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[Ranma] [fanfic] Pool Of Drowned Ranma

Disclaimer: All Ranma-1/2 characters and plot elements used here
are in fact the property of Rumiko Takahashi and her assigns,
and are used without their knowledge or permission. This is
fan-fiction: an open fan letter in prose. Any similarities
between Happosai and G. B. Gardner are strictly legendary.

--siaru 11feb0/04apr01


----------------------------------------------------------------

Two conspirators crept along the darkened upstairs hallway of
the Tendo house. Crouching, they eased open the door of one
room, then paused to sort out the placement of things and people
by the wan light of the nighttime Nerima sky spilling from the
window. Then they silently padded over to the sleeping roll
where the smaller of the two inhabitants was sleeping. That
person's sleep was fitful and restless. Now there was a mumbled
shout of "no, won't eat that, YOU CRAZY? ..NO, DON'T... ite...".
Even as the shouting faded off, it was answered as the smaller
sleeper was slapped with a wooden sign by the larger one.

The smaller creeper sensed that the moment of opportunity was
almost gone. "Now", he whispered. The larger one lifted his
burden and poured from it onto the smaller sleeper, splashing
across his-now-her face and torso. She was up like a shot,
flicking on the light and leaping back into a defensive stance.

"What'd you do _that_ for??!"

Happosai blinked and stared at Onna-Ranma, evidently waiting for
something. Pantyhose Taro lowered his jar and took a step back
from the wetness, avoiding the puddle, resuming his everpresent
smirk. The panda rolled over slightly, took in just who was in
the room, realized who could kick whose butt, and held up a
sign: [quiet please panda is sleeping].

Then Happosai let out a dramatic sigh, said "No, no, it's wrong,
it should have happened by now", and shook his head. He turned
and looked up, scowling at Taro. "Where did you get that? You
didn't test it, did you? You're won't get your name changed that
way!" Taro looked away, embarrassed.

The casual way in which she was dismissed from concern angered
Onna-Ranma further. "Just what were you trying to do? What
was that stuff?" She placed a kick to the little man's backside,
a kick which he casually blocked with his hand without turning.

"Oh, just a little Jusenkyo water..."

Onna-Ranma's blood went cold for a moment. "JEEZ, I CAN'T
BELIEVE YOU TWO!! WHAT KINDA WATER DID YOU DUMP ON ME THIS
TIME??"

"You should be thanking me, m'boy, I was trying to help you get
rid of your curse... so you could give her to me!"

"WHAT??!!"

By now, lights were going on in other bedrooms.

"It was _supposed_ to be water from the Spring of Drowned Twins,
but Pantyhose here, _Mister Pantyhose_, had to bungle the job.
Now that I look at it, it's obvious that he got that water from
an uncursed spring." He sighed. "Go dump it in the koi pond,
Pantyhose, maybe we'll get more fish. It sure isn't working
here."

By now, heads were poking out into the hallway. "Ranma, shut up,
people are trying to sleep!"

"Geez, I'm sorry, Akane, didn't mean to bother you about people
trying to lock me in my girl form! You've got a pig to sleep
with; I'm sure he'd love to be your fiance if I can't!" 

A fed-up Ranma left the room to change into something male. Taro
went to go dump the remaining spring water, Happosai went to go
sulk somewhere, and the panda went to look for someplace drier
and less cursed to sleep.

###

Down in the outer bathroom, Onna-Ranma stepped out of the
Jusenkyo-soaked boxers and nervously played a stream of hot
faucet water onto herself. "Whew." Ranma-kun slid down against
the bathroom wall, very glad to be male again. He reached for a
towel to cover himself.

Through the doorway next to him, a small black pig dove
in, scooted in the puddled hot water, then shoulder-rolled in it
and came up human. "Ranma--"

"Gee, Ryoga, you'd think you live here, ya got here so fast.
Whose room did _you_ sleep in tonight?"

"That's not funny, Ranma. You should know better than to go
shouting like that, waking up Akane."

"Hey, Ryoga, do ya hafta walk around here naked? Jeez, you'd
think you were cursed or somethin'!"

Ryoga took a quick glance around for witnesses. The only one he
saw was Taro, who was grinning, obviously arriving to watch the
show. "Ranma, you've gone too far this time! This is all *your* 
fault!"

Ranma turned and stared blankly at the naked martial artist in
his face, and the clothed one now leaning against the furo door.
"Why is it always my...." He shrugged and turned to go back to
his room. "Whatever."

Ryoga grabbed Ranma by the neck. Ranma spun around and flipped
on the cold water faucet, hard, and thumbed a spray past
himself.

The spray of cold water caught Ryoga, as planned, conveniently
repackaging him from a major threat back into a minor if
persistent nuisance. As he shrank, though, it struck the person 
behind him, namely Taro.

To his credit, Taro did what he could to minimize the damage. It
was automatic. This was his body, after all, and he had
experience from birth in dealing with issues related to a sudden
change in size. He'd tucked into an extremely tight fetal ball
by the time the horns had started to sprout. When you moonlight
as a fifty-foot monster with tentacles, horns and hooves,
though, there's only so much you can do to minimize your sudden
requisition of additional parking space. Suddenly the bathroom
sink was out in the hallway, the inner chamber doors were
shattered and folded, the furo was embedded two feet deep into
the outer wall of the house, and, in the silence following the
sounds of explosive expansion, the sounds of water gurgling as
it receded through the pipes accompanied the distant hiss of
water escaping from broken pipes under the house.

Even more devastating,though, was that suddenly his horns were
sticking up through the ceiling. That meant that they were
suddenly sticking up through the floor of Akane's bedroom. That
meant that when, hearing and feeling the explosive expansion,
Akane swung her feet back down out of bed in the darkness to go
teach Ranma the meaning of peace and quiet and courtesy and
harmony, she immediately tripped and went headlong on flooring
she'd safely trod a few moments ago. Further enraged, she was
back up and moving in a flash, heading downstairs, further
convinced that a particular someone was going to pay for ruining
her sleep.

At the bathroom, she confronted a nude male Ranma who was grimly
trying to free one of Taro's legs and get it through the
bathroom doorway, while dodging the wildly whipping eel-head
tail, and kicking one leg to shake loose a small black pig which
had its teeth sunk into his ankle. He had freed one hooved foot;
it hung down from the top of the doorframe, along with an
enormous bovine butt. The enormous male hardware also thus
presented was, to Akane, more cause for outrage.

"Ranma, you jerk, you didn't have to wreck our bathroom! And
_*stop picking on P-Chan*_!!"

Blazing with righteous indignation expressed as a battle aura,
Akane threw one ki-soaked punch at Ranma. He flew through the
wall and out into the yard. Panicked at flying into darkness, he
tried to twist himself around, to put his feet under him, but
the ride was over too quickly. He went face-first into the
water, his head banged hard against the stones with a sharp
noise in his ears, there was a sharp pain in as well as on his
head, and then the darkness was immediate and final.

"Hmph!" Akane looked at the smashed wall, mentally cataloged its
condition as being all Ranma's fault, scooped up her pig, spun
on her shapely heel and went up to bed. Maybe that baka would
have sense enough to stay out there all night; he deserved it.

Taro waited until the sounds of violence had ceased. Not that he
couldn't take it in normal battle in this form, even from Akane,
but with his manhood on the line he felt trapped and vulnerable.
With the start given him by Ranma, Taro coaxed one leg, then the
other, then his rear, through the bathroom door. Now that he had
room for it, he ducked his head to free his horns from the
ceiling. Then, carefully backing up, he managed to get his giant
body out into the family room. Still feeling boxed in, he slunk
out of the house to go curl up in the dojo, ignoring everything
that wasn't in his path.

###

In the shady deeper darkness at the treeside edge of the koi
pond, Happosai took another toke from his pipe and fumed.

It would have gone so well. A split, permanently-female Ranma
wouldn't be much more glompable than the part-time girl was now,
but the residual chi in her undergarments would be a much more
reliable summons for his own energies. There'd be no lengthy
tentative touching and guessing whether Ranma had been female
long enough for the male spiral to finish winding down, the
female spiral to finish forming and conducting energies, no
blind-guess gambling on whether the resonances left in the
natural fibers of his shorts were holding the echoes of the
first and second chakras of a boy or a girl. Any clothing which
that female Ranma took off would have all the right energies.

With his magic, he would have guided the formation of that
female Ranma so that she was female in thought, not just a boy
trapped in a girl-suit. Just a natural girl, with all that
incredibly sweet Ranma energy, such a guileless combination of
innocence, determination and raw animistic power.

He wouldn't even have to glomp so much, just enough to remind
her of the act and provoke her sense of outrage, prompting her
into automatically fending him off with the energies which were
what he wanted in the first place.
Bathing in those female energies called him to renewed life,
reminded him of being a man, made his body resonate with his own
masculine energies once more.

The boy Ranma would have been rid of the curse that he so
publicly despised, and yet his female twin would have been
constantly around him, to be in his face with her equal
abilities, teaching the boy to transcend his father's venal
stupidity of attitude in a way that Akane, damn Soun for ruining
her, was too lazy and spoiled to try. Maybe the boy would've
eventually dumped Akane in favor of the new girl; now _there_ 
could've been a union with some powerful babies!

It all would have been so sweet, but Pantyhose had ruined it by
cutting corners, bringing untested waters. Now Ranma would be
alert to the threat, so, even given some real twin-water, the
plan had no real chance of succeeding now. It was all just too
sad and tragic.

Some thought was nagging him, something was out of place and
needed his attention. He lost himself in the nowness for a
moment, letting that nagging thought seek him out for a
heart-to-heart talk. It came, he heard, and he had it. He
frowned.

Ranma hitting the koi pond with a splash was normal as things
went around here, and part of the entertainment. A wet
Onna-Ranma not sitting up and mouthing off to her assailant was
not. Not even hearing Ranma's breathing was totally off the
scale. He put his pipe away and bounded over to Ranma. In the
morning twilight, the red ribbon of blood from her head looked
black; its source looked faintly dimpled. Her face was in the
water and had been since she landed, a good ten minutes or so
ago. This was serious.

He jumped over to where Ranma's feet stuck out beyond the pool.
He roused up serpent-fire, belled out his aura with energy, then
took hold of Ranma's feet and pulled hard. She flew up, over and
down, a good ten feet from the pool, then just lay there
unmoving, her skin pale and bluish. He listened to her chest; no
heartbeat. Her skin was cool to the touch. He began to get
angry: this was no way to treat his prize pupil and best hope
for a proper heir to his School.

He rolled her over. Good, launching her skyward had kept her
face from getting ripped up by the poolside rocks while she had
no chi to protect her. Now to work.
He jumped up on her chest, pumping her trampoline-style until
water started coming out of her open mouth. He rolled her to one
side, using his shoulder to continue the pumping, until it
seemed like much of the water was gone. Then he rolled her over
onto her back again.
 
He pulled out his pipe, puffed it alight, then cupped the bowl
with his hand and raised the stem skyward, holding it that way
while an aura built around it. Then he whipped it down to touch
her chest; sparks flew. She convulsed, then lay still. He tamped
the tobacco down, puffed it some more, then held the stem once
more aloft. This time he pulled harder, until he could see a ion
cloud of lambent charge collecting around the bone bit.

He reached over with the other hand, gathering a wan golden glow
into his cupped palm, then used it to caress her cold cheek and
forehead. "Don't leave us now, Ranma. You've got too much to do
here. I _call_ you." His eyes flared wide at these last words:
something seemed to pass from them to her bared forehead.

