Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Permutation ❯ Chapter 7
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: gsteemso 
In which Ranma learns more than he ever suspected there was to know about physically growing up. Features two rather disturbing meetings.
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: 4 | Words: 8.8K | Visits: 2.4K | Status: Work In Progress
In which Ranma learns more than he ever suspected there was to know about physically growing up. Features two rather disturbing meetings.
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: 4 | Words: 8.8K | Visits: 2.4K | Status: Work In Progress
Permutation
A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso
Chapter Seven
Not my characters — Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.
Saotome Ranma opened his eyes. They felt all crusty, and for some reason he was really thirsty. Suiting action to thought, he began to sit up on what he now recognized as the guest bed those nice Sailor girls had lent him, when two very alarming facts slammed into his awareness. Not only was he surrounded by sleeping girls, but some sicko had apparently glued his boxers to his privates and then dressed him again! GYAAAHHHH! he thought, jolting rigid in a blind panic. …Wait a minute, it’s Ami and the others. We were just talking and I— eeeep. So that’s why my boxers are… He flushed bright red, then went deathly pale again as he remembered the suggestion that had put him out for the past few minutes. His brain threatened to go offline again. Can’t think about it! he told himself frantically. Think about food instead! Rice balls, sashimi, okonomiyaki, octopus rolls…
His brain still shielding itself (with the strength of large bank vaults) from the memory of his most recent conversation, Ranma carefully picked his way off of the bed without jostling any of the three girls who were also resting across it. He slipped out and headed tensely for the bathroom, where he stripped as quickly as he could and started the shower using only the hot water tap. He waited until the bathroom was filling with thick clouds of steam before daring to get wet, and began frantically washing off the dried… secretions, which to his dismay were becoming slimy again as they soaked up the water, apparently being restored to “good as new” condition. Get it OFF me! he screamed to himself. Pregna— preg— NOT GONNA HAPPEN!
Ranma was aware that he didn't really know much about this whole pregnancy thing. Unfortunately, he knew even less that was correct, not that he realized the fact.
He’d picked up the usual whispered misinformation from the other boys in his elementary school days, but he had somehow managed to miss every health class his many subsequent schools had ever held — and, of course, he had never encountered much popular entertainment while out on his training trip, so he’d never been subjected to the constant barrage of sexual imagery the average TV-watching urbanite had to tolerate in their formative years. Also, Genma always had such an intemperate reaction to the whole subject of girls that the young Ranma soon learned never to mention them, and after a while seldom even thought of them. As a result of all this, he was trying to deal with a pair of 16-year-old bodies using, at best, a ten-year-old child’s concept of how the embarrassing bits worked.
He'd seen animals mating often enough during the training trip, but never linked this behaviour to human reproduction. Heck, he hadn't really linked it to animal reproduction. In more than one village they’d stayed at, the only dogs allowed to run loose were very obviously male — and, dogs being dogs, that hadn’t stopped them from mounting one another whenever they felt like it. The young Ranma had concluded that various animals’ occasional habit of standing or laying on one another’s backs was just some incomprehensible peculiarity of nature. He’d never connected the act with so much as the animals’ gender, let alone puppies. Back then, he’d decided he could puzzle it out later, after he became the greatest martial artist in the world; at the time, he’d had training to get back to.
Here and now, Ranma had taken what the girls had told him, connected it with miscellaneous other facts from his life, and reached some very alarming conclusions. This horrible, sticky, goopy stuff that came spewing out of my… uhh… thing seems to be the key to it all. Michiru said it could get me pregnant when I’m a girl. “I’m not even a real girl! I’m just a guy with a curse!” he muttered nervously. That has to make the stuff horrifically powerful. It certainly smells weird enough to be that strong. He furrowed his brow in thought.
Once Ranma had turned eleven, Genma had begun exhorting the boy to stay away from girls at all costs, because they could tangle up a guy’s life and stop him from advancing in the Art. Ranma had never quite understood this, especially considering how seldom he met girls anyway, but with how adamant ol’ Pops always was, he’d figured there must be something serious to it. Now that he’d discovered what part of a guy was used to get a woman pregnant, it all made a horrible kind of sense. The goopy stuff would, apparently, come boiling out of a guy whether he wanted it to or not; and, judging by everyone’s attitude to boy-girl contact, its ability to make a girl pregnant must be very potent. Lacking any kind of mechanical knowledge of the sex act, Ranma understandably concluded the goopy stuff must be able to work just by its touching a girl — any part of a girl, from hair to toenails!
Pretty scary stuff on its own, to say the least — but in Ranma’s case, it loomed far worse. Not only was there a risk of him contaminating a girl with his own goopy stuff, but his own or even other people’s goopy stuff might affect his girl side! The very idea was enough to seriously endanger Ranma’s sanity, especially as he thought through the implications of the matter over the course of his shower.
As it abruptly sank in just what he was apparently facing, Ranma let out a girlish squeak. Wide-eyed and trembling with stress, he sank to his heels in the tub. He clung, by adamantine reflex, to the confines of the near-scalding jet of water; to be female while the goopy stuff was even in the same building would be unthinkable just now.
Still… “I’m Saotome Ranma, and I never lose when it matters. I will find a way forward!” Unfortunately, this bold declaration was just loud enough to drown out the sound of someone knocking timidly on the bathroom door.
* * *
Haruka came back towards the guest room with a blanket, which it had taken her some time to find in her and Michiru’s bedroom closet. The others had seemed a bit chilled after passing out. “Did one of you say something?” she asked as she entered, looking at where she’d left the others laying sideways across the bed. “Hmm.” The middle of the bed was conspicuously Ranmaless. Cocking her head, she could just make out the sound of running water. Huh, guess he took our advice.
A small but sudden movement at the foot of the bed drew her attention. Ami seemed to be having a very strange dream. The blue-haired genius’ limbs — and also her nostrils — twitched slightly, and her face wore an expression that was mildly hungry, eager and tense all at the same time. Her breath was coming faster, and she seemed to be unconsciously trying to cuddle up to the departed Ranma.
Ami made a faint breathy sound and rolled over onto where Ranma had been, awakening in what looked like complete bewilderment when there was no one there. “Errh…” she mumbled blearily, with an unmistakable tinge of disappointment.
“That’s so cute! Our little bookworm is growing up!” Haruka teased gently, pleased to see the shy girl having such an enjoyably uninhibited rest. With an effort, she refrained from asking which of Ranma’s two forms Ami’s dreams had featured, reasoning that such teasing and innuendo was best postponed to when the others arrived for the meeting. That way there’d be lots of witnesses.
Ami blushed scarlet. Mumbling excuses, she ducked out the door and scampered towards the bathroom, feeling an urgent need to be somewhere private to recover her composure. She was disappointed to find the door closed. She gave it a few timid knocks; was someone already in there? With the blood still roaring through her ears in embarrassment, she couldn’t really tell, but she didn’t hear any kind of obvious answer and she really needed to hide somewhere for a few minutes.
Snatching urgently at the knob, she decided the door must have blown shut or something, and darted inside.
* * *
In the shower, Ranma had successfully scraped all the goopy stuff off himself, despite it having set like some sort of creepily sticky rubber cement due to having congealed in the hot water. He was still unable to act on Ami’s advice to try for an orgasm from the female perspective, as he couldn’t quite bring himself to risk switching to girl form just yet, but he had turned the water temperature down enough that he wasn’t getting mild first-degree burns any more. He was still entirely absorbed in devising possible defences against contamination by pregna— preg— problem-inducing goopy stuff, and decided he’d worry about girl-orgasms later on, if he ever got around to it. It wasn’t like he could imagine ever needing the capability, after all.
His mind made up, he squared his shoulders, shut off the shower and whipped the curtain back, all in one smooth motion… and found himself looking straight at Ami’s back, as she tidily shut the bathroom door after entering.
There was a crowded moment as she realized the bathroom was awfully humid to be unoccupied and spun around to see why, only to come face to face with a flabbergasted and extremely nude Ranma. Despite her best intentions, her attention was immediately drawn to his midsection, the entirety of which was highlighted in bright red from scrubbing and the hot water.
They both froze for a brief, horrible eternity, exchanging shocked looks, before hastily doing a synchronized about-face that would have done a dance troupe proud.
“Sorry—!” they choked out in unison, Ami frantically groping for the doorknob and its promise of blessed escape, while Ranma fought his conditioning and tried not to shrink into a ball again. Ami found the handle and fled just as Ranma resealed the shower curtain. They each slumped against the nearest walls in reaction as the door banged shut.
* * *
A few minutes later, Ranma’s head poked cautiously out of the bathroom. Seeing no one nearby, he gathered himself and strode out wearing a towel, in search of clean clothes. Haruka hadn’t thought to set any out, being more immediately concerned with finding a blanket for the others, but since they had all one at a time recovered and fled as quickly as dignity would allow, he was able to get some more from what he’d been lent without any further incidents.
