Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Permutation ❯ Chapter 2
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: gsteemso 
In which some other people plan a rescue. Features a very good meal.
Anime/Manga: Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Comedy | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 07.04.2008 | Updated On: 01.16.2010 | Pages: 3 | Words: 6.4K | Visits: 2.6K | Status: Work In Progress
In which some other people plan a rescue. Features a very good meal.
Anime/Manga: Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Comedy | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 07.04.2008 | Updated On: 01.16.2010 | Pages: 3 | Words: 6.4K | Visits: 2.6K | Status: Work In Progress
Permutation
A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso
Chapter Two
Author’s notes (updated Tues. 2007/02/06):
It has been brought to my attention that the original Nodoka is not nearly as loony as most Westerners think. Oops.
Because I’d hate to lose so many of the really funny bits, this fic is now officially set in an Alternate Universe. It’s pretty similar to the one Takahashi wrote about, except… In this universe, Nodoka’s got such loopy ideas about her son’s manliness, she wants him to take all the other fiancées as mistresses after he marries Akane, in order to satisfy their overlapping claims on him. Hey, it makes perfect sense to her…
When I originally wrote these first few chapters, I wanted the story to make sense to all potential readers — i.e., all those who know English, and not just the small subset who treat anime fandom as a kind of secret society, with an understanding of a few key Japanese words standing in for the initiates’ special handshake. Accordingly, I dealt with untranslatable elements such as honorifics largely by ignoring them, or by use of awkward substitute phrases if I absolutely had to convey them. The latter approach worked so poorly that I have been forced to give it up. While I still omit — or, in the few cases where it is possible, translate — most uses of honorifics, I have had to retain a few in this and subsequent chapters.
For those who do not understand these secret handshakes (the initiated may skip to the disclaimer): an honorific is a feature of many languages that conveys some aspect of the speaker’s relationship to the entity being named. “Fred-sama” is like saying “honoured Fred”, or perhaps “venerable Fred”, or sometimes even “Lord Fred”. It can also be used sarcastically. “-Chan” is used when referring affectionately to a child, to a loved one, or (by children) to a fellow child. It can also be used derisively. “-San” translates directly as “mister,” “miss,” or “missus,” so I don’t need to use it very often. “-Kun” is intermediate between “-chan” and “-san” in familiarity, such as might be used by adult good friends, or a teenager to their peers. I seldom need to use this one either. The occupation and/or social status of the person being addressed can also be applied as an honorific, such as “-sensei” for a teacher or a doctor, or “-hime” for a princess — but those generally translate better, so again, I rarely need to use them.
Honorifics in Japanese also differ from those in English by being almost universally gender-neutral. Despite what many people seem to think, “-chan” and “-kun” have no particular relationship to the gender of the people in question, except insofar as people tend to be rather more familiar when addressing young girls than when addressing anyone else.
Not my characters — even my version of Nodoka is based on an embarrassingly large number of other fanfics. The original version of Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.
Tendo Nabiki was in a foul mood. She had met a rather dull-witted classmate named Kuno Tatewaki at a restaurant, and sold him some overpriced risqué snapshots of Ranma’s girl form and Akane while eating costly pastries at his expense. That had gone as it usually did, save that the pompous samurai-in-his-own-mind had been much more unthinkingly insulting than usual — and had also, quite obviously without even realizing, persisted in ordering her least favourite treats as bribes. Then, to top it off, neither one of her two favourite unsuspecting models was to be found when she came home! She’d tried asking Kasumi, but that had been distressingly like trying to discuss philosophy with a sheep. (Nabiki sometimes worried about her elder sibling’s apparent vapidity… but not very hard.) The middle Tendo daughter ended up in her room, phoning around to see if anyone had seen her two missing subjects.
Meanwhile, Kasumi managed to get her secret fit of giggles under control and resumed taking the washing off the clothesline. She was just finishing when Akane unexpectedly hurried into the yard, looking distraught.
“Oh, big sis, it’s awful! When I got there, the zookeepers had just recaptured some loose tigers and I saw Ranma in the Cat-Fist, chasing after some Sailor Soldiers!”
Kasumi looked astounded. “Really? Sailor Soldiers? I thought they were an urban legend. Do you suppose he’ll bring back some autographs for us?”
“KASUMI! Be serious! He thought he was a cat and he was chasing them like they were mice! It was just like he had a tail to twitch! What if they thought he was a demon? He could be a pile of smoking ashes somewhere by now!” Akane looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.
Footsteps sounded in the doorway of the house. “It’s more likely they’re trying to seduce him by now,” Nabiki said, with a sardonic smile at Akane. “After all, they are said to be fighters for love, and anyone who dresses like that in public has a very definite goal in mind.” Nabiki watched eagerly to see how Akane would defend against this sally.
Akane gave Nabiki a stricken look and fled, crying, to her room. She still, in face of all the evidence, thought Ranma was a womanizer who would let himself be seduced in a heartbeat, and she didn’t know which set of fears was worse.
“That wasn’t very nice, little sister,” said Kasumi reprovingly.
“Oh, come on, I was just teasing her,” replied Nabiki. “She’s going to have to learn how to deal with that sooner or later, especially with the way Ranma talks to her.”
Kasumi made a noncommittal sound.
“Well, anyway, the important thing here is the Sailor Soldiers. If Akane saw them outrunning Ranma in Cat-Fist mode, I’m willing to bet they’re the real thing, and that means there’s a lot of money to be made if I can just get in touch with them. Do you know how many million yen changes hands every month for Sailor Soldier merchandise, merchandise that the Sailors have almost certainly not approved? If I could become their agent, my cut alone would be enough to send us all to Tokyo University!” cackled Nabiki, her grin threatening to overflow her face.
Kasumi blinked and opened her mouth to answer, but Nabiki was already jogging back inside to start digging up what she could on the Pretty Soldiers.
* * *
Meanwhile, back in Minato, the Sailor Soldiers (in civilian guise) were gathered in the Outers’ kitchen, discussing Ranma while he showered.
“Well, I agree that we need to help him, and I agree that we can achieve almost anything if all of us pull together, but does anyone have any more specific ideas about what we can actually do?” said Michiru. “This problem does not involve the demons we usually deal with. There isn’t anything we can just blast with magic.”
“Believe me, when you find out what his father is like, you’ll be tempted,” said Setsuna with feeling. “And the grandmaster of his martial arts school is even worse.”
“WORSE?” chorused most of the others.
“You haven’t even mentioned him up until now! How is he worse? And who else will we have to worry about?” asked Haruka.