The field around the upraised pipe was starting to crackle. He
brought it down swiftly to strike her gently between the
breasts. Lightning flew from his hand, along and around the pipe
stem and into her chest, accompanied by a sharp report of local
thunder. Again her body convulsed, then audibly exhaled. He
grinned, put his pipe away and got very much in her face. One
hand wandering her torso, tickling here and there, he started
blowing charged air into her lungs until her exhalations got
strong.  He paused and watched when she moaned, then hopped up
onto her belly, rocking his knees into her diaphram in time with
her breathing.

She groaned and opened one eye. "Where..." 

He hopped down and leaned into her face, waiting until she
recognized him. "You died. I fixed that. Lie still, let me
finish up."

He stood by her head. He cupped his hands together, gathering a
gold-white light into them that seemed to come from the ground,
the sky, the neighboring trees, -- everywhere but her and the
pond. He brought his hands down against her head. The wound
closed, bone flowed back to its rightful place, the mottled
black bruising faded, and her cheeks began to look a little less
pale. The golden aura faded into her head and was gone, leaving
its effects behind. He staggered a little. Then he got in her
face again.

"When I blow, you suck it in. You won't like the way it tastes;
do it anyway. If you cough it back up, fine, just cough up the
rest of the water." He brought out his pipe, puffed it alight,
then took a careful drag of its smoke while cupping both hands
around the bowl, making the golden bowl glow, making the black
stem gleam. He looked down at her; she opened her mouth,
waiting. He blew a stream of smoke into her mouth and she
breathed it in, then rolled over and started coughing and
spitting.

She shuddered. "That was awful."

"Yup... but it works."

She got up onto one elbow and looked at him with clearer eyes,
studying him for a moment. "You saved my life."

"I did more than that. I had to do quite a bit of work on you. I
don't often get to practice my healing techniques, not without
feeling like a sucker for doing it. This is different: can't
have you walking around damaged, m'boy. Where would I go for
midair refueling?"

"Well, thanks, old man..." She waved a vagrant hand at him and
turned away, starting to summon the strength to stand up.

"Thanks just doesn't cut it, Ranma. You'll pay me back in kind.
I get free glomps and feels for this, anytime I want. You owe
me." 

She stood, wobbled, then started walking slowly towards the
darkened house. "For how long?"

"For the rest of your life."

She turned around and grimly started heading back to the koi pond.

"Okay, okay, for 24 hours."

Onna-Ranma stood still for a moment, then nodded and turned back
towards the house. "I think I can stand that ...barely."

"Great, let's get started... as soon as you change into something
warm. You wouldn't want me to catch cold, now, would you?"

She nodded grimly and trudged towards the house.

"Here, you forgot this."

She turned and stared balefully. "Ain't that a little thick?
Usually you wanna make me wear a bra that's real skimpy. What's
with this one?"

"It's a nursing bra. It's got these trapdoor cups, see?"

"A _nursing bra_?"

"If I only get 24 hours, I'm gonna make 'em count. And wear
something nice!"

###

Ranma stood in the middle of her room, naked and alone, trying
to get used to the fact that she had died, that someone had had
to make an effort to steal her back from whatever awaited dead
people. Her panda-shaped father was making lumbermill noises
down in the family room, oblivious to the whole event. The
sodden sleeping rolls were pushed over to one corner for now;
come the day, they would be sun-dried, maybe washed to get that
spring-water flushed out of them. Nothing overt seemed different
from what passed for normalcy for her, but the inner awareness,
too pronounced to be passed off as Happosai hyperbole, that her
life had decisively terminated and then resumed because someone
else valued it, was a subtle pressure on her awareness, pushing
her up to look down into the context of the normal course of her
life-so-far rather than reimmersing herself in it.

She looked down at her body. Logic said that she could still
change, despite whatever she'd just gone through, and she wasn't
that worried about it. She knew that with the bathroom plumbing
in its present state she had no immediate way of testing that.
Frankly, she wasn't all that eager to do that anyway. It was
hard to pin down why. It wasn't a fear of being male, gods knew,
she still defined herself as a guy with a curse, and it wouldn't
change anything about her screwed-up life. No, it just wasn't
something she felt she should do right now. Maybe the old lech's
spells needed time to work.

No, _she_ needed time to work. Something about the way the old
creep spoke to her implied something she had to work to grasp.
There was no attraction, certainly, rather a steady
back-of-the-throat pit-of-the-stomach revulsion, and maybe
he could have changed that in her while she was helpless
..while she was dead... it was more a feeling of respect, of
perverse but self-consistent honor, a feeling that, unlike
everybody else here except maybe Kasumi, he respected her as
having a sense of honor, and illuminated his own thereby. 
Everyone else assumed the worst about her or treated her like a
wayward child who would someday master her own life, someday but
no time soon. The old creep treated her like she already had
that, and maybe provoked it in her.

The old creep had his needs, and that was nasty to
contemplate... but it was how he recharged, how he kept his
ancient body alive and moving. He'd explained it to her once,
something about the magic of opposite genders, of unlike charges
attracting, something about a lance and a grail and a vacuum
tube. He needed some of that now; he'd looked like he'd burned
through some major reserves in bringing her back to life.

No, she had to do this. This wasn't duty foisted on her by her
father's actions or settled on her as the hapless object of
someone else's fantasy, this was her own honor. The old creep
had saved her life, brought her back from real death. Now he
wasn't seeking any payment for saving her life other than this,
a replenishment of what he'd paid out to save her; she might as
well do it right.

Her thoughts continued as she started to pull on the sheer
panties from the "Happosai collection" box in the closet, then
that nursing bra, then fished through the closet for feminine
clothing that wouldn't embarrass her: some slacks and a loose
unisex blouse that could hide some of what was likely to happen
as the old creep started spelunking her clothing. Neither
garment was such that she'd be ashamed to be seen male in them.
The underwear was unlikely to still be hers by the time he was
done, so it didn't count.

She finished with a sturdy shawl that could be tied loosely like
an oversized scarf around her neck, or used as a sling for a small
childlike form to ride in, if it came to that, and an old pair
of her usual slippers that fit her better as a girl than as a
guy.

She'd do this, get through this 24 hours by treating it like a
martial arts trial, then have another look at her attitudes
towards herself and those around her.

And Akane... Well, she'd have to think about Akane when this was
over. This wasn't the first time that Akane had all but killed
her. She could walk away from the whole tangle once she turned
eighteen, none of the others attracted her that much; but was
she likely to survive that long, the way things were going?


The dawn air was still cool as she opened the door. Onna-Ranma
stepped off the porch and sighed. She looked up. The sun was
just clearing the urban horizon; it was as good a time-marker as
any. "All right, 24 hours starts now. All aboard."

"Sweeto!!" 

This roused the very large multispecies animal which had been
sleeping curled up in the dojo. Taro took one look at Happosai
clambering down into Onna-Ranma's blouse, said something
unintelligible, cursed in an equally cryptic manner as it
realized that it was losing an unrepeatable opportunity to poke
fun at the fem-boy because it couldn't really talk, and tried to
swing a mammoth fist instead. Happosai met the mammoth fist with
his own tiny one, and Taro was slammed against the house in no
uncertain terms. It took it a few minutes to recover enough to
pry itself loose and let itself out of the yard.

###

Akane had been roused by the single peal of thunder; it felt
worrisome, the way it seemed to originate down in the yard. 
Sleepily moving to her window, she watched with a sinking
feeling in her gut as Happosai worked Ranma over, finally
rousing the redhead. Somehow she felt guilty about it, like it
should have been her out there tending her fiance, or maybe even
she shouldn't have been quite so rough.
  
On the bed her pet pig stirred, noticed her missing from the
bed, and walked across the blankets to stand next to her,
sleepily nosing her in the thigh. It felt intimate in a way that
she wasn't entirely comfortable with, not now. She leaned away
from the affectionate pig, cast a last glance through the window
at where the pervert still sat waiting for the redhead to
return, then pulled together the day's clothes, intending to see
if the furo had enough water in it for a sponge bath. Behind
her, the pig stared after her moodily, snuffled softly and
settled down on the bed again, then changed its mind and went
scampering down the hall, looking for a way to get to where it
had left its camping gear, intent on boiling whatever water was
still in the canteen.

The toilet wouldn't flush and the furo was a lost cause, so
Akane carried her clothing down to the laundry room and changed
for the day there.

Thinking she could somehow make amends for her part in things,
Akane took it into her head to prepare breakfast. A certain
panda awoke at the initial sounds of culinary skirmish, took
note of this, and quietly let itself out through the front door,
seeking someplace where food was food and peril was peril and
the two didn't suddenly try to combine in unholy matrimony.

Akane had gotten to the point where the eggs were just firming
up in the frying pan when the house shuddered as Yet Another
Martial Artist was embedded in its wall. The simmering but
innocuous miso soup jumped on the stove; Akane's attempt to
catch it and put it back on its burner succeeded only in adding
the soup to the eggs. She drew back sharply to look things over
and the cooking oil at her elbow joined the nouveau-cuisine,
which was by now bubbling briskly and overflowing the edge of
the pan, sending tentative feelers of miso-egg down into the
flame. Then the oil got there and the miso-eggs were flambe'.
She reached blindly into the refrigerator and grabbed what might
have been a box of baking soda in a happier time, but was now a
container of antique leftovers, a kind of starter culture from
her last serious attempt at cooking. When that was added to the
mix, it didn't even begin to douse the fire, instead that was
when things started to get weird even for Akane. The panful of
mighty-morphin' neo-stir-fry miso-eggs-flambe' began to whistle
Hindemith. In fugue. On pitch.

Amazingly, this time Akane had sense enough to quit while she
was behind. Rather than panicking and adding something else to
the mix, she grabbed a pot-holder, seized the frying pan, and
carried the burning mass quickly and quietly into the bathroom,
where she dumped it into the toilet and flushed it down, or
tried anyway. Unfortunately, reality was being uncooperative.
Yes, the mass of once-was-food went down, but no, the broken
water pipes didn't provide any water to help it on its way or
douse it, instead the burning mass slid on a cushion of the
slime mold that usually builds up in blackwater piping, while
inviting same to hop on board and join the fun as it passed.
What finally found release through the breaks in the sewer
piping was an all too fragrant and entirely new smell, one that
brought every person in the house to full alert with the
impression that the aliens had landed.

Onna-Ranma had noticed the leaping kitchen flames out of the
corner of her eye and came running with a bucketful of pond
water. Soun, incredibly, was awake and actively working at
smothering the stove fire with his blanket, and even thought to
turn the burners off first... so Onna-Ranma, still with Happosai
on board, followed the trail of fumes to where Akane was trying
to twist moisture from wet towels over the toilet bowl, and
pitched in the bucket of pond water.

That's when the smell _really_ got bad. Whatever the effective
power of the magical component of the Jusenkyo-influenced koi
pond water might have been, it was immediately overwhelmed and
drafted by the combined magical might of the
toilet-of-cursed-martial-artists slime mold and the starter
culture from Akane's last Excellent Culinary Adventure, which
knew for certain just what its business was and set about doing
it with renewed zeal. The smell went straight past Horrible,
confidently expecting to arrive at Intolerable in a matter of
moments and determined to reach Lethal on schedule.

Still tying shut her robe, Kasumi paused to stare into her
kitchen. "Oh, my. Father, I think we'll be dining out tonight."
With a shouted "Don't mention food!", Nabiki brushed past her,
then stopped, turned and ran, holding her hand to her mouth, a
desperate look in her eyes.

Akane and Onna-Ranma bodily stopped her, chorusing "Not in the
toilet!!" Nabiki's eyes got wider and she turned again and
dashed for the yard with Kasumi close behind. By now her eyes
were streaming, enough so that she noticed the koi pond only
when she tripped on its stones and fell, immediately followed by
Kasumi. She narrowly missed decorating Kasumi with her past
repasts instead of the pond.