A few minutes later, he found Ami downstairs. “Eep!” she squeaked, turning purple with embarrassment as her mind immediately flashed to the last view she’d had of him.
“Um, doc, I need advice!” Ranma blurted before the moment could get any more awkward. It seemed reasonable to him that an aspiring doctor would know how to defend against things a human body did, no matter how gross or unrequested.
Great, she winced internally. Just what I needed. “Um, what with, Ranma-san?” she asked carefully. She was really hoping this wouldn’t turn out as awkwardly as the last go ’round.
“The goopy stuff! If it can get people p-p-pre— Argh. PREGNANT, I need a way to protect myself from it! What do other people do?”
She gave him an odd look. “It only gets you pregnant if someone puts it inside your, uh, girl parts, okay Ranma?”
“Really?! Oh gods, what a relief! I was gettin’ really worried about it. Far as I knew, it just had to touch you!”
Ami stared. “Uh, how long ago was the last health class you sat at school?”
“ ‘Health class?’ What’s that?”
“Good grief! No wonder you’re so confused about this stuff. Come on, mister, you need to hear the whole story from a real doctor, and as soon as possible! Good news for you, though, my mom should be able to help. She’s a proper doctor at the hospital, not just a student like me, and she can tell you everything you need to know.” Ami grabbed Ranma’s arm and dragged him to see Michiru.
A few words of explanation later, the two of them had used the Disguise Pen (still in Ranma’s keeping from the night before) to hide his appearance behind the seeming of a nondescript schoolboy, and were headed to Ami’s apartment to collect her mother.
* * *
Happosai yawned and sat up slowly amidst a heap of bras, absent-mindedly dislodging some lacy black panties from over his left ear with one hand. Ergh, what did I drink last night? I ache like I went full-out against Cologne-chan, Pantyhose-taro and Ranma all at once, but it’s a good ache… except for the part in my… What the hell? His eyes shot open wide, and he stared down at himself in shock. “WHY AM I FEMALE?!”
* * *
Pantyhose-taro followed the group of shrivelled old men into the apartment house. The one he’d first met, who had introduced himself in passing as Kenjiro, led them into an apartment on the ground floor and closed the door after the last pervert had filed into the living room.
Kenjiro appeared to be in charge of the meeting, and immediately began by calling to order “the Glorious Liberators of Magical Panties.”
Their acronym is “G.L.o.M.P.”? Pantyhose-taro raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“Now then, young fellow, why don’t you tell these fine gentlemen what you told me?” Kenjiro requested happily.
“Uh. Well, OK,” he said, at something of a loss. Finally he just blurted the gist of his story out in one go: “I need a set of magical-girl panties to bribe an old pervert into changing the horrible name he saddled me with at my birth. According to the traditions of my village, only he can change it — but he has so far refused.”
“Gosh. Sounds like quite the noble quest you’ve brought us, young fellow. Were you really a tentacle monster before young Kenji here gave you that bucket of hot water?” one of the oldest of the old perverts asked appraisingly.
“Huh? Well, I was a yeti-bull-crane-eel-octopus hybrid. I don’t think of myself as a monster but I did have tentacles, if that helps. Oh, and I can fly thanks to the crane part.”
“Oh ah?” The old man looked thoughtful, and turned to the even older old man next to him. Pantyhose-taro couldn’t quite hear what they said to one another, but within moments there was a small huddle around the two senior perverts who’d spoken up, muttering excitedly and making elaborate gestures.
Finally, “Well, maybe it’ll work, at that!” said one of them cheerfully, looking at Pantyhose-taro. “How about it, young fellow — will you help us with our cunning plan to get magical panties?”
“Maybe,” he replied cautiously. “What’s the plan? I don’t feel like getting roasted by magical fire or whatever if it goes sour.”
“Makes sense,” another old man agreed. “It’s really quite ingenious in its simplicity though — all we have to do is distribute walkie-talkies, spread out around areas of frequent sightings, and radio you to swoop in in your tentacled form when we spot one on her own. You’d grab her, extract the magical panties, and run like hell to the nearest one of us, throwing her as far as you can in the other direction to slow her up. We’d each have a kit consisting of hot water, a set of shorts for you, and a lead-lined box to hide the goods. She comes pelting after you and all there is in front of her is a young man training as a runner, and his friendly old neighbour having a quiet word. We’re away scot-free and we all get what we’re after!”
“That actually sounds like it might work,” agreed Pantyhose-taro — rather against his better judgement; but a potential end to his years of torment had finally come into view, and by gods he wasn’t about to stop now.
“Wait, wait,” said an old pervert who’d hitherto held his tongue. “If this young fellow takes away the magical panties, what are we supposed to do for OUR collections?” The others all fell silent at this. It was so obvious in hindsight — one set of magical panties wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy two groups of panty-collectors.
Pantyhose-taro didn’t fancy taking on more than one magical girl at a time; he may have had 14 limbs and an eel for a tail, but however good he was at dividing his concentration, he only had one brain to direct them with. Fortunately, he wasn’t concerned with the fate of the panties after they would persuade that accursed Happosai to change his name. “Why don’t you just join forces with the old… fellow I’m going to bribe with them? You’d probably get along great.” A shiver ran down his spine at the thought of what this group might achieve with Happosai added to its number, but he wasn’t bothered; let that fag-boy Ranma worry about it after he himself went home to China with a decent name.
“Who is he, anyway? I’m surprised we haven’t met him already, if he’d like these panties as much as you say.”
“He’s an indestructible, hundred-plus-year-old holy terror, cursed the world around as… Happosai.” Pantyhose-taro grimaced.
He could not have achieved a greater reaction by saying that the God of Perversion was parked outside in a 1970s pimpmobile and wanted to address the faithful.
“You… you actually know The Master? Personally?!” Pantyhose-taro could hear the capital letters in the question as the awestruck old men stared at him.
With a horrible sinking feeling, he replied, “Yes.” A thought struck him and he brightened again. “Help me and I’ll take you to him!”
“Done!” the old men chorused, as one pervert.
* * *
At the Hikawa Shrine, the group was just getting settled. Of those who were arriving earlier — Mamoru and Setsuna had sent word they would be delayed — the last to arrive were Ami, Ranma, and the unexpected addition of Dr. Mizuno. The good doctor thought the Senshi were a group of friends Ami studied with, and of late had occasionally dropped by a few minutes early to help with their homework before taking Ami home, so the others weren’t too upset at the extra presence. It just meant they’d have to be careful not to mention things like demons, long-dead kingdoms on other planets and talking cats. Since they were only here to help Ranma today, that shouldn’t be insurmountable.
“Hello, everyone,” she greeted them. “Today Ami’s asked me to give you all a refresher course on your health classes. I’m not sure why she picked today, but luckily I had the day off, so I’m happy to help.”
Ami broke in smoothly, “We needed this today because poor Ranma-san here has never sat one in his life, and… well, you’ll have to see this to believe it, but…”
“I have a curse that turns me into a girl,” said Ranma mechanically. He hated this part of meeting people.
“Excuse me?” the doctor asked with an eyebrow raised.
“Like this!” said Usagi cheerfully, pouring a cup of cold water over him.
“In-incredible!” Dr. Mizuno gasped, collapsing into the nearest empty seat. The boy she’d walked back here with seemed to have changed his clothes and hairstyle while she wasn’t looking — the disguise pen at work, though of course she didn’t realize it — and now he’d apparently shed a substantial amount of both mass and height at a mere application of water! And, she had to admit, those curves the boy now had certainly looked female. “How is this even possible?” It contradicted everything she thought she knew about physics — and quite a bit of what she thought she knew about anatomy, she reflected wryly.
“Cursed springs of Jusenkyo, very tragic story,” said Ranma bitterly. “I’ve had this… condition for about a year now.”
“More to the point, she’s been using what is basically two different sixteen-year-old bodies with only an elementary school understanding of how either one works,” picked up Ami. “She really needs your help, Mom. I didn’t want to risk missing something important by trying to explain it myself.”
“I’m not sure I follow completely,” said the doctor. “Shouldn’t he have at least a basic idea what to expect from his male body?”
“Uh. Not really,” Ami replied nervously. She really didn’t want to revisit the embarrassing events of the morning. She settled for saying, “He seems to have recently come into the mental effects of, um, puberty all at once.”
“Ah? Unusual. Well, not to worry, Ranma-kun, I can tell you what you need to know.” She collected herself enough to stand up again, and pulled out some rather graphic pictorial aids. “Since you’re a girl right now, we’ll start with that body…”
Ranma suddenly realized that a pretty older woman was about to tell her, in embarrassing detail, all about girl parts while she was surrounded by pretty girls her own age. The fact that she was a girl herself was for some reason not very comforting. “Eeep!”
