The Amazon and the Moneylender: Episode 6, Part 2: The
Walking Earthquake saves the day.
see E6P1 for comment about the Baksai Tenketsu Wave
-------------------------------------------------------
A few hours later Shampoo woke up with a slight
headache. She stretched, yawn and scratched her head.
She looked around and realized that she wasn't at
home.
"Why Shampoo at Ranma's home?" she asked herself.
"That was strange dream."
"What dream was that grand-daughter?"
"Pervert-girl kiss Shampoo," and she looked
confused, not very troubled, but thoroughly confused.
"Strange dream."
"It wasn't a dream," Cologne told her. Shampoo
blinked.
"I go kill Akane," she was surprised when Cologne
stopped her.
"She didn't kiss you, you kissed her. Mousse's love
potion was off target."
"I go kill Mousse, then." She turned to look at the
unconscious form of the master of hidden weapons.
"Wait until he wakes up from Akane's beating, and
get ready for�"
"SHAMPOO DID WHAT?!?"
"�.Ranma's reaction."
"I can't believe you let me miss that!" Happosai's
voice wailed. There was the sound of several thuds and
a strangled cry of pain.
"WHAT GAVE YOU THE BRIGHT IDEA TO TELL HIM ABOUT
IT!" this was followed by the sound a panda in pain.
Shampoo sweatdropped.
"Shampoo go back home now," she said quietly.
"Hmmm, this could be interesting," Cologne said to
herself. "Yes, that might be a good idea." After
Shampoo left Cologne nudged Mousse.
"Huh, what?"
"If I were you boy," she said. "I'd be leaving
right now."
"THIS IS ALL MOUSSE'S FAULT!" Mousse sweatdropped.
"Why are you helping me?" he asked as he stood up.
"I'd rather not see Shampoo or the son-in-law
charged with murder." He sweatdropped and was about to
leave.
"You want to hurt him, you'll have to go through
me!" Mousse stopped, turned around again and slumped.
Then he rushed to the other room. Cologne arced an
eyebrow.
"Stop, stop I'm here." Akane glared at him, Ranma
looked about ready to tear him to pieces. Genma-panda
was unconscious over to the side holding a sign that
read, "Oww.."
"Are you crazy," Kodachi asked him, ribbon in hand.
"Shouldn't you be running?"
"And let you shoulder all the blame, that would
really impress Shampoo wouldn't it?"
"Shampoo, Shampoo! Always Shampoo! What anybody can
see in that blue-haired bimbo I'll never understand."
"Oh, and you think that womanizing, muscle-bound
Saotome is such a great catch?" Akane and Ranma
blinked and looked at each other.
"Aren't we supposed to be getting mad at them?"
Akane asked.
"And to think I ever worried about an insolent fool
like you!"
"Worry about me!" Mousse paused and his voice
calmed down. "When did you worry about me?" Kodachi
winced and blushed feverishly.
"Oh�don't pay any attention to that, I was just
excited."
"Hey, over here!" Ranma shouted.
"You didn't think I could beat Copycat Ken!" Mousse
realized suddenly.
"He did beat you once before," Kodachi noted, a
little smugly.
"I had him running last time!" It had actually been
more like a draw, but try telling Mousse that.
"Can they even hear us?"
"Well no one was there to witness it were they?"
"Even Akane beat Ken!"
"Hey! What do you mean by that?"
As the argument continued, Ranma and Akane had
ceased putting in their own complaints and sat down
watching the two exchange insults awhile Soun and
Genma-panda played Shogi and Kasumi prepared dinner.
"We don't sound like that do we?" Akane asked.
"Noble brat!"
"I don't think anything could get this boring."
Ranma muttered.
"Blind idiot!"
Kasumi and the two fathers glanced at Ranma and
Akane quickly and then returned to watching the
argument.
"What?" Ranma and Akane asked them.
"Baka!"
"Crazy!"
"Fine, if you feel that way, I do not see why I
should stand here and take that!"
"Fine, I'm going home! See you tomorrow!"
"I'll catch you at work then!" They both hmphed,
turned back to back and stampeded off, completely
unaware of the implications of their last angry
outbursts.
"Weren't we going to do something when they
finished?" Akane asked.
"Its been an hour of listening to them shout at
each other," Ranma answered. "I almost forgot my name
twice." They stood up and stretched while Soun and
Genma-panda played shogi.
"Oh, where did Cologne get to."
"She went back to the Cat Caf�," Genma-panda's sign
read.
"Oh that's right," Akane declared wearily. "I
wanted to talk to Shampoo."
"I think I'll go along with that." They both
narrowed their eyes.
"Dinner's ready," Kasumi called.
"Tomorrow," Akane suggested. "Should be
interesting."
"Yeah, I wonder what Shampoo will do to Mousse."