Akane turned and blindly ran for the door, followed by Soun.
Happosai gasped, reached up out of Onna-Ranma's cleavage,
pointed towards the exit and shouted "get us out of here!"

Akane stepped clear of the house, wiped her streaming eyes with
her shirtsleeve, and noted two male Ranmas in the koi pond,
one wearing Kasumi's robe and nightie, the other in Nabiki's
pajamas. With mounting fury, she glared at first one, then the
other.

"Ranma, which one is you and what have you done with my
sisters?!!" One of the Ranmas reached out a hand for some help
in getting up. Akane was having none of that; she batted the
hand away and stepped back, only to trip over the sprawled legs
of the other Ranma and fall in herself.

Onna-Ranma came over and gave them each a hand up. "Jeez, are
you uhh, guys... uhh... all right? I mean, other than looking
like me, that is... Careful, your balance is gonna be off, it's
easier to fall over. Nabiki, don't pull your pants up so hard,
you'll hurt something, I mean it."

Nabiki-kun grimaced. "Thanks, I just found out about that. How
do you walk without damaging yourself?"

"You kinda stumble, that's the best way of putting it. Don't
walk with your feet together until you get the hang of it. Umm,
or something like that." She blushed.

"Oh, my. Our koi pond doesn't usually do this to people. What
happened to it?"

Akane-kun hung his head. "It's ..kinda... my fault, well, part
of it."

"It's not _all_ your fault, Akane, I mean, not the first part.
Happosai had Taro bring him a big jug of Jusenkyo water, he was
sposedta bring Spring of Drowned Twins but he brought some
uncursed water instead. Happosai tried to use it to split off my
girl side--"

"And it would've worked, too!" came from Onna-Ranma's blouse.

Kasumi-kun and Nabiki-kun looked wide-eyed at Onna-Ranma's
chest; Akane-kun just looked down, cheeks flaming. A small head
popped up from Ranma's cleavage. "I had Taro dump the water in
the koi pond to keep it from causing trouble, and that would've
been the end of it, except some young lady had to go and kill my
star pupil there."

"Oh, my, what young lady?"

"Who do you _think_ might have done it, Kasumi?"

"Oh, dear. Akane, you promised me about your temper."

"Right... so I noticed that Ranma here hit her head and wasn't
breathing. I even had to kickstart her heart. I gave her
mouth-to-mouth, got her breathing again..."

"Oh... so that's why you're ..where you are?"

"Yup. I saved her life out of the goodness of my heart, so she's
gonna be thanking me for the next 24 hours. Strictly voluntary,
of course."

Nabiki-kun shivered. So did Kasumi-kun, for that matter, both
being idly grateful for being temporarily immune to such
charitable contributions. "I always said you had a good heart,
Ranma... chan."

"Great chest, too. 'Scuse me, I gotta get back to work. You're
gonna have to drain that pool now, you know, it's cursed. Pool
of Drowned Ranma." The tiny head disappeared again. The blouse
resumed rippling like the skin of a week-dead mouse.


"Okay, this is officially weird. What're the odds?"

"I don't know... I've never been Ranma before."

"Are we stuck this way?" 

"We need some hot water." 

"You don't know that that'll work." 

"Well, we can try..." 

"Tofu's clinic won't be open for hours yet." 

"Perhaps Ukyo has some hot water to spare; we could go ask her."

"Yeah, we'll need to get something for breakfast anyway, and she
can use the business."

Akane-kun grimaced. "I don't want Ukyo to see me as a guy! She
might get smart at me, or grab me or something. Or laugh." He
shrugged. "We could boil some water from the pond."

Akane-kun froze on being given The Look by both cursed sisters,
a look compounded of "_not in my kettle_" from Kasumi-kun, "_not
after what I just put into it_" from Nabiki-kun, and "_not after
what it's done to us already_" and an overwhelming "_just how
badly lagged are you anyway_" from both of them.

"Well, it was a thought..."

Nabiki-kun, livid, rounded on him then. "And just where do you
suggest we should boil it? Thanks to a certain somebody, our
kitchen is now a tourist attraction from War Of The Worlds."

Akane-kun folded, fresh tears in his eyes. "I'll just stay here,
then. You two go ask Ukyo. Maybe in a few days you can send over
a kettle of hot water, just in case it might do some good..."

"Now, now, little ...brother... We all make mistakes. You've
just had more than your share recently."

"It's your specialty, Akane, just like Kasumi does the cooking
and I do the finance."

"Now, Nabiki, that was unkind."

"You didn't leave your last three meals lying around."

"Go look on the ground outside my bedroom window and tell me
that."

"Yes, well, it's still past time somebody said something.
Admitted, Ranma attracts trouble, but who's personally
responsible for most of the holes in the roof, and the damaged
kitchen equipment? And Ranma didn't throw himself into our koi
pond; he never does. He didn't kill himself there, either. This
curse we've got now isn't his fault, it's hers. Like a lot of
things around here."

The conversation between Nabiki-kun and Kasumi-kun faded as they
let themselves out through the gate and headed for Ucchan's.
Left conspicuously out of the conversation, and left behind,
Akane-kun stood, humiliated and ashamed, replaying in his mind
Nabiki-kun's capsule assessment of his part in a lot of things
he'd rather not have faced.

####

P-Chan had been safely under the house, lazily tending a small
camp-stove which was heating a pan of water. Nearby were puddles
left behind after someone, probably Soun, had turned off the
main water valve; if they hadn't, judging from the width of the
puddles, there would be sprays of water down here and he'd be
unable to keep his human form once he gained it. 

The water had taken forever to collect using his metal drinking
cup, dragging it sideways in his teeth, but now there was enough
in the pan that he'd be human once he tipped the pan over onto
himself. He'd done just that many times in just this spot.  
Hiding down here kept his secret, plus it was a listening post
for anything said in the bathroom and much that was said in the
kitchen. It was his favorite spot on the Tendo property other
than wherever Akane was, even though right now the broken drain
pipe was leaking a bit more sewer smell than his piggy nose
could comfortably handle. Soon the water would be hot enough for
him to change, and then he could repay Ranma for upsetting Akane
again, and score points with her by being her champion again.
And find out why the house above him shook so much a minute or
two ago.

That's when the drainpipe started whistling, at first the
_whuff_ of displaced stinky air as something slid down, then a
tune he didn't recognize and didn't want to, something that
started out leftwards of *Rite Of Spring* and kept going. Then
the whatever-it-was started spraying hotly down around him,
anointing him with its bouquet even as it triggered his change,
just in time to catch a hot wet faceful of it as water was added
to the mix upstairs. If he hadn't been human by then he would
have passed out from the smell. As it was, he clung to
consciousness long enough to grab his clothes and crawl out of
there only by mentally reciting his mantra: _Ranma this is all
your fault_. Then he had to pull down a bandanna and tie it as a
face mask so he could venture back under there to retrieve his
stove and backpack, both of which were now immediately
identifiable by smell as having been where Something Of Note
had happened.

Ryoga was thus very much a not-happy camper when he finished
stowing his campstove in his pack. Rounding the house, he went
looking for his nemesis, and found him standing near the koi
pond, next to ...herself? They were speaking, so he paused to
listen, hoping for clues as to which one needed pounding just
now.

"But look at me, Ranma, now my clothes don't even fit!" 

Onna-Ranma sighed. "Go ahead and use some of mine, Akane, I
promised I'd stay in this form for 24 hours."

"I can't, I don't think I can stand to go back in the house, not
until that smell goes away."

"That _was_ your cooking, you know, doesn't that make a
difference?"

"Ha ha, Ranma, very funny."

"Maybe if you went in by the roof?"

"I have to do something. These panties are pinching me ...where
I didn't use to have anything. That stuff hurts!"

"That's why I wear those Chinese clothes. There should be a set
by the window; I was gonna wear 'em this morning. My
undershorts, too. Maybe you can just reach in and snag 'em."

"It's worth a try, thanks."

That was enough for Ryoga. Now he was sure which one was Ranma.
The other was Akane, changed somehow by Ranma so he'd have
company in his cursed form, company which wouldn't be attractive
to Ryoga; now his devious plan was unmasked. This was
intolerable.

"RANMA, PREPARE TO DIE!"

"Aww, again? I did that already today!"

Onna-Ranma sighed and got into a ready stance, shrugging the
burden in her blouse over into a position that didn't restrict
her arm movements quite as much. Ryoga started in with a swift
kick, and she jumped back, immediately wishing she hadn't, as,
even with the bra, the extra load attached to her chest made the
move painful.

She noticed Ryoga setting up for some close-in punches.
Ordinarily she would have immediately leaped up and out, forcing
Ryoga to extend himself, but she couldn't leap with full force
with Happosai on board, and she couldn't predict how his
shifting load would affect any leap at less power. Hampered by
Happosai's omnipresent glomp, Onna-Ranma was forced on the
defensive by Ryoga's furious attack.

Just as Ryoga's fist found an opening and darted towards her
face, a tiny arm holding a small long-stemmed pipe reached up
out of her cleavage and batted the stem of the pipe against the
fist. Instantly Ryoga's momentum was summed and reversed and he
was sailing across the yard.

His eye caught Akane-kun's open-mouthed stare momentarily, and
he realized where he would land and why it would matter.
Panic showed in his eyes as the rest of his life passed before
his eyes:

1. He would land in the koi pond.

2. In front of Akane.

3. Who would see him change into P-Chan.

4. And would pound him into sausage and meat by-products for
sleeping with her.

5. Worse, she wouldn't like him anymore, even when she was a
girl again, if that ever happened.

6. And his poor little heart would break into little tiny
bacon-bits.

7. And he would be too damaged to properly incinerate his
remains (and the surrounding neighborhood) with a perfect Shishi
Hokoudan.

In a moment the in-flight movie was over, he tried and failed to
fold and lock his legs or his feelings into an upright position,
and he touched down in a perfect five-point landing with a
resounding splash, eyes closed to savor his last sight of an
Akane-of-either-sort who wasn't incandescently furious at him.

He felt wet; this was expected. 

Rather than drowning in his own clothing per usual, though, he
was feeling rather confined in the upper chest, and much moreso
around the hips, even though his waistband felt like it was
about to fall off. That latter feeling intensified as he stood
up, when, as sometimes happens when pants designed to keep
28-inch hips snugly happy suddenly have 34-inch hips come to
visit them, his pants forcibly unsnapped and unzipped.
He-now-she reached down quickly with both hands to grab her
pants and keep them at work hiding the last-known-address of her
manhood, then shivered, groaned, sat back down and folded her
arms primly, stunned by the feeling of her elbows slamming
against brand-new upholstery, upholstery which hadn't gone
through the Bakusai Tenketsu training with the rest of her and
was thus quite sensitive.

She opened her eyes slowly, then, resolutely _not_ looking down,
she stood up again, one hand tightly clutching the errant
waistband. She walked over to Ranma and poked her in the chest.
Lightly; Happosai's hand held the pipe aloft, ready to dish out
more of the same. "Ranma, this is all your fault!"

"What would you rather turn into, _P-Chan_?"

Onna-Ryoga glanced over at Akane-kun, who was now wrinkling his
nose at the stench; he apparently hadn't caught the clue. Their
eyes caught for a moment, then Akane-kun turned away. "He didn't
do anything this time, Ryoga. It's your fault you got cursed.
And you'd better get a bath somewhere; you stink like our
bathroom."

As Akane-kun went over to get the stepladder, Ryoga-chan got her
pack and quietly let herself out. 

