ranma tried to keep his eyes away from her bare skin to instead look into her eyes, but found himself gravitating toward that intriguing view. "Well... uh... I just... I can't... remember..."
"What do you mean, you can't remember?" asked Yuri icily.
Ranma swallowed, both from Yuri's cold look and the awesome view. "Ryouga... buddy..." he stammered, though it was hard to think of Ryouga as a 'buddy' with the view, "…that Herb thing is... Y'know, the last time I remember me being locked... a-and last I knew, y-you were still P-chan!"
Yuri's features twisted a little and for a second Ranma saw the Visage of Rage that Ryouga adopted on the face of Yuri, and any lingering disbelief over her identity was dispelled. "Who's P-chan?!!" she barked, cracking her knuckles against his skull.
Unfortunately, Yuri's swing had caused the knot of her covering to slip off her shoulder, exposing more of her bare flesh to Ranma. Ranma's eyes bugged out to saucer size as he got an eyefull of the feminized Ryouga's flesh. "Dah-dyuh-fah—" stammered the martial artist.
Yuri glanced down, finally realizing how much of a spectacle she'd made of herself. She pulled the knot back into place and wrapped the sheet tightly around her body. "Okay, I believe you," she said, suddenly calm.
Ranma's brain, rebooting after the removal of feminine flesh from view, noted that she seemed to accept rather easily. "You do?" he asked.
Yuri nodded. "Yep. If you were just playing some sort of amnesia game, you wouldn't be blushing that hard just for the sight of me in the nude. We've seen each other's female bodies in the buff plenty of times; we soon got over any residual bashfulness long ago.." She paused, fingering the sheet which was the only thing protecting her modesty, "Which is why I wasn't too careful about this crude tunic."
"Um, okay... but, er... no offense, but... couldya get some clothes on?" Ranma asked.
"Okay!" said Yuri with a perky shrug. She moved to the bureau, she loosened the knot holding her makeshift tunic together. The silk bedclothes slid off her shoulder and down her body to pool at her feet, revealing her smooth, toned back, her curved hips, her tight, rounded bottom...
Ranma immediately did a 180 on his place on the bed, his nose threatening to explode.
Yuri noticed Ranma's prudishness and sighed. "You might as well turn around and get used to it again," she advised, stepping into a fresh pair of panties. "I'm still stuck, and we're still the three-doubleyou-aye trouble consultant team, codename Lovely Angels."
Ranma turned around to see Yuri pull on an oversized shirt. "Y'know, this is very un-Ryouga like behavior."
"People change, Ranma. Especially in 150 years in a body in the opposite sex they were born in," remarked Yuri. "But I haven't given up on my dream of getting my Nyanniichuan curse unlocked and returning to male form. That used to be your dream, except now your curse isn't locked anymore." Yuri shrugged. "So you can probably guess what that means."
"You're gonna stick to me like glue till you find out how I was cured, arencha?"
A crafty grin appeared on Yuri's face. "Bingo! If we can figure out how you got unlocked, maybe there's some hope for me!" she stated matter-of-factly. "Besides, male or female, you're still my partner." Her grin softened until it became almost tender. "And there's also the matter that we spent quite a lot of very intimate moments together last night," she added in a soft voice, "It's very flattering that you find me sexy after all these decades."
"'Intimate moments'? 'Sexy'?" parroted the son of Saotome Genma and Nodoka, suddenly feeling very, very ill as his face went ashen. "You mean... we..."
Yuri nodded her head vigorously.
Ranma took a deep, calming breath... then
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
Yuri winced at the scream. "Jeez, calm down! What's wrong, anyway?"
"I SLEPT WITH A GUY!!! Okay, he was a girl at the time but still, AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" Ranma yelled at the top of his lungs (except for the uncapped bit).
A vein throbbed on Yuri's forehead. "You hippocrit! You stared experimenting LONG before I did!" she growled. Then, she thought it over and smacked her head in realization. "Dummy! Ranma's still has that 'Man-beyond-Men' defect going!" she murmured, letting out an exasperated sign.
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(Posted Fri, 16 Jan 2004 19:26)
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