"What do you mean the sun isn't setting yet?" Ukyou
asked with mock annoyance. She had lost the initial
annoyance Ryouga's getting lost produced, and a lot
had been burned off by her embarassment earlier. Now
all that was left was attempting to get Ryouga home in
under a week. Then she could tease him about it later
and of course teasing led to�she blushed and got back
to the problem at hand. "You didn't get lost in a
building or anything did you?"
"Yeah, there was this one really small one with a
loud air conditioner," a sea's distance away Ukyou
smacked her head.
"What is it with him and airplanes," she asked
herself. "Okay, well it should be still past noon
where you are, I hope, so just walk away from the
sun."
"Uh, hold on a moment, Ukyou," Ryouga set the phone
to the side and cracked his knuckles. "Baksai Tenketsu
Wave!!" The cliff face in front of him vanished in
series of explosions. As the last explosion was fading
off he heard what sounded like people.
"Ryouga have you ever heard of going around the
geography rather than through it?"
"Ukyou I think someone was on that cliff face!"
"Oh shit! Go! Go!" Ryouga was already hanging up
and running through the newly created pass. He came
out on the edge of a vast field of familiar pools with
bamboo pools. The water of the nearest pool was
stained red, blood red and the pool was half-sheared,
half snapped at the top.
"Hello?" He turned to look back at the pile of
rubble and saw someone half-covered in boulders. He
rushed over and from there it didn't take long to
uncover the only shallowly buried person. "Nabiki?"
She was beaten and cut, and not dressed in her usual
attire at all. She was in fact dressed much more like
that ninja freak of Kuno's did, some sort of ninja
night suit that had been cut into ribbons in the fall.
He avoided looking too closely at the remains of her
outfit, fainting from embarrassment wouldn't be a good
thing right now.
Ryouga didn't pause to wonder what she was doing
here. He checked her pulse and removed a bandana from
his head. With the same hand he grabbed his canteen
and pulled the cap off with his teeth. Damping the
bandana he started to clean her wounds.
"Good pulse," he mumbled. Nabiki groaned,
apparently coming to, as he wiped her face. He started
upon seeing the cut clearly. "That was a knife."
Nabiki's eyes fluttered open, but the unfocused motion
showed she was still largely unaware of what was going
on around her. He noticed that her right arm was
twisted awkwardly, obviously a dislocated shoulder,
and it was something that could have happened in the
rock fall but wasn't likely.
Taking the opportunity Nabiki's dazed state
presented, Ryouga set the shoulder back into joint.
Nabiki cried out, and her looking about seemed to
become more directed than accidental. She was going
to come completely out of the daze fairly soon.
Reasonably certain that she wasn't going to die on
him anytime soon, Ryouga scanned the area for the form
of whoever else had to have been up there. His eyes
latched onto the bloody spring and nodded grimly.
Whoever it was had impaled themselves on that pool in
falling off the cliff. They had then fallen into the
spring. He looked down as Nabiki blinked away the last
of her confusion. The girl suddenly fixed him with
such a vicious glare that he flinched.
"GET AWAY FROM FREAK!" She punched upward and
caught the surprised Ryouga across the jaw. She tried
to stand up and then fell down again, her legs
battered in the fall.
"Nabiki, I'm Ryouga," the lost boy declared she
fixxed him with that glare again.
"Why don't you just kill me?" Ryouga winced again,
Nabiki was vindictive and bitter about a lot of
things, but he couldn't remember doing anything that
warranted this kind of behavior.
"Nabiki, whoever you were fighting they fell into
that pool over there," Ryouga pointed. "Now maybe its
time to get you to the nearest hospital." Nabiki
frowned.
"You don't expect me to fall for this, do you Ken?"
"Copycat Ken," he thought, that explains why she
doesn't believe I'm me. "Nabiki if I were Ken why
would I need to trick you right now?" He looked back
at the pool and saw a body coming to the surface, and
walked over towards it, planning to pull the body out.
Nabiki's punch drunk mind worked rapidly over the
facts and came at last to the correct conclusion.
"It's Jusenkyo! Don't go in the water!" Ryouga
halted and watched as the blood red pool swallowed
Copycat Ken's, he could recognize it now, body again,
then the water smoothed to a preternatural calm. The
water suddenly looked like it was just waiting for
someone to come to it. He turned back to face Nabiki
who spoke with her usual manner, as if everything she
said was obvious and it was a pain to have to explain
it. If it weren't for the visible injuries, and an
occasional gasp or pant, he could have sworn that she
was fine.
"The Amazon village is not far," she said. The girl
noticed the mobile phone in its belt pouch. It was one
of those new satellite things that could be reached
almost anywhere. It was most certainly Ukyou's idea.
"Medical care first," Ryouga insisted. He walked
over to her and bent over to pick her up.