Ten minutes later, Akane-kun got down off the ladder, a bundle
of Ranma's clothing in his hands, and looked around. 

"Whatcha need?"

"Someplace to change clothes."

"You can change over in that corner. Nobody else will see you,
and I've seen it all before, a lot longer than my girl form."

"But you're a girl!"

Onna-Ranma grimaced and gestured. "Just do what you want, Akane.
If I say anything more, you'll just turn it into a reason to hit
me. I'm _real_ tired of it."

Shamefacedly, Akane-kun hid in the indicated corner to change,
while Onna-Ranma turned her back and moodily stared at the pond.
By the time she turned around to see how things were going,
Akane-kun was gone.

###

Onna-Ranma was getting bored. Encumbered by Happosai, she
couldn't practice her arts effectively. Besides, she was getting
a bit too hungry to want to do any strenuous exercising. She
debated going into the house to see if there were any decent
mangas lying around in the family room, something to pass the
time until Ucchan's was open for business. She'd have to come up
with two breathing masks to do that, though, one for her, one
for Happosai; his grasp had been painful when he was persuading
her to evacuate the bathroom area. She stood, idly staring at
the koi pond.

"What's going on here, Ranchan?" 

Onna-Ranma looked up. Ukyo stood with one hand on her battle
spatula, surveying the scene, her face a mixture of puzzled
bemusement and rising nauseous disgust at the pervasive smell
surrounding the house proper.  

"Oh, hi, Ucchan. Akane made breakfast." 

"That explains the smell; so why is everybody looking like you
now? Is this how you're going to solve your fiancee problem?"

"Naw, Akane clobbered me into the koi pond after Taro dumped
some uncursed Jusenkyo water into it... and... I died and
Happosai had to bring me back to life. So that's how it got my
form into it." Even though it was true, it felt weird to be
saying that.

Ukyo shivered and moved closer to hug Ranma-honey, shifting into
full-sympathy mode. "But you're alive now, and *YAAAAAHHHHHHH*!!"

When Ukyo glomped Onna-Ranma, Happosai branched out from being
just friendly with one bosom to being professionally pleasant
with two. Ukyo leaped back and kept backing up, eyes wide,
staring at the tiny hand which was sticking up from Onna-Ranma's
cleavage and proudly holding her breast-bindings. Suddenly her
feet were at the rocks and had nowhere to go. She sat down
heavily in the pond.

She-now-he closed his eyes tightly and shook his head. "Don't
tell me... yup, I sound like you. This is pathetic." He looked
at his hands, then up at Onna-Ranma, who was offering a hand up.
He stood up and glared at the extra hand still waving its trophy
at her chest. "So what's _that_ doing there?"

"Happosai. He used up a lot of his energy fixing me back up, so
for the next 24 hours he's recharging offa me." 

"And anybody else who gets near you. Wanna play with me now, old
man? Huh? Didn't think so." Ukyo-kun shook his head. He grabbed
his binding-cloth from the offering hand. "I'm going back to my
restaurant for some hot water; Kasumi should have it ready by
now. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but... Ranchan,
I'm going to steer clear of you until your little pervert
payback is over. That's disgusting."

_Sigh_. "Yeah, I know."

"You're hungry, aren't you, sugar... Why don't you come to the
restaurant with me, I'll fix you something to eat?"

"Somebody's gotta stay here to warn people not to fall in the
pond."

"Well, so far they seem to fall in anyway."

"I can't help it if they won't listen. Very tragic."

"Ouch... okay, Well, I'll see if I can send something over in a
bit, okay?"

"I'd love that. Thanks, Ucchan, you're a real pal."

"...I won't say it, not looking like this. I'd end up getting
married to myself."   

Ukyo-kun left. Onna-Ranma realized that she'd somehow discovered
a potent Fiancee-Glomp-Repellent. The only nagging little
problem with it was that the cure was undeniably worse than the
disease.

 
###

Nodoka Saotome stood staring unseeing at the paper in her hand. 
It was a bill from a local store for some bales of bamboo
shoots, "panda food", representing a tab run up over the last
several months, and, though it was made out to her, the writing
was that of her missing husband.

She looked out over the street; her eye caught on a passing
panda. Close by, actually. Somehow this area seemed to have
attracted pandas; her little friend Ranko Tendo had one as well.
Perhaps this beast was even the one that her errant husband had
taken to feeding. She didn't mind charity, but her money was
strictly budgeted, and this sudden expense would cut deep into
her household funds.

"Oh, Dearest, how could you..."

The panda froze momentarily, chilled to the bone as it caught
her blank stare out of the corner of its eye. It was very very
certain that she was looking straight at it.  It resumed
lumbering off down the sidewalk, trying hard not to change its
pace in its eagerness to get away before she could follow it
into some isolated place and put that sword to good use without
witnesses. All that went through its mind as a theme to
its rising panic was "she knows -- someone must have told her --
she knows..."

Following behind, Nodoka unwrapped and unsheathed her katana.
She had a few hours yet, her shopping having been curtailed by
having her funds commandeered to feed someone's panda, so she
was going to follow this panda at a distance for awhile to see
where it called home. If she needed to prod the beast to make it
behave, or to keep it moving... that's what the sword was for.

###

It took a good ten minutes for Onna-Ranma to decide that it was
a far better idea to head for the food at Ucchan's than to wait
here in the hope that it would eventually come to her. Besides,
the people who'd visited the koi pond most recently had done so
because she was near it, so maybe if she left they'd stop doing
that, and if they didn't, well, then, it must not have been her
fault after all.

After the unnerving experience of battling Ryoga while
breast-feeding, though, she was by no means eager to attract the
attentions of any more of the people who usually enlivened her
day while thus handicapped. Back alleys and sneak passages were
in order, even if it took longer.

###
 
Once again an alternate-shaped Ryoga was tending a pan of water
over a campstove, this time just over the lip of the canal. Not
that canal water made such a great bath, but Kasumi and Nabiki
had both been charged by Ukyo with keeping anything that
fragrant out of the restaurant.

They weren't supposed to treat her this way. Ranma was the
villain, everybody knew that, she'd declared often enough and
loudly enough that it was all Ranma's fault, why was that bit of
political magic now coming undone? It must have something to do
with this new cursed form... which meant, of course, that it was
all Ranma's fault. Now, if Onna-Ryoga could only get everyone
else back into the habit of agreeing with that...

The moment was at hand; the water began to steam. Ryoga seized
the pan and dumped its contents over now-himself. He turned off
the stove and put it aside while he fussed over swabbing his
pack down with canal water, quenched the remaining heat of the
stove grille in water and packed it away, then shouldered the
pack and set off for the front of Ucchan's, where he was sure he
could at least get a meal passed to him once Ukyo got back to
staff the grille.

If the place didn't get cleaned out by then, that is... Ryoga
recognized the panda presently peering into the closed windows
and locked door and knew that he'd have to bodily protect the
restaurant if he wanted anything to eat from it.



###

Ukyo-kun let himself into the Tendo yard, grimacing. He'd heard
often enough from Ranchan about the old lady with the ladle and
her habit of indiscriminately blessing both the street and any
passing martial artists; now he'd experienced it first-hand, and
it wasn't fun, and what it had done to two okonomiyakis was just
plain nasty. The only bright spot was the fact that Shampoo,
who'd all but ridden him down with her bicycle, had gotten
caught by the ladle too, and nearly gotten her tail caught in
the chain as a result. Now maybe that stupid Amazon would pass
by while he hid in here. Especially if she couldn't get the
soggy 'yakis off her face without hands. Ranchan must've left
for the restaurant after all, so he didn't feel quite so bad
about finding other uses for them.

No such luck. A pink-and-purple cat hopped up onto the outer
wall and stared down into the yard, shortly followed by a
diminutive crone.

"Smells like Akane's been cooking again. When will she learn? Or
you, for that matter."

Annoyed by the slur on his chances in the Marry-Ranma
competition, and realizing that it doubly applied to his current
shape, Ukyo-kun just turned away, expression darkening.

"Don't just stand there, Son-In-Law, you know there's a full
meal waiting for you at the Nekohanten. You don't have to put
up with toxic waste from an inferior suitor, either of them."

Ukyo-kun realized that neither Amazon realized who he was, and
played along, hoping for some way to turn that to advantage in
the War Of The Fiancees.

"I'll stay here, thanks. This is only temporary." He leaned back
against the wall, arms folded, in his best
this-is-how-Ranma-acts style.

"So you're going to patiently wait here for the Tendo household
to go back to what passes for normal? I think otherwise. You'll
thank me for this when you've finished the job Akane started and
have no further reason to stay here."

With that, Cologne casually tossed the cat onto Ukyo-kun,
expecting Neko-Ken nature to take its course. Ukyo-kun roused to
a faceful of feline female crotch. Ukyo-kun pushed the cat away
with an open palm and grimaced at Cologne as only a
Ranma-lookalike can. "Don't throw your pussy at me, jackass, I
don't swing that way."

In the mind of a certain Chinese cat, certain connections were
made at blinding speeds.

Item: this Ranma had just been seen coming from the direction of
Ucchan's.

Item: there was a notorious cross-dressing ninja with suspect
sexual tendencies employed therein.

Item: this Ranma was even wearing a 'yaki-seller's uniform,
showing off his cute butt in a most unusual way that was
suggestive of cross-dressing.

Item: this Ranma was somehow now immune to her as a cat; he must
be deliberately ignoring her.

Item: from what he had just said, this Ranma must be playing
around with boys now; maybe he even considered himself engaged
to one, since, in Ranma's life, any romance however slight
always resulted in another fiancee of one gender or another.

Action: this yaoi behavior must be stopped right now somehow
before her Airen stopped caring entirely about her undeniable
species-generic female charms. Having a little fun on the side
was one thing, but her Amazon womanhood must always be his
highest priority. She would have to make sure that that's all he
could see, at least until this little phase passed.

Crawling desperately up Ukyo-kun's arm with all the native speed
and ferocity to be expected of a frantic housecat, Neko-Shampoo
settled into place straddling the temporary boy's face, with the
claws of all four paws locked into hair or skin.

Ukyo-kun responded to this demonstration of affection by blindly
leaping for the koi pond, determined to drown the cat if that's
what it took to make her let go of him.

To Cologne's amazement, when the inevitable splash subsided,
what had been one male Ranma and one female cat now emerged as
two male Ranmas, one in a 'yaki-seller's uniform, the other
skyclad but for the beads and bells in his hair. The two Ranmas
started talking. Loudly. In exactly the same voice.

"Don't try that again. I'm not who I look like." 

"Who ...who you?"

"Who do think I am, jackass? I'm Ukyo."

"Look like Airen."

"So do you. It's this pool, somebody's messed it up so it acts
like one of those cursed pools. I'm starting to understand why
Ranchan acts so stressed out all the time."

"No fun look like Airen; no can marry self."

"Yeah, tell me about it, sugar." 

Ukyo-kun pulled himself up off Shampoo-kun, shuddered, and
started trying to knife the magically-active and slightly tingly
water out of his clothing with the edge of a palm. "Yecch...
don't see how Ranchan can stand this, this feels horrible." He
turned away, heading for the gate.

Shampoo-kun stood up and looked down at himself, getting
teary-eyed, not about wet clothing but wet maleness. "No lie.
Shampoo suppose to be woman among women; now is weak, useless,
silly boy. Maybe come off with hot water?"

"Saotome, I'll kill you for what you've done to Shampoo!"