* * *
A small black pig dragging an enormous backpack paused in its efforts. Where the hell was it NOW? It idly noted the odd reddish-purple colour of the sky and the strangely spire-shaped mountains on the horizon, before shrugging and resuming its slow progress. At least those stupid overgrown lizard things with all the teeth had decided to leave it alone again.
It is worth noting that, several years later when the movie Jurassic Park came out, Ryoga would mistake it for a particularly badly made documentary.
A beautiful six-limbed woman with antennæ, four breasts and green skin looked up in surprise from her picnic as the backpack scraped through a patch of low bushes without apparent means of propulsion. “What in— Oh, it’s Mr. Space Alien again! He’s so funny.” She picked up a warm, squashy, fist-sized object from in her picnic hamper and tossed it overhand into the shrubbery at the leading edge of the backpack. There was a wet splat noise as the hot-drink balloon burst over Ryoga’s porcine head, and he erupted in human form from beneath the bracken.
“AAIIIIEEEEE!” he shrieked, his eyes crossing, as he frantically tried to rescue his newly endangered dangly bits from the scratchy bushes. He may have been significantly toughened up from the Breaking Point training, but to all things there are exceptions.
“Oops! I forgot how spiky those bushes are! Sorry, Mr. Space Alien.” The verdant woman watched with interest to see what the crazy alien would do next. She didn’t know where he came from or how he managed the shapeshifting trick, but every couple of months she would run across him in the wilderness here near her home, and he was invariably entertaining.
Ryoga muttered direly to himself. “Ranma, you will pay for this humiliation!” He squinted out of the corner of his eyes and confirmed that, yes, the mutant nymph or whatever she was was still there and watching him with three wide eyes. He didn’t know why she never seemed to say anything, but at least she was keeping her distance this time. The first time he’d run across her, while en route from China back to Tokyo, she had been bathing nude in a stream not two feet in front of him, and Ryoga had nearly died of blood loss from the resulting nosebleed. Fortunately, he’d fainted forwards into the stream, and the four-armed woman had been able to rescue his piglet form before he was washed away.
* * *
Ranma’s eyes bulged. “I might start bleeding from WHERE?!”
* * *
Konatsu was having unworthy thoughts. He may have felt like a girl and thought of himself as a girl, but ultimately he wasn’t one, and his libido reflected the fact. He was utterly devoted to Ukyo, but Ranma’s mother had somehow manœuvred him into being engaged to Ranma’s girl form, which was wonderful because it would let him be in a relationship with Ukyo, but at the same time tortuous because boy-Ranma came as part of the package. Konatsu could deal with that — he had after all been raised as the lowest-ranking girl at the Red Hot Kunoichi Tea House, with all that that implied — but he didn’t want to cheat on Ukyo-sama.
It was a problem.
Especially since girl-Ranma was so sexy, and if both Konatsu and Ukyo were engaged to her then a three-way suddenly became not only possible but probable— Aargh, aargh, unworthy thoughts…
Konatsu was sure that good girls didn’t think like this. Unfortunately, his imagination kept going back to the idea.
The transvestite smacked himself in the face with one of Ukyo’s throwing spatulas and tried harder to focus on his restaurant duties, duties which in no way involved heaving bosoms or long, luscious legs— Aargh, aargh, aargh…
Konatsu was, depending how you looked at it, having either a very good or a very bad day.
* * *
“The idea that you might become pregnant is very upsetting to you, isn’t it, Ranma-kun? I think we need to talk about that some more.” Dr. Mizuno watched the redhead carefully.
“Awk! Uh, do we have to?”
“Yes, I think we should. It’s something all girls grow up expecting might happen some day, but it must have come as a terrible shock to someone raised to have a very macho self-image like you were.”
“Well, yeah. I’m a guy! Maybe I’m a girl part of the time, but that doesn’t mean I want to be one for long enough to have a baby. And what was all that business about pregnancy hormones? I don’t even wanna THINK about what that would do to my guy side!” In typical fashion, Ranma was more worried about her guy side looking girly than she was about the otherwise unthinkable idea of bringing a new life into the world from her own muscular belly. Actually, she kept having a nagging feeling that she should come up with an isometric exercise regime for all the new voluntary muscles she’d just learned were located Down There. Getting groin-punched hurt a lot for girls too, not just for guys, so maybe if she muscled up that area she could get some immunity? She began testing theoretical approaches at the back of her mind as she listened to the doctor speak.
“Well, I can tell you that you’re a lot more worried about it than you need to be. Since you’ve yet to experience an actual period, it seems pretty clear that your fertility cycle gets reset every time you switch into girl form. That means you’d have to stay female for at least two and probably three months just to start menstruating, and it just so happens that a girl’s first one or two periods don’t actually involve any egg cell coming out. That means you’d have to be locked as a girl for at least four months — maybe as long as six — just to get to the point where it would even be physically possible for you to get pregnant.”
“Really?” Ranma perked up a bit, but the assembled girls could all see that she was still fairly stressed out.
“I don’t think that’s all of what’s bothering you, though, is it, Ranma-kun? I think you’re just as upset by what you’d have to do to GET pregnant, at least by traditional means.”
Ranma was silent for a time. “You have no idea what it’s like,” she whispered. “If you suddenly found yourself with guy parts where they had no business being and all sorts of perverted women suddenly throwing themselves at you, would you want to even think about that?” She shuddered. “I wish all those perverts would leave me out of their sick fantasies.”
“You’re right, I do have no idea what it’s like. I do know that it’s something you’re going to have to deal with as long as you have a girl’s body in there somewhere, though. Look at Haruka-kun here. She doesn’t ever want to be touched by a man in that way, either, but she has to understand at some level that it’s theoretically possible.”
“It’s true,” agreed Haruka. “With one thing and another, I’m not likely to ever have to worry about it, but I have to acknowledge the possibility or I’d go crazy if it ever did happen.”
“Suppose she and I wanted a child of our own, besides Hotaru-chan I mean?” asked Michiru. “If we had a choice I would bear it, but sometimes medical problems mean that turns out not to be an option. If you marry one of those girls and settle down, what will you do if she suffers some accident that leaves her unable to carry a baby to term? If you could take on that role for her, wouldn’t you rather consider it than condemn yourself to a life without children?”
Ranma looked badly shaken at that idea. Quite obviously, the possibility had never occurred to her. It was hardly surprising given her total ignorance of matters relating to childbirth prior to this conversation.
“That’s it exactly, Ranma-kun,” continued the doctor. “You’re not likely ever to get intimate with a man, and that’s just fine with anyone who cares about what YOU think. But there are other situations where you might actually want to get pregnant, and they don’t have to involve… doing ‘that’.”
“I think you’d make a great mom!” enthused Usagi, making what may have been the least helpful suggestion possible.
“GYAAAAAH!” screamed Ranma.
There was a confused and very crowded moment.
“Oh, dear.” Dr. Mizuno blinked, and stood her stack of distressingly graphic pictorial aids back up again. “Makoto-kun, you’re an athlete — could you go and catch her, please?”
* * *
Happosai, meanwhile, was coming to terms with… her… new experiences earlier that morning.
Unexpectedly, the rejuvenated pervert found she wasn’t terribly upset, despite this previously inconceivable turn of events. She just felt too mellow. “Wow…” she mumbled distractedly. Who knew women had it that good?
After a few minutes, she’d pulled enough of her personality back together to begin considering her new options. How best to take advantage of the new opportunities available to her? “Let’s see, when I’m a man I can still chase nature’s bounty of pretty girls, and collect their silky darlings. I guess that means when I’m a woman I should… try to feel up studly young men and collect their perversely smelly jockstraps? Hmm, something sounds a bit off about that, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it as I go.”
As you may have surmised from listening in on her thought process, Happosai wasn’t adapting quite as well as the currently-a-woman believed, but at least she was making an effort.
* * *
Makoto didn’t have to go far. She found Ranma in the courtyard, hugging herself for warmth on the shady side of the shrine building, though the morning wasn’t particularly cool out. “Ranma-kun?” she asked tentatively. “Are you all right?”
The stressed-out redhead, still with her arms wrapped protectively around herself, turned a burdened gaze on her. “Yeah, I guess. It’s just a bit much, you know?”
“Bearing in mind how crazy-unlikely it would be for you in particular, would it be so bad to be a mommy?” asked Makoto quietly, tilting her head to one side.
Ranma blinked, and stood up a bit straighter. “I guess I did kinda overreact, eh?” She snorted a brief, mostly humourless laugh and relaxed her arms from their death-grip around her abdomen. “Really, I guess it wouldn’t be THAT bad, but I don’t ever want to find out first hand.”
“I can’t imagine you’d ever have to,” smiled Makoto reassuringly, ushering her gently back into the building.
