Bad Acting
	A sequel to the previous fic titled, "Fake Cat."
	A couple of days after Ranma's admittance that the Neko-ken was purely
an act, word spreads that Ranma had been shamming everyone. Naturally, many
people challenged Ranma to battles and fights. Ranma wins all of them. Today's
challenger was Cologne. Akane sees Cologne laying on the ground as she comes up,
after visiting a seminar discussing the effects of tomboys entering the Japanese
workforce.
	"What happened?" she asked as Ranma sits there in deep thought.
	Ranma closed his eyes. "Cologne tried to ambush me, but I've gotten used
to hear the sound of her pogo stick hopping up and down. I went into my
Neko-ken, but Cologne shouts to me that she's heard that it's an act. I said,
'Yes, it's an act, and so is this.' With that, I snapped the pogo stick in half
and Cologne isn't as nearly a good fighter without her stick intact."
	"Take away the crutch, the limp can't walk," Akane mused.
	"Exactly," Ranma added. "I hope I haven't killed her. Maybe she's
acting. Who knows?"
	"Ranma, today you'll die!" shouted a familiar voice.
	"Oh, great. It's the Lost Boy," groaned Ranma, opening his eyes.
	Ryouga comes out of the bushes and charges after Ranma. Akane slides her
foot out and Ryouga leaps over Ranma and lands on Shampoo, who's hiding in a
bush.
	"Get off of me, Ryouga!" shrieks Shampoo.
	"Did you get silicone implants?" asked Ryouga.
	"Lost boy should not laugh at breast like this! Large breast run in the
family! My mother and her mother before that had large breast!"
	Shampoo pushes Ryouga out of the bush as she gets up and storms towards
where Ranma's sitting. Ranma simply dodges Shampoo's leap and she lands on a
bigger rock than the one Ranma's sitting on. She turns around and realizes
something isn't right. She looks down, whitish-colorless fluid starts to ooze
from tears in the breast.
	"You got silicone breast implants?!" screamed Akane. This could be too
hard to believe.
	"Yeah...don't most people?" replied Shampoo. Then she covered up her
mouth, as she realized that she said it without her Chinese accent. There was a
pregnant pause while the silicon continued to ooze out, Ryouga looked in his
backpack for some antibiotic cream, and Ranma and Akane looked at Shampoo very
carefully.
	If you could replace Shampoo's hair with a more traditional black
dye...and seeing that her breast were deflated as such...Ranma pictured her
against a lot of the other Chinese females he's seen. Clothed or naked, old or
young, courtesians or protestitues...then he realized what it was. The eyes.
They did not look Chinese at all. They looked, Japanese. No...can't be, he
thought, as he went through the images one more time.
	Akane tried to place the voice. It sounded Japanese. It sounded Japanese
through and through. She had never really heard or seen any other Chinese person
besides these two until the trips to Jusenkyou. Come to think of it, Herb didn't
look very much like a Chinese person either...but how could she know? Wait, the
eyes. The eyes did not look Japanese. Or was it because Herb had shouted one too
many times at Mint and Lime?
	Suddenly, something else struck Akane. Shampoo, she reasoned, does not
look like a bimbo anymore. In fact, she isn't even dressed like a bimbo today.
Instead of the usual chinese waitress suit, Shampoo was wearing a t-shirt
featuring a picture of the very popular group, "Sex Machineguns" and a pair of
Gap jeans. She was even wearing a bra, which now looked way too big for her.
	Ryouga finally got the antibacterial ointment and smeared the 2 litre
tube of stuff all over Shampoo.
	"Hey! Watch where you aim that stuff, I don't wanna look like I've
gotten some Pearl Necklaces to her when she wakes up," screamed Shampoo,
pointing to the protrasted body of Cologne.
	"You're not Chinese at all, aren't you, Shampoo."
	Shampoo looked incredulously at Ranma as if he had said that she was
ugly or something.
	"Shampoo, I've seen a lot of Chinese girls." Akane perked up her
eyebrows at that remark. "Trust me, you are not Chinese."
	"I am too!"