Shampoo-kun looked up and froze, processing just who the target
was and why.  Above him, the white-robed Master of Hidden
Weapons descended, claws and chains outstretched, glasses
perched safely (and uselessly) on his head. Shampoo-kun
relexively raised a knee, protecting the newly-acquired tender
bits. This block, uncharacteristic of Anything-Goes and thus not
planned for, put the knee in position to collide with his
attacker's tender bits. Both went down with a splash, bound
together by many no-longer-supervised chains. Mousse had a
moment of intense physical regret, just before the sensation
faded along with the masculine tender bits doing all the
regretting.

"Stupid duck-boy, why you no use glasses? No can see you fight
Shampoo!"

"I can see you clearly now, and you're not Shampoo. Urk-- and
I'm not a duck. What..."

"Pool make us like Airen. Now Airen not marry Shampoo-boy."

"Mousse, do you have anything that will hold water?"

Onna-Mousse looked up at Cologne. "I have a kettle up my
sleeve, but I don't think it's hot anymore."

"Fill it with water from that pond and come back with me to the
Nekohanten. You two need hot water and I want to study that pond
water."


###

"That's it. I'm gonna pound her."

"Now, Akane, she's an old woman. She's just honoring the
traditions."

"She gets Ranma every morning with that ladle of hers, seems
like, and now she got the three of us in one shot. And then she
smiled at us, I'm sure of it. I was a girl again for ten whole
minutes, that's all!"

"So? Are you going to kill her too, Akane? For getting us wet?
Better go kill the weatherman, there might be clouds tomorrow."

"Let's just go back to Ukyo's for some more hot water. And
control your temper, Akane, you promised, remember?"

"Yeah... wait, there's Ranma, this 'yaki's for her."

"We'll meet you at Ukyo's, then."

###

Two animals, one normal by Nerima standards, the other one
abnormal by any universal standard, were both expressing their
displeasure at the front door of Ucchan's. 

The panda knew that there was not only hot water in there, which
was nice on occasion but not essential, but food, which involved
the panda's personal Prime Directive. The food was obvious, you
could smell it, even through the vapors being emitted by Ryoga,
and said Ryoga was being doubly annoying by refusing to let him
come inside and help himself to some of it, all on account of a
petty thing like money. It wasn't as if a panda skin had
pockets, and anyway the last time he'd seen his own money was
those two weeks when he'd worked for Dr. Tofu until Nabiki
stopped remembering to ask him for room-and-board money. Now for
some reason Ukyo didn't trust him to pay her back later for
goods consumed, and had left instructions to that effect; sheer
ingratitude after all he'd done to set her up as the boy's
fiancee.

Taro-beast needed hot water and food in that order, because it
would take maybe ten times as much food to fill his stomach
otherwise. The magic of Jusenkyo somehow expanded anything he'd
already eaten in human form to an equivalent amount in his
cursed tummy, but it didn't work retroactively. He also was
troubled by their petty insistence on his paying for his meals.
His dragonskin vest was buried somewhere deep within his larger
shape where he couldn't reach it or its pockets, and anyway he
was far more accustomed to people just giving him things like
food in the hope that maybe then he'd go away. In an open field
competition he could take out the macho chick with the big
spatula pronto, if she was in there, ditto the stinky boy with
the umbrella who was currently in his face, but here he couldn't
use his size to advantage without destroying the food and the
hot water within.

His patience, never in great supply, was on the point of running
out, when Ryoga, also never one for patience in the first place,
starting ripping up boulders out of the tiny park down the
street and throwing them up in front of Ucchan's front door.
When all the available boulders had joined the barricade, Taro
made one effort to stick one giant finger through the remaining
opening, and got his fingertip slashed open by a bandanna for
his troubles. At that point, both animals gave up and grumpily
walked off. Taro paused to lift a leg to give the barricade a
piece of his mind, but put it down quickly when a flurry of
flung bandannas reminded him why he didn't often expose that
part of himself.

The spray caught Ryoga, though, and while it wasn't cold enough
to trigger the change, it was enough to send him, freshly
pissed, back to the canal for some more hurried cold-water
washing, so it amounted to almost the same thing.

###
"It _hurts_, old man, and that wasn't part of the deal."

Onna-Ranma had had enough of feeling like her bosom was at the
wrong end of a private gravity well. Seated on some loose trash
behind a fence, she fashioned her shawl into a rough sling,
undid her blouse and pushed Happosai over into it. He cooperated
long enough for both of them to get comfortable, then
immediately fastened back onto the exposed breast and resumed
his ministrations.

Behind her, a still-male but much-chastened Akane-kun, who had
been following at a discreet distance, came up, offering an
okonomiyaki which was silently accepted and immediately
devoured.

"What is he _doing_ in there?" 

"Nursing." Onna-Ranma looked down her exposed cleavage at the
creature attached like a particularly ugly barnacle to her
breast. "Ya don't actually think you're gonna get something outa
there, do ya?"

Happosai broke off to peer up at her. "Nothing but chi, my dear,
nothing but chi ...and that's all I need right now. Maybe if I'm
good I'll get a return-match when you get in a motherly way."

He poked his head up out of his nice warm nest to stare at
Akane-kun with a level gaze of calm contempt. "What say, Akane,
want to get Ranma-chan pregnant with that new hardware of yours
and then drown her some more? Make an old man proud and happy?"

Hearing no retort, he chuckled, ducked back down and went back
to his business.

Akane-kun heard the little suckling noises and reddened, acutely
aware that Onna-Ranma was still alive thanks solely to the
noisome creature attached to her bosom, and horribly ashamed at
having caused all this just by one little show of temper... to
say nothing of empathetically cringing from the imagined
sensations of that lech nursing at _his_ bosom.

That's when Nodoka stood up, looked around for the noise, and
stared at the small swaddled burden.

"Ranko ...who put you in this condition?" 

Onna-Ranma lowered her gaze and pointed at Akane-kun, the Keeper
of the Mallet Of Self-Righteousness and the Cause Of Her Current
Predicament. Nodoka turned and stared at Akane-kun, knowing in a
heartbeat whose (borrowed) face she was seeing. Akane-kun stared
back with widening eyes.

"Oh, my manly son!" 

The naked katana still waved in the uncertain hands of the
gifted amateur, attracting attention as nearby deadly threats
are wont to do. Said gifted amateur was approaching, arms
outstretched, the presence of the katana in one hand momentarily
forgotten in this flush of tender motherly pride.

To Akane-kun, however, who was now sure that somehow the katana
was going to be put to work in a matter of moments avenging the
honor of Nodoka's currently-female "manly son", the katana was not
to be ignored. Akane-kun did the only sensible thing possible
under the circumstances: he panicked, turned and ran.

Nodoka stopped and shook her head admiringly at the retreating
view of her supposed son's back. "Yes, well, I suppose you must
be about your manly work, there are other maidens out there
yet."

Even Happosai paused and rolled his eyes at that one.

###

Three male Ranmas, one in standard-issue red-and-black, the
other two in various ladies' sleepwear, paused on a street
corner to confer.

"She's never going to forgive me -- she thinks I got her son
pregnant!"

"Now, Akane, we'll just have to explain to her what happened..."

"And how do we do that without getting Ranma killed? She's got
that sword of hers, she might use it on Ranma!"

"What's the matter, Akane, you don't like competition in the
Let's-Kill-Ranma department?"

"Nabiki!!"

"No, Kasumi, I... I deserve it. This is all my fault."

"Well..."

"Well, it is! He died... I killed him... and I can't get over
how empty I'd feel if he'd stayed dead." He shook his head. "I
can only hope I haven't lost him already. Not that I'd blame
him. And I'm not even a girl now."

"None of us are. Let's get this straightened out as much as we
can, get our own shapes back, get our house back in order, and
then I'll help you fix things up with Ranma... for a price."

"Thanks, Nabiki..."

"But you'd better mean it about changing your ways. None of us
can stand any more of this, and that includes Ranma. Oops,
enough of that, here comes company."

Two more Ranma-kuns strolled up, one in a 'yaki-seller's outfit,
the other in a silk pantsuit.

"Let me guess... you're Shampoo."

The silk-clad Ranma nodded. "Great-grandmother say find out what
make koi pond cursed, where Airen."

Ukyo-kun grimaced. "Don't you have tables to tend at your
restaurant?"

"Mousse do that in girl form, not even need glasses. Look like
Airen girl, so so cute. You got hot water? Great-grandmother say
hurry find out, no have time to get change."

"Okay, c'mon back to Ucchan's, then, if I can get us inside we
can all sit down and talk this out." 

###

Five temporary Ranma-kuns stood in an impatient semicircle
around the front door of Ucchan's watching Onna-Ryoga at work
trying to take down the barricade of rocks she had put up in
front of the door. With her reduced upper-body musculature, it
was nowhere near as easy as it had been to put them on the
doorsill in the first place, and these five were in good shape
to get physically unpleasant about something like taking fifteen
minutes or more to boil some canal water.

"Is the window open?" 

"No, I keep it locked from the inside." 

"So there's no way in until Ryoga gets her rocks off?" 

"Let's go back to the dojo, maybe the smell has gone away." 

"Was worse when Shampoo go by." 

Ukyo-kun remembered something. "I think I left the back door
unlocked. Let's go -- last one there has to lead Ryoga-chan in
by the hand through the front window!"

"Ewwwwww!"

There might have been argument just then about the nature of the
booby prize, but the starting gun for this particular footrace
turned out to be, not the thought of enjoying good clean hot
water while avoiding the aromatic Ryoga, but Onna-Ryoga herself,
who had gotten frustrated trying to use her umbrella to pry
loose the boulders than kept her from the badly-needed hot
shower waiting within, and resorted to something more immediate.

"Bakusai Tenketsu!"

Some of the exploding bits of boulder found their way to
newly-discovered bits of male anatomy, suddenly educating them
all as to why this particular assault on manhood was widely
regarded as a Forbidden Technique. Mindful of how many boulders
remained unexploded, they ran.

###

The panda hunched over and began erasing itself from sight with
the Umisen-Ken, smirking at its cleverness as much as a panda
could smirk. After all, what good were Forbidden Techniques if
everyone else learned how to use them?

It was the work of a moment and some sharp claws for it to tear
the small padlock off the door. It fumbled with the doorknob,
then just shouldered the door open in a display of its own best
martial artistry.

Inside, it found the ingredients for okonomiyaki ready on
a counter. Beneath were utensils and grill supplies. In a back
room it found the supply room for Ucchan's. Foodstuffs were
everywhere. A shelf held large jars of Ukyo's secret 'yaki
sauce. Truly this was a gift from the gods, this wealth of food
it had found.

More to the point, it found her stash of saki, and, for the sake
of economy of motion, consumed it on the spot. What that might
have done to any normal panda is unknown. What it had done to
this Jusenkyo panda was to eliminate most second thoughts,
inhibitions, and pangs of guilt or conscience, along with a good
deal of its judgement and balance and most of its capacity for
pain. This last was per plan: if the katana-wielding wife were
to run it down now, at least it wouldn't feel that lethal blow.
Quite as much, anyway.

This made decisions difficult, however. It seized an unopened
jar of Ukyo's secret sauce, that which made her 'yakis so
delicious as far as it knew, but there were no okonomiyakis to
put it on. Easily enough solved: steal the sauce now, and show
up periodically to swipe the 'yakis. Besides, no telling when
Ukyo might return with her omnipresent weaponry to make life
difficult.

With that decision made, and forgetting that the plan made no
provision for immediate provisions, the panda let itself out the
back door of Ucchan's, still cloaking, and lumbered off down the
alley. On hearing a noise and seeing five Ranmas coming around the
corner and heading towards it, it upped its speed to a flat-out
run, losing its stealth cloaking in the process. Not only did
the boy usually violently object to such thievery, this time he
had brought spares.