"What are you doing? Let go of me!" Nabiki shouted
angrily, ineffectually and painfully resisting with
her good arm and as much motion as her bruised legs
would allow. "You'll get us lost!"
"You're not going to walk there like this," he
answered. "Now just keep still before you kill us
both. Point and I'll go that way, okay?"
"Put me down, now! I can walk well enough." She
declared. Ryouga hesitated a moment and set her down.
She glared at him and walked a couple of steps,
faltering only once. When Ryouga moved forward to keep
her from falling she glared at him. "Stay there, I can
walk there fine."
"At least use the walking stick with my gear," he
pointed to the pile on her left. "You're going to kill
yourself." He saw the knife slash down the right side
of her face start to bleed, as if someone had drawn a
red tear line from the corner of her eye. He tossed a
bandana over to her. "And try to keep that against
your face." Nabiki took both offered items and limped
slowly, painfully and stubbornly through the rubble.
Shampoo was looking forward to tomorrow when Mousse
showed up for work the next day. Cologne had told her
to make sure that he could still work, but she also
gave her blessing to make work as hellish as she
wanted. As long as business didn't suffer.
Shampoo yawned as she finished cleaning up from the
day's business. It was odd, but the memory of kissing
Akane did not disturb her as much as she would have
thought. It was still somewhat fuzzy in her memory,
perhaps that was due to that crazy-girl's sleep
powder. Shampoo finished wiping down the table and sat
down, staring off into space for a moment.
She yawned as she went over the events in her head
again, the memories must have been warped by the day's
fatigue, because it seemed more like a dream. This
time Shampoo wasn't the only participant in the kiss,
and the girl didn't exactly seem to be Akane this
time. This girl was taller, had a slimmer build, brown
hair and not black. In fact this girl bore a strong
resemblance to�.
"Nabiki?" Shampoo muttered softly. The girl pulled
away and smiled that sly grin of the money-girl's.
"Wake up, girl," Cologne snapped passing through
the lobby. Shampoo's head popped up from the table.
"Shampoo awake!!"
"You're almost finished, try to hold out a long
enough to walk to your bed."
"Yes great-grandmother," she answered cheerfully.
Then the young amazon wiped off the last table and
walked off to bed yawning. "Why I think about that
stupid greedy money-girl?" she asked herself.
Ukyou leaped at the phone when it rang. She had
been pacing back and forth anxiously since Ryouga had
last hung up to go see if he had buried some poor
tourist alive.
"Hello?Ryougaisthatyou?Aretheystillalive?"
"Hi Ukyou," Ryouga answered sheepishly.
"Ryouga, where are you? Did you kill any one?
What's going on?"
"We're in Shampoo's home town, I think. I found
Nabiki." Ukyou hadn't expected that, she blinked. "And
Copycat Ken. Ken's dead."
"Copycat Ken? She took on Ken! Nabiki can't fight!
How is she?"
"She's in pretty bad shape, physically" Ryouga
said. Ukyou paused, Ryouga had specified her physical
condition.
"How does she sound?"
"Fine...now,"
"Now?"
"Well, before we got here she was...," he took a
moment to find the proper word. "...irrational." Ukyou
didn't answer for nearly a full second.
"Is she awake?"
"Yeah, do you want to talk to her?" She answered an
affirmative and waited for the phone to be passed
over.
"Ukyou? How's the restaurant?" She sounded tired,
but otherwise it was the same dry somewhat bored voice
she always used.
"Nabiki, is Ryouga there?"
"No, your boyfriend is outside where he is trying
to avoid getting into any fights."
"What happened with Ken?" There was a long pause.
"An error in judgement," Nabiki answered flatly.
The moneylender was thinking "I should have just
killed him while he slept."
"What did he do?"
"What do you think he did? He would have killed me
if it weren't for that walking earthquake of yours."
Nabiki was aware of blanks in the story, but she
didn't consider them too deeply. It had been one large
mistake, better to leave the blanks alone.
"Are you going to be okay?"
"I'll be fine, but one thing, Ukyou."
"What is it?"
"About me and Shampoo," There was a muffled sound
of disgust from the other end and Nabiki frowned.
"Leave her alone, she loves Ranma...not me."
"I'll lay off the cat, if she lays off me," Ukyou
agreed, she decided not to tell Nabiki about today's
events. Nabiki had already had a bad enough day.
"Fair enough," Nabiki agreed.
"Should I tell everybody you're coming back?" The
moneylender fiddled with one of with a flask she had
pulled from her bag. The bag contained several more
such flasks.
"Sure, I have everything I need here. Break it to
them easy."
=====
"Caffeinated Kender? What's that, a berserk spell?" -
Tribble, Kender Warrior of the Celestial Kingdom
Signed
He of Too Many Names (Thrythlind/Thryth/Luke/Hyperbole/Pika/Pooka)
http://members.aol.com/thrythlind/snake.html
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com