“Answering that will take a while, and I think we should wait until Ranma comes back… here, these homemade magazines describe most of the people involved. I took all the duplicate ones from the confiscated property box at Usagi’s school.” Setsuna pushed a stack of garish, cheaply printed leaflets out onto the table. The top one showed a blurry midair photo of a boy Ranma’s age, wearing a yellow and black bandanna and with a suggestion of fangs. Surmounting the picture, in eye-watering red and white, was the title: NERIMA MARTIAL ARTS REVIEW.
Haruka picked it up and idly flipped through it, noting that it appeared to be a rather inept compilation of trick photography. Strangely, not all the purported combatants were human. At least one photo showed a ridiculous image of a small white duck with glasses, launching dozens of times’ its own weight of chains at some target which was supposedly outside the frame of the picture. As she set the silly pamphlet back down, she saw a note on the inside cover indicating the publishers were some outfit calling themselves the Furinkan High School Photography Club. Haruka gave a small snort of disbelief — really, a duck?! Even among other schoolchildren, who’d be gullible enough to fall for that?
* * *
As they went about their after-school routines at opposite ends of the family mansion, the two Kuno teenagers suddenly sneezed violently, in unwitting stereo. “Foul sorcerer… can’t get a moment’s peace…” Tatewaki muttered irritably.
* * *
In the shower, Ranma was deep in thought. Before Sailors Moon and Saturn had healed him of the Cat-Fist, this was something he had always tended to avoid. The thing was, whenever he’d sat down to think in Nerima, he ended up either getting attacked while his guard was down, or chasing his thoughts in circles because of the insoluble fiancée problem. Genma had always been careful never to let him be exposed to the principles of logic, on the grounds that such knowledge might make him “get silly ideas and stop being a dutiful son,” as Genma had thought of it.
No, despite appearances, the man was not actually malicious… just incredibly foolish and incompetent.
In any case, as a result of this gap in his training, Ranma had never realized that the problem as posed had no solution — he’d always just thought himself not scholastically inclined enough to figure it out. For much the same reason, it had honestly never occurred to him that being more academically inclined might help him in situations like this. Such had always been portrayed to him as taking valuable time and effort that could be better put towards pursuit of the Art.
Again, the contradictions inherent in this approach to Ranma’s education had simply never occurred to Saotome senior.
Now, of course, Ranma wasn’t thinking about any of that. After all, he didn’t remember any of it. What was weighing on his mind was his inconstant gender.
How can I be both a guy and a girl? If I started off as a guy, then shouldn’t I prefer that? he puzzled. Does this make me weird? I mean weirder than I already am for changing in the first place? He turned the water colder and went female. Oooo, tingly, she thought absently, as the tepid water trickled across her more sensitive female skin.
Ranma didn’t realize it, but the magical healing the currently-a-girl had undergone had cured her of everything that was ailing her mentally. She’d been resigned to being only half a man after Jusendo, when Jusenkyo was temporarily flooded and the last hope for several months of finding the Spring of Drowned Man had gone, but she hadn’t LIKED being female. It was, after all, a curse. However, the Silver Crystal had altered the weaves of the magic Jusenkyo had laced throughout Ranma’s very soul, such that it was no longer inherently maleficent. There was more to the healing, as well, but it would be some time before anyone noticed the other results.
Here and now, Ranma was remembering how frightening the change had been when she didn’t know about it. And then, just when I thought nothing would ever go right again, Hotaru-chan came in and was nice to me and wanted to be my friend. She said she thought it makes me special! And her friends all want to be friends with me, too! Ranma couldn’t believe her good fortune.
“But it’s not random, is it?” she mused out loud. I was brought here. I wonder who those Sailor Soldiers they mentioned were? They must be really smart if they knew I’d be accepted here. Ranma absently turned the heat back up a bit, reverting to male. Wait a minute, sure, they didn’t know who I was at first… but why did they leave me here instead of taking me home, once they found out? Do I have a home? They must know, they knew what was up when I changed the first time and I panicked. If I have a home, is it an unhappy one? I really hope not…
“Still,” he said decisively to the wall of the shower, “If it is a bad place, maybe the nice people here can help me fix it!”
* * *
Elsewhere, there was a small Chinese restaurant with unusual staffing. In the kitchen, a wizened old woman was discussing recent goings-on with her great-granddaughter. “So Son-in-Law went straight home after school, but he wasn’t there when you came back with the food? How strange.” Cologne knew that Ranma wouldn’t have been able to hide from Shampoo, as the girl had triggered her Jusenkyo curse and investigated in cat form as soon as she’d been balked at the door.
“That right, Great-Grandmother,” Shampoo said. “He was there, and Kitchen Destroyer, but they both gone in only five minutes while Shampoo back turned. And now special soup get cold and the Suggestion Herb stop working, start taste funny instead!”
“Wait, Shampoo, what have I told you about using drugs on him? Even if he did have magical help with it, remember that he defeated Saffron the Phœnix King, who in his overpowered state at the time could have destroyed half the village without much effort!” Her brow furrowed briefly, and she absently muttered, “I suspect he’s still got both of the dratted staves, too…” before wrenching herself back on topic and finishing her lecture. “Now, what do we do so Son-in-Law never makes it necessary for us to kill him for the safety of the tribe?”
“Always be careful he not find out about drugs! Shampoo sorry.”
“That’s my girl.”
* * *
Ranma, still male, finished dressing in the clothes Haruka had lent him. Even without the amnesia he wouldn’t have batted an eye at her cross-dressing, not after dealing with Ukyo and her numerous transvestite suitors; with the amnesia, which had not so much erased his memories as severely Swiss-cheesed them, he didn’t even realize there was anything unusual about a pretty girl who dressed as a pretty boy most of the time. He had to admit that Michiru had been right — he did feel better showered and in clean clothes. With a smile that approached his normal cocky grin, he pushed open the door of the changing room and headed bravely downstairs.
Unfortunately, he was promptly besieged by an eager and affectionate Minako and Makoto. They weren’t about to let a little thing like a gender-swapping curse keep them away from such a good-looking guy, even if nothing could ultimately come of it because he was engaged.
Besides, Setsuna had kept talking about what she’d glimpsed of Ranma’s past in the devious and difficult-to-direct depths of the Time Gates. It had sounded like Ranma never had any good experiences with girls unless someone hit him right afterwards, and the two Sailors were determined to give him some nicer memories than that — chiefly by giving him lots of smiles and unconditional affection, and not being violent about it. The fact that he was starting to look baffled and distressed at their attention just showed how important it was to do so as soon as possible.
Luckily for Ranma, the next person to come across the three was Ami. So, when Ranma shied away from her — there were GIRLS near him being FRIENDLY and Ami was a girl too, therefore she must be about to hit him — she immediately figured out what was going on, and gave Minako and Makoto a very uncharacteristic tongue-lashing. “You heard what Pluto told us about girls chasing him all the time! You heard about the fiancées who hit him whenever he even gets looked at suggestively! Of course he’s going to get stressed out if you start coming on to him! What were you thinking?!”
The two girls, red-faced at the unsuspected gigantic flaw in their plan, immediately apologized to Ranma. They looked so distraught with chagrin that Ranma was taken aback, though he wasn’t sure why. He had the oddest feeling that it was his fault they were upset, which seemed both blindingly obvious and incredibly wrong.
“Um. No problem…?” he said tentatively, drawing a complete blank on how to proceed.
Just then, the conversation was interrupted by Michiru announcing dinner, accompanied by some mouth-watering smells from the kitchen behind her. The three girls and Ranma all eagerly headed to the dining room, grateful for the distraction from the uncomfortable conversation, as Michiru continued on to tell the others it was time to eat.
* * *
Back in Nerima, Ukyo was a bit concerned. Ranma had promised to come by and taste-test a new version of her special okonomiyaki sauce before going home to dinner, but he hadn’t shown up. Easily resolved, she thought to herself, I just need to phone the Tendos and ask. I bet Akane went and cooked something… eurgh… experimental again. She winced, then brightened. “Ha! They’ll be begging to buy dinner off me!” Grinning, she picked up the phone and dialled.
The phone was answered, politely, on the third ring.
“Oh, hi Kasumi, it’s Ukyo. Is Ranchan there? He was supposed to come try my new okonomiyaki sauce today.”
The answer to this did not seem to match Ukyo’s expectations.
“You’re kidding. Akane lost him at a zoo? How’d she manage that?”
The ensuing explanation was fairly long, and ended on a very unexpected note.
“WHAT!”
The distant speaker repeated herself.
“All right, but, c’m’on, Sailor Soldiers? Someone’s playing a joke on you. There’s no such thing.”
There followed more explanation, this time rather disjointed, to judge by Ukyo’s frown of concentration as she listened to it.
“…They outran him when he was in the Cat-Fist. Nabiki thinks they’re real. She does? Well, okay, I’ll take your word for it. I’ll be right over with Konatsu.”
There was an expression of polite surprise from the other end of the line.
“Well, we’re going to need to sort out search parties, aren’t we? Right. See you in a few.” Ukyo hung up and stared blankly at the wall for a few moments. Sailor Soldiers? This was a new depth of weirdness even for Ranma.
“Excuse me, Ukyo-sama, but did I hear correctly? Ranma-sama got lost while chasing Sailor Soldiers?” asked Konatsu respectfully.
“Apparently, sugar. Pretty crazy, huh?”
“EEEEE! I hope we can get autographs! They are so cool! I’ve got a little picture of them in the cupboard where I sleep.”
“Wha…?”
“Oh, to be a pretty sailor-suited defender of love and justice! It’s every girl’s dream!” Konatsu’s eyes had little hearts in them.
“Okaaaaay. You do remember that you’re really a guy?”
“I’ve lived my whole life as a girl. Please, Ukyo-sama, don’t confuse me with technicalities.”
* * *
Dinner at the Outers’ house was a cheerful and somewhat boisterous affair, what with the Inners, Ranma, and Usagi’s husband Chiba Mamoru all visiting, and the oldest person present (Setsuna) being only 20. Mamoru had come straight over after work, arriving just in time to sit down with the others, and Setsuna and Usagi were taking it in turns to tell him all about the day’s strange events — suitably edited for Ranma’s ears, of course.
“And then they healed her head, but she went unconscious instead of getting up human. They didn’t know who she was or where she came from yet, so they brought her here where we could look after her,” Usagi was saying.
Setsuna continued, “A little while later, Sailor Pluto came back and told us what she’d learned about Ranma, like that she was really a boy with a transformative curse, and asked us to look after him until they could find a way to make his life less horrible.”
“Why, what’s wrong?” asked Mamoru.
So that’s why they didn’t take me home, Ranma thought glumly to himself. Looks like I was right about it being a bad place. Out loud, he said, “Yeah, what’s so awful they couldn’t take me home?”
Setsuna looked at Mamoru, then at Ranma. “I wasn’t going to get into that until after dinner. Basically, almost everyone who had a big part in your life before you were brought to us wants to either kill you, own you or use you, and in a few cases all three. Can we please leave the details for later? I don’t want to ruin anyone’s appetite when they’ve made us such a wonderful meal.” Good one, Setsuna, that was really reassuring, she thought to herself with an inward wince. She felt rather foolish; she hadn’t blurted out something so ill-considered in years, not since well before having had her Sailor Pluto memories reawakened. Something about Ranma just seemed to encourage an unfortunate degree of honesty.
Getting rather reluctant nods from both males, Setsuna changed the subject and began swapping tales with Mamoru of humorous events at their respective schools. As both of them knew very well, the old joke about universities being the home of “academentia” was almost too accurate to be funny.
The other girls noticed Ranma’s mood and, with some effort, managed to get him thinking of cheerier things. No longer distracted by trying to learn about himself, Ranma was soon eating with his usual gusto, to general astonishment. “By all the gods,” said Rei in awed tones, “There are TWO of them!” Everyone except Ranma immediately swivelled to look at Usagi.
Usagi looked up in mid-gulp, her chopsticks stopped halfway out of her mouth. “Whaff?” she asked indistinctly, and swallowed the mouthful she was chewing. “Have I got something on my face?”
Everyone else broke up laughing. “No, but I think you’ve got some competition for the leftovers,” said Haruka with a grin. Ranma blushed.
“Hey, if anyone else wanted it they’d have eaten it already,” said Usagi cheerfully, to a chorus of tolerant groans.
The rest of the meal passed in a happy, chaotic whirl of eating and conversation. Before too long, everyone was coöperating to clear away the dishes.
“Now,” said Setsuna when they’d all sat back down at the freshly cleaned table, “we need to discuss Ranma’s screwed-up life and what we can do to help.” She brought the stack of cheap magazines out again, and handed them out to people at random. “We’ll be getting a visit from Sailor Mercury and her computer soon so she can scan Ranma, and I’d like to have some ideas by then.”
Ami didn’t so much as bat an eyelid at this, but she did nod at Setsuna in acknowledgement as soon as Ranma’s attention was elsewhere. Before that, she spoke: “I think we should start by telling Ranma all the stuff you told us while he was in the shower.”
“I got some of it from what you said before dinner,” put in Ranma, a bit warily.
Setsuna gave a nonchalant half-shrug and said, “And hearing a summary twice would get boring for most of you. I’ll just tell the story of Ranma’s life, as we got it from Sailor Pluto.
“Your name, as we told you earlier, is Saotome Ranma. Your father is Genma and your mother is Nodoka, and I hate to say this about anyone, but many of the things they have done to you ought to have landed them both in jail, your mother for child abandonment and your father for child abuse. You went on a ten-year martial arts training trip with Genma when you were six years old, and your mother’s idea of making sure you came out of it all right was to accept an honour pledge that you would both commit honourable suicide if she did not judge you a ‘Man among Men,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean, on your return. Your ‘signature’ consisted of playful finger painting, and you had no idea of the contract until Nodoka caught up with the both of you a few months ago. I’ll say more about that in a minute.
“Your training trip took you to dojos and monasteries all over East Asia, and while you travelled Genma taught you what he could as well. Unfortunately, he is almost without scruples, and a large part of your early training was in committing petty thefts of food and other supplies. You eventually refused to commit any more crimes when you realized it was wrong, but by that time the other problem with Genma’s training methods had already surfaced: the man is incredibly hasty and shortsighted, and frequently trained you in things before he understood them completely himself.
“The worst of these incompletely understood techniques was the Cat-Fist. The training method is to take a young child — six years old, in your case — wrap them in fish products, and keep throwing them into a pit of starving cats until they go insane from the fear and trauma. The subject’s mind defends itself from the cats by becoming one itself, and the result is a human who thinks they are a cat, to the extent of manifesting invisible ‘claws’ of chi that can cut through anything, and developing the ability to purr. The original idea was to create a berserk, like the Vikings a thousand years ago, who drew on the mental states of bears or wolves — but with domesticated elements to make it easier to control, hence the housecat part.
“You went from being fond of cats to being absolutely terrified of them, and if you couldn’t get away from one that was scaring you, the fear overwhelmed your mind just like it did in the pit, and you would ‘go cat.’ You were apparently in such a state when you were found by the Sailor Soldiers, which is how you ended up here with us, but that’s getting ahead of myself.” Setsuna paused to sip some tea.
“Luna and Artemis aren’t here, are they?” queried Rei, with some alarm.
“No, they stayed home when we went out earlier,” lied Usagi. The Moon Cats had really gone to kill time in the Sailors’ hidden control room under the Crown Amusement Centre.
Minako nodded in agreement. “The Sailor Soldiers cured it anyway, so I doubt it matters.”
“I still don’t like cats. I don’t remember the pit itself, but I remember remembering it. Cats are not good news.” Ranma spoke with an apologetic but final air.
“Oh, is your memory coming back?” asked Ami with interest.
“Not really, but hearing about my life is dredging up a few scraps of feelings and half-memories that make a bit more sense now.”
Setsuna picked up the thread again. “Anyway… Er. Drat. I accidentally left out an episode that would later come back to haunt you. Never mind, I’ll back up a bit. A couple of months before the Cat-Fist incident, Genma took you through Kansai, where you met a wandering okonomiyaki chef and his child Ukyo…”
* * *
While the Sailors, Mamoru and Ranma listened enthralled to Setsuna’s tale of Ranma’s past, the various martial artists of Nerima and their hangers-on were gathering at the Tendo Dojo to talk about ways of finding Ranma. So far they’d figured out that he was probably still somewhere in the Azabu-Jūban district of the neighbouring Minato ward, as all available evidence pointed to the Sailors living there. No one knew where, exactly, but there were enough people present to search it thoroughly if nothing better came up.
They’d managed to avoid involving the Kunos so far, but unfortunately for all concerned, the gathering did include Happosai, who was even more enthusiastic than usual because Nabiki had sold him a few blurry magazine pictures of the Sailor Soldiers. He was now expounding at length on the sort of places you might look for girls who wore their skirts that short: “— and then there’s this massage parlour right in the middle of Azabu-Jūban where they really know how to make an old man happy —”
“Grandfather Happosai, please!” Kasumi broke in, blushing furiously. “You know Ranma would never willingly enter a place like that, and I really doubt they keep any superheroines in there either.”
Happosai was so taken aback at this conjunction of ideas — how could anyone not want to enter a massage parlour?! — that he fell silent for long enough to lose the floor. A babble of conversation sprang up as everyone began talking at once. It was cut short as Nodoka suddenly realized what Kasumi had just said about her son. “Kasumi, dear, what did you mean by that? A manly man seeks out female company at every opportunity. How else is he supposed to get the experience he’ll need to keep all his mistresses happy after he marries Akane?”
This pronouncement was greeted with dead silence. Genma looked like he’d swallowed his tongue and began sweating nervously, eyeing his wife’s sword. Soun wanted to be outraged at this affront to his youngest daughter’s ability to satisfy her future husband’s male urges, but the sword and its frighteningly unskilled wielder were uppermost in his mind as well, so he uneasily held his peace. Akane, Ukyo and Shampoo didn’t know whether to be revolted or infuriated, and Kasumi had blanched like a bedsheet at being put on the spot in such a way. Cologne and Happosai were impassive but each raised an eyebrow, while Mousse was so indignant on behalf of Shampoo that his powers of speech had temporarily flown the coop — though, of course, no one paid any heed to his ruffled feathers. Nabiki and Konatsu were so busy thrashing out every detail they’d gleaned about Sailor Soldiers that they hadn’t really been paying attention to Nodoka’s words, but they fell silent in surprise when everyone else suddenly stopped talking.
“Um, I, I —” Kasumi gibbered. Fortunately for her, Nodoka’s attention was diverted as all three fiancées decided on “infuriated” and blew their stacks simultaneously.
“MISTRESSES?!”
Nodoka looked astonished. “Of course! What’s wrong with that? My son is far too manly for any one of you girls alone. In fact, I’ve been giving serious consideration to finding him some non-martial-artist mistresses as well, to make him a more well-rounded person.” In Minato, the Sailors all suddenly felt a chill, and wondered why. “How about you, Kasumi? And perhaps Nabiki as well?” suggested Nodoka brightly.
Kasumi froze again, a panicked expression on her face. Nabiki somehow managed to avoid spraying her mouthful of tea across the room, and in fact betrayed no outward signs of having heard Nodoka at all, apart from a slight greenish tinge to her suddenly immobile features.
“Or, even better, how about you two and miss Konatsu?” continued Nodoka happily, turning to face the gender-confused ninja. “I’m sure a traditional young lady like you would be very good for Ranma…”
END PART TWO
Latest revision as of Weds. 2009/04/15
The bit about Nabiki wanting to be the Sailors’ agent waltzed straight into my brain from Burger Becky’s excellent Sailor Ranko continuations. It’s not totally in character for manga-Nabiki, but it’s close enough to “plausible” that I just couldn’t resist it. I hope no one minds, especially not Burger Becky.
I also have to say I’m stunned that no one else seems to have ever added Konatsu to the list of fiancées. He’s a boy who thinks he’s a girl, and when Ranma is in cursed form, she’s a girl who thinks she’s a boy… they’re even both lesbians! It’s a perfect match, I tell you!
Uh, yeah… Shutting up now.
A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso
Chapter Two
Author’s notes (updated Tues. 2007/02/06):
It has been brought to my attention that the original Nodoka is not nearly as loony as most Westerners think. Oops.
Because I’d hate to lose so many of the really funny bits, this fic is now officially set in an Alternate Universe. It’s pretty similar to the one Takahashi wrote about, except… In this universe, Nodoka’s got such loopy ideas about her son’s manliness, she wants him to take all the other fiancées as mistresses after he marries Akane, in order to satisfy their overlapping claims on him. Hey, it makes perfect sense to her…
When I originally wrote these first few chapters, I wanted the story to make sense to all potential readers — i.e., all those who know English, and not just the small subset who treat anime fandom as a kind of secret society, with an understanding of a few key Japanese words standing in for the initiates’ special handshake. Accordingly, I dealt with untranslatable elements such as honorifics largely by ignoring them, or by use of awkward substitute phrases if I absolutely had to convey them. The latter approach worked so poorly that I have been forced to give it up. While I still omit — or, in the few cases where it is possible, translate — most uses of honorifics, I have had to retain a few in this and subsequent chapters.
For those who do not understand these secret handshakes (the initiated may skip to the disclaimer): an honorific is a feature of many languages that conveys some aspect of the speaker’s relationship to the entity being named. “Fred-sama” is like saying “honoured Fred”, or perhaps “venerable Fred”, or sometimes even “Lord Fred”. It can also be used sarcastically. “-Chan” is used when referring affectionately to a child, to a loved one, or (by children) to a fellow child. It can also be used derisively. “-San” translates directly as “mister,” “miss,” or “missus,” so I don’t need to use it very often. “-Kun” is intermediate between “-chan” and “-san” in familiarity, such as might be used by adult good friends, or a teenager to their peers. I seldom need to use this one either. The occupation and/or social status of the person being addressed can also be applied as an honorific, such as “-sensei” for a teacher or a doctor, or “-hime” for a princess — but those generally translate better, so again, I rarely need to use them.
Honorifics in Japanese also differ from those in English by being almost universally gender-neutral. Despite what many people seem to think, “-chan” and “-kun” have no particular relationship to the gender of the people in question, except insofar as people tend to be rather more familiar when addressing young girls than when addressing anyone else.
Not my characters — even my version of Nodoka is based on an embarrassingly large number of other fanfics. The original version of Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.
Tendo Nabiki was in a foul mood. She had met a rather dull-witted classmate named Kuno Tatewaki at a restaurant, and sold him some overpriced risqué snapshots of Ranma’s girl form and Akane while eating costly pastries at his expense. That had gone as it usually did, save that the pompous samurai-in-his-own-mind had been much more unthinkingly insulting than usual — and had also, quite obviously without even realizing, persisted in ordering her least favourite treats as bribes. Then, to top it off, neither one of her two favourite unsuspecting models was to be found when she came home! She’d tried asking Kasumi, but that had been distressingly like trying to discuss philosophy with a sheep. (Nabiki sometimes worried about her elder sibling’s apparent vapidity… but not very hard.) The middle Tendo daughter ended up in her room, phoning around to see if anyone had seen her two missing subjects.
Meanwhile, Kasumi managed to get her secret fit of giggles under control and resumed taking the washing off the clothesline. She was just finishing when Akane unexpectedly hurried into the yard, looking distraught.
“Oh, big sis, it’s awful! When I got there, the zookeepers had just recaptured some loose tigers and I saw Ranma in the Cat-Fist, chasing after some Sailor Soldiers!”
Kasumi looked astounded. “Really? Sailor Soldiers? I thought they were an urban legend. Do you suppose he’ll bring back some autographs for us?”
“KASUMI! Be serious! He thought he was a cat and he was chasing them like they were mice! It was just like he had a tail to twitch! What if they thought he was a demon? He could be a pile of smoking ashes somewhere by now!” Akane looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.
Footsteps sounded in the doorway of the house. “It’s more likely they’re trying to seduce him by now,” Nabiki said, with a sardonic smile at Akane. “After all, they are said to be fighters for love, and anyone who dresses like that in public has a very definite goal in mind.” Nabiki watched eagerly to see how Akane would defend against this sally.
Akane gave Nabiki a stricken look and fled, crying, to her room. She still, in face of all the evidence, thought Ranma was a womanizer who would let himself be seduced in a heartbeat, and she didn’t know which set of fears was worse.
“That wasn’t very nice, little sister,” said Kasumi reprovingly.
“Oh, come on, I was just teasing her,” replied Nabiki. “She’s going to have to learn how to deal with that sooner or later, especially with the way Ranma talks to her.”
Kasumi made a noncommittal sound.
“Well, anyway, the important thing here is the Sailor Soldiers. If Akane saw them outrunning Ranma in Cat-Fist mode, I’m willing to bet they’re the real thing, and that means there’s a lot of money to be made if I can just get in touch with them. Do you know how many million yen changes hands every month for Sailor Soldier merchandise, merchandise that the Sailors have almost certainly not approved? If I could become their agent, my cut alone would be enough to send us all to Tokyo University!” cackled Nabiki, her grin threatening to overflow her face.
Kasumi blinked and opened her mouth to answer, but Nabiki was already jogging back inside to start digging up what she could on the Pretty Soldiers.
Meanwhile, back in Minato, the Sailor Soldiers (in civilian guise) were gathered in the Outers’ kitchen, discussing Ranma while he showered.
“Well, I agree that we need to help him, and I agree that we can achieve almost anything if all of us pull together, but does anyone have any more specific ideas about what we can actually do?” said Michiru. “This problem does not involve the demons we usually deal with. There isn’t anything we can just blast with magic.”
“Believe me, when you find out what his father is like, you’ll be tempted,” said Setsuna with feeling. “And the grandmaster of his martial arts school is even worse.”
“WORSE?” chorused most of the others.
“You haven’t even mentioned him up until now! How is he worse? And who else will we have to worry about?” asked Haruka.
“Answering that will take a while, and I think we should wait until Ranma comes back… here, these homemade magazines describe most of the people involved. I took all the duplicate ones from the confiscated property box at Usagi’s school.” Setsuna pushed a stack of garish, cheaply printed leaflets out onto the table. The top one showed a blurry midair photo of a boy Ranma’s age, wearing a yellow and black bandanna and with a suggestion of fangs. Surmounting the picture, in eye-watering red and white, was the title: NERIMA MARTIAL ARTS REVIEW.
Haruka picked it up and idly flipped through it, noting that it appeared to be a rather inept compilation of trick photography. Strangely, not all the purported combatants were human. At least one photo showed a ridiculous image of a small white duck with glasses, launching dozens of times’ its own weight of chains at some target which was supposedly outside the frame of the picture. As she set the silly pamphlet back down, she saw a note on the inside cover indicating the publishers were some outfit calling themselves the Furinkan High School Photography Club. Haruka gave a small snort of disbelief — really, a duck?! Even among other schoolchildren, who’d be gullible enough to fall for that?
As they went about their after-school routines at opposite ends of the family mansion, the two Kuno teenagers suddenly sneezed violently, in unwitting stereo. “Foul sorcerer… can’t get a moment’s peace…” Tatewaki muttered irritably.
In the shower, Ranma was deep in thought. Before Sailors Moon and Saturn had healed him of the Cat-Fist, this was something he had always tended to avoid. The thing was, whenever he’d sat down to think in Nerima, he ended up either getting attacked while his guard was down, or chasing his thoughts in circles because of the insoluble fiancée problem. Genma had always been careful never to let him be exposed to the principles of logic, on the grounds that such knowledge might make him “get silly ideas and stop being a dutiful son,” as Genma had thought of it.
No, despite appearances, the man was not actually malicious… just incredibly foolish and incompetent.
In any case, as a result of this gap in his training, Ranma had never realized that the problem as posed had no solution — he’d always just thought himself not scholastically inclined enough to figure it out. For much the same reason, it had honestly never occurred to him that being more academically inclined might help him in situations like this. Such had always been portrayed to him as taking valuable time and effort that could be better put towards pursuit of the Art.
Again, the contradictions inherent in this approach to Ranma’s education had simply never occurred to Saotome senior.
Now, of course, Ranma wasn’t thinking about any of that. After all, he didn’t remember any of it. What was weighing on his mind was his inconstant gender.
How can I be both a guy and a girl? If I started off as a guy, then shouldn’t I prefer that? he puzzled. Does this make me weird? I mean weirder than I already am for changing in the first place? He turned the water colder and went female. Oooo, tingly, she thought absently, as the tepid water trickled across her more sensitive female skin.
Ranma didn’t realize it, but the magical healing the currently-a-girl had undergone had cured her of everything that was ailing her mentally. She’d been resigned to being only half a man after Jusendo, when Jusenkyo was temporarily flooded and the last hope for several months of finding the Spring of Drowned Man had gone, but she hadn’t LIKED being female. It was, after all, a curse. However, the Silver Crystal had altered the weaves of the magic Jusenkyo had laced throughout Ranma’s very soul, such that it was no longer inherently maleficent. There was more to the healing, as well, but it would be some time before anyone noticed the other results.
Here and now, Ranma was remembering how frightening the change had been when she didn’t know about it. And then, just when I thought nothing would ever go right again, Hotaru-chan came in and was nice to me and wanted to be my friend. She said she thought it makes me special! And her friends all want to be friends with me, too! Ranma couldn’t believe her good fortune.
“But it’s not random, is it?” she mused out loud. I was brought here. I wonder who those Sailor Soldiers they mentioned were? They must be really smart if they knew I’d be accepted here. Ranma absently turned the heat back up a bit, reverting to male. Wait a minute, sure, they didn’t know who I was at first… but why did they leave me here instead of taking me home, once they found out? Do I have a home? They must know, they knew what was up when I changed the first time and I panicked. If I have a home, is it an unhappy one? I really hope not…
“Still,” he said decisively to the wall of the shower, “If it is a bad place, maybe the nice people here can help me fix it!”
Elsewhere, there was a small Chinese restaurant with unusual staffing. In the kitchen, a wizened old woman was discussing recent goings-on with her great-granddaughter. “So Son-in-Law went straight home after school, but he wasn’t there when you came back with the food? How strange.” Cologne knew that Ranma wouldn’t have been able to hide from Shampoo, as the girl had triggered her Jusenkyo curse and investigated in cat form as soon as she’d been balked at the door.
“That right, Great-Grandmother,” Shampoo said. “He was there, and Kitchen Destroyer, but they both gone in only five minutes while Shampoo back turned. And now special soup get cold and the Suggestion Herb stop working, start taste funny instead!”
“Wait, Shampoo, what have I told you about using drugs on him? Even if he did have magical help with it, remember that he defeated Saffron the Phœnix King, who in his overpowered state at the time could have destroyed half the village without much effort!” Her brow furrowed briefly, and she absently muttered, “I suspect he’s still got both of the dratted staves, too…” before wrenching herself back on topic and finishing her lecture. “Now, what do we do so Son-in-Law never makes it necessary for us to kill him for the safety of the tribe?”
“Always be careful he not find out about drugs! Shampoo sorry.”
“That’s my girl.”
Ranma, still male, finished dressing in the clothes Haruka had lent him. Even without the amnesia he wouldn’t have batted an eye at her cross-dressing, not after dealing with Ukyo and her numerous transvestite suitors; with the amnesia, which had not so much erased his memories as severely Swiss-cheesed them, he didn’t even realize there was anything unusual about a pretty girl who dressed as a pretty boy most of the time. He had to admit that Michiru had been right — he did feel better showered and in clean clothes. With a smile that approached his normal cocky grin, he pushed open the door of the changing room and headed bravely downstairs.
Unfortunately, he was promptly besieged by an eager and affectionate Minako and Makoto. They weren’t about to let a little thing like a gender-swapping curse keep them away from such a good-looking guy, even if nothing could ultimately come of it because he was engaged.
Besides, Setsuna had kept talking about what she’d glimpsed of Ranma’s past in the devious and difficult-to-direct depths of the Time Gates. It had sounded like Ranma never had any good experiences with girls unless someone hit him right afterwards, and the two Sailors were determined to give him some nicer memories than that — chiefly by giving him lots of smiles and unconditional affection, and not being violent about it. The fact that he was starting to look baffled and distressed at their attention just showed how important it was to do so as soon as possible.
Luckily for Ranma, the next person to come across the three was Ami. So, when Ranma shied away from her — there were GIRLS near him being FRIENDLY and Ami was a girl too, therefore she must be about to hit him — she immediately figured out what was going on, and gave Minako and Makoto a very uncharacteristic tongue-lashing. “You heard what Pluto told us about girls chasing him all the time! You heard about the fiancées who hit him whenever he even gets looked at suggestively! Of course he’s going to get stressed out if you start coming on to him! What were you thinking?!”
The two girls, red-faced at the unsuspected gigantic flaw in their plan, immediately apologized to Ranma. They looked so distraught with chagrin that Ranma was taken aback, though he wasn’t sure why. He had the oddest feeling that it was his fault they were upset, which seemed both blindingly obvious and incredibly wrong.
“Um. No problem…?” he said tentatively, drawing a complete blank on how to proceed.
Just then, the conversation was interrupted by Michiru announcing dinner, accompanied by some mouth-watering smells from the kitchen behind her. The three girls and Ranma all eagerly headed to the dining room, grateful for the distraction from the uncomfortable conversation, as Michiru continued on to tell the others it was time to eat.
Back in Nerima, Ukyo was a bit concerned. Ranma had promised to come by and taste-test a new version of her special okonomiyaki sauce before going home to dinner, but he hadn’t shown up. Easily resolved, she thought to herself, I just need to phone the Tendos and ask. I bet Akane went and cooked something… eurgh… experimental again. She winced, then brightened. “Ha! They’ll be begging to buy dinner off me!” Grinning, she picked up the phone and dialled.
The phone was answered, politely, on the third ring.
“Oh, hi Kasumi, it’s Ukyo. Is Ranchan there? He was supposed to come try my new okonomiyaki sauce today.”
The answer to this did not seem to match Ukyo’s expectations.
“You’re kidding. Akane lost him at a zoo? How’d she manage that?”
The ensuing explanation was fairly long, and ended on a very unexpected note.
“WHAT!”
The distant speaker repeated herself.
“All right, but, c’m’on, Sailor Soldiers? Someone’s playing a joke on you. There’s no such thing.”
There followed more explanation, this time rather disjointed, to judge by Ukyo’s frown of concentration as she listened to it.
“…They outran him when he was in the Cat-Fist. Nabiki thinks they’re real. She does? Well, okay, I’ll take your word for it. I’ll be right over with Konatsu.”
There was an expression of polite surprise from the other end of the line.
“Well, we’re going to need to sort out search parties, aren’t we? Right. See you in a few.” Ukyo hung up and stared blankly at the wall for a few moments. Sailor Soldiers? This was a new depth of weirdness even for Ranma.
“Excuse me, Ukyo-sama, but did I hear correctly? Ranma-sama got lost while chasing Sailor Soldiers?” asked Konatsu respectfully.
“Apparently, sugar. Pretty crazy, huh?”
“EEEEE! I hope we can get autographs! They are so cool! I’ve got a little picture of them in the cupboard where I sleep.”
“Wha…?”
“Oh, to be a pretty sailor-suited defender of love and justice! It’s every girl’s dream!” Konatsu’s eyes had little hearts in them.
“Okaaaaay. You do remember that you’re really a guy?”
“I’ve lived my whole life as a girl. Please, Ukyo-sama, don’t confuse me with technicalities.”
Dinner at the Outers’ house was a cheerful and somewhat boisterous affair, what with the Inners, Ranma, and Usagi’s husband Chiba Mamoru all visiting, and the oldest person present (Setsuna) being only 20. Mamoru had come straight over after work, arriving just in time to sit down with the others, and Setsuna and Usagi were taking it in turns to tell him all about the day’s strange events — suitably edited for Ranma’s ears, of course.
“And then they healed her head, but she went unconscious instead of getting up human. They didn’t know who she was or where she came from yet, so they brought her here where we could look after her,” Usagi was saying.
Setsuna continued, “A little while later, Sailor Pluto came back and told us what she’d learned about Ranma, like that she was really a boy with a transformative curse, and asked us to look after him until they could find a way to make his life less horrible.”
“Why, what’s wrong?” asked Mamoru.
So that’s why they didn’t take me home, Ranma thought glumly to himself. Looks like I was right about it being a bad place. Out loud, he said, “Yeah, what’s so awful they couldn’t take me home?”
Setsuna looked at Mamoru, then at Ranma. “I wasn’t going to get into that until after dinner. Basically, almost everyone who had a big part in your life before you were brought to us wants to either kill you, own you or use you, and in a few cases all three. Can we please leave the details for later? I don’t want to ruin anyone’s appetite when they’ve made us such a wonderful meal.” Good one, Setsuna, that was really reassuring, she thought to herself with an inward wince. She felt rather foolish; she hadn’t blurted out something so ill-considered in years, not since well before having had her Sailor Pluto memories reawakened. Something about Ranma just seemed to encourage an unfortunate degree of honesty.
Getting rather reluctant nods from both males, Setsuna changed the subject and began swapping tales with Mamoru of humorous events at their respective schools. As both of them knew very well, the old joke about universities being the home of “academentia” was almost too accurate to be funny.
The other girls noticed Ranma’s mood and, with some effort, managed to get him thinking of cheerier things. No longer distracted by trying to learn about himself, Ranma was soon eating with his usual gusto, to general astonishment. “By all the gods,” said Rei in awed tones, “There are TWO of them!” Everyone except Ranma immediately swivelled to look at Usagi.
Usagi looked up in mid-gulp, her chopsticks stopped halfway out of her mouth. “Whaff?” she asked indistinctly, and swallowed the mouthful she was chewing. “Have I got something on my face?”
Everyone else broke up laughing. “No, but I think you’ve got some competition for the leftovers,” said Haruka with a grin. Ranma blushed.
“Hey, if anyone else wanted it they’d have eaten it already,” said Usagi cheerfully, to a chorus of tolerant groans.
The rest of the meal passed in a happy, chaotic whirl of eating and conversation. Before too long, everyone was coöperating to clear away the dishes.
“Now,” said Setsuna when they’d all sat back down at the freshly cleaned table, “we need to discuss Ranma’s screwed-up life and what we can do to help.” She brought the stack of cheap magazines out again, and handed them out to people at random. “We’ll be getting a visit from Sailor Mercury and her computer soon so she can scan Ranma, and I’d like to have some ideas by then.”
Ami didn’t so much as bat an eyelid at this, but she did nod at Setsuna in acknowledgement as soon as Ranma’s attention was elsewhere. Before that, she spoke: “I think we should start by telling Ranma all the stuff you told us while he was in the shower.”
“I got some of it from what you said before dinner,” put in Ranma, a bit warily.
Setsuna gave a nonchalant half-shrug and said, “And hearing a summary twice would get boring for most of you. I’ll just tell the story of Ranma’s life, as we got it from Sailor Pluto.
“Your name, as we told you earlier, is Saotome Ranma. Your father is Genma and your mother is Nodoka, and I hate to say this about anyone, but many of the things they have done to you ought to have landed them both in jail, your mother for child abandonment and your father for child abuse. You went on a ten-year martial arts training trip with Genma when you were six years old, and your mother’s idea of making sure you came out of it all right was to accept an honour pledge that you would both commit honourable suicide if she did not judge you a ‘Man among Men,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean, on your return. Your ‘signature’ consisted of playful finger painting, and you had no idea of the contract until Nodoka caught up with the both of you a few months ago. I’ll say more about that in a minute.
“Your training trip took you to dojos and monasteries all over East Asia, and while you travelled Genma taught you what he could as well. Unfortunately, he is almost without scruples, and a large part of your early training was in committing petty thefts of food and other supplies. You eventually refused to commit any more crimes when you realized it was wrong, but by that time the other problem with Genma’s training methods had already surfaced: the man is incredibly hasty and shortsighted, and frequently trained you in things before he understood them completely himself.
“The worst of these incompletely understood techniques was the Cat-Fist. The training method is to take a young child — six years old, in your case — wrap them in fish products, and keep throwing them into a pit of starving cats until they go insane from the fear and trauma. The subject’s mind defends itself from the cats by becoming one itself, and the result is a human who thinks they are a cat, to the extent of manifesting invisible ‘claws’ of chi that can cut through anything, and developing the ability to purr. The original idea was to create a berserk, like the Vikings a thousand years ago, who drew on the mental states of bears or wolves — but with domesticated elements to make it easier to control, hence the housecat part.
“You went from being fond of cats to being absolutely terrified of them, and if you couldn’t get away from one that was scaring you, the fear overwhelmed your mind just like it did in the pit, and you would ‘go cat.’ You were apparently in such a state when you were found by the Sailor Soldiers, which is how you ended up here with us, but that’s getting ahead of myself.” Setsuna paused to sip some tea.
“Luna and Artemis aren’t here, are they?” queried Rei, with some alarm.
“No, they stayed home when we went out earlier,” lied Usagi. The Moon Cats had really gone to kill time in the Sailors’ hidden control room under the Crown Amusement Centre.
Minako nodded in agreement. “The Sailor Soldiers cured it anyway, so I doubt it matters.”
“I still don’t like cats. I don’t remember the pit itself, but I remember remembering it. Cats are not good news.” Ranma spoke with an apologetic but final air.
“Oh, is your memory coming back?” asked Ami with interest.
“Not really, but hearing about my life is dredging up a few scraps of feelings and half-memories that make a bit more sense now.”
Setsuna picked up the thread again. “Anyway… Er. Drat. I accidentally left out an episode that would later come back to haunt you. Never mind, I’ll back up a bit. A couple of months before the Cat-Fist incident, Genma took you through Kansai, where you met a wandering okonomiyaki chef and his child Ukyo…”
While the Sailors, Mamoru and Ranma listened enthralled to Setsuna’s tale of Ranma’s past, the various martial artists of Nerima and their hangers-on were gathering at the Tendo Dojo to talk about ways of finding Ranma. So far they’d figured out that he was probably still somewhere in the Azabu-Jūban district of the neighbouring Minato ward, as all available evidence pointed to the Sailors living there. No one knew where, exactly, but there were enough people present to search it thoroughly if nothing better came up.
They’d managed to avoid involving the Kunos so far, but unfortunately for all concerned, the gathering did include Happosai, who was even more enthusiastic than usual because Nabiki had sold him a few blurry magazine pictures of the Sailor Soldiers. He was now expounding at length on the sort of places you might look for girls who wore their skirts that short: “— and then there’s this massage parlour right in the middle of Azabu-Jūban where they really know how to make an old man happy —”
“Grandfather Happosai, please!” Kasumi broke in, blushing furiously. “You know Ranma would never willingly enter a place like that, and I really doubt they keep any superheroines in there either.”
Happosai was so taken aback at this conjunction of ideas — how could anyone not want to enter a massage parlour?! — that he fell silent for long enough to lose the floor. A babble of conversation sprang up as everyone began talking at once. It was cut short as Nodoka suddenly realized what Kasumi had just said about her son. “Kasumi, dear, what did you mean by that? A manly man seeks out female company at every opportunity. How else is he supposed to get the experience he’ll need to keep all his mistresses happy after he marries Akane?”
This pronouncement was greeted with dead silence. Genma looked like he’d swallowed his tongue and began sweating nervously, eyeing his wife’s sword. Soun wanted to be outraged at this affront to his youngest daughter’s ability to satisfy her future husband’s male urges, but the sword and its frighteningly unskilled wielder were uppermost in his mind as well, so he uneasily held his peace. Akane, Ukyo and Shampoo didn’t know whether to be revolted or infuriated, and Kasumi had blanched like a bedsheet at being put on the spot in such a way. Cologne and Happosai were impassive but each raised an eyebrow, while Mousse was so indignant on behalf of Shampoo that his powers of speech had temporarily flown the coop — though, of course, no one paid any heed to his ruffled feathers. Nabiki and Konatsu were so busy thrashing out every detail they’d gleaned about Sailor Soldiers that they hadn’t really been paying attention to Nodoka’s words, but they fell silent in surprise when everyone else suddenly stopped talking.
“Um, I, I —” Kasumi gibbered. Fortunately for her, Nodoka’s attention was diverted as all three fiancées decided on “infuriated” and blew their stacks simultaneously.
“MISTRESSES?!”
Nodoka looked astonished. “Of course! What’s wrong with that? My son is far too manly for any one of you girls alone. In fact, I’ve been giving serious consideration to finding him some non-martial-artist mistresses as well, to make him a more well-rounded person.” In Minato, the Sailors all suddenly felt a chill, and wondered why. “How about you, Kasumi? And perhaps Nabiki as well?” suggested Nodoka brightly.
Kasumi froze again, a panicked expression on her face. Nabiki somehow managed to avoid spraying her mouthful of tea across the room, and in fact betrayed no outward signs of having heard Nodoka at all, apart from a slight greenish tinge to her suddenly immobile features.
“Or, even better, how about you two and miss Konatsu?” continued Nodoka happily, turning to face the gender-confused ninja. “I’m sure a traditional young lady like you would be very good for Ranma…”
END PART TWO
Latest revision as of Weds. 2009/04/15
The bit about Nabiki wanting to be the Sailors’ agent waltzed straight into my brain from Burger Becky’s excellent Sailor Ranko continuations. It’s not totally in character for manga-Nabiki, but it’s close enough to “plausible” that I just couldn’t resist it. I hope no one minds, especially not Burger Becky.
I also have to say I’m stunned that no one else seems to have ever added Konatsu to the list of fiancées. He’s a boy who thinks he’s a girl, and when Ranma is in cursed form, she’s a girl who thinks she’s a boy… they’re even both lesbians! It’s a perfect match, I tell you!
Uh, yeah… Shutting up now.