The First Ranma: A Really Twisted Tale
By Ron Dow75
It was a typical day at Tomobiki High School: "A boy went into
the girls' room!!" a long raven-haired girl yelled in the hall.
Lum yelled, "A-ta-ru!" giving off lightning flashes within her
long blue sailor suit, and flying off for the door.
There was a cheer from the by-standers, as both female and male
commented:
"Moroboshi is going to get zapped!"
"Moroboshi always gets zapped!"
"And somehow he always survives."
"That pervert only has one thing he's lucky at, surviving!"
Lum declared, "Ataru! This is too much, even for you!!" as she
flew over the stalls.
The girls within yelled their displeasure with Lum looking down
on them while they were in the awkward position.
The alien with the long green hair and the two small yellow horns
sticking out from it ignored all else but her hunt for the
Greatest Lecher in the Galaxy, her husband! It didn't take long
for her to find somebody dressed in the boys' black plebe uniform
squatting over the Japanese toilet in the floor!
"Dahling!! How many unforgivable things do you think I can
forgive you for!!?"
The boy in the stall first tossed up his leather book bag, then
the toilet paper up at the space princess; but with the speed of
one born and bred to the martial arts, he snapped off the end the
latter. By the time Lum had knocked the bag out of the way, and
burned the roll to ashes with her lightning attack, the black
haired boy had wiped his crotch, from front to back, and tossed
it in the toilet bowl. Then the bolt of lightning got through.
He stood up. Unsinged. "What ya do that for, Lum!?!"
Lum blinked at her unhurt victim, "Ryuunosuke??"
A girl asked, "Ryuunosuke's in here?!"
The mild mannered student of Tomobiki High frowned, "Now, look
what you did," zipping up his pants.
Another girl said, "The thought that I'm in the next stall!"
Lum said, "I'm sorry, Ryuunosuke! But a girl said-"
Ryuunosuke said, "(HmmH!) She must be new to the school."
Taking a breath like a martial artist would give himself just
before meeting a challenge, Ryuunosuke opened the stall door,
and went out.
"Ryuunosuke is in here!"
"Should he really be allowed in here?"
"Who cares! Just the thought of it makes my day!"
"Oh-woo! I have to go back into the stall!"
Lum looked down at all the silly human girls, and yelled,
"Ryuunosuke is a girl!!"
One girl giggled, "I don't care."
Another declared. "That makes him the perfect boyfriend!"
A third simpered, "Yes!" "He's got more machismo than all the
boys around here combined!"
Two girl friends declared, "And he doesn't have to prove it!!"
as they held hands in a shared gush.
Lum flew down so she didn't have to see what the girl who'd gone
back into the stall was doing. "I'm sorry, Ryuunosuke!"
The brunette with the dark mood grunted, "(HnH!)" putting his
hands in his pockets as he ambled his way past the girls looking
at him with goo-goo eyes. "It happens all the time."
Lum found that she had to get in front of him, because the girls
wanted to close in around, and follow in his wake. "Ryuunosuke,
may I ask a question?"
He said, "You're not gonna ask me for a date, too?" If it was a
joke, he asked it without any humor.
Lum asked, "I just want to know how come you weren't
electrocuted?"
The one, whose life had left her looking like a cute, disengaged
boy in the semi-long, barely combed hairstyle of the day, said,
"Your attack has one flaw. Your adversary has to be grounded."
Lum stopped. "I knew that." But not too many on Earth seemed to.
If they, now, started doing things like wearing shoes with
insolating soles...
+++
Ataru Moroboshi looked around, up and down the school hall. The
brown haired, rather homely looking boy cackled, "I don't see Lum
anywhere. (He, ha, hah!) I escaped from your fangs again!" Of
course, he knew she would be in his next class; she was in all of
his classes (even gym!). But it was the principle of the thing!
He didn't ask to be married (Not to her, anyway). He saved the
world single-handedly from alien invasion! He should have gotten
a reward, not this life sentence!
A door opened, and he knew which one it was without having to
look. And what did he see when he did look? A parade of five
girls led by one boy.
That wasn't a boy; that was: "Ryuu-chan!!" Ataru grinned, rushing
for her.
Lum was the last to leave, and was just in time to see what
happened.
Ataru went crashing through the second floor hall window, while
Lum zapped her husband for good measure.
He had the further misfortune to fall on a small alien with one
little yellow horn who had just happened to be toddling along
over the school.
All Oni had one special power. Jariten's was fire-breathing.
+++
"Ten!!" The smoldering Ataru yelled from the now smoldering,
defoliated bush he'd landed in. "If I hadn't been singed already
by your cousin Lum, that'd hurt!!"
Looking up at the broken window: "That was Lum-chan's lightning
flash I saw?" asked the very little kid (his yellow tiger-striped
trunks were often called diapers) who was her most loyal of her
kin.
Ataru cried, "What did you think it was?!!" shaking a fist at
the second most obnoxious of the aliens he'd had the misfortune
to meet. Maybe the most obnoxious: Lum, at least, looked like a
beautiful girl. And she liked to wear that tiger-striped bikini.
If she didn't insist she was his wife, he might actually chase
her.
Ten answered, "With you around, I though something had happened
to a science project, or school projector."
Ataru insisteed, "I'm not that unlucky!!"
A sentence was pronounced, "You are the unluckiest boy in the
world." From out of nowhere, it was Cherry, the short, chinless,
frog-faced Buddhist monk with the huge lobes.
Both of them cried, "YAAA!!!"
Ten breathed fire on him; then Ataru hit him over the head with a
very large wooden mallet. The later only served to break the char
off of the mad monk. Which left the potbellied gnome in just a
loincloth.
The monk asked, still on his feet, despite the large lump on his
bald dome, "Do you not want to mitigate your bad luck, or not?"
Ataru told him, "A man makes his own luck!!"
"Exactly."
+++
"Lum-chan! Lum-chan! Wait up!" asked a very kawai schoolmate with
very long, naturally curly maroon hair and a narrow ribbon in its
side. The sailor scarf under her middy collar was red, not yellow
like Lum's.
Ryuunosuke stopped at the sound of her voice, "Ran."
The human girls saw his reaction, and, grumbling, walked as
gracefully away as their hurt pride could. They knew they could
not compete with the most girlish of girls.
Lum said, "Ryuunosuke! Remember, you're a girl!" coming down next
to him.
Ryuunosuke frown, "I know I'm a girl," as he turned to look upon
Lum's oldest and dearest childhood friend.
Breathing a little hard from the short jog, Ran was still able to
speak, "You promised to have tea on my UFO!"
Lum asked, "When did I promise that?" her eyes took on that
vacant, slightly cross-eyed innocent look she'd practiced so hard
to get.
Ran sounded disappointed, "Oh. Then I guess I'll just have to
find some other amusement. Perhaps a date with your Ataru!"
Lum demanded, "Ran! You leave my husband alone! I'm the only
one he can date!"
Ryuunosuke stammered, "Er, Ran, uh, if you want to do
something, that is, uh..."
Ran beamed, "I'd love to, Ryuu-chan! That is, if Lum objects?"
Lum told her, "I object!"