* * *
The rest of the instructional session passed with relative smoothness, up until the end. Dr. Mizuno had finished talking about female puberty and then gone over what Ranma could expect from her male body, to the accompaniment of much blushing, giggling and a considerable number of double-entendres from the other girls, not all of whom had previously heard about that side of things. She finished up by confirming what little Haruka, Hotaru, Michiru and Ami had told Ranma that morning about masturbation and wet dreams, but was a bit puzzled by the slightly cross-eyed expression Ranma was developing towards the finish. “Uh, Ranma-kun? Are you paying complete attention here?”
The girl in question gave a guilty start. “Yes! Er, mostly.” She looked sheepish.
“What would you be thinking about besides what we’re discussing? This is important stuff, you know.”
“Nothing! Nothing important. It’s just, you’ve told me about all these muscles I never knew I had, so while I’ve been memorizing what you’re telling us, I’ve also been trying to figure out ways to exercise them.”
A rather peculiar expression passed across everyone else’s face. “…Exercise them?” echoed Haruka faintly, in tones of mild disbelief.
Dr. Mizuno coughed uncomfortably. “Er… the only new muscles we’ve mentioned are in your ‘girl parts’… you do realize that the only reason to exercise those muscles is to have better sex with them?”
Ranma turned a brilliant red, her eyes opening wide. “OH! Ah. Er. Whoops?”
* * *
During all this, Tuxedo Mask had returned bearing the information that a group of old perverts were mobilizing to pilfer the Sailors’ hypothetical underwear. (He didn’t know if the Sailor uniform actually came with any or not, as his wife Usagi had always been just as eager to get intimate as he was. That meant she always ended up getting frustrated and simply willing the whole works to disappear before he could ever find a way past the magically-armoured leotard.) He’d dropped his transformation to return to being just Chiba Mamoru, and narrowly avoided walking in on the medical lecture series in progress within the house. He was now loitering — “hiding” was too strong a word — with Artemis at the farthest corner of the shrine grounds, lest they also suffer the horror that had befallen Ranma.
* * *
Eventually, not even Dr. Mizuno could think of anything else to tell Ranma, so she made her goodbyes and left the girls at the shrine to hang out together for the rest of the day. Setsuna arrived as soon as the doctor had departed, appearing soundlessly outdoors behind Mamoru.
“It’s safe now, she’s gone,” she said with a smirk.
Mamoru looked sheepish, and turned to go back inside.
Artemis gave her a sharp look around the once and future Prince of Earth’s legs. “Sure, go ahead and laugh at us. You’re just one girl among many in there. We’d have had no such help!”
Setsuna blinked, and realized that admitting she too had skipped the awkward half of the meeting would not help her save face. “Fair enough,” she allowed with a calm smile, ushering the man and the Mau back towards the buildings.
Once everyone was settled again, Ranma having reverted to male in the interim in order to see better over the crowd of girls, Rei got the group’s attention and began to speak. “I noticed something weird earlier, and Phobos and Deimos seem to back it up as something we need to worry about,” she said bluntly. After a brief interlude wherein Ranma was brought up to speed on Sailor Mars’ assistants, Rei told the assembled teens of her observations and the ravens’ unusually literal warning.
After a brief pause while they all absorbed her words, everyone in the room swivelled to look expectantly at either Ami or Setsuna.
“Don’t look at me,” said the Time Guardian. “As far as I know we’ve got an easy ride until the Great Freeze starts messing everything up.” She noticed Ranma’s puzzled look and added, “I’ll explain about that later, Ranma-kun.” She wasn’t looking forward to putting him through that; no one ever dealt easily with the knowledge that a disaster so great even the Sailors’ combined magic couldn’t shield everyone from it was looming in a few years. She actually felt it was humorous, in a darkly ironic way; various extradimensional horrors had been trying so hard to conquer the Earth in recent years, and yet any one of them would have been promptly wiped out by the coming cataclysm even if they’d succeeded. She made a mental note to look in the Gates later on and see if Ranma’s added presence could help them save any more of the world’s population. He may not have had any magic besides his curse (as far as she was aware), but he was still pretty powerful.
Ami was a bit more thoughtful in replying. “Well, I’ll have to do some research and set the Mercury Computer to scan everything in range…” She trailed off into incomprehensible muttering for a moment, then said more decisively, “I should have something for you all in a few days.”
The others accepted this as the best that could be done, and moved on to other things.
After some discussion of various trivial things like school assignments, Haruka remembered Ami’s naughty dream from earlier and asked, in a seemingly innocent tone of voice, “So, Ami, were you dreaming of Ranma as a girl or as a boy when you were rolling around on his bed this morning?”
Ami froze, one eye bugging out and her hair sticking out at odd angles. “Glurk?!” The shocked stares she was getting from everyone else didn’t help her composure any.
“Oh, didn’t I tell any of you about that?” grinned Haruka. “After they all passed out from Michiru suggesting Ranma could accidentally get himself pregnant, I left to get a blanket for them. When I came back, our little bookworm was having a naughty dream about Ranma, who’d already woken up and left to have a shower. You should have seen her expression when she rolled over onto him and he wasn’t there. It was so CUUUUTE!” she gushed.
Ami gave her a look like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a semi tractor. Ranma was frozen to his seat with decidedly mixed emotions writ large across his face. After a brief pause, all the other girls spoke up at once, pressing Ami and Haruka for details. Mamoru and the two Mau kept to the back of the crowd, trying not to laugh out loud at Ranma’s or Ami’s expressions.
After an especially enthusiastic but shockingly personal question from Minako, Ami’s patience snapped. “NO I WASN’T! And anyway, the bedsheet was covering his—” She froze, mortified, and refused to say another word.
Ranma was giving her a horrified look, mouthing the word “No…” over and over as he slowly shook his head from side to side in denial. Internally, all he could think was, “Oh GODS no, not another one, please!”
Setsuna cleared her throat a bit theatrically and, with some difficulty, gathered everyone’s attention once more. “Well, as amusing as this is, we do have one last item to cover. Ranma’s loony ex-associates seem to have worked themselves into a perfect state for trying his plan on them. I suggest that we go ahead with it tonight.”
“Already?” said Ranma with some surprise, tremendously glad of the change in subject. “Geeze, that’s kind of extreme even for them.” He knew that the Nerima gang would sooner or later start leaping to bizarre conclusions, probably involving a maximum of embarrassment for him if anyone at school heard the rumours, but he was honestly a little shocked that they’d so easily — not to mention promptly — written him off as having gone permanently female in mind as well as body. Even under the influence of Ryoga’s damned fishing rod of love, that time when Ranma had honestly worked hard to be a girl so that the Lost Boy might return her magically implanted affections, she had been something of a tomboy. Not that anyone ever cared to notice, he grumbled inwardly. “Pervert,” my magnificent ass.
“I’d not have believed it if I hadn’t been listening in person,” agreed Setsuna.
“Who should go along to support him?” asked Ami.
“I’d suggest Usagi and the Guardian Soldiers,” ventured Michiru. “One downside to this plan is the possibility of the media being attracted. Best not to risk having all of us in one place.”
“I had another idea to tack on to this little performance of Ranma’s,” piped up Minako. “How’s about we lead off by letting them catch a brief distant glimpse of girl-Ranma necking with a really manly guy, like Mamoru?”
“EWW! No way!” spluttered the aquatranssexual in question, a horrified expression on his face. He would have said more but words had temporarily failed him.
“I’m not wild about cheating on my wife with another guy, either,” interjected Mamoru somewhat sourly. Yes, girl-Ranma was stunning, but knowing she wanted to kiss him exactly as little as he wanted to kiss her boy side was a very effective antidote to any potential attraction he might have felt.
“Well, as long as it’s only acting… no one said the guy had to really be a guy, did they?” pointed out Haruka with a decidedly unfeminine leer.
Michiru shot a searching look at her lover, and pointed out a trifle too calmly, “As long as it looks convincing from a distance, it doesn’t need to be a real kiss, either.”
Haruka made a big show of snapping her fingers in disappointment, her smile shifting to something a lot less predatory and more good-humoured.
“Doesn’t have to be a real kiss… Hum, that’s… actually kind of a… really funny idea,” admitted Ranma thoughtfully. “I’d pay good money to see a picture of their faces when they realize it’s me.”
“That’s the spirit!” cheered Minako. In the background, the young Hotaru looked rather shocked at what was being plotted before her. “Now, here’s how we can get a bunch of them together at a distance…” began Minako confidently.
END PART SEVEN
Latest revision as of Sat. 2008/10/18
Thanks are due to my most excellent prereaders, including among others my lovely wife, and also to the disparate groups of suspicious characters at the Temple of Ranma’s Senshi Seifuku C&C forum and The Fanfiction Forum’s Ranma section. The many-talented J. St. C. Patrick, who is a member of the first two groups, has also done a truly amazing set of illustrations for this story — see the fan art section of my website (the most current location of which should be in my author profile).
