Chapter Text
- Chapter 15: Anything Goes -
"Its weird being the better fighter," Akane lamented quietly as the two of them sat in the dojo after a halted training attempt.
Ranma was using Psychic power now to lift a large amount of blue toxin off himself tiredly. He did not say anything as he did it, just glared forwards.
"I want to be better," Akane admitted with a look at her fiance. "Not for you to get worse." It was a confession that she hadn't really thought he could get stuck weaker before. There didn't seem to be an easy fix to it this time, and it had been clear from the attempt that there was a big physical change here causing it that they couldn't just reverse.
"I'm slower, can't take your solid hits as well, and can barely splatter you around," he said, voice barely noticeable and lacking the unusual clarity it had gained from becoming a Gardevoir. 'Barely' also still meant she had coated some of the floor from his earlier attempts, but it had clearly taken a lot more out of him for less damage. "I can barely do anything," he half shouted, still relatively quietly, and flung an arm forward. The lifted toxic material snapped into the far wall with a crack.
"Um, can't you just use that against me?" Akane asked at that display. "That looks like it would splatter me easy," she admitted a bit nervously. Both because it was an intimidating display, and because she knew he had to have thought of it already.
Ranma still didn't really respond to her for a while. "It isn't the right way," he groaned, properly talking for a Gardevoir instead of just using his mouth. "I'm not Fighting like that," he said clearly looking for the right word. "Its, its just thinking at stuff. I mean, it isn't easy." Akane let out a snort of laughter at that statement, earning a proper glare instead of just a depressed look. "But it still isn't using my muscles."
Akane considered that for a moment. "Do you actually have-" she started to ask.
"Ya know what ah mean!" he shot back. "Its just powers. Nothin at all ta do with working out or training my body, all just thinking at stuff better."
The Muk looked at her fiance, and considered how he described the Psychic power that gave him shape. "Do you think I'm using muscles and working out normally like this?" Akane asked darkly of him. "Do you think changing my mix or working out how to flow has anything to do with human training?" She glared at him. "Anything Goes," she very specifically pointed out.
Ranma raised an eyebrow, or at least something close to doing that. "Ah think there is more ta it than that," he commented, but he did stand up. "But if ya want to deal with Psychic power instead of martial arts I can try that on ya."
Akane smiled, just long enough for a burst of energy to splatter part of her. Then she frowned at him as she reformed, and he looked slightly embarrassed. "How about you try that again, properly?" she commented about how it wasn't even as bad as one of his harder punches from before the change, even if it clearly was a bit easier to hit her with and ranged.
"Hey!" he shouted and then the fight was back on.
Akane found herself hanging back and letting Ranma just try and hit her. Something that it took five attempted invisible bursts of Psychic power for her to realize was what he normally did to everyone else. Then a pink glow came at her instead of just nothing, which she almost managed to dodge, but hit her much harder than the invisible ones had.
"That's better," she taunted with a laugh.
"Hey, I can tell what you're thinking there!" Ranma complained then started to fling those pink blasts more easily.
"Well, next up is taking a hit," Akane countered and started to sling a few globs at him between being splashed by blasts that actually hit her.
"Hey," Ranma yelped as he started to twist and glide out of the path, occasionally getting hit. Soon he was floating more deliberately and even once flashed to the other side of a room in a teleport.
---
"Better?" she asked, Alcremie again and baking some victory brownie-cookies for both of them. The kind she made when she was particularly happy with her fiance.
"I wanna see if I can get more physical with it," Ranma admitted from next to her, quite obviously reading her mind a bit to actually work with her on the baking without getting in the way. "Also I'm not sure what pops will do when he sees it."
"Well, it isn't like he was going to let you just not try anything to get strong again," she pointed out as she took a break from mixing and let a pink glow take over for her until she could pass the bowl to Ranma. "At least once he stops looking for Mew in places she probably isn't."
"Damn ___," the Gardevoir grumbled. "I don't get it. Would you do something like that?"
"Would you run like Alakazam?" Akane said with a roll of her eyes. "Just because they're like us doesn't make them us."
"If things were worse maybe," Ranma huffed as he finished mixing. "But it would have to be a lot worse. Right now things are almost looking up." He sighed. "I just need to deal with humans not liking how I got the curse fixed."
"So we're just going to see if we can force humans to realize you're a guy like that?" Akane asked with a laugh as she got out one of her good cookie sheets.
"Well, I am the only Gardevoir we know of so far," he pointed out. "I just have ta deal with them mistaking me for a human girl."
Akane looked at her fiance's new form again. "Well, at least you don't have breasts anymore," she half reassured, half teased.
"Hey now, It wasn't my fault everyone saw those and assumed 'girl'. Nabiki particularly included," Ranma shot back as she set the sheet down for them to use. He somehow sounded serious as he used his new powers to clean off the spoon. Then he seemed to consider something. "Wait, I just remembered," he suddenly declared.
"Remembered what?" she asked with a shake of her head.
"You did almost do something like this," he said pointing the spoon at her, and it took her a moment to realize he meant turning someone into something. "You threatened to turn Shampoo into living pie filling."
"Just help me make the cookies," Akane complained angrily at being called out for that. "We need to split the batter up into balls and put those on the sheet. It might take a couple of batches."
"Split it up?" Ranma said thoughtfully. "Here, hold the bowl, I have an idea." He quickly passed her the bowl and started to concentrate. The cookie dough lifted into the air surrounded by a pink glow.
Then it started to split apart in a very wobbly and quite uneven set of chunks. Akane didn't even wait for the glow to suddenly cut out to get ready to use the bowl to catch the dough again as it fell in a small collection of lumps.
"Nice idea," she sarcastically declared after successfully getting it all back in the bowl before any hit the ground. "Now how about you try and do it one at a time instead?" she suggested as she turned into a human for the first time since his own change. Being a slime was just not an option for this part.
Ranma stuck out his tongue at her, but they both were able to quickly get the first sheet filled with enough left for at least half of another. Akane considered what he looked like now while she was human again as they waited for the first batch to bake, and honestly could only think about how she didn't really have too much issue telling that he was still a guy even when he had been girl shaped after discovering he was a guy. Compared to that she felt he looked a lot like a guy now.
---
Akane made her way to the Amazon's restaurant in Alcremie form to once again see if Cologne could be convinced to turn a monster human. Only this time she was along to support her idiot fiance instead of trying to find a fix for her idiot friends.
"'Boy, go get the warrior women to fix this'," Ranma not-really quoted his father as he floated along facing her instead of where they were going. "What does the old panda think she's gonna say? 'Oh Son-In-Law, of course I can overpower a godlike ___'?"
"I dislike every part of that impression," Cologne cut in from the road in front of the restaurant. "Now, can somebody explain why you are a whatever you are? Maybe what you are too if anyone knows."
Akane let Ranma take care of that while they made their way inside. Shampoo gave her a dark look, and then glanced up at Ranma long enough to overhear what had happened. After that the look Akane got was one that made the initial dark one seem positively sunny. "What did slime girl do now?" the Amazon questioned quietly while Ranma continued to talk to the old woman.
"I didn't do anything. You guys were the ones to tell Kodachi Kuno about 'fixing' Jusenkyo curses," Akane shot back and sat down near where Shampoo was being a waitress. "Then she somehow got Betty and Ryoga to get her to a Legendary pokemon, apparently something like the one who changed me, and Ranma made this one mad."
"Airen good at that," Shampoo grumbled. "Is girl all time now?"
"No, he got that fixed to be a guy all the time," Akane said with a roll of her eyes. She got an unimpressed look in reply. "I'm serious, that's what a guy Gardevoir looks like."
Shampoo looked over at Ranma, who was being closely inspected by Cologne. "You two, over here," the old woman demanded. "I have news and I don't want to say it twice, or worse have Son-In-Law mangle it later."
Akane looked at the unhappy Gardevoir, who was now blue instead of green, and moved over along with Shampoo. "Great Grandmother, what is issue?" Shampoo asked.
"The issue is that your husband has got himself in a bigger mess than normal," Cologne answered. "I want to impress on you all how this is a demonstration of the difference between a strong general curse on anyone, like Jusenkyo, and a strong personal curse on just one specific person." The old Amazon pointed at Ranma. "He's immune to Jusenkyo now, specifically made so that cursed water can't even touch him. He could sit at the bottom of one of those pools for an hour and not get wet enough to trigger his new color change. Whatever did that has also stopped most of my more magical options from even getting close to working."
"Okay, so how about finding Mew?" Akane asked, already prepared for just that news, and Cologne glared at her. "Or at least a Mew if we can't find the one that did it to him." She didn't see why this was such a big surprise to the elder Amazon.
"Ranma kept calling whoever did this nothing at all," the old woman complained. "I have never heard of any of your kind of creatures before, and I doubt it will be easy to find one if they are from that far away. In the worst case you are creatures from another world, and I would need a lot of time and effort to accomplish that." Cologne looked over the Gardevoir again. "You said you weren't as strong anymore due to being a 'Gardevoir'. That the Tendo girl can fight you evenly without using the new abilities of your new body. I want to see how much 'weaker' you are in this form before I support any efforts to restore you."
---
Akane was unsure what to think about that demand, or how Cologne apparently thought it was important enough to shut down the restaurant and bring both Shampoo and Mousse. She stayed Alcremie just in case there were Deals, and Ranma was mostly walking instead of sort of floating. Which so far seemed to mean that he was actually trying not to use Psychic power.
"So, who is that?" Mousse asked her when they stopped in a fairly isolated overgrown empty lot.
"Ranma," Akane answered and double checked that the guy was wearing his glasses. "He got turned into a pokemon." For once the Amazon boy was actually able to see.
"Stuck as a girl again?" Mousse questioned with a laugh. Across from them Cologne had Ranma and Shampoo trade turns using a specific move against each other to demonstrate Ranma's abilities.
"That's what a guy Gardevoir looks like," she repeated dryly as Ranma landed a solid blow that clearly was not as strong as normal. Shampoo was only knocked a bit instead of needing to roll with the blow. "Its more of a problem for fighting."
"Can't be that bad," the Jusenkyo cursed Amazon boy said with a roll of his eyes. "Another curse and he still keeps his hands."
Cologne quickly moved the pair through a number of existing skills, and then said something that gave Ranma pause and made Akane smile. "Alright, Son-In-Law, now show me what a 'Gardevoir' can actually do," the old woman demanded. "Its clearly not made for actual martial arts, but I can tell it is still a fighter's shape."
"What can he do?" Mousse questioned quietly while Ranma clearly took a minute to give into the idea.
"Watch," Akane said with a shake of her head. She couldn't describe it better than the sudden and casual use of a mixture of blasts of Psychic energy, telekinetic grabs to throw off Shampoo's aim, floating instead of falling to help dodge, and a new one for her where he fired off a bright and forceful blast of light that she could tell was Fairy instead of Psychic. Her gifted knowledge of her pokemon forms told her that would be less effective against her Muk form than the others, which was probably why he hadn't tried it against her Muk form.
All of them clearly worried Shampoo, and while they weren't the best made or aimed, Akane was sort of glad Cologne wasn't facing her way to see the smile on her face at his performance. At least until the old woman got done with testing Ranma. "Now I want to see what miss Tendo can do," Cologne said and turned to look Akane in the eyes. "A match against Mousse should work."
Ranma looked up at her quickly, and the two younger Amazons seemed just as confused by the proposal. "Alright," Akane said with a shrug and thinned down into a Muk. "I'm up for a fight." She was still unhappy enough with the whole situation that it seemed like a good way to burn off some banked rage.
Mousse looked at her with a moment of confusion, before he huffed at the agreement. "If you really think so," he smugly declared and walked a couple steps closer to Cologne. "Although I'll stop whenever you're done." A straight bladed sword slipped out of his sleeve and into his hand in a simple motion.
Akane stared dully, Cologne rolled her eyes at Mousse's statement, Ranma put a hand on his face, and Shampoo clearly just didn't want to be there. "Just show me what she can do," the old woman ordered.
Mousse started forward in a very telegraphed sword strike, one that Akane could have easily dodged even in human form years ago. It also was clearly an attempt to just intimidate her with live steel. Which was almost funny.
Akane didn't dodge like he clearly expected, and instead put at least a quarter of her mass into a fist that she drove into his gut as the blade smoothly sliced through her body. Mousse went backwards, and let go of the blade in order to turn it into a controlled roll. The sword then went a bit wild as the momentum of the strike allowed it to spin through her mass, doing a bit more damage than the cut had, but not really hurting her much at all.
Mousse was now a good distance away, partly covered in her blue toxic goo and staring at the now discarded sword as it melted from where it landed next to her with its own coating of the deeper acids from her body. Akane wasn't about to let him have time to recover, so she surged forward in order to slam into her opponent directly.
He apparently didn't learn the lesson from the sword, as two handfuls of throwing knives embedded into her sludge as she approached before Mousse threw himself to the side. He barely got out of the way of her main mass, but after lots of training with Ranma she was well practiced at making sure to splash anyone close enough to the impact point. The knives had stung less than the stop at the end of her attack, and she left them behind to dissolve in the dirt as she turned her attention towards her opponent again.
Mousse had been notably coated, and apparently decided to spin in order to get the larger globs off. Akane considered attacking again just long enough to hear a clinking sound, and then thinned as much as possible to duck under one of the thick chains that the weapon user had dropped out of his sleeves. The large links were blunt enough to push a lot more of her around than the bladed weapons, and the spaces inside of them would catch and tear material away from her if they connected.
Being so thin across the ground made it a bit harder to move, due to covering a larger area, but Akane knew that well enough to expect the downward strike towards her center from the second chain. With a bit of effort she split herself in two on purpose instead of waiting to be splattered to pieces, and as a result barely made it out of the way before the chain tore into the ground.
It was always tricky to be in multiple places at once, but Akane was happy to see that Mousse focused on the larger of her two parts as she made them go to either side of him. That meant he could hurt her a bit more if he caught that part with the chains, but it also let her get the somewhat smaller mass behind him. She started to try and split the larger part again as she saw him raise both of the chains upwards, and charged the smaller part towards his back.
Unfortunately Mousse wasn't just slamming the chains into the ground again, instead he swept them down and to either side low enough to catch the top of Akane's second split attempt painfully. However, it did leave him unsteady as the rest of her slammed into his back. Which meant he was knocked firmly to the ground and further coated as she quickly slid back into a single puddle and made to get herself a good distance to his left side.
Mousse was back on his feet quickly, with the chains moving quick to clear out a distance Akane couldn't approach within without risk of another painful hit. The metal of them was corroding slightly from the toxins they had already tore out of her, but probably not fast enough to break before one of them was out of the fight. The Amazon was moving a bit slower from the damage she had done so far, but still too quickly for her best moves to get close enough. Akane knew she needed to slow him down more.
A quick look around the edges of the lot showed a serious Cologne, a surprisingly exasperated Shampoo, and an interested looking Ranma. Which reminded Akane of what Ranma had said the last time they had trained while he was still a human, that Sayuri's sugar-sludge wasn't as sticky as her Alcremie icing. Icing that wasn't even made to be sticky, but Akane had seen food turned to fighting weapons for that purpose before. In fact she had seen it just as much before becoming made out of it as she had after flinging it around by accident herself, maybe even more times.
So Akane thickened to icing to end the circling the two combatants had taken to doing while she considered her next move. It would slow her down, so Mousse might have a chance to close the distance and use his chains again. To stop that she flung out a pair of globs of the fastest hardening icing she could make quickly, which was closer to a quick setting and poor tasting fondant. The Amazon caught the first glob on one chain, the links that threatened her body now a liability as they got filled with the substance and sagged down noticeably. The second hit him directly and made him stumble back.
Akane quickly thinned back into a Muk and decided to try for other ranged-
"That's enough," Cologne said calmly, but firmly enough to stop the two of them right where they were. The old woman began to walk towards Mousse. "You forgot what you were fighting, boy," she said bluntly as he swayed a bit on his feet. "As soon as you let her hit you, you were on a time limit to end the fight." A pinkish fruit was shoved in Mousse's face. "Eat this. Every hit after that first one reduced that time limit, and you didn't speed up at all."
Cologne then turned the most frightening look Akane had ever seen on the old woman's face directly at her. It almost looked like respect. "I underestimated you, Akane Tendo," Cologne gravely declared. "Son-In-Law, if this is the sort of fighter you've been training against, then you haven't lost as much as you seem to think." The elder Amazon nodded. "I'll look into a cure for your new curse."
---
Akane decided on human for the walk back home, uncertain about what had happened. "Do you think she's going to find anything?" she tried, asking for something specific to think about.
Ranma seemed to seriously consider the question. "I couldn't get anything from Cologne," he explained, probably about mind reading. "Not like pops, he's just a hole where Psychic stuff doesn't work. She was blocking me somehow." He sighed loudly. "But na, I don't think shes going to find a cure, and I doubt we're finding Alakazam or Mew unless they show up again on their own." He smirked at her. "But the old hag has a point, ya have gotten better more than ah got worse. Ya beat Mousse after all."
"Cologne stopped us," Akane pointed out, but it did feel good to hear him say she pulled that off.
"Cause Mousse was about ta fall over from yer poison," Ranma laughed. "I'd say ya did a good job of showing off what ya meant about not being a normal martial artist when yer shaped like that too."
"It was a bad match for him," Akane bragged with a chuckle, although she did think about how much more trouble it would have been if Mousse had started with the chains. "So you're going to actually try and use your new stuff then?"
"I guess so," her fiance admitted. "I still want ta see if I can do actual martial arts like this instead, but I can't ignore the new stuff." The Gardevoir then spotted at a nearby ice cream store. "How about a victory treat?"
"Whose paying?" Akane asked, with a suspicion that the answer was 'whatever guys buy for us'. One that was confirmed when Ranma looked over at a pair of guys already inside the store that had stopped to look at both of them.
"They're thinking I'm a girl," Ranma said surprisingly darkly. "I wanna see what they do when they find out I'm not." Then the Psychic/Fairy looked thoughtful. "We should eat all of it first though. Just in case they want a fight."