	"How do you know?" asked Akane, who really wanted to ask: "OH?! And how
many girls have you done it with, you pervert!"
	 Ranma, sensing this hidden question said, "Pops only spent about three
weeks in western China. He spent more time hanging around the red-light district
of China, Vietnam, and other bad districts than I care to remember."
	"He brought you along?" gasped Ryouga.
	"What was he suppose to do, leave me someplace else where I could run
away back home? No he brought me along, claiming he was teaching me the 'facts
of life' and how a martial arts should act around women. My job was to notify
him at the first sign of trouble."
	"So...you weren't involved?"
	"No...and after the Jusenkyou incident, I was a girl most of the time
anyway."
	Akane blinked, looking puzzled.
	"A-and what did you learn?" Ryouga smirked in one of those
I-Don't-Believe-You smiles.
	"That I rather not be a girl than a guy," Ranma said. "After all, Pops
gave 'em the shaft, literally."
	Another silence ensued. Ranma pondered whether he told too much. Akane
glanced at Ranma, seeing if there any sign that the baka pervert was lying about
all of this.
	Ryouga then sighed. He knew something about red-light districts, and
putting together the previous conversation he nodded. "I believe you, Ranma. You
wouldn't do something like that."
	Ranma smiled. At least someone believed him.
	Ryouga turned back to Shampoo, who was finally trying to clean away as
much of the leakage as she could. "Shampoo, from my vast experience of being in
China, I would have to agree with Ranma. You don't seem to be Chinese. Quite
frankly, you're too smart to be Chinese."
	"Okay. You got me. I'm not Chinese. I'm actually Japanese. Cologne
doesn't know it, through. My parents adopted me when I was a baby."
	"How could you learn Japanese, then?"
	"They were in Japan for a while, and they taught me Japanese, even when
they were back in the village. But the other girls didn't like the fact that I
looked different. When you saw me there for the very first time, you ruined my
chance to kill a girl because she had accused me of not looking like an Amazon.
But, after you fled, the girls, and a lot of the women of the tribe, including
Cologne, saw the beauty of the foreigner. In fact, there's talk now about
lifting of one of the basic beliefs of Amazonism: purity of the race."
	Ryouga started to blush, perhaps realizing it was a silly thing to say
what he said about how Shampoo was too smart to be Chinese. Or maybe he realized
he had just gotten a boner looking at Shampoo and now he had to clean his pants
someplace else. Maybe both. Anyway, he hoped no one else could smell the fishy
smell that erupted from Ryouga's loins.
	Akane looked around and said, "Well, I'm hungry. Do you have any good
fish entrees at the Nekohaten, Shampoo?"
	Ranma looked at Akane strangely, wondering how could she say something
like that at a time like this.
	"Do you think Dr. Tofu can clean this mess up?"
	"He'll have you sown up and as good as new in no time," smiled Ranma.
"Then, maybe you could tell us about yourself. By the way, is that your real
hair color?"
	"Uh...no. How could you tell?"
	"Lucky guess."
	"Well, then, come on. Let's go," smiled Ranma. 
	"Ranma, what about Cologne?" asked Akane. "Do you think she's heard
everything we've said?"
	 "Most likely," Ranma said, "which is just as well. Cologne? Cologne?
You can wake up now?"
	She did not move.
	"Aw, quit acting, old ghoul. I didn't hurt you that badly, now!"
	Cologne laid still. Akane went over and turned over the body, which was
facing down in the ground. She opened her eyes, and they were still rolled up to
her eye socket.
	"Man, did I hit her that hard? I don't usually hit women that hard,"
Ranma muttered.
	"Maybe it's just as well. Cologne probably wouldn't have accepted the
truth anyway," Akane said, nodding her head.
	Ranma picked up the old ghoul, and dropped kicked her towards China.
Everyone else nodded.
	Shampoo was about to get up, but Ryouga rushed to her side and helped
her up. Shampoo then pulled Ryouga towards the direction of the Dr. Tofu's
Clinic.
	Akane leaned over, whispered to Ranma, "I think Ryouga's trying to hit
on Shampoo."
	"What was your first clue?" he muttered back.