If anyone else wants to be a prereader, and can promise a turnaround time of less than a day per thousand words, I’d be very grateful — just drop me a line at «gsteemso@ficfan.org». Thanks for reading!
A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso
Chapter Seven
Not my characters — Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.
Saotome Ranma opened his eyes. They felt all crusty, and for some reason he was really thirsty. Suiting action to thought, he began to sit up on what he now recognized as the guest bed those nice Sailor girls had lent him, when two very alarming facts slammed into his awareness. Not only was he surrounded by sleeping girls, but some sicko had apparently glued his boxers to his privates and then dressed him again! GYAAAHHHH! he thought, jolting rigid in a blind panic. …Wait a minute, it’s Ami and the others. We were just talking and I— eeeep. So that’s why my boxers are… He flushed bright red, then went deathly pale again as he remembered the suggestion that had put him out for the past few minutes. His brain threatened to go offline again. Can’t think about it! he told himself frantically. Think about food instead! Rice balls, sashimi, okonomiyaki, octopus rolls…
His brain still shielding itself (with the strength of large bank vaults) from the memory of his most recent conversation, Ranma carefully picked his way off of the bed without jostling any of the three girls who were also resting across it. He slipped out and headed tensely for the bathroom, where he stripped as quickly as he could and started the shower using only the hot water tap. He waited until the bathroom was filling with thick clouds of steam before daring to get wet, and began frantically washing off the dried… secretions, which to his dismay were becoming slimy again as they soaked up the water, apparently being restored to “good as new” condition. Get it OFF me! he screamed to himself. Pregna— preg— NOT GONNA HAPPEN!
Ranma was aware that he didn't really know much about this whole pregnancy thing. Unfortunately, he knew even less that was correct, not that he realized the fact.
He’d picked up the usual whispered misinformation from the other boys in his elementary school days, but he had somehow managed to miss every health class his many subsequent schools had ever held — and, of course, he had never encountered much popular entertainment while out on his training trip, so he’d never been subjected to the constant barrage of sexual imagery the average TV-watching urbanite had to tolerate in their formative years. Also, Genma always had such an intemperate reaction to the whole subject of girls that the young Ranma soon learned never to mention them, and after a while seldom even thought of them. As a result of all this, he was trying to deal with a pair of 16-year-old bodies using, at best, a ten-year-old child’s concept of how the embarrassing bits worked.
He'd seen animals mating often enough during the training trip, but never linked this behaviour to human reproduction. Heck, he hadn't really linked it to animal reproduction. In more than one village they’d stayed at, the only dogs allowed to run loose were very obviously male — and, dogs being dogs, that hadn’t stopped them from mounting one another whenever they felt like it. The young Ranma had concluded that various animals’ occasional habit of standing or laying on one another’s backs was just some incomprehensible peculiarity of nature. He’d never connected the act with so much as the animals’ gender, let alone puppies. Back then, he’d decided he could puzzle it out later, after he became the greatest martial artist in the world; at the time, he’d had training to get back to.
Here and now, Ranma had taken what the girls had told him, connected it with miscellaneous other facts from his life, and reached some very alarming conclusions. This horrible, sticky, goopy stuff that came spewing out of my… uhh… thing seems to be the key to it all. Michiru said it could get me pregnant when I’m a girl. “I’m not even a real girl! I’m just a guy with a curse!” he muttered nervously. That has to make the stuff horrifically powerful. It certainly smells weird enough to be that strong. He furrowed his brow in thought.
Once Ranma had turned eleven, Genma had begun exhorting the boy to stay away from girls at all costs, because they could tangle up a guy’s life and stop him from advancing in the Art. Ranma had never quite understood this, especially considering how seldom he met girls anyway, but with how adamant ol’ Pops always was, he’d figured there must be something serious to it. Now that he’d discovered what part of a guy was used to get a woman pregnant, it all made a horrible kind of sense. The goopy stuff would, apparently, come boiling out of a guy whether he wanted it to or not; and, judging by everyone’s attitude to boy-girl contact, its ability to make a girl pregnant must be very potent. Lacking any kind of mechanical knowledge of the sex act, Ranma understandably concluded the goopy stuff must be able to work just by its touching a girl — any part of a girl, from hair to toenails!
Pretty scary stuff on its own, to say the least — but in Ranma’s case, it loomed far worse. Not only was there a risk of him contaminating a girl with his own goopy stuff, but his own or even other people’s goopy stuff might affect his girl side! The very idea was enough to seriously endanger Ranma’s sanity, especially as he thought through the implications of the matter over the course of his shower.
As it abruptly sank in just what he was apparently facing, Ranma let out a girlish squeak. Wide-eyed and trembling with stress, he sank to his heels in the tub. He clung, by adamantine reflex, to the confines of the near-scalding jet of water; to be female while the goopy stuff was even in the same building would be unthinkable just now.
Still… “I’m Saotome Ranma, and I never lose when it matters. I will find a way forward!” Unfortunately, this bold declaration was just loud enough to drown out the sound of someone knocking timidly on the bathroom door.
Haruka came back towards the guest room with a blanket, which it had taken her some time to find in her and Michiru’s bedroom closet. The others had seemed a bit chilled after passing out. “Did one of you say something?” she asked as she entered, looking at where she’d left the others laying sideways across the bed. “Hmm.” The middle of the bed was conspicuously Ranmaless. Cocking her head, she could just make out the sound of running water. Huh, guess he took our advice.
A small but sudden movement at the foot of the bed drew her attention. Ami seemed to be having a very strange dream. The blue-haired genius’ limbs — and also her nostrils — twitched slightly, and her face wore an expression that was mildly hungry, eager and tense all at the same time. Her breath was coming faster, and she seemed to be unconsciously trying to cuddle up to the departed Ranma.
Ami made a faint breathy sound and rolled over onto where Ranma had been, awakening in what looked like complete bewilderment when there was no one there. “Errh…” she mumbled blearily, with an unmistakable tinge of disappointment.
“That’s so cute! Our little bookworm is growing up!” Haruka teased gently, pleased to see the shy girl having such an enjoyably uninhibited rest. With an effort, she refrained from asking which of Ranma’s two forms Ami’s dreams had featured, reasoning that such teasing and innuendo was best postponed to when the others arrived for the meeting. That way there’d be lots of witnesses.
Ami blushed scarlet. Mumbling excuses, she ducked out the door and scampered towards the bathroom, feeling an urgent need to be somewhere private to recover her composure. She was disappointed to find the door closed. She gave it a few timid knocks; was someone already in there? With the blood still roaring through her ears in embarrassment, she couldn’t really tell, but she didn’t hear any kind of obvious answer and she really needed to hide somewhere for a few minutes.
Snatching urgently at the knob, she decided the door must have blown shut or something, and darted inside.
In the shower, Ranma had successfully scraped all the goopy stuff off himself, despite it having set like some sort of creepily sticky rubber cement due to having congealed in the hot water. He was still unable to act on Ami’s advice to try for an orgasm from the female perspective, as he couldn’t quite bring himself to risk switching to girl form just yet, but he had turned the water temperature down enough that he wasn’t getting mild first-degree burns any more. He was still entirely absorbed in devising possible defences against contamination by pregna— preg— problem-inducing goopy stuff, and decided he’d worry about girl-orgasms later on, if he ever got around to it. It wasn’t like he could imagine ever needing the capability, after all.
His mind made up, he squared his shoulders, shut off the shower and whipped the curtain back, all in one smooth motion… and found himself looking straight at Ami’s back, as she tidily shut the bathroom door after entering.
There was a crowded moment as she realized the bathroom was awfully humid to be unoccupied and spun around to see why, only to come face to face with a flabbergasted and extremely nude Ranma. Despite her best intentions, her attention was immediately drawn to his midsection, the entirety of which was highlighted in bright red from scrubbing and the hot water.
They both froze for a brief, horrible eternity, exchanging shocked looks, before hastily doing a synchronized about-face that would have done a dance troupe proud.
“Sorry—!” they choked out in unison, Ami frantically groping for the doorknob and its promise of blessed escape, while Ranma fought his conditioning and tried not to shrink into a ball again. Ami found the handle and fled just as Ranma resealed the shower curtain. They each slumped against the nearest walls in reaction as the door banged shut.
A few minutes later, Ranma’s head poked cautiously out of the bathroom. Seeing no one nearby, he gathered himself and strode out wearing a towel, in search of clean clothes. Haruka hadn’t thought to set any out, being more immediately concerned with finding a blanket for the others, but since they had all one at a time recovered and fled as quickly as dignity would allow, he was able to get some more from what he’d been lent without any further incidents.
A few minutes later, he found Ami downstairs. “Eep!” she squeaked, turning purple with embarrassment as her mind immediately flashed to the last view she’d had of him.