"Hey, isn't that Ranchan's old man?"

"Sure is. What's he been doing in your store?"

"Panda-man only think of tummy, now run, must have take
something."

"Hey jackass! What'd you steal from me?"

"We get him, no?"

"We get him _*yes*_. Come on!"

Nodoka noticed the panda as it swept back past on the other side
of the fence. It must be running towards its master and food; if
she kept it in sight, it might lead her to her husband and
explanations of her son's very evident manliness. Blade held
high for safety, she took off running, hastening toward a gap in
the fence where she could intercept the animal. She would find
her husband now; she could sense that, could almost sense his
nearness.

"Dearest! At last!"

In the midst of running, the drunken panda heard this and was
also distracted by the glint of sunlight on a nearby gleaming
katana blade; gleaming, as in, unsheathed, naked, sharp and
ready to do very unpleasant things to martial artists suspected
of being not-so-honorable. The panda stumbled, lost its clawed
grip on the jar of 'yaki sauce, lunged to grab it, lost its
footing and went sprawling. Stunned, it felt sharp pains where
the broken glass was cutting into its belly, and thought to its
drunken self that some kind of instant seppuku had begun already
and not bothered to notify it in time for it to wrap up its
worldly affairs, have one last game of shogi, or maybe swim to
Borneo. Teary-eyed at this untimely end to an otherwise
exemplary life, and not daring to move as its personal Angel Of
Divine Retribution climbed over the fence and stepped down and
stood on its back, it lay waiting for the mercy-stroke.

"Uh-oh..."

At the end of the alley, the rear end of a panda lay in a large
and spreading pool of reddish liquid. The panda was not moving.
At all.

Nodoka spun into view, one foot still on the rump of the prone
panda whose bulk hid its still-resident head from view, her
katana held ready at bisection height.

"Oh, my, Mr. Saotome..."

"I.. I guess he paid for everything." Ukyo-kun began to turn a
bit green.

"We look like Airen, maybe we next? No can fight in this weak
male body!"

Five male-looking Ranmas mostly in not-very-manly costume
somehow came to a zero-inertia halt seeming inches from this
premature-finish-line. This had nothing to do with promises made
by wandering martial artists, well, not much maybe, but more
immediately it had to do with protecting certain newly-acquired
proven-sensitive bits of anatomy from the dire edge of that
blade... but it looked suspicious. And they knew it. Especially
since there were five of them. So, five male Ranmas backed up
slowly, then quickly, then turned and ran, retreating to their
individual shelters. Still with one foot on the rump of the
frozen panda, Nodoka stared in amazement, the sword forgotten
and drooping. "What magic has my son used to mature his babies
so quickly?"

Behind the fence sat one female Ranma with aged papoose, slowly
shaking her head, beginning to suspect that her
currently-fragile grip on reality was in fact hereditary.

After a minute or so of total inaction on the part of the panda,
Nodoka turned to prodding the animal with the point of the
sword. "Get up, you animal. I want to see who's been keeping
you, then we'll see what's to be done with you."

At this, the panda roused. She hadn't killed it yet, now if it
could avoid leading her back to the Tendo place there was a
chance that she wouldn't discover the boy's other shape; that
was the real danger. She had known her groom was a charming
scoundrel when she married him; it was the boy whose part-time
unmanliness was lethal to disclose.  

Its raid on Ucchan's was a bust, literally. That left the
Nekohanten as the other known eating place where the Tendos had
a tab. Perhaps it could get something to eat on the way past,
while leading her away from the area. Or maybe it should lead
her out of the area first so it could enjoy its meal whenever it
might find one. 

With the target settled, it resumed its lumbering pace down the
alley and up the street, closely pursued by its unknowing wife,
who kept prodding it whenever its pace slackened or its path was
getting too blatantly hairpinned.

Onna-Ranma waited for the noise of her parents' passage to
subside, then got up and headed for home by way of Ucchan's.
However surreal it might be at the Tendo place, it was worse out
here.

###

The three Tendo usually-sisters had returned home quite some
time ago after some a leisurely lunch and some shopping. The
house was still too aromatic for use, so they more-or-less took
up temporary residence in the dojo, where Soun was already
napping. Even with its proximity to the fragrant bathroom corner
of the house, it was less upsetting to contemplate than the koi
pond.

Over in the front yard, Kasumi-kun had politely negotiated the
use of a neighbor's garden hose, and was now happily heating a
kettle of water on a small hibachi. Presently Nabiki-kun
returned from using the same neighbor's phone to make
arrangements for repairs, and then both of them used the first
kettleful of hot water to return to their accustomed femininity,
and the second to indulge in sponge baths, while Akane-kun with
his less-sensitive male nose plied the ladder to fetch clothing
through their bedroom windows. The third kettleful was his
alone, and then finally all three of them were not only girls
again, but smelling like it and dressed like it. 

Through all of this, nobody had thought to stand guard at the
koi pond. In fact, all the Tendos were avoiding looking at it or
thinking about it as much as humanly possible.

###

It had taken Sasuke most of the morning and a great deal of
playing tethered-goat to get Midorigame out of his pool and into
the Kuno limo. It took still more effort, though much less time,
to insinuate him into the Tendo koi pond without inadvertently
becoming Gator Chow, so Sasuke was understandably reluctant to
stick around to admire his handiwork. Besides, notwithstanding
his loyalty to the Kuno siblings (he was their manservant, after
all, and he'd done the dirty work of moving the bloody animal
from point A to point B) he couldn't help but have some regrets
for what was sure to happen. The Tendos had always been somewhat
respectful of him.

Still, the project had been long in the making and costly to
implement (panda meat was quite expensive, as befitted an
endangered species), and not to be derailed over a minor issue
of personal feelings. The alligator had been snacking on panda
meat for the last month or so, to the point where he preferred
it to human (a less endangered but more expensive meat, even for
the Kuno clan). Now he was ready to go to war to do away with
that nasty part-time panda that kept cluttering up the playing
field with more fiancees for darling Ranma-sama... purely in the
spirit of the best Kuno sportsmanship, of course, the same kind
of sportsmanship that brings military rifles and infrared
imaging to deer hunting instead of flint-tipped spears.

Even a shadow warrior had some standards, though, even one who
would tolerate working for the Kunos, so Sasuke was eager to be
done with the whole business and go back to more straightforward
lurking and spying.
 
Thus it was that Sasuke somehow missed the fact that a
25-foot-long alligator somehow became a five-foot-tall redhead
girl. Or perhaps that was because the redhead immediately sunk
back into the pool with only her eyes and her bangs showing,
occasionally rising to expose her nostrils for a breath. The koi
noticed when the redhead started snapping at them as they swam
past, but eventually forgot about it after she seized one in her
mouth, started choking on it and spat it out, and thereafter
pointedly ignored them. Onna-Gator settled down to wait for
panda-flesh.

Some hours later, it was a freshly washed and feminized Akane
who next encountered Miss Turtle, who was by now getting hungry
enough that panda was an option rather than a requirement.

When she noticed that Onna-Midorigame was on all fours and
naked, she immediately dismissed the sight with a huffy "not
again" and sat down to pointedly ignore everything but her
hurriedly-retrieved manga; she'd deal with that cuter-than-thou
catgirl when she was good and ready.

The mistaken identity started to get noticed when the nude
redhead, instead of climbing up in her lap and purring and
licking her face until it fell asleep, proceeded to bite her in
the thigh, _hard_, and then try to use that leverage to drag her
back to the pool with it.

When Akane screamed in pain and rage and jumped away, Kasumi had
come around from the hibachi with her kettle. She stood
watching for a moment. "Oh my, I don't think Ranma-kun likes you
anymore, Akane. I did warn you about striking out in anger."

She poured out some of the hot water. The resultant 25-foot
alligator started moving towards Akane again, jaws agape. Akane
shrieked and headed for the relatively-less-threatening koi
pond. Kasumi stood for a moment, eyes wide. "Goodness, Akane, I
think you've _really_ gotten onto Ranma's bad side!" 

Soun had looked out of the dojo at the first scream. By the time
the supposed-Neko-Ranma became a reptile, he was running, shinai
in hand. He, Akane and Midorigame reached the pond's edge at
roughly the same time. Akane furiously scooped and splashed up
great sprays of water at the reptile just as Soun jammed the
shinai into the beast's jaws. Midorigame with jaws propped open
suddenly became a girl-Ranma-lookalike with a shinai sticking up
through its redheaded skull. It shuddered and went limp, its
open gaze going glassy.

Akane stared at the sight of something-like-Ranma being
something-like-dead yet again, and lost her composure, her
balance and her lunch. She-now-he sat in the redecorated pond,
sobbing "I'm sorry, Ranma, I'm sorry, please be alive, I'm
sorry..." He looked up as a looks-like-Onna-Ranma in a brown gi
raised her hand to Kasumi: "Kasumi, dear, could we have some hot
water over here?" 

"...Who... Dad?" 

Kasumi arrived with the kettle. The alive-and-breathing redhead
lost a pigtail and gained a mustache and a foot of height. He
looked over at Akane-kun, glaring. "Akane?" 

"Y-y-y-yes, Dad?" 

"Stop killing your fiance. That's an order." 

"But... this time it was you!" 

"I don't go around turning people into cursed koi ponds, Akane.
If this keeps up, all our koi are going to want to marry you. Or
Ranma. Or someone." He looked down at the redheaded corpse and
sighed. "Kasumi, we need to turn that thing back into an
alligator before somebody gets arrested for murder."

"Oh, my... Yes, that could be taken the wrong way." 

"Wait until I get my axe, in case it hasn't made up its mind to
be dead yet."

Akane-kun stood up and clambered out of the koi pond, tugging on
an errant bra-strap, trying to stop the pinching. Male
mammaries, though vestigial, could be hurt if the straps were
tight enough and torqued the wrong way. "Kasumi, could I--"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Akane-kun, I've only got enough for this
alligator, you'll have to wait for the next kettleful. You don't
want to have to stare at a dead Ranma for ten minutes, now, do
you?" 

Akane-kun took one look down at the cursed corpse and promptly
bent over and got rid of the leftovers. Wiping his mouth, he
staggered away towards the dojo, pointedly avoiding looking back
at the dead onna-reptile, trying not to sob too loudly.

Soun arrived with his axe, and Kasumi poured the rest of the hot
water onto the corpse, which immediately resumed being an
alligator with a shinai through its brain. They watched it for a
long moment, but it didn't even twitch. Soun decapitated it
anyway to be safe.

Kasumi stood looking down at the corpse. "I suppose I should see
about alligator recipes for dinner, father, I don't think this
will keep too long."

"You're a good household manager, Kasumi, but I don't think
anybody will want to eat that. What if it turns back into Ranma
when you cook it?"

"Oh, my, that could be unpleasant... and Ranma might take it the
wrong way. He's already been killed once today."

###

Kasumi straightened up when the kettle started emitting the
first signs of steam.

Taro casually reached down over the wall, seized the kettle
between thumb and forefinger and so took it from the startled
Kasumi, and poured its contents down onto his enormous head. He
immediately vanished down behind the wall. In a moment the
kettle sailed up over the wall to clatter against the dojo.
Kasumi shook her head and went to fetch it; some of Happosai's
guests were not very polite or proper. 

"Akane-kun, I'm afraid it's going to be another ten minutes
yet."

As a small team of plumbers arrived in plastic HazMat suits to
confer with Nabiki, Kasumi went to fill the kettle again.