Ran's said, "Goodie!" delighted.
Lum asked, "Ran-chan, why won't you believe Ryuunosuke's a
girl?"
Ran answered, "Silly Lum! Have you realized that Ataru cannot
return your love? Is that why you're staking your claim on the
only real man at this school?" And she fluttered her eyelashes at
her target, "Perhaps in all of Greater Tokyo."
Lum nearly cried in frustration. "This is not about me, Ran!"
Then to the other party, "Ryuunosuke, why would you want to go
out with Ran?!"
Ryuunosuke said, "Nobody wears a sailor suit better," lost in
admiration.
+++
Somehow, the penniless monk had managed to produce and put on a
new robe. He noted, "This is an unusually long break between
breaks."
"Do you think Lum-chan may have blown some fuses?" little Ten
asked, looking up at the windows as he hovered five feet above
the ground.
"If the bells don't tell me to, I'm not going to classes," Ataru
cackled, leaning against a wall, his black plebe coat was
completely unbuttoned and open, now, revealing his red T-shirt.
"You are just delaying the inevitable," Cherry said.
"Death is inevitable. But I live for the moment! If I live enough
moments, then I won't die. Infinity also get small."
Ten frowned, "Is that how you've been able to survive?"
"It is a logic worthy of a mystic," Cherry said.
"If there are no classes, Lum-chan can play!" Ten smiled, put-
putting up towards the broken window.
A passing jet stream caused the little boy to spin like a ball in
mid-air.
"Ataru!" Lum cried, swooshing down from the busted window. "Ran
and Ryuunosuke are going on another date!"
"Ran-chan and Ryuu-chan!!?!" Ataru cried, suddenly erect and
alert. "Girls should not date girls!! That is against all of
morality! Against the very Laws of Nature! Without the proper
functioning of Nature, where would the World be! Were would Japan
be!?!! It threatens to upset the very foundation of our national
security! For the sake of future generations, we must rescue them
from their misguided straying from the path of virtue, and set
them on the path of righteous love!"
Cherry's staff with the bells tripped the boy before he'd made
two steps. "They do not need your luck. Let Ryuunosuke's luck
handle this."
"Luck!?! Luck!!?" Ataru yelled, shaking his fist at the most
obnoxious human of all time. "If poor Ryuu-chan had any luck,
would that girl who had every right to be a vision of loveliness
be bound by the lie that she's a man!?!!"
"Cherry's right, Dahling! You will only cause more trouble; like
you did on their last date," Lum said, hovering above him.
"And what of Ran's own luck, Lum," Cherry suggested.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Cherry," Lum said,
trying not to let any guilt show.
"Since you were little girls, she's only had bad luck when she's
near you."
"Ah-HA!!" Ataru was up on his feet to accuse, "Lum's a carrier!
She's the reason for all of my bad luck, too!!"
"You were bad luck before Lum showed up!" Jen told him, floating
down to nearly an arm's length to him, ready to spit fire on him.
"Human weird luck when added to alien weird is Super weird!!"
Ataru told him.
"Cherry is right," Lum admitted her guilt. She hung herself in
the air. "No wonder my best friend in the universe hates me while
she loves me."
"Ran has a real Jekyll and Hyde personality disorder," Cherry
said.
"Stop spreading lies about fair damsels!!" Ataru cried as he
kicked the monk so hard he landed in a tree.
Still slumped over in mid-air, Lum said, "Perhaps we should
listen to Cherry, and stay out of it this time."
"Listen to Cherry!? Never!! Not when it involves cute girls like
Ran-chan and Ryuu-chan!" Ataru declared, his eyes afire.
Lum became less of a dishrag: "Now I know we should stay out of
it! The only reason I told you was because the last time they
went on a date, we went on a date."
"It wasn't a date!!" Ataru yelled at her.
Ten finally made it up to the level Cherry was draped over some
tree branches. "Why did you interfere to stop trouble? That's not
like you."
"I am a mysterious monk with motivations beyond the reasoning of
the uninitiated."
"The only motivation you have is, 'what can I do to get something
to eat'?"
"That reminds me: Lum! If you're not going on a date, that means
you'll be eating at the Moroboshi's, right?! It is a good deed to
give a bowl of rice to a-"
Lum's response was to scream, and send out such a massive bolt
from her body that the charred, again, monk was sent falling down
the split that had opened up in the tree.
+++
As soon as the last bell of school had rung, Ryuunosuke rushed to
the one-room apartment in the back of the school store. "I'm
goin' out with Ran! I have a second chance!" He dropped the wool
plebe coat that buttoned up the neck as soon as he got in the
door, "This time! This time!" He headed straight for the alcove
with the deep cement sink, pulling up his white T-shirt, "This
time: I will do it! I am prepared, now! I know what to expect!"
He tossed the shirt away "This time, I Will ask her! I won't
take no for an answer!"
In his haste, he fumbled at the knot that kept the long cloth
bandage strip in place "Girls! Girls, they're... Girls are...
Girls are Wonderful!" he told himself. "Girls are the most
wonderful things there are..." he smiled at the thought of them,
as he pulled out the ends of the bandage from where they'd been
tucked in to further tourniquet them. "And Ran is the cutest: The
most Girl of Girls!" Ryuunosuke, at last, could unwind the strip
of cloth that was so tightly wound around his chest that day as
one had been everyday for five years. If anybody asked about it,
his father would say his son had injured himself. Anybody who
knew the Fujinami family at all knew that the way father and son
yelled and fought each other (everyday, in every way) it was no
wonder that Ryuunosuke would be injured. "A guy'd hafta be a
fool not to get what he can from her."
His ardor took sudden flame: "Yes! With her, I can do it! I will
be a girl!!" he said holding the bandage in a hand while his
good size tits now swung free in the daylight coming from the
many paned window in front of him.
"Ryuunosuke! Ryuunosuke! You dog, you! You, Don Juan! You, chip
off the your Old Man's block!!" declared a craggy and weather-
beaten man in the white pants and shirt of a beachcomber, and a
woven virility belt around his waist.
In his haste Ryuunosuke'd left the sliding double doors open!
"Stay out of the lav when I have nothing coverin' my chest!!"
he ordered his father, as he put his right arm across his tits,
the hand in a tight fist, like the other.
"Men do not have to be modest among each other!"
"I am not a man!!" he roared the monotony that echoed his whole
life. "I'm a girl!!" he cried, lashing out with all the power his
left fist possessed at the man who'd ruined his life.
"Nonsense!" his father easily got out of the way on tiptoe. "Your
dating proves that you are, at last, a man!"
"We were through this crap the last time I went out with Ran!" he
turned around after the momentum had carried him out of the
alcove in the one room apartment. "I don't date!! I'm doing this
to get the straight skinny on how to be a girl!!"
"Just like an inexperienced boy! Say what you want, your actions
always make your father proud of you, Ryuunosuke! You leave a
callow lad, but you'll come back a man!" And he held up two white
Japanese rooting fans with the red circles on them: "Score!
Score!"
"Why you!!!" Ryuunosuke screamed with all his might, running at
the demon with his left fist out stretched, his right cocked over
his chest.
"Do you think you can score?" his father smiled, challenging him
to get a blow to him.