“Um, doc, I need advice!” Ranma blurted before the moment could get any more awkward. It seemed reasonable to him that an aspiring doctor would know how to defend against things a human body did, no matter how gross or unrequested.
Great, she winced internally. Just what I needed. “Um, what with, Ranma-san?” she asked carefully. She was really hoping this wouldn’t turn out as awkwardly as the last go ’round.
“The goopy stuff! If it can get people p-p-pre— Argh. PREGNANT, I need a way to protect myself from it! What do other people do?”
She gave him an odd look. “It only gets you pregnant if someone puts it inside your, uh, girl parts, okay Ranma?”
“Really?! Oh gods, what a relief! I was gettin’ really worried about it. Far as I knew, it just had to touch you!”
Ami stared. “Uh, how long ago was the last health class you sat at school?”
“ ‘Health class?’ What’s that?”
“Good grief! No wonder you’re so confused about this stuff. Come on, mister, you need to hear the whole story from a real doctor, and as soon as possible! Good news for you, though, my mom should be able to help. She’s a proper doctor at the hospital, not just a student like me, and she can tell you everything you need to know.” Ami grabbed Ranma’s arm and dragged him to see Michiru.
A few words of explanation later, the two of them had used the Disguise Pen (still in Ranma’s keeping from the night before) to hide his appearance behind the seeming of a nondescript schoolboy, and were headed to Ami’s apartment to collect her mother.
Happosai yawned and sat up slowly amidst a heap of bras, absent-mindedly dislodging some lacy black panties from over his left ear with one hand. Ergh, what did I drink last night? I ache like I went full-out against Cologne-chan, Pantyhose-taro and Ranma all at once, but it’s a good ache… except for the part in my… What the hell? His eyes shot open wide, and he stared down at himself in shock. “WHY AM I FEMALE?!”
Pantyhose-taro followed the group of shrivelled old men into the apartment house. The one he’d first met, who had introduced himself in passing as Kenjiro, led them into an apartment on the ground floor and closed the door after the last pervert had filed into the living room.
Kenjiro appeared to be in charge of the meeting, and immediately began by calling to order “the Glorious Liberators of Magical Panties.”
Their acronym is “G.L.o.M.P.”? Pantyhose-taro raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“Now then, young fellow, why don’t you tell these fine gentlemen what you told me?” Kenjiro requested happily.
“Uh. Well, OK,” he said, at something of a loss. Finally he just blurted the gist of his story out in one go: “I need a set of magical-girl panties to bribe an old pervert into changing the horrible name he saddled me with at my birth. According to the traditions of my village, only he can change it — but he has so far refused.”
“Gosh. Sounds like quite the noble quest you’ve brought us, young fellow. Were you really a tentacle monster before young Kenji here gave you that bucket of hot water?” one of the oldest of the old perverts asked appraisingly.
“Huh? Well, I was a yeti-bull-crane-eel-octopus hybrid. I don’t think of myself as a monster but I did have tentacles, if that helps. Oh, and I can fly thanks to the crane part.”
“Oh ah?” The old man looked thoughtful, and turned to the even older old man next to him. Pantyhose-taro couldn’t quite hear what they said to one another, but within moments there was a small huddle around the two senior perverts who’d spoken up, muttering excitedly and making elaborate gestures.
Finally, “Well, maybe it’ll work, at that!” said one of them cheerfully, looking at Pantyhose-taro. “How about it, young fellow — will you help us with our cunning plan to get magical panties?”
“Maybe,” he replied cautiously. “What’s the plan? I don’t feel like getting roasted by magical fire or whatever if it goes sour.”
“Makes sense,” another old man agreed. “It’s really quite ingenious in its simplicity though — all we have to do is distribute walkie-talkies, spread out around areas of frequent sightings, and radio you to swoop in in your tentacled form when we spot one on her own. You’d grab her, extract the magical panties, and run like hell to the nearest one of us, throwing her as far as you can in the other direction to slow her up. We’d each have a kit consisting of hot water, a set of shorts for you, and a lead-lined box to hide the goods. She comes pelting after you and all there is in front of her is a young man training as a runner, and his friendly old neighbour having a quiet word. We’re away scot-free and we all get what we’re after!”
“That actually sounds like it might work,” agreed Pantyhose-taro — rather against his better judgement; but a potential end to his years of torment had finally come into view, and by gods he wasn’t about to stop now.
“Wait, wait,” said an old pervert who’d hitherto held his tongue. “If this young fellow takes away the magical panties, what are we supposed to do for OUR collections?” The others all fell silent at this. It was so obvious in hindsight — one set of magical panties wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy two groups of panty-collectors.
Pantyhose-taro didn’t fancy taking on more than one magical girl at a time; he may have had 14 limbs and an eel for a tail, but however good he was at dividing his concentration, he only had one brain to direct them with. Fortunately, he wasn’t concerned with the fate of the panties after they would persuade that accursed Happosai to change his name. “Why don’t you just join forces with the old… fellow I’m going to bribe with them? You’d probably get along great.” A shiver ran down his spine at the thought of what this group might achieve with Happosai added to its number, but he wasn’t bothered; let that fag-boy Ranma worry about it after he himself went home to China with a decent name.
“Who is he, anyway? I’m surprised we haven’t met him already, if he’d like these panties as much as you say.”
“He’s an indestructible, hundred-plus-year-old holy terror, cursed the world around as… Happosai.” Pantyhose-taro grimaced.
He could not have achieved a greater reaction by saying that the God of Perversion was parked outside in a 1970s pimpmobile and wanted to address the faithful.
“You… you actually know The Master? Personally?!” Pantyhose-taro could hear the capital letters in the question as the awestruck old men stared at him.
With a horrible sinking feeling, he replied, “Yes.” A thought struck him and he brightened again. “Help me and I’ll take you to him!”
“Done!” the old men chorused, as one pervert.
At the Hikawa Shrine, the group was just getting settled. Of those who were arriving earlier — Mamoru and Setsuna had sent word they would be delayed — the last to arrive were Ami, Ranma, and the unexpected addition of Dr. Mizuno. The good doctor thought the Senshi were a group of friends Ami studied with, and of late had occasionally dropped by a few minutes early to help with their homework before taking Ami home, so the others weren’t too upset at the extra presence. It just meant they’d have to be careful not to mention things like demons, long-dead kingdoms on other planets and talking cats. Since they were only here to help Ranma today, that shouldn’t be insurmountable.
“Hello, everyone,” she greeted them. “Today Ami’s asked me to give you all a refresher course on your health classes. I’m not sure why she picked today, but luckily I had the day off, so I’m happy to help.”
Ami broke in smoothly, “We needed this today because poor Ranma-san here has never sat one in his life, and… well, you’ll have to see this to believe it, but…”
“I have a curse that turns me into a girl,” said Ranma mechanically. He hated this part of meeting people.
“Excuse me?” the doctor asked with an eyebrow raised.
“Like this!” said Usagi cheerfully, pouring a cup of cold water over him.
“In-incredible!” Dr. Mizuno gasped, collapsing into the nearest empty seat. The boy she’d walked back here with seemed to have changed his clothes and hairstyle while she wasn’t looking — the disguise pen at work, though of course she didn’t realize it — and now he’d apparently shed a substantial amount of both mass and height at a mere application of water! And, she had to admit, those curves the boy now had certainly looked female. “How is this even possible?” It contradicted everything she thought she knew about physics — and quite a bit of what she thought she knew about anatomy, she reflected wryly.
“Cursed springs of Jusenkyo, very tragic story,” said Ranma bitterly. “I’ve had this… condition for about a year now.”
“More to the point, she’s been using what is basically two different sixteen-year-old bodies with only an elementary school understanding of how either one works,” picked up Ami. “She really needs your help, Mom. I didn’t want to risk missing something important by trying to explain it myself.”
“I’m not sure I follow completely,” said the doctor. “Shouldn’t he have at least a basic idea what to expect from his male body?”
“Uh. Not really,” Ami replied nervously. She really didn’t want to revisit the embarrassing events of the morning. She settled for saying, “He seems to have recently come into the mental effects of, um, puberty all at once.”
“Ah? Unusual. Well, not to worry, Ranma-kun, I can tell you what you need to know.” She collected herself enough to stand up again, and pulled out some rather graphic pictorial aids. “Since you’re a girl right now, we’ll start with that body…”
Ranma suddenly realized that a pretty older woman was about to tell her, in embarrassing detail, all about girl parts while she was surrounded by pretty girls her own age. The fact that she was a girl herself was for some reason not very comforting. “Eeep!”
A small black pig dragging an enormous backpack paused in its efforts. Where the hell was it NOW? It idly noted the odd reddish-purple colour of the sky and the strangely spire-shaped mountains on the horizon, before shrugging and resuming its slow progress. At least those stupid overgrown lizard things with all the teeth had decided to leave it alone again.
It is worth noting that, several years later when the movie Jurassic Park came out, Ryoga would mistake it for a particularly badly made documentary.
A beautiful six-limbed woman with antennæ, four breasts and green skin looked up in surprise from her picnic as the backpack scraped through a patch of low bushes without apparent means of propulsion. “What in— Oh, it’s Mr. Space Alien again! He’s so funny.” She picked up a warm, squashy, fist-sized object from in her picnic hamper and tossed it overhand into the shrubbery at the leading edge of the backpack. There was a wet splat noise as the hot-drink balloon burst over Ryoga’s porcine head, and he erupted in human form from beneath the bracken.
“AAIIIIEEEEE!” he shrieked, his eyes crossing, as he frantically tried to rescue his newly endangered dangly bits from the scratchy bushes. He may have been significantly toughened up from the Breaking Point training, but to all things there are exceptions.
“Oops! I forgot how spiky those bushes are! Sorry, Mr. Space Alien.” The verdant woman watched with interest to see what the crazy alien would do next. She didn’t know where he came from or how he managed the shapeshifting trick, but every couple of months she would run across him in the wilderness here near her home, and he was invariably entertaining.
Ryoga muttered direly to himself. “Ranma, you will pay for this humiliation!” He squinted out of the corner of his eyes and confirmed that, yes, the mutant nymph or whatever she was was still there and watching him with three wide eyes. He didn’t know why she never seemed to say anything, but at least she was keeping her distance this time. The first time he’d run across her, while en route from China back to Tokyo, she had been bathing nude in a stream not two feet in front of him, and Ryoga had nearly died of blood loss from the resulting nosebleed. Fortunately, he’d fainted forwards into the stream, and the four-armed woman had been able to rescue his piglet form before he was washed away.
Ranma’s eyes bulged. “I might start bleeding from WHERE?!”
Konatsu was having unworthy thoughts. He may have felt like a girl and thought of himself as a girl, but ultimately he wasn’t one, and his libido reflected the fact. He was utterly devoted to Ukyo, but Ranma’s mother had somehow manœuvred him into being engaged to Ranma’s girl form, which was wonderful because it would let him be in a relationship with Ukyo, but at the same time tortuous because boy-Ranma came as part of the package. Konatsu could deal with that — he had after all been raised as the lowest-ranking girl at the Red Hot Kunoichi Tea House, with all that that implied — but he didn’t want to cheat on Ukyo-sama.
It was a problem.
Especially since girl-Ranma was so sexy, and if both Konatsu and Ukyo were engaged to her then a three-way suddenly became not only possible but probable— Aargh, aargh, unworthy thoughts…
Konatsu was sure that good girls didn’t think like this. Unfortunately, his imagination kept going back to the idea.
The transvestite smacked himself in the face with one of Ukyo’s throwing spatulas and tried harder to focus on his restaurant duties, duties which in no way involved heaving bosoms or long, luscious legs— Aargh, aargh, aargh…
Konatsu was, depending how you looked at it, having either a very good or a very bad day.
“The idea that you might become pregnant is very upsetting to you, isn’t it, Ranma-kun? I think we need to talk about that some more.” Dr. Mizuno watched the redhead carefully.
“Awk! Uh, do we have to?”
“Yes, I think we should. It’s something all girls grow up expecting might happen some day, but it must have come as a terrible shock to someone raised to have a very macho self-image like you were.”
“Well, yeah. I’m a guy! Maybe I’m a girl part of the time, but that doesn’t mean I want to be one for long enough to have a baby. And what was all that business about pregnancy hormones? I don’t even wanna THINK about what that would do to my guy side!” In typical fashion, Ranma was more worried about her guy side looking girly than she was about the otherwise unthinkable idea of bringing a new life into the world from her own muscular belly. Actually, she kept having a nagging feeling that she should come up with an isometric exercise regime for all the new voluntary muscles she’d just learned were located Down There. Getting groin-punched hurt a lot for girls too, not just for guys, so maybe if she muscled up that area she could get some immunity? She began testing theoretical approaches at the back of her mind as she listened to the doctor speak.
“Well, I can tell you that you’re a lot more worried about it than you need to be. Since you’ve yet to experience an actual period, it seems pretty clear that your fertility cycle gets reset every time you switch into girl form. That means you’d have to stay female for at least two and probably three months just to start menstruating, and it just so happens that a girl’s first one or two periods don’t actually involve any egg cell coming out. That means you’d have to be locked as a girl for at least four months — maybe as long as six — just to get to the point where it would even be physically possible for you to get pregnant.”
“Really?” Ranma perked up a bit, but the assembled girls could all see that she was still fairly stressed out.
“I don’t think that’s all of what’s bothering you, though, is it, Ranma-kun? I think you’re just as upset by what you’d have to do to GET pregnant, at least by traditional means.”
Ranma was silent for a time. “You have no idea what it’s like,” she whispered. “If you suddenly found yourself with guy parts where they had no business being and all sorts of perverted women suddenly throwing themselves at you, would you want to even think about that?” She shuddered. “I wish all those perverts would leave me out of their sick fantasies.”
“You’re right, I do have no idea what it’s like. I do know that it’s something you’re going to have to deal with as long as you have a girl’s body in there somewhere, though. Look at Haruka-kun here. She doesn’t ever want to be touched by a man in that way, either, but she has to understand at some level that it’s theoretically possible.”
“It’s true,” agreed Haruka. “With one thing and another, I’m not likely to ever have to worry about it, but I have to acknowledge the possibility or I’d go crazy if it ever did happen.”
“Suppose she and I wanted a child of our own, besides Hotaru-chan I mean?” asked Michiru. “If we had a choice I would bear it, but sometimes medical problems mean that turns out not to be an option. If you marry one of those girls and settle down, what will you do if she suffers some accident that leaves her unable to carry a baby to term? If you could take on that role for her, wouldn’t you rather consider it than condemn yourself to a life without children?”
Ranma looked badly shaken at that idea. Quite obviously, the possibility had never occurred to her. It was hardly surprising given her total ignorance of matters relating to childbirth prior to this conversation.
“That’s it exactly, Ranma-kun,” continued the doctor. “You’re not likely ever to get intimate with a man, and that’s just fine with anyone who cares about what YOU think. But there are other situations where you might actually want to get pregnant, and they don’t have to involve… doing ‘that’.”
“I think you’d make a great mom!” enthused Usagi, making what may have been the least helpful suggestion possible.
“GYAAAAAH!” screamed Ranma.
There was a confused and very crowded moment.
“Oh, dear.” Dr. Mizuno blinked, and stood her stack of distressingly graphic pictorial aids back up again. “Makoto-kun, you’re an athlete — could you go and catch her, please?”
Happosai, meanwhile, was coming to terms with… her… new experiences earlier that morning.
Unexpectedly, the rejuvenated pervert found she wasn’t terribly upset, despite this previously inconceivable turn of events. She just felt too mellow. “Wow…” she mumbled distractedly. Who knew women had it that good?
After a few minutes, she’d pulled enough of her personality back together to begin considering her new options. How best to take advantage of the new opportunities available to her? “Let’s see, when I’m a man I can still chase nature’s bounty of pretty girls, and collect their silky darlings. I guess that means when I’m a woman I should… try to feel up studly young men and collect their perversely smelly jockstraps? Hmm, something sounds a bit off about that, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it as I go.”
As you may have surmised from listening in on her thought process, Happosai wasn’t adapting quite as well as the currently-a-woman believed, but at least she was making an effort.
Makoto didn’t have to go far. She found Ranma in the courtyard, hugging herself for warmth on the shady side of the shrine building, though the morning wasn’t particularly cool out. “Ranma-kun?” she asked tentatively. “Are you all right?”
The stressed-out redhead, still with her arms wrapped protectively around herself, turned a burdened gaze on her. “Yeah, I guess. It’s just a bit much, you know?”
“Bearing in mind how crazy-unlikely it would be for you in particular, would it be so bad to be a mommy?” asked Makoto quietly, tilting her head to one side.
Ranma blinked, and stood up a bit straighter. “I guess I did kinda overreact, eh?” She snorted a brief, mostly humourless laugh and relaxed her arms from their death-grip around her abdomen. “Really, I guess it wouldn’t be THAT bad, but I don’t ever want to find out first hand.”
“I can’t imagine you’d ever have to,” smiled Makoto reassuringly, ushering her gently back into the building.
The rest of the instructional session passed with relative smoothness, up until the end. Dr. Mizuno had finished talking about female puberty and then gone over what Ranma could expect from her male body, to the accompaniment of much blushing, giggling and a considerable number of double-entendres from the other girls, not all of whom had previously heard about that side of things. She finished up by confirming what little Haruka, Hotaru, Michiru and Ami had told Ranma that morning about masturbation and wet dreams, but was a bit puzzled by the slightly cross-eyed expression Ranma was developing towards the finish. “Uh, Ranma-kun? Are you paying complete attention here?”
The girl in question gave a guilty start. “Yes! Er, mostly.” She looked sheepish.
“What would you be thinking about besides what we’re discussing? This is important stuff, you know.”
“Nothing! Nothing important. It’s just, you’ve told me about all these muscles I never knew I had, so while I’ve been memorizing what you’re telling us, I’ve also been trying to figure out ways to exercise them.”
A rather peculiar expression passed across everyone else’s face. “…Exercise them?” echoed Haruka faintly, in tones of mild disbelief.
Dr. Mizuno coughed uncomfortably. “Er… the only new muscles we’ve mentioned are in your ‘girl parts’… you do realize that the only reason to exercise those muscles is to have better sex with them?”
Ranma turned a brilliant red, her eyes opening wide. “OH! Ah. Er. Whoops?”
During all this, Tuxedo Mask had returned bearing the information that a group of old perverts were mobilizing to pilfer the Sailors’ hypothetical underwear. (He didn’t know if the Sailor uniform actually came with any or not, as his wife Usagi had always been just as eager to get intimate as he was. That meant she always ended up getting frustrated and simply willing the whole works to disappear before he could ever find a way past the magically-armoured leotard.) He’d dropped his transformation to return to being just Chiba Mamoru, and narrowly avoided walking in on the medical lecture series in progress within the house. He was now loitering — “hiding” was too strong a word — with Artemis at the farthest corner of the shrine grounds, lest they also suffer the horror that had befallen Ranma.
Eventually, not even Dr. Mizuno could think of anything else to tell Ranma, so she made her goodbyes and left the girls at the shrine to hang out together for the rest of the day. Setsuna arrived as soon as the doctor had departed, appearing soundlessly outdoors behind Mamoru.
“It’s safe now, she’s gone,” she said with a smirk.
Mamoru looked sheepish, and turned to go back inside.
Artemis gave her a sharp look around the once and future Prince of Earth’s legs. “Sure, go ahead and laugh at us. You’re just one girl among many in there. We’d have had no such help!”
Setsuna blinked, and realized that admitting she too had skipped the awkward half of the meeting would not help her save face. “Fair enough,” she allowed with a calm smile, ushering the man and the Mau back towards the buildings.
Once everyone was settled again, Ranma having reverted to male in the interim in order to see better over the crowd of girls, Rei got the group’s attention and began to speak. “I noticed something weird earlier, and Phobos and Deimos seem to back it up as something we need to worry about,” she said bluntly. After a brief interlude wherein Ranma was brought up to speed on Sailor Mars’ assistants, Rei told the assembled teens of her observations and the ravens’ unusually literal warning.
After a brief pause while they all absorbed her words, everyone in the room swivelled to look expectantly at either Ami or Setsuna.
“Don’t look at me,” said the Time Guardian. “As far as I know we’ve got an easy ride until the Great Freeze starts messing everything up.” She noticed Ranma’s puzzled look and added, “I’ll explain about that later, Ranma-kun.” She wasn’t looking forward to putting him through that; no one ever dealt easily with the knowledge that a disaster so great even the Sailors’ combined magic couldn’t shield everyone from it was looming in a few years. She actually felt it was humorous, in a darkly ironic way; various extradimensional horrors had been trying so hard to conquer the Earth in recent years, and yet any one of them would have been promptly wiped out by the coming cataclysm even if they’d succeeded. She made a mental note to look in the Gates later on and see if Ranma’s added presence could help them save any more of the world’s population. He may not have had any magic besides his curse (as far as she was aware), but he was still pretty powerful.
Ami was a bit more thoughtful in replying. “Well, I’ll have to do some research and set the Mercury Computer to scan everything in range…” She trailed off into incomprehensible muttering for a moment, then said more decisively, “I should have something for you all in a few days.”
The others accepted this as the best that could be done, and moved on to other things.
After some discussion of various trivial things like school assignments, Haruka remembered Ami’s naughty dream from earlier and asked, in a seemingly innocent tone of voice, “So, Ami, were you dreaming of Ranma as a girl or as a boy when you were rolling around on his bed this morning?”
Ami froze, one eye bugging out and her hair sticking out at odd angles. “Glurk?!” The shocked stares she was getting from everyone else didn’t help her composure any.
“Oh, didn’t I tell any of you about that?” grinned Haruka. “After they all passed out from Michiru suggesting Ranma could accidentally get himself pregnant, I left to get a blanket for them. When I came back, our little bookworm was having a naughty dream about Ranma, who’d already woken up and left to have a shower. You should have seen her expression when she rolled over onto him and he wasn’t there. It was so CUUUUTE!” she gushed.
Ami gave her a look like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a semi tractor. Ranma was frozen to his seat with decidedly mixed emotions writ large across his face. After a brief pause, all the other girls spoke up at once, pressing Ami and Haruka for details. Mamoru and the two Mau kept to the back of the crowd, trying not to laugh out loud at Ranma’s or Ami’s expressions.
After an especially enthusiastic but shockingly personal question from Minako, Ami’s patience snapped. “NO I WASN’T! And anyway, the bedsheet was covering his—” She froze, mortified, and refused to say another word.
Ranma was giving her a horrified look, mouthing the word “No…” over and over as he slowly shook his head from side to side in denial. Internally, all he could think was, “Oh GODS no, not another one, please!”
Setsuna cleared her throat a bit theatrically and, with some difficulty, gathered everyone’s attention once more. “Well, as amusing as this is, we do have one last item to cover. Ranma’s loony ex-associates seem to have worked themselves into a perfect state for trying his plan on them. I suggest that we go ahead with it tonight.”
“Already?” said Ranma with some surprise, tremendously glad of the change in subject. “Geeze, that’s kind of extreme even for them.” He knew that the Nerima gang would sooner or later start leaping to bizarre conclusions, probably involving a maximum of embarrassment for him if anyone at school heard the rumours, but he was honestly a little shocked that they’d so easily — not to mention promptly — written him off as having gone permanently female in mind as well as body. Even under the influence of Ryoga’s damned fishing rod of love, that time when Ranma had honestly worked hard to be a girl so that the Lost Boy might return her magically implanted affections, she had been something of a tomboy. Not that anyone ever cared to notice, he grumbled inwardly. “Pervert,” my magnificent ass.
“I’d not have believed it if I hadn’t been listening in person,” agreed Setsuna.
“Who should go along to support him?” asked Ami.
“I’d suggest Usagi and the Guardian Soldiers,” ventured Michiru. “One downside to this plan is the possibility of the media being attracted. Best not to risk having all of us in one place.”
“I had another idea to tack on to this little performance of Ranma’s,” piped up Minako. “How’s about we lead off by letting them catch a brief distant glimpse of girl-Ranma necking with a really manly guy, like Mamoru?”
“EWW! No way!” spluttered the aquatranssexual in question, a horrified expression on his face. He would have said more but words had temporarily failed him.
“I’m not wild about cheating on my wife with another guy, either,” interjected Mamoru somewhat sourly. Yes, girl-Ranma was stunning, but knowing she wanted to kiss him exactly as little as he wanted to kiss her boy side was a very effective antidote to any potential attraction he might have felt.
“Well, as long as it’s only acting… no one said the guy had to really be a guy, did they?” pointed out Haruka with a decidedly unfeminine leer.
Michiru shot a searching look at her lover, and pointed out a trifle too calmly, “As long as it looks convincing from a distance, it doesn’t need to be a real kiss, either.”
Haruka made a big show of snapping her fingers in disappointment, her smile shifting to something a lot less predatory and more good-humoured.
“Doesn’t have to be a real kiss… Hum, that’s… actually kind of a… really funny idea,” admitted Ranma thoughtfully. “I’d pay good money to see a picture of their faces when they realize it’s me.”
“That’s the spirit!” cheered Minako. In the background, the young Hotaru looked rather shocked at what was being plotted before her. “Now, here’s how we can get a bunch of them together at a distance…” began Minako confidently.
END PART SEVEN
Latest revision as of Sat. 2008/10/18
Thanks are due to my most excellent prereaders, including among others my lovely wife, and also to the disparate groups of suspicious characters at the Temple of Ranma’s Senshi Seifuku C&C forum and The Fanfiction Forum’s Ranma section. The many-talented J. St. C. Patrick, who is a member of the first two groups, has also done a truly amazing set of illustrations for this story — see the fan art section of my website (the most current location of which should be in my author profile).
If anyone else wants to be a prereader, and can promise a turnaround time of less than a day per thousand words, I’d be very grateful — just drop me a line at «gsteemso@ficfan.org». Thanks for reading!