###

At the Nekohanten, the panda had, by its reckoning, found fresh
trouble in the form of a redheaded waitress. Why the boy would
be serving tables here in cursed form when there was no Phoenix
Pill to be had was a wonder, but if Nodoka noticed her and tied
her to Mister Panda, her presence could be enough to bring the
whole subterfuge down. There could be no leisurely dining here,
this would have to be strictly drive-through. Especially with
Nodoka tagging along and whacking it with a sheathed sword to
try to drive it back out of the restaurant.

Fortunately, the panda found a likely diner who probably
wouldn't mind sharing a meal, or at least one who was fair game
for involuntarily contributing one: one Pansuto Taro. The boy
owed him one for his missing breakfast, after all. Even better,
the boy had just had his dinner served; there were two full
bowls of noodles before him. Surely he wouldn't mind sharing
one. The panda hooked two sets of claws onto the rim of the bowl
and pulled.

With Taro glaring and grasping at the bowl in question, the
panda was just beginning to rethink its strategy, when the bowl
slipped from Taro's grasp, upended and decorated the panda with
hot ramen and broth. Immediately a naked Genma seized a nearby
pitcher of water and recloaked himself in pandahood, hoping
Nodoka wouldn't notice the momentary lapse in furriness.

Fortunately, Nodoka immediately had other things on her mind,
namely the enormous Taro-beast now crowding her back out through
the suddenly-shattered front facade of the restaurant. As the
diners behind it scrambled to escape from their upended tables
at the rear end, she was at the front end being stared down by
an extremely irate bovine face, the owner of which was firmly
convinced that she had herded the panda over to its table just
to ruin its meal. It was reaching out an enormous hand to her as
she turned and headed for home at a fast but dignified clip, now
convinced that, bad as it was to be stuck with the bill for a
panda's bamboo shoots, she couldn't afford to be friendly with a
beast that size if it meant she'd end up paying to feed it.

Behind her, the Taro-beast grumbled inarticulately to itself as
it watched the panda, the other bowl of ramen in its paws, head
the other way and duck into a low entryway. It needed hot water
before dinner anyway.  

###

The plumbers were gathered over against the corner of the house
closest to the bathroom, hunched or crouched, watching as one of
their number did righteous battle with something that extruded
two protoplasmic arms whenever one was cut off. Behind them, one
of their number was giving first aid to another whose HazMat
suit had been partially ripped from his chest and whose
discarded boots were still dissolving. Prismatic gleams of light
flickered across the caustic substance which coated them.

The kettle began to steam. Kasumi stood up from where she was
swabbing cups and plates, but a very large hand got there first.
The Taro-beast poured the kettle's contents over its head and
vanished behind the compound wall. A moment later, the kettle
sailed into the yard again, clattering loudly against the dojo.

"Another ten minutes, Akane-kun!"

###

Mousse-chan was in no mood for troublemakers, so, when the
ever-smirking Pantyhose Taro strolled up, peered into the dusty
hole which was now the main entrance to the Nekohanten, and
haughtily demanded two replacement bowls of ramen for the two
that he'd been unable to enjoy at the restaurant before, she
took one look at his smug face, mentally calculated just how
much of him was still outside the place, and nailed him in the
face with a pitcherful of iced tea. Besides, she thought as she
watched the beast lumber away for hot water, she was going
to be saddled with the job of making temporary repairs on the
front wall of the place after the diners went home.

###
   
The plumbers had suited up Soun with as much HazMat gear as they
could spare. It looked damned silly on top of his full suit of
armor, but no one was in any mood to giggle. They had three men
down, one with light wounds, and five who, thanks to someone
leaving a dead alligator lying around to trip over, were now
cute identical red-headed teenage girls who no longer thought
about much of anything except what the hell they were going to
tell their wives. They'd already called in the last three
reinforcements, and they were still losing the battle with
that... whatever it was. Next time Nabiki Tendo called for
plumber service, they'd be sure to negotiate combat pay clauses.

All of them watched nervously as Soun crawled laboriously under
the house, the head of his naginata gaily decorated with paper
spirit wards, and began to hack away at the thing that might yet
escape into the greater Tokyo sewer system to spawn, after which
no one would dare sit or squat over a toilet again. The path of
a martial artist was fraught with peril.

Soun and the plumbers were not the only ones who thought they
might be in peril. The kettle was just starting to emit the
faintest wisp of vapor when a large hand descended, seized it
between thumb and forefinger and rose, leaving a startled Kasumi
gaping. The Taro-beast poured the water on its head, then stood
there unshrunk for a moment, said something exceedingly nasty in
Beast, backhanded off all the major branches of an innocent
cherry tree in retaliation against reality, dropped the empty
kettle at Kasumi's feet, leaned over and, folding its arms on
the top of the compound wall, glared down at the pitiful
hibachi while its tentacles fidgeted. It glowered at Kasumi,
who glanced up into its enormous nightmare face, nervously
picked up the kettle and got up to fill it from the garden hose.

"A-Another twenty minutes, Akane-kun!"  

###

The plumbers were just pulling Soun out from under the house
feet-first, spraying him from both sides as he emerged with a
mix of antiseptic and fungicide and, just to be safe, Tidi-Bowl
and holy water, when the kettle sailed over the compound wall
again to clatter against the dojo. Kasumi shuddered, wiped her
brow, and got up to fill it again. Over on the other side of the
wall, a reanthropomorphicized Taro strode purposefully down the
street, intent on getting his meal of ramen, dammit.

He almost made it. He would have, except the day was warm and
cloudless, and the streets were likely to be dusty in the
afternoons, and the neighborhood was a settled one with its
share of elderly women, and Ibuki-san wasn't the only one with a
ladle.

###

Kasumi just sat back by her hibachi and watched. As the kettle
started to emit vapor, a giant hand reached down over the
compound wall, only to be batted away by five teenage redhead
girls wearing torn-up HazMat gear and oversized coveralls, armed
with various sharp pointy bits of medieval martial weaponry and
an electric cattle prod which last saw use keeping pit bulls
away from the plumbing. One of the girls grabbed the kettle, the
five of them bunched their heads together, and all of them
resumed being men. The kettle clattered against the nozzle of
the garden hose, momentarily sending cold spray all around.

Kasumi-kun wearily shrugged, tugged his peasant dress into the
new alignment, and went to refill it.

Akane-kun just sat on the dojo steps, hugging his knees, and
watched and leaked tears.

###

Happosai poked his head up out of the improvised sling. "Ranma,
m'boy, how do you feel about having me doing this to you?"

"Truthfully? I embarrasses the hell outa me, and bugs me about
as much... but it's paying back a debt, so I'm just thinking of
it as something I have to do out of personal honor." She
shrugged. "I just kinda ignore it."

"Fehh... that's no good. If you don't get mad at me or ashamed
or afraid or aroused, if you're not reacting to what I'm doing
to your female form... then all I get from you is the male
energies of your mind. I can't use that." Happosai nimbly leaped
down out of the sling and stood facing Onna-Ranma. "Well, m'boy,
you're off the hook. You paid me back better than I expected;
you can go change if you want. Now I think I'll see what I can
get from all your girl lookalikes while they last."

"Whaaa... while they last?"

"Well, yeah, that pool isn't a Jusenkyo spring, it's just got
some Jusenkyo water to help it along. I expect the curses will
wear off in a few days... so I'd better get moving before they
go back to normal. Where'd that pig-boy of yours go? He's so
proud of how tough he is, I bet he'll be _fun_ to grope in a
girly sort of way. He might not even fade! Heehee!"

A stunned Onna-Ranma pointed vaguely in the direction of
_out-there_, and Happosai was off like a shot, evidently
recovered from his labors. 

Actually, he only traveled about fifty feet before he was
snagged out of the air like a wrinkled fly ball by a very large
infielder named Taro, presently in his
explosion-in-an-action-figure-factory shape. The conversation
which followed was brief and to the point.

"Mruooomphmhermnaaahhhm!" 

"No way. You botched the deal, you brought me the wrong water.
If you want your name changed so bad, change it yourself."

"_MRUMVoooGHEEEVAAAAAHHHHHHH_!!" 

"You can try, Pantyhose, you can try!"

At that point Happosai twisted free of Taro's grasp and used
three different painful points on Taro's giant anatomy as
jumping points up to a springboard-jump off his bovine snout, to
resume his airborne mission to seek out new Onna-Ranmas in need
of expert cuddling, coincidentally sending Taro backward over
the compound wall into the yard to land on his head with his
horns locked in the soil.

Taro cracked open one giant eyeball in time to see Onna-Ranma
raising Kasumi's kettle over her head, preparing at long last to
use a share of it to assume the male form. Even upside-down, he
managed to seize the kettle and pour it onto his own face,
denying Ranma the change and assuming a shape which could bully
with words. He tossed the empty kettle back at the still-female
Ranma, who caught it glumly and handed it off to Kasumi-kun, who
went back to his spigot and hibachi, calling out to the dojo,
"another ten minutes yet, Akane-kun!"

"Well, if it isn't the poster-boy for breastfeeding. The old man
give ya a thrill?"

"Back off, cowboy, I don't need this." 

"What if I don't feel like backing off? Thanks to you my name
didn't get changed."

"It was your dumb mistake, not mine. Now -- back -- OFF!"

"Hey, if it's a fight you want, I can give you one you'll never
forget!"

Taro went over to the koi pond, knelt down and stuck his head in
the water, mentally ready to take to the skies and play
dive-bomber. Then, rather than exploding out of the water, he
slowly slid in the rest of the way. He had been trying to go in
the direction of Big and Bad; Nature, Murphy and Jusenkyo had
other ideas, and gently migrated him in the direction of Petite,
Pert and Cute. Taro _hated_ Cute, especially as applied to...
herself. Onna-Taro rolled over and sat up in the water and
glumly surveyed her new accoutrements. She was sure that those
big bumps were going to stretch her dragonskin vest all out of
shape. 

"Arrggh, I forgot about the pond. I'm never gonna live this
down, this is worse than my name."

"What was that, fem-boy?"

"Who you calling a fem-boy, fem-boy?"

"Who _you_ calling a fem-boy, fem-boy?"

"You, fem-boy, that's who!"

"Yeah, fem-boy?"

"Arrrgh, I can't even hold a decent conversation now!"

"Like you ever could. Wanna hand up, or ya wanna sit there and
cry awhile?"

"Who's crying, fem-boy?"

"Didn't we settle that, Pantyhose fem-boy?"

"Fem... I'll kill you!"

"Not unless you're a magical girl now, fem-boy."

"I can still take you out!"

In nothing flat, Onna-Ranma was through Onna-Taro's defenses and
pushing her up against the wall, her other fist cocked and
ready. "You don't get it, do you? You ain't big-muscle anymore.
You've got two shapes, punk guy and cute girl. You're used to
turning all bad-and-ugly in cold water, and you've lost that...
so until you can get your girl shape into shape, maybe you
shouldn't be trying to piss off people you might need as
friends."

"Friends like you? Fehhh."

"Without friends like me, you'd have no friends at all. Nobody
else can stand your mouth."

"So? I don't need friends, I can take what I... umm, yeah..."

Onna-Ranma let her down and turned away. "C'mon, let's see about
getting some hot water. When things settle down, I'll help you
train that body if ya want, so you can defend yourself when it
rains."

"This sucks. Maybe I'll just go hide somewhere."

"It won't work, man. Nobody's gonna let you just walk away, you
hafta be able to defend yourself when you look like this,
everybody goes nuts over it, even you did."

"Naww, I just liked to pick on you cuz it got under your skin." 

"And you think you won't get just as much from everyone else?
Get used to it, and learn to fight back, that's all I can say."

"You don't think it'll wear off?"

"The old pervert said something about the pond stuff fading, so
ya might get yer old shape back, but ya can't count on it, I
dunno if it applies to people that're already cursed."

###

Nabiki-kun arrived home from his quick visit to survey the
Nekohanten's new ventilation, quite thoroughly convinced that
the little old ladies with the ladles were practitioners of some
obscure water-based martial art, and probably coordinated by
cel-phone. Three times! That was adding insult to injury to...
something else.

The aroma had been all but banished from the house, thanks to
the expert work of the plumbers and whoever had also provided
them with the HazMat suits. Only in the bathroom and under the
house was the smell still noticeable. The family moved back
indoors.

While Nabiki-kun finished the transaction with the departing
plumbers, listening carefully to the muffled voices from their
HazMat suits, on those who still had them, Akane-kun was being a
loud nuisance, repeatedly asking, "It's fixed? Can I change
now?"

Nabiki-kun grimaced and pointed towards the kitchen, then turned
back to the plumbers, having traded his place in the hot-water
line for some relative quiet.


***

Kasumi had just finished pouring hot water on her own head when
the two redheads showed up in the kitchen. Kasumi took one
scowling look at the female Ranma wearing the dragonskin vest,
turned to the one wearing the shawl, smiled and said,
"Ranma-kun, would you care for some hot water?" and poured
enough for a change. As Ranma stretched into his male muscles
for the first time in nearly a day, Kasumi then stared at the
other girl whose hand was still outstretched towards the kettle,
holding the kettle well back.

Onna-Taro met Kasumi's gaze. "So I don't get any, huh?"

"You do; but this time you have to ask politely."

"Awright, I'm asking. Please. Jeez."

Poit! "Very well, but I expect better of you next time..." The
last of the kettleful went to restoring Taro to manliness. He
immediately stretched and cracked his knuckles. "Saotome..."

"..and no fighting in the house, unless you like cold baths in
the koi pond."

"Umm, no... that won't be necessary..."

Akane-kun ran in, eyes alight. "My turn, Kasumi?"

"Another ten minutes, Akane-kun."

Kasumi refilled the kettle and set it back on the flame while
Akane-kun settled into a good stiff pout.

Nabiki-kun walked in and pointed at the kettle. "I'm first in
line on that." He turned to Ranma. "Don't get too happy yet,
Saotome. The plumbers have done all they're going to do..."

"So the bathroom and plumbing are all fixed now, right?"  

"All but the sewer pipe underneath. The plumbers won't touch
that without combat pay; that stuff tried to crawl out and bite
'em while they were fixing the toilet, and it got worse from
there. They think it's dead now, at least Daddy does, but that
leaves the pipe. You two guys broke it, you're martial artists,
you have to fix it."

"Whaaat? He squirted me!!"

"Just c'mon, man, let's go." He dumped half a cup of cold water
over his head, holding out the rest for Taro to do the same.

"Why?"

"It's real tight under the house, it's a lot easier to move
around if you're smaller."

Taro sighed and resumed being cute and female, while Onna-Ranma
took the bucket of supplies Nabiki-kun was holding.

"Just how're we supposed to fix that pipe? We don't have any of
the right tools and there's no replacement pipe."

"That's been taken care of. Look, you use this stuff to scrub
off as much crud as you can from the original pipe, then you
patch it with this. Don't get the glue on you, it'll burn your
skin."

"This isn't exactly how it's supposed to be done, is it?"

"The right people have already been persuaded not to notice. Do
you want to pay for having it done right, Ranma? Besides, around
Nerima they kinda ignore that sort of thing, they figure it's just
going to get broken again before long. Clean off the pipe, glue
on the patch, fill in the little holes with this gunk and you're
done. Don't make more work for yourself."

###

Onna-Ranma inhaled sharply at the sheer pungency of the stench
and pinched her nose to make it less sensitive. Even after most
of a day, with a decent breeze to dissipate it, it was hard to
take. Behind her, Onna-Taro sneezed and gagged. "What... what
made that smell? I don't think I could handle it in my old
shape."

"Your old shape wouldn't fit under here anyway. And it's Akane's
cooking."

"And you _live_ here... you're worse off than I thought."

"Heh, sometimes she makes it especially for me, thinks she's
doing me a favor, if ya can believe that."

"Why don't you just leave?"

"I told ya, you can't get away with that looking like this, it
just doesn't work. Besides, this is the only real home I can
remember, and at least she ain't too put off by my curse; maybe
you can relate to that."

"You mean my name?"

"Yeah."

"You might be right. But you can still leave."

"You have any idea how often I get chased around by -- damn!
Stop it! That hurts!" That, on being slapped in the chest by the
flat of a bokken. Onna-Ranma scooted further under the house.
Onna-Taro was next. "Hey!"

One would think that being huddled under the floorboards of a
house, enveloped in a ghastly smog and encumbered with hardware
cloth and epoxy in the pursuit of honest work would constitute
sanctuary of some sort. Especially when you were twins. Not to
the Kunos, though. Especially when you were twins.

"My fiery goddess! Come to me!" That, while, identity
pseudoconfirmed by bokken-probe, Onna-Taro was now being jabbed
with a bouquet of roses. Even though the roses were red, the
thorns hurt just as much, even through the vest.

"Umm... I can't, I'm stuck here." Onna-Taro needed more practice
in the verbal fencing required for dealing with Tatewaki Kuno.
Behind her, Onna-Ranma grimaced; that kind of an opening could
only make things worse.

"Then I shall pry you loose and thus rescue you... what, now
there are two of you!" This, on jabbing Taro repeatedly with the
tip of the bokken, largely in the chest, until she fell flat.
Immediately, Onna-Ranma was driven to fending off another
bouquet of roses plucked from thin air. "I must have you both!"

"Not until you've released my Ranma-sama!" That, accompanied by
the bullwhip crack of a metallized ribbon wielded by Kodachi,
smacking against... well, you know. "And what have you harridans
done with my turtle?"

Upstairs in the bathroom, someone chose that moment to flush the
toilet. Over the usual sounds of swirling plunging waters and
the unusual sound of fluids hissing and spurting from the gaps
in the pipe, a voice, perhaps Nabiki's, floated down. "Oops,
sorry, I forgot!" Two redheads glowered in sympathy at each
other. This time they were lucky, though; the streams of
magically-enhanced blackwater largely missed them, in favor of...

"Phfaugh! What is this vile stench! What have I done to you, my
goddesses, to suffer such?" Then he thought, and then leered.
"Or might this be a subtle invitation to adjourn to the bath
with the two of you?"

"You impudent peasants! Wash this foulness off me at once!"

An upraised eyebrow from one redhead, a smirking nod from the
other, and then two Kunos were hustled out from under the house,
escorted around the corner and deposited none too gently in the
koi pond. As expected, they immediately lost interest in
harrassing the two reluctant plumbers as soon as their eyes lit
on each other.

"Get - off! Get - off! Get - ooog!"

That last was Onna-Ryoga, who was staggering over, having just
discovered that repeatedly punching someone affixed to the
tender parts of one's chest, if that someone was as nimble as
Happosai, could be risky. It didn't help that, while she was
tenderly cupping one injured part, the old gnome was now
not-so-tenderly cupping the other one and giving her what on
other faces might have been an affectionate smile but on this
one looked more like a deaths-head with wrinkles. She sidled up
to the nearby female redheads, hoping to get the parasite to
leap to a fresher host. When that didn't work, she abandoned
caution and started running full-force-frontal into anything
nearby and big, ignoring the conversation in the pond.

"You again! What have you done with my brother, you vile
trollop?"

"Saotome, I have discovered you! Your evil stops now!"

After all, if they were too self-involved to discover the truth
about Ranma's variations in shape through all these months, why
should they deign to notice their own? 

"My evil? You witch, I'll deal with you as I should have done
long since, you and your pet!"

"My pet? Vile sorceror, I'll destroy you, and your panda too!"

This was, of course, when the panda arrived, having finally made
sure it had ditched Nodoka, only to be set upon by several of
its son. It was completely and thoroughly fed up with all the
pseudo-Ranmas, annoyed no end at not knowing who any particular
one of them was, and besides, it was peckish from having missed
two meals in a row. When the female Ranma with the gnome
attached rammed into it, it belly-rammed her right back, sending
her sprawling. When a male Ranma threatened it with a ribbon and
a female one threatened it with a wooden sword, it roared, drew
itself up to its full height, spread its upper limbs wide and
clobbered the two together. The noise of their skulls colliding
was meaty, definite and satisfying.

Akane-chan, still steaming from her return to femininity,
rounded the corner from the dojo and immediately saw a fit
target for all her recent frustrations. She had no idea who the
two Ranmas presently falling limply from its forelimbs might be,
and she didn't care. If that jerk hadn't taken his son to
Jyusenkyo, if he hadn't suckered all those people into multiple
engagements, if he hadn't signed _her_ up to marry his son
before she was even _born_ --"

"This is all your fault! _*Panda no baka*_!"

Akane shoved the panda _hard_ and jumped back far enough to
avoid the great splash. For once, she was sure she was doing the
right thing in being forceful and violent, and she was damn well
going to enjoy the sensation of certainty. That damn panda was
going to find out what everybody else had been putting up with.

The panda sat up in the pond, holding up a sign: [And that's
supposed to do exactly what?]

Akane stared and sat down heavily onto Ryoga's wet backpack. She
didn't notice the wet Happosai who emerged behind her and looked
at her thoughtfully for a moment before shaking his head. She
didn't think to look for where Onna-Ryoga might've gone, she was
too preoccupied with her turbulent feelings. 

On the one hand, this was a grave disappointment, that panda
_needed_ to be cursed to look like Onna-Ranma for awhile, needed
to deal with all the people he had set loose on Ranma in the
first place. On the other hand, if the panda didn't change, that
meant...

Akane sat pouring handful after handful of cold pond water onto
her still-female head, giggling hysterically. Behind her, a
small black pig was doing its living best to escape from its
clothing and her presence undetected, something hard to do
considering the sheer weight of the backpack it was suddenly
buried beneath. The panda shrugged at the mystery, then put its
sign away, got its ponderous bulk up out of the pond, and
stumbled off in search of something far more important, food,
accompanied by the sodden gnome.

Meanwhile, having finally finished with the patch, Onna-Ranma
and Onna-Taro were now commiserating in the bathroom as they
cleaned off the too-affectionate slime mold.

"I told ya to be careful of letting anything hit ya in the
boobs. You wouldn't think it, but it hurts. He can do some
real damage with that bokken of his if you're not careful."

Two buckets poured cold water down onto two equally-shapely
redheaded female forms. Soaping began.

"Yeah, yeah... what pisses me off is the way he got the idea that
I _wanted_ to be his girlfriend just 'cause he brought flowers.
Talk about lame..."

"You see what I mean about my curse... what it does to you isn't
nothing compared to what everybody else does to you because of
it."

Two buckets poured hot water down onto two forms which ceased to
be identical and became male. They looked at each other and
themselves. Akane's cooking was maliciously persistent; another
round of scrubbing was needed.   

"I never thought I'd say it, but I can see your point, and
you're right. Wish I had my old curse back, they wouldn't dare
pull that kinda thing on me then."

"Well, look on the bright side... nothing else can go wrong,
can it?"
 
Two buckets poured cold water down onto two human male forms.  

Onna-Ranma looked at the furry flank of the enormous
multispecies shape suddenly overflowing the bathroom in all
directions and forcing her out the door. She backed slowly away,
heedless of her nudity, shaking her head and looking around
wide-eyed for any witnesses, suddenly sure that backup would
arrive momentarily and it wouldn't be on her side.
 
"No, no, no, no... not again..."


----------------------------------------------------------------


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