At the last possible moment, Ryuunosuke unleashed his right punch
while replacing it with his left to cover his tits.
At the last possible moment, Fujimi Fujinami moved his chin to
the side.
Ryuunosuke fell back into the lav area.
The Old Man looked in past the door. His son was bent over the
sink, his right holding onto the rim, his left arm still over his
chest, and his cheek against a cracked pane. "You should've freed
your hands!"
+++
Ataru came into the apartment from the school store, "Ryuu-chan!
Don't do this! Only men and women belong together! Let me show
you what dating a man is like!"
"My son will never date another man!" Fujimi Fujinami declared.
"What do you think he is!? A pervert?!"
Ataru's girl-trained senses quickly found, on the paper panes of
one of the sliding double doors across the alcove, the silhouette
of a girl's form. Form!! It looked like she wasn't wearing any
clothes!! "Ryuu-chan!!" he cried, racing at the door, ignoring
her fight-crazy father.
The father simply smiled under his thick eyebrows.
A fist broke through the door and Ataru ran into it. He fell
unconscious to the green tatami-mat floor.
"See!? See, my son!?!" his father said, coming over. "This is
what happens when you let boys think you're interested in boys!"
"I never let him think I'd date him! I don't want to date boys!!"
Ryuunosuke cried, ripping a hole in enough of the paper door
panels to stick his head through. "The thought makes me want to
puke!"
"Spoken like a true man!" his father said, reaching down and
picking up Ataru.
"I'm A Girl!!" his years of conditioned reflexes forced him to
scream and lash out at the man. He broke through the sliding
door, and into the room.
He really was naked.
His father was leaving with the pervert Ataru over his shoulder.
Ryuunosuke hurried back through the door to finish cleaning up.
He didn't have the time to go to a public bath, so he had to do
it this way. He ran enough water to wet the bar of soap, and then
lathered up his body; he would then go back over the area with a
damp cloth.
It was always strange when he got to his tits. He was used to
feeling them tightly, even painfully squashed up against his pecs
(and with the amount of upper body exercise his fighting gave
him, they were well-developed muscles). Unbound, the tits dangled
and rolled like something unreal...even ethereal. They were not
really a part of him, but the ghostly, the haunting reminder of
what he could-Should-have been!
He knew he could not stay there any longer; he moved down to his
hips and butt. This was only body he'd know; puberty was slow
enough, and his dad had provided enough distractions, for him to
get use to its curves. And it wasn't all that round; even in the
T-shirt and shorts he'd wear at the Hama tea shop on the beach,
he would be mistaken for a boy.
When his hand moved to his groin... He did it as quickly and
matter-of-factly as he could. He sometimes wondered what it would
be like to have a cock. He knew they bulged in swim trunks and
pants in many different ways. But every time he'd had a chance to
actually see one, he'd turned away in shame and disgust. That's
how he felt when he thought about having one as a man. While,
when he thought about having one as a girl... would mean coming
to terms with what he did have in place of a cock. Ryuunosuke was
very careful around his own tiny, little cock; he was afraid of
what his fantasies might reveal.
+++
"There you are, Ataru!!" Lum said flying over to the just
awakening boy who'd been put out with the school garbage. "Are
you ready to give up this interference, and come home with me?"
"Never!" he sat up in the garbage from a couple of busted plastic
bags. "For the sake that is all righteous and virtuous, I, Ataru
Moroboshi, must save those girls!"
"You just want to date them yourself!" she tried to burst his
pretentious bubble.
"Of course! That would prove they were saved!"
"Then we'll end up going through what happened the last time,"
Lum sighed.
"History does Not repeat itself! That is a bald-faced myth!" he
declared getting up and out of the garbage.
"No, it doesn't. They say that the second time is a farce."
"The first time was a farce!"
"Then, what will it be this time?" Lum asked herself with that
cross-eyed innocent look.
"There's not going to be a next time!"
"Dahling!!" Lum threw her arms and herself around him. "You have
given up!"
"No! I'm going to learn from history!" Ataru smiled with great
determination in his eyes. "I'm going back in time, and Not do
what made my noble mission a failure!"
"I was the reason you couldn't go through with your plans!"
"Exactly!"
"And how are you going to go back in time without me?"
Ataru wanted to scream; instead he smashed his fists down onto
thin air, as he bowed his head.
+++
Ryuunosuke was now in front of the dresser. "(Hunh!) We can't
even afford a towel large enough to cover my body," he grumbled,
pulling up his boxers. "Just small Japanese towels."
"You better hurry up! You don't want to keep the girl waiting!"
his father said, seeing that his son'd rewrapped his chest in the
bandages.
"I'm hurryin' as fast as I can!" he yelled, holding up his T-
shirt for emphasis as he nearly looked over his shoulder. "Tea
parties are supposed to begin at four!"
"Tea parties? You're not actually going to a tea party,
Ryuunosuke?!"
"I am," he stated, as he pulled on the fresh T-shirt.
"What kind of a date is that for a man?!"
"It's not a date! I'm not a man! I'm a girl!!" he spun around,
ready for another attack.
But his father only had a gleam in his eyes. "I'll save this
fight until after I find out how your date went."
Still not trusting the man, Ryuunosuke decided to put on his
white oxford shirt first; he wouldn't want to have his legs
caught in pants when his dad did attack him. "Why're you gonna
wait?"
The father sat down at the only other piece of furniture in the
room, a small low Japanese table. "It'll be horrible, if the girl
gets turned off because your body got beaten up right before your
date."
"It's not a date," he said, yet again, having put his arms in one
at a time. "And you said that the last time I went out with Ran."
"See!? I am consistent in my views!"
"I wish you weren't," his frown deepened, buttoning the shirt,
now. "Then I woulda had some chance to know what it feels like
to be a girl."
"(Ha! Ha! Ha!) That's what a date is for!"
"I said "feels like to be a girl" -Not what a girl feels like!! I
already know that!!" He hadn't even finished buttoning his shirt,
and here he was ready to get into that fight he didn't want to
get into. Not now. Like his dad said: Wait until he saw how his
time with Ran went!
He went back to buttoning, "But that's exactly why I am goin'
out. There is no girl who knows more how to be a girl than Ran."
+++
Lum had her own personal yellow tiger-striped UFO saucer levitate
Ataru up inside. Everywhere he looked there was equipment (all
without square corners) straight out of pre-Star Trek sci-fi
shows or comic books. If it did not look high tech alien, it did
not belong in view, he thought.
"I knew you'd have a time machine! You have a ray gun for
everything! If it's not a ray gun, then its something so weird,
nobody in their right mind could think of it!"
Lum, now in the yellow tiger-stripes that were the national
colors of the Oni race of Uru (the bikini-style reflecting the
fact that she hadn't been officially recognized as married),
explained, "I have one of everything. I am a space princess.
What would it look like, if another space princess had something
I didn't have?"
"Why couldn't those other space princess think the same way, and
want me!?" he wanted to sulk.
"Because you're somebody only somebody who loves you could want?"
Lum said, kneeling in front of a piece of equipment that looked
like a one-legged metal table coming from the floor-deck. In the
middle of it was something that looked like a teacup.
Ataru walked over to the table. "Don't I get any tea?"
"This tea isn't for drinking. This tea is for time traveling!"
"What?" Ataru said, dropping down to sit Japanese-boy-style,
knees wide out. "Are you saying all we have to do go back in time
is to drink some tea?"
"Of course not!" Lum smiled at the idea. "The tea is to provide
the time tunnel swirling effect as we go back in time!"
"What??" Ataru asked, clueless.
Lum pulled out a little doohickey from the bikini top. "This is
the time machine!"
"That little thing's going to open up time for us?"
"The real time machine is already at the time between time. This
is like a doorbell button! It's keyed to me, personally!" Lum
smiled. She wasn't about to tell him she had more than one time
machine, each working under different principles. (Like she'd
said, a space princess had to have one of everything!)
"Well," Ataru eyed it, "At least it's a machine, not some stupid
tea. But you sure I can get in?"
"If you're with me!" she smiled, and dropped the doohickey into
the cup.
Before Ataru could ask, now what? he found himself slurped in,
and going down the drink! "LuMUUUU!!!" he screamed.
+++
In still unaltered time:
Ran was in her UFO saucer. She was out of her school sailor suit,
and in her normal Earth attire: A twirlable midi dress (this time
white with pink trim) with petticoats, a wide bow behind her
waist, and some simple frills to soften the edges, and (pink)
heels.
Unlike her fellow Uruan, Lum, Ran did not like to display all of
her technology. Her spacecraft had been modified by a program
labeled "Euro-kitsch, Japanese Translation". Kitsch, kawai,
girly, or cutesy, whatever a local called it, that's how she
wanted the world to see her. That's what she felt like: And it
was all Lum's fault!!
Unbidden, another old childhood memory resurfaced: They were very
little girls at school. There were rows of tables, and Ran and
Lum were sitting at a middle one; they were just about the only
humanoids in the class. The rest were what the humans would call
monsters, but that wasn't why Ran and Lum sat next to each other.
Ran's mothership was parked within a flying-scooter ride of Lum's
mothership. And there were hardly anybody else on the planetoid
they lived on. (Lum's father was "Mr. Invader", and Ran's mother
was "Mrs. Enforcer". And though she did not understand it at the
time, her family was key to the alliance of the Oni and Gaki
races; their Gestapo tactics carried over to the way they raised
their child.)
Lum was in her yellow tiger-striped short strapless shift, and
she was in her opaque angelic gossamer one. (Did they ever have
hair that short?) "I'm almost finished with my temporal transmat
for arts and crafts!" she said merrily.
"I'm adding something extra to mine!" Lum said, her little tongue
out as she worked with only the molecular manipulation tools they
allowed kids to play with. "A Random Access Memory!"
"Oh, no, Lum! Don't you remember what they said about Chaos
Theory?!"
"A little chaos is fun! Oops!"
"What did you do, Lum!?!!" Ran cried, worried about the end of
time.
"My hand just slipped," Lum told her worrywart friend.
"Slipped!!?!" Ran went very pale at the thought.
Suddenly Errp the Anuran inflated its throat, and croaked at her,
"This is all your fault!!" This surprised Little Ran so much, she
cried.
"Sensei!" Ocho the Octopian said, as he embraced Errp with all
eight of his arms.
The whole class began to chase each other, all saying they loved
this monster, or that monster, but few saying it to the monster
who said they loved them. They didn't care if Ran was in their way,
they'd run right over her, even as she sat at the table. And if
somebody got caught, they fought them off as they tried to get to
the one they said they loved. Again, they didn't care if Ran got
mixed up in their frays. And the worst part, what made her cry even
more was: Nobody said they loved her!!!
No one trampled Lum; who was laughing and clapping her hands,
thoroughly amused.
In the middle of this, the Mrs. Janus, the Siamesean humanoid
female with two fronts and no back, stormed over to Ran, and
yelled at her: "You leave my Dahling alone!! I won't let you suck
the youth out of him!!"
The teenage face of Ran's present being was anything but cute, as
rage filled every fiber of her being, her fangs showing: "I see,
now, that was the future Lum that yelled at me. Traumatized me
because I thought the teacher was yelling at me for something I
hadn't done! If that hadn't been the feedback tension of the
quantum string from around the nexus point that chaos might've
lasted longer than a few minutes!
"Lum..." Ran's voice took on a terrible tone, "I have always been
at the wrong end of your reckless pranks. One day, one day: I
Shall Get My Revenge!!! Bwa-Ha! Ha! Ha..."
+++
Ataru saw that he Was in a swirling of something that was tea
colored. It would have been more dramatic if cream and sugar had
been added. But this was traditional Eastern tea, not the Western
stuff that came in a bag; there were tea dregs everywhere. If he
knew how to read tealeaves, he would have had an idea of just how
bad his luck was going to be this time.
"Dahling! Hold my hand!" the bikini-clad alien said to him,
reaching out her hand for him.
"Why should I!?!" he asked, keeping his hands to himself.
"If we don't stay together, we might get separated!"
"Good!" he told her, putting both hands behind his back, and away
from her. "Then I can change time without your-" And just like a
skater spins faster with his limbs in, so, now, too, did Ataru!
"Lum!!" he wanted her to hold his hand now: Any hand! A foot,
even! He fought against momentum and put his limbs out until he
was spinning less quickly. But now he was no longer spinning
smoothly; his thrashing about was sending him out of control,
deeper and deeper into the teacup of time. "Lu-Ummmm!!..."
"Ataru!!" Lum yelled, using her flying power to try and reach
him.
+++
In still unaltered time:
Ryuunosuke was dressed in his best clothes, the same clothes he'd
worn the last time he'd gone out with Ran. He had on black,
polished oxford shoes, and a white oxford shirt, his slacks were
navy blue, and his sweater-vest was gray; he even wore a
correctly noosed red tie. Maybe it was a little stupid wearing
this when he wanted to know how to be a girl; but you dress up
for a girl like Ran, right? After all, he was going out with
somebody special, and these were the best-his Only best-clothes
he had.
"Once I know how to act like a girl, people won't ever think of
me as a guy, again! I can wear dresses, and nobody'll stare, and
point, and say I'm just a stupid guy in a dress! I can relax, and
be the girl I was meant to be! I could then... I could then
wear..." and a mirage, like the kind that pull men lost in a
desert after them, appeared before his thirsty spirit, "...a
girl's school uniform... sailor suit... fuku!"
The problem with this fantasy vision was that Ryuunosuke wasn't
in it; Ran was.
He at last came to a vacant lot. There on top of its grass knoll
was the pink UFO saucer. The ramp was down, as if welcoming him.
+++
Ataru felt like a drip as he fell back into time.
"Ataru! Ataru!" It was Lum's voice! She had followed him. He
couldn't even get rid of her in time! Maybe what she'd told him
earlier was all a lie!
"Shinobu! Shinobu!" a preschool little boy who looked more than
just vaguely familiar called out.
The little dark brown haired girl ran from the little boy.
But he caught her. Only to be shocked by the cloth Lum doll
holding onto the back of his head.
But that didn't stop him: He immediately chased the teenage
beauty Sakura.
And got shocked again, while the real bikini-clad Lum flew
overhead. "Ataru! When are you going to learn your lesson?" she
said as she watched the little boy glom onto every girl, teen,
and pretty woman he came upon, only to be shocked again and
again.
+++
In still unaltered time:
Ran looked at the mega-huge close-up of the one and only true
love of her life, the Oni Rei, arguably the handsomest male
humanoid in the universe. She set the tray with her daily
offering of food before the shrine, "Don't look at me that way!
No! No! It's you, and only you, I wish to date! There is no other
in my heart!"
She crawled up on the table, getting closer to her idol, "But
you're not here! A girl can't sit home and wait every evening! I
need to keep in practice, for when you do call for me!"
"Oh, yes, I know! I wish I wasn't stuck on this primitive planet,
too! But, soon, soon, I promise, there will be no more Lum for
you to love, and you can give me all of your attention!" Ran
kissed the picture of the giant screen.
"Yes!! Yes!!" she hopped down, and kept on hopping. "You do
understand!"
The doorbell chimed.
"Until after the date, when I tell you all about it!" she said,
pressing a button to have the screen draw a curtain over the
picture. ""That will prove you have nothing to be jealous over!"
+++
"What kind of monster are you, electrocuting little kids!!" Ataru
screamed.
"I wasn't electrocuting you! I was trying to condition you not to
chase after girls!" the second bikini-clad Lum, the one he'd tea
traveled with, defended herself.
"Well, you failed! I still chase girls!" he stabbed himself his
thumb, proud of his words.
"I could try it again!" Lum brightened.
"No you can't!!" he ordered.
"You're right," she sighed.
"I am?" he looked at her suspiciously.
"History cannot repeat itself. We cannot do the same idea over
again without a significant change in plot."
"Is that why we're back way before Ran's and Ryuunosuke's first
date?"
"We're back here because you wouldn't hold my hand when I asked
you to!"
+++
In still unaltered time:
"Uh,... Hello, Ran," Ryuunosuke stumbled.
"Ryuunosuke!" Ran greeted him with good cheer. "You really
should not've met me at my place. And not so early! It's not
something a gentleman should do!" she was serious, but her tone
told him that she forgave this boy so very na
By Ron Dow75
It was a typical day at Tomobiki High School: "A boy went into
the girls' room!!" a long raven-haired girl yelled in the hall.
Lum yelled, "A-ta-ru!" giving off lightning flashes within her
long blue sailor suit, and flying off for the door.
There was a cheer from the by-standers, as both female and male
commented:
"Moroboshi is going to get zapped!"
"Moroboshi always gets zapped!"
"And somehow he always survives."
"That pervert only has one thing he's lucky at, surviving!"
Lum declared, "Ataru! This is too much, even for you!!" as she
flew over the stalls.
The girls within yelled their displeasure with Lum looking down
on them while they were in the awkward position.
The alien with the long green hair and the two small yellow horns
sticking out from it ignored all else but her hunt for the
Greatest Lecher in the Galaxy, her husband! It didn't take long
for her to find somebody dressed in the boys' black plebe uniform
squatting over the Japanese toilet in the floor!
"Dahling!! How many unforgivable things do you think I can
forgive you for!!?"
The boy in the stall first tossed up his leather book bag, then
the toilet paper up at the space princess; but with the speed of
one born and bred to the martial arts, he snapped off the end the
latter. By the time Lum had knocked the bag out of the way, and
burned the roll to ashes with her lightning attack, the black
haired boy had wiped his crotch, from front to back, and tossed
it in the toilet bowl. Then the bolt of lightning got through.
He stood up. Unsinged. "What ya do that for, Lum!?!"
Lum blinked at her unhurt victim, "Ryuunosuke??"
A girl asked, "Ryuunosuke's in here?!"
The mild mannered student of Tomobiki High frowned, "Now, look
what you did," zipping up his pants.
Another girl said, "The thought that I'm in the next stall!"
Lum said, "I'm sorry, Ryuunosuke! But a girl said-"
Ryuunosuke said, "(HmmH!) She must be new to the school."
Taking a breath like a martial artist would give himself just
before meeting a challenge, Ryuunosuke opened the stall door,
and went out.
"Ryuunosuke is in here!"
"Should he really be allowed in here?"
"Who cares! Just the thought of it makes my day!"
"Oh-woo! I have to go back into the stall!"
Lum looked down at all the silly human girls, and yelled,
"Ryuunosuke is a girl!!"
One girl giggled, "I don't care."
Another declared. "That makes him the perfect boyfriend!"
A third simpered, "Yes!" "He's got more machismo than all the
boys around here combined!"
Two girl friends declared, "And he doesn't have to prove it!!"
as they held hands in a shared gush.
Lum flew down so she didn't have to see what the girl who'd gone
back into the stall was doing. "I'm sorry, Ryuunosuke!"
The brunette with the dark mood grunted, "(HnH!)" putting his
hands in his pockets as he ambled his way past the girls looking
at him with goo-goo eyes. "It happens all the time."
Lum found that she had to get in front of him, because the girls
wanted to close in around, and follow in his wake. "Ryuunosuke,
may I ask a question?"
He said, "You're not gonna ask me for a date, too?" If it was a
joke, he asked it without any humor.
Lum asked, "I just want to know how come you weren't
electrocuted?"
The one, whose life had left her looking like a cute, disengaged
boy in the semi-long, barely combed hairstyle of the day, said,
"Your attack has one flaw. Your adversary has to be grounded."
Lum stopped. "I knew that." But not too many on Earth seemed to.
If they, now, started doing things like wearing shoes with
insolating soles...
+++
Ataru Moroboshi looked around, up and down the school hall. The
brown haired, rather homely looking boy cackled, "I don't see Lum
anywhere. (He, ha, hah!) I escaped from your fangs again!" Of
course, he knew she would be in his next class; she was in all of
his classes (even gym!). But it was the principle of the thing!
He didn't ask to be married (Not to her, anyway). He saved the
world single-handedly from alien invasion! He should have gotten
a reward, not this life sentence!
A door opened, and he knew which one it was without having to
look. And what did he see when he did look? A parade of five
girls led by one boy.
That wasn't a boy; that was: "Ryuu-chan!!" Ataru grinned, rushing
for her.
Lum was the last to leave, and was just in time to see what
happened.
Ataru went crashing through the second floor hall window, while
Lum zapped her husband for good measure.
He had the further misfortune to fall on a small alien with one
little yellow horn who had just happened to be toddling along
over the school.
All Oni had one special power. Jariten's was fire-breathing.
+++
"Ten!!" The smoldering Ataru yelled from the now smoldering,
defoliated bush he'd landed in. "If I hadn't been singed already
by your cousin Lum, that'd hurt!!"
Looking up at the broken window: "That was Lum-chan's lightning
flash I saw?" asked the very little kid (his yellow tiger-striped
trunks were often called diapers) who was her most loyal of her
kin.
Ataru cried, "What did you think it was?!!" shaking a fist at
the second most obnoxious of the aliens he'd had the misfortune
to meet. Maybe the most obnoxious: Lum, at least, looked like a
beautiful girl. And she liked to wear that tiger-striped bikini.
If she didn't insist she was his wife, he might actually chase
her.
Ten answered, "With you around, I though something had happened
to a science project, or school projector."
Ataru insisteed, "I'm not that unlucky!!"
A sentence was pronounced, "You are the unluckiest boy in the
world." From out of nowhere, it was Cherry, the short, chinless,
frog-faced Buddhist monk with the huge lobes.
Both of them cried, "YAAA!!!"
Ten breathed fire on him; then Ataru hit him over the head with a
very large wooden mallet. The later only served to break the char
off of the mad monk. Which left the potbellied gnome in just a
loincloth.
The monk asked, still on his feet, despite the large lump on his
bald dome, "Do you not want to mitigate your bad luck, or not?"
Ataru told him, "A man makes his own luck!!"
"Exactly."
+++
"Lum-chan! Lum-chan! Wait up!" asked a very kawai schoolmate with
very long, naturally curly maroon hair and a narrow ribbon in its
side. The sailor scarf under her middy collar was red, not yellow
like Lum's.
Ryuunosuke stopped at the sound of her voice, "Ran."
The human girls saw his reaction, and, grumbling, walked as
gracefully away as their hurt pride could. They knew they could
not compete with the most girlish of girls.
Lum said, "Ryuunosuke! Remember, you're a girl!" coming down next
to him.
Ryuunosuke frown, "I know I'm a girl," as he turned to look upon
Lum's oldest and dearest childhood friend.
Breathing a little hard from the short jog, Ran was still able to
speak, "You promised to have tea on my UFO!"
Lum asked, "When did I promise that?" her eyes took on that
vacant, slightly cross-eyed innocent look she'd practiced so hard
to get.
Ran sounded disappointed, "Oh. Then I guess I'll just have to
find some other amusement. Perhaps a date with your Ataru!"
Lum demanded, "Ran! You leave my husband alone! I'm the only
one he can date!"
Ryuunosuke stammered, "Er, Ran, uh, if you want to do
something, that is, uh..."
Ran beamed, "I'd love to, Ryuu-chan! That is, if Lum objects?"
Lum told her, "I object!"
Ran's said, "Goodie!" delighted.
Lum asked, "Ran-chan, why won't you believe Ryuunosuke's a
girl?"
Ran answered, "Silly Lum! Have you realized that Ataru cannot
return your love? Is that why you're staking your claim on the
only real man at this school?" And she fluttered her eyelashes at
her target, "Perhaps in all of Greater Tokyo."
Lum nearly cried in frustration. "This is not about me, Ran!"
Then to the other party, "Ryuunosuke, why would you want to go
out with Ran?!"
Ryuunosuke said, "Nobody wears a sailor suit better," lost in
admiration.
+++
Somehow, the penniless monk had managed to produce and put on a
new robe. He noted, "This is an unusually long break between
breaks."
"Do you think Lum-chan may have blown some fuses?" little Ten
asked, looking up at the windows as he hovered five feet above
the ground.
"If the bells don't tell me to, I'm not going to classes," Ataru
cackled, leaning against a wall, his black plebe coat was
completely unbuttoned and open, now, revealing his red T-shirt.
"You are just delaying the inevitable," Cherry said.
"Death is inevitable. But I live for the moment! If I live enough
moments, then I won't die. Infinity also get small."
Ten frowned, "Is that how you've been able to survive?"
"It is a logic worthy of a mystic," Cherry said.
"If there are no classes, Lum-chan can play!" Ten smiled, put-
putting up towards the broken window.
A passing jet stream caused the little boy to spin like a ball in
mid-air.
"Ataru!" Lum cried, swooshing down from the busted window. "Ran
and Ryuunosuke are going on another date!"
"Ran-chan and Ryuu-chan!!?!" Ataru cried, suddenly erect and
alert. "Girls should not date girls!! That is against all of
morality! Against the very Laws of Nature! Without the proper
functioning of Nature, where would the World be! Were would Japan
be!?!! It threatens to upset the very foundation of our national
security! For the sake of future generations, we must rescue them
from their misguided straying from the path of virtue, and set
them on the path of righteous love!"
Cherry's staff with the bells tripped the boy before he'd made
two steps. "They do not need your luck. Let Ryuunosuke's luck
handle this."
"Luck!?! Luck!!?" Ataru yelled, shaking his fist at the most
obnoxious human of all time. "If poor Ryuu-chan had any luck,
would that girl who had every right to be a vision of loveliness
be bound by the lie that she's a man!?!!"
"Cherry's right, Dahling! You will only cause more trouble; like
you did on their last date," Lum said, hovering above him.
"And what of Ran's own luck, Lum," Cherry suggested.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Cherry," Lum said,
trying not to let any guilt show.
"Since you were little girls, she's only had bad luck when she's
near you."
"Ah-HA!!" Ataru was up on his feet to accuse, "Lum's a carrier!
She's the reason for all of my bad luck, too!!"
"You were bad luck before Lum showed up!" Jen told him, floating
down to nearly an arm's length to him, ready to spit fire on him.
"Human weird luck when added to alien weird is Super weird!!"
Ataru told him.
"Cherry is right," Lum admitted her guilt. She hung herself in
the air. "No wonder my best friend in the universe hates me while
she loves me."
"Ran has a real Jekyll and Hyde personality disorder," Cherry
said.
"Stop spreading lies about fair damsels!!" Ataru cried as he
kicked the monk so hard he landed in a tree.
Still slumped over in mid-air, Lum said, "Perhaps we should
listen to Cherry, and stay out of it this time."
"Listen to Cherry!? Never!! Not when it involves cute girls like
Ran-chan and Ryuu-chan!" Ataru declared, his eyes afire.
Lum became less of a dishrag: "Now I know we should stay out of
it! The only reason I told you was because the last time they
went on a date, we went on a date."
"It wasn't a date!!" Ataru yelled at her.
Ten finally made it up to the level Cherry was draped over some
tree branches. "Why did you interfere to stop trouble? That's not
like you."
"I am a mysterious monk with motivations beyond the reasoning of
the uninitiated."
"The only motivation you have is, 'what can I do to get something
to eat'?"
"That reminds me: Lum! If you're not going on a date, that means
you'll be eating at the Moroboshi's, right?! It is a good deed to
give a bowl of rice to a-"
Lum's response was to scream, and send out such a massive bolt
from her body that the charred, again, monk was sent falling down
the split that had opened up in the tree.
+++
As soon as the last bell of school had rung, Ryuunosuke rushed to
the one-room apartment in the back of the school store. "I'm
goin' out with Ran! I have a second chance!" He dropped the wool
plebe coat that buttoned up the neck as soon as he got in the
door, "This time! This time!" He headed straight for the alcove
with the deep cement sink, pulling up his white T-shirt, "This
time: I will do it! I am prepared, now! I know what to expect!"
He tossed the shirt away "This time, I Will ask her! I won't
take no for an answer!"
In his haste, he fumbled at the knot that kept the long cloth
bandage strip in place "Girls! Girls, they're... Girls are...
Girls are Wonderful!" he told himself. "Girls are the most
wonderful things there are..." he smiled at the thought of them,
as he pulled out the ends of the bandage from where they'd been
tucked in to further tourniquet them. "And Ran is the cutest: The
most Girl of Girls!" Ryuunosuke, at last, could unwind the strip
of cloth that was so tightly wound around his chest that day as
one had been everyday for five years. If anybody asked about it,
his father would say his son had injured himself. Anybody who
knew the Fujinami family at all knew that the way father and son
yelled and fought each other (everyday, in every way) it was no
wonder that Ryuunosuke would be injured. "A guy'd hafta be a
fool not to get what he can from her."
His ardor took sudden flame: "Yes! With her, I can do it! I will
be a girl!!" he said holding the bandage in a hand while his
good size tits now swung free in the daylight coming from the
many paned window in front of him.
"Ryuunosuke! Ryuunosuke! You dog, you! You, Don Juan! You, chip
off the your Old Man's block!!" declared a craggy and weather-
beaten man in the white pants and shirt of a beachcomber, and a
woven virility belt around his waist.
In his haste Ryuunosuke'd left the sliding double doors open!
"Stay out of the lav when I have nothing coverin' my chest!!"
he ordered his father, as he put his right arm across his tits,
the hand in a tight fist, like the other.
"Men do not have to be modest among each other!"
"I am not a man!!" he roared the monotony that echoed his whole
life. "I'm a girl!!" he cried, lashing out with all the power his
left fist possessed at the man who'd ruined his life.
"Nonsense!" his father easily got out of the way on tiptoe. "Your
dating proves that you are, at last, a man!"
"We were through this crap the last time I went out with Ran!" he
turned around after the momentum had carried him out of the
alcove in the one room apartment. "I don't date!! I'm doing this
to get the straight skinny on how to be a girl!!"
"Just like an inexperienced boy! Say what you want, your actions
always make your father proud of you, Ryuunosuke! You leave a
callow lad, but you'll come back a man!" And he held up two white
Japanese rooting fans with the red circles on them: "Score!
Score!"
"Why you!!!" Ryuunosuke screamed with all his might, running at
the demon with his left fist out stretched, his right cocked over
his chest.
"Do you think you can score?" his father smiled, challenging him
to get a blow to him.
At the last possible moment, Ryuunosuke unleashed his right punch
while replacing it with his left to cover his tits.
At the last possible moment, Fujimi Fujinami moved his chin to
the side.
Ryuunosuke fell back into the lav area.
The Old Man looked in past the door. His son was bent over the
sink, his right holding onto the rim, his left arm still over his
chest, and his cheek against a cracked pane. "You should've freed
your hands!"
+++
Ataru came into the apartment from the school store, "Ryuu-chan!
Don't do this! Only men and women belong together! Let me show
you what dating a man is like!"
"My son will never date another man!" Fujimi Fujinami declared.
"What do you think he is!? A pervert?!"
Ataru's girl-trained senses quickly found, on the paper panes of
one of the sliding double doors across the alcove, the silhouette
of a girl's form. Form!! It looked like she wasn't wearing any
clothes!! "Ryuu-chan!!" he cried, racing at the door, ignoring
her fight-crazy father.
The father simply smiled under his thick eyebrows.
A fist broke through the door and Ataru ran into it. He fell
unconscious to the green tatami-mat floor.
"See!? See, my son!?!" his father said, coming over. "This is
what happens when you let boys think you're interested in boys!"
"I never let him think I'd date him! I don't want to date boys!!"
Ryuunosuke cried, ripping a hole in enough of the paper door
panels to stick his head through. "The thought makes me want to
puke!"
"Spoken like a true man!" his father said, reaching down and
picking up Ataru.
"I'm A Girl!!" his years of conditioned reflexes forced him to
scream and lash out at the man. He broke through the sliding
door, and into the room.
He really was naked.
His father was leaving with the pervert Ataru over his shoulder.
Ryuunosuke hurried back through the door to finish cleaning up.
He didn't have the time to go to a public bath, so he had to do
it this way. He ran enough water to wet the bar of soap, and then
lathered up his body; he would then go back over the area with a
damp cloth.
It was always strange when he got to his tits. He was used to
feeling them tightly, even painfully squashed up against his pecs
(and with the amount of upper body exercise his fighting gave
him, they were well-developed muscles). Unbound, the tits dangled
and rolled like something unreal...even ethereal. They were not
really a part of him, but the ghostly, the haunting reminder of
what he could-Should-have been!
He knew he could not stay there any longer; he moved down to his
hips and butt. This was only body he'd know; puberty was slow
enough, and his dad had provided enough distractions, for him to
get use to its curves. And it wasn't all that round; even in the
T-shirt and shorts he'd wear at the Hama tea shop on the beach,
he would be mistaken for a boy.
When his hand moved to his groin... He did it as quickly and
matter-of-factly as he could. He sometimes wondered what it would
be like to have a cock. He knew they bulged in swim trunks and
pants in many different ways. But every time he'd had a chance to
actually see one, he'd turned away in shame and disgust. That's
how he felt when he thought about having one as a man. While,
when he thought about having one as a girl... would mean coming
to terms with what he did have in place of a cock. Ryuunosuke was
very careful around his own tiny, little cock; he was afraid of
what his fantasies might reveal.
+++
"There you are, Ataru!!" Lum said flying over to the just
awakening boy who'd been put out with the school garbage. "Are
you ready to give up this interference, and come home with me?"
"Never!" he sat up in the garbage from a couple of busted plastic
bags. "For the sake that is all righteous and virtuous, I, Ataru
Moroboshi, must save those girls!"
"You just want to date them yourself!" she tried to burst his
pretentious bubble.
"Of course! That would prove they were saved!"
"Then we'll end up going through what happened the last time,"
Lum sighed.
"History does Not repeat itself! That is a bald-faced myth!" he
declared getting up and out of the garbage.
"No, it doesn't. They say that the second time is a farce."
"The first time was a farce!"
"Then, what will it be this time?" Lum asked herself with that
cross-eyed innocent look.
"There's not going to be a next time!"
"Dahling!!" Lum threw her arms and herself around him. "You have
given up!"
"No! I'm going to learn from history!" Ataru smiled with great
determination in his eyes. "I'm going back in time, and Not do
what made my noble mission a failure!"
"I was the reason you couldn't go through with your plans!"
"Exactly!"
"And how are you going to go back in time without me?"
Ataru wanted to scream; instead he smashed his fists down onto
thin air, as he bowed his head.
+++
Ryuunosuke was now in front of the dresser. "(Hunh!) We can't
even afford a towel large enough to cover my body," he grumbled,
pulling up his boxers. "Just small Japanese towels."
"You better hurry up! You don't want to keep the girl waiting!"
his father said, seeing that his son'd rewrapped his chest in the
bandages.
"I'm hurryin' as fast as I can!" he yelled, holding up his T-
shirt for emphasis as he nearly looked over his shoulder. "Tea
parties are supposed to begin at four!"
"Tea parties? You're not actually going to a tea party,
Ryuunosuke?!"
"I am," he stated, as he pulled on the fresh T-shirt.
"What kind of a date is that for a man?!"
"It's not a date! I'm not a man! I'm a girl!!" he spun around,
ready for another attack.
But his father only had a gleam in his eyes. "I'll save this
fight until after I find out how your date went."
Still not trusting the man, Ryuunosuke decided to put on his
white oxford shirt first; he wouldn't want to have his legs
caught in pants when his dad did attack him. "Why're you gonna
wait?"
The father sat down at the only other piece of furniture in the
room, a small low Japanese table. "It'll be horrible, if the girl
gets turned off because your body got beaten up right before your
date."
"It's not a date," he said, yet again, having put his arms in one
at a time. "And you said that the last time I went out with Ran."
"See!? I am consistent in my views!"
"I wish you weren't," his frown deepened, buttoning the shirt,
now. "Then I woulda had some chance to know what it feels like
to be a girl."
"(Ha! Ha! Ha!) That's what a date is for!"
"I said "feels like to be a girl" -Not what a girl feels like!! I
already know that!!" He hadn't even finished buttoning his shirt,
and here he was ready to get into that fight he didn't want to
get into. Not now. Like his dad said: Wait until he saw how his
time with Ran went!
He went back to buttoning, "But that's exactly why I am goin'
out. There is no girl who knows more how to be a girl than Ran."
+++
Lum had her own personal yellow tiger-striped UFO saucer levitate
Ataru up inside. Everywhere he looked there was equipment (all
without square corners) straight out of pre-Star Trek sci-fi
shows or comic books. If it did not look high tech alien, it did
not belong in view, he thought.
"I knew you'd have a time machine! You have a ray gun for
everything! If it's not a ray gun, then its something so weird,
nobody in their right mind could think of it!"
Lum, now in the yellow tiger-stripes that were the national
colors of the Oni race of Uru (the bikini-style reflecting the
fact that she hadn't been officially recognized as married),
explained, "I have one of everything. I am a space princess.
What would it look like, if another space princess had something
I didn't have?"
"Why couldn't those other space princess think the same way, and
want me!?" he wanted to sulk.
"Because you're somebody only somebody who loves you could want?"
Lum said, kneeling in front of a piece of equipment that looked
like a one-legged metal table coming from the floor-deck. In the
middle of it was something that looked like a teacup.
Ataru walked over to the table. "Don't I get any tea?"
"This tea isn't for drinking. This tea is for time traveling!"
"What?" Ataru said, dropping down to sit Japanese-boy-style,
knees wide out. "Are you saying all we have to do go back in time
is to drink some tea?"
"Of course not!" Lum smiled at the idea. "The tea is to provide
the time tunnel swirling effect as we go back in time!"
"What??" Ataru asked, clueless.
Lum pulled out a little doohickey from the bikini top. "This is
the time machine!"
"That little thing's going to open up time for us?"
"The real time machine is already at the time between time. This
is like a doorbell button! It's keyed to me, personally!" Lum
smiled. She wasn't about to tell him she had more than one time
machine, each working under different principles. (Like she'd
said, a space princess had to have one of everything!)
"Well," Ataru eyed it, "At least it's a machine, not some stupid
tea. But you sure I can get in?"
"If you're with me!" she smiled, and dropped the doohickey into
the cup.
Before Ataru could ask, now what? he found himself slurped in,
and going down the drink! "LuMUUUU!!!" he screamed.
+++
In still unaltered time:
Ran was in her UFO saucer. She was out of her school sailor suit,
and in her normal Earth attire: A twirlable midi dress (this time
white with pink trim) with petticoats, a wide bow behind her
waist, and some simple frills to soften the edges, and (pink)
heels.
Unlike her fellow Uruan, Lum, Ran did not like to display all of
her technology. Her spacecraft had been modified by a program
labeled "Euro-kitsch, Japanese Translation". Kitsch, kawai,
girly, or cutesy, whatever a local called it, that's how she
wanted the world to see her. That's what she felt like: And it
was all Lum's fault!!
Unbidden, another old childhood memory resurfaced: They were very
little girls at school. There were rows of tables, and Ran and
Lum were sitting at a middle one; they were just about the only
humanoids in the class. The rest were what the humans would call
monsters, but that wasn't why Ran and Lum sat next to each other.
Ran's mothership was parked within a flying-scooter ride of Lum's
mothership. And there were hardly anybody else on the planetoid
they lived on. (Lum's father was "Mr. Invader", and Ran's mother
was "Mrs. Enforcer". And though she did not understand it at the
time, her family was key to the alliance of the Oni and Gaki
races; their Gestapo tactics carried over to the way they raised
their child.)
Lum was in her yellow tiger-striped short strapless shift, and
she was in her opaque angelic gossamer one. (Did they ever have
hair that short?) "I'm almost finished with my temporal transmat
for arts and crafts!" she said merrily.
"I'm adding something extra to mine!" Lum said, her little tongue
out as she worked with only the molecular manipulation tools they
allowed kids to play with. "A Random Access Memory!"
"Oh, no, Lum! Don't you remember what they said about Chaos
Theory?!"
"A little chaos is fun! Oops!"
"What did you do, Lum!?!!" Ran cried, worried about the end of
time.
"My hand just slipped," Lum told her worrywart friend.
"Slipped!!?!" Ran went very pale at the thought.
Suddenly Errp the Anuran inflated its throat, and croaked at her,
"This is all your fault!!" This surprised Little Ran so much, she
cried.
"Sensei!" Ocho the Octopian said, as he embraced Errp with all
eight of his arms.
The whole class began to chase each other, all saying they loved
this monster, or that monster, but few saying it to the monster
who said they loved them. They didn't care if Ran was in their way,
they'd run right over her, even as she sat at the table. And if
somebody got caught, they fought them off as they tried to get to
the one they said they loved. Again, they didn't care if Ran got
mixed up in their frays. And the worst part, what made her cry even
more was: Nobody said they loved her!!!
No one trampled Lum; who was laughing and clapping her hands,
thoroughly amused.
In the middle of this, the Mrs. Janus, the Siamesean humanoid
female with two fronts and no back, stormed over to Ran, and
yelled at her: "You leave my Dahling alone!! I won't let you suck
the youth out of him!!"
The teenage face of Ran's present being was anything but cute, as
rage filled every fiber of her being, her fangs showing: "I see,
now, that was the future Lum that yelled at me. Traumatized me
because I thought the teacher was yelling at me for something I
hadn't done! If that hadn't been the feedback tension of the
quantum string from around the nexus point that chaos might've
lasted longer than a few minutes!
"Lum..." Ran's voice took on a terrible tone, "I have always been
at the wrong end of your reckless pranks. One day, one day: I
Shall Get My Revenge!!! Bwa-Ha! Ha! Ha..."
+++
Ataru saw that he Was in a swirling of something that was tea
colored. It would have been more dramatic if cream and sugar had
been added. But this was traditional Eastern tea, not the Western
stuff that came in a bag; there were tea dregs everywhere. If he
knew how to read tealeaves, he would have had an idea of just how
bad his luck was going to be this time.
"Dahling! Hold my hand!" the bikini-clad alien said to him,
reaching out her hand for him.
"Why should I!?!" he asked, keeping his hands to himