The following piece is meant as a side story to Worse, and a 
basic understanding of that storyline will help to figure this one out.  
It should not be necessary to read this story to understand anything in 
the regular Worse chapters.
	IMO, this skates as close to an outright lemon as I am ever 
likely to get.  If you are offended by that sort of thing, you shouldn't 
read this.

			  WHOSE IS THAT FACE IN THE MIRROR?
				by Scott K. Jamison
			    (Takahashi/CLAMP disclaimer)

	Hikaru Saotome sighed as he entered the bathroom.  It had been a 
perfectly miserable day, his sister's kindly words aside.  Everyone at 
school now knew his secret, or at least part of it: that sometimes he had 
a girl's body.
	He was sure that all of them were laughing now, laughing at him.  
Some boy Hikaru was, with boobs and all.  He cringed at the thought of 
the constant ridicule that was sure to come. 
	Ranma had meant to be comforting, but how could she know what he 
was going through?  It wasn't like she turned into something awful 
everytime she got wet.  Hikaru shuddered.  Girls were weak and helpless, 
unless they were tomboys, and then they were unfeminine.  He didn't want 
to end up serving some man hand and foot just because some idiot curse 
took away his manhood.  
	Or did she know?  His big sister seemed to know so many things 
before she could possibly have heard of them.  
	Hikaru scrubbed down and rinsed with hot water.  He massaged his 
hair and felt grit from the mud bath he'd had earlier still clinging to 
it.  With practiced hands he unwound his braid and shampooed his 
waist-length hair.
	Ranma's behavior was kind of weird altogether, Hikaru decided.  
Sometimes she acted like a sister, sometimes like a big brother, and 
sometimes like someone from another planet entirely.  Like that bit with 
the hot chocolate.  Even though Hikaru was sure she'd meant the words, it 
seemed like she was imitating someone else, rather than it being natural 
to her.  Normally she used fairly masculine language...
	Hikaru rinsed out his hair and began brushing it.  Could it 
be...Ranma had been to China?  Fallen into one of those stupid springs 
and turned into a boy for a while?  Maybe that was her secret, and then 
she got cured somehow.  Nah, no girl would *want* to be cured of that.  
After all, being a boy was so much *cooler*. 
	But there was that weird conversation they'd had the night 
before, where Ranma kept making him look in the mirror and asking if 
Hikaru was a boy or a girl.  
	She'd said who he was inside was the important part.  That as 
long as Hikaru knew who he really was, nothing else mattered.  But what 
was inside wasn't what most people saw.
	Hikaru thought back and realized he'd never actually *looked* at 
his female form as such.  Just brief glimpses here and there, and then 
looking away in disgust at what his body had become.  But how could he 
deal with how people reacted to his outside if he didn't really know what 
they were seeing?
	More than time he got over that.  Hikaru turned on the cold water 
and sprayed himself.  He (he resolved never to think of himself as "she") 
walked over to the mirror and stared into it.
	Start at the top?  Yeah.  His hair flowed down over his body like 
a scarlet waterfall; apparently Mom's side of the family had redhead 
genes.  He started weaving it back into the braid, then stopped, seeing 
how feminine the motions appeared.  Hikaru frowned.  He could cut his 
hair shorter, of course, but that would waste all the time he'd put in 
learning the Iron Braid techniques.  Besides, he looked cool with a 
braid.   And it was a technique Ranma didn't know, putting him one up on 
her. 
	When he was in female form, his face really showed a strong 
resemblance to his sister's.  So Hikaru focused on the differences.  His 
eyes were a reddish-brown, more towards red, and his eyelashes were 
thicker and longer, giving him a dewy-eyed look.  Also, there was just a 
touch of baby fat left there.
	Hikaru felt his throat.  Less prominent Adam's Apple, and his 
voice was just a touch higher pitched as a girl.  He hoped his voice 
would break soon.
	Hands were just a touch more delicate-looking, and it seemed like 
the nails were longer somehow.  Hikaru formed a "strong-arm", and felt 
his bicep.  The muscles were still there, but they were less defined on 
the surface, making him look smoother.
	Now for one of the tough parts.  Hikaru looked at his chest and 
the growths there.  His breasts weren't nearly as big as Ranma's, or even 
Akane's.  They were more like big bumps, just large enough to make it 
embarrassing to take his shirt off.  He felt one.		
	It was soft to the touch, but not as sensitive as the scuttlebutt 
in locker room talk would have it.  The nipple was a bit more so, 
though.  *That* was the part that had been really embarrassing this 
afternoon, he decided, the nipples being so obvious in a wet t-shirt.  He 
let go. 
	Probably the closest I'll get to copping a feel for a long time, 
he thought.  If I even want to.  
	He still hadn't made up his mind whether he liked girls or not, 
and was quite frankly a little afraid the curse would make up his mind 
for him.
	Below that, slim waist curving out into hips that seemed just a 
bit *too* wide to Hikaru.  He didn't want to get one of those enormous 
butts he'd seen on some older women.  Maybe if he exercised a whole lot, 
it would go down.
	Long legs, and again the feet seemed smaller when he was a girl.  
Less kicking power.
	He swallowed hard and looked between his legs.  There was a 
dusting of hair that looked the same except red instead of black.  And 
then there was the central difference.  The one thing that couldn't be 
ignored in deciding girl from boy.
	His manhood was gone, replaced by--did they call it a 
"womanhood"?  Hikaru realized he didn't even know the proper name for it, 
just the slang the other boys used, most of which he was pretty sure was 
not to be used in front of girls.
	Ranma had mentioned something called a "period", and Hikaru had 
looked it up, though he had to shut the dictionary quickly when someone 
came by snooping.  Apparently girls bled down there every month or so for 
some stupid reason.  Hikaru sure hoped not being a real girl would 
protect him from that.  From what Ranma'd said, apparently you had to be 
a girl a while for it to happen.
	From the other boys' stories, this was supposed to be really 
exciting to see.   But Hikaru didn't find it titillating; just weird.  He 
touched it gently, hesitantly.  It felt kind of...good...when he did 
that.  Maybe he could--
	Hikaru blushed at the thought.  Wouldn't that be a little 
perverted?  Besides, what if someone caught him at it?  The bathroom 
wasn't as private as he'd like it to be.  Besides, he didn't know what 
kind of icky stuff came out of girls when they did that.  Cleaning up 
after a couple of "experiments" when he was a boy full time had been 
disgusting enough.
	He decided he'd had enough of a look for now and slid into the 
furo.  Hot water relaxed muscles he hadn't even realized were tense and 
restored his natural form.
	Hikaru stopped one more time in front of the mirror on his way 
out and surveyed his male form.
	"Yeah, that other one may be cute, but *this* is my face.  
Looking good, man."
	He slid the door closed behind him, and the mirror reflected only 
an empty room.


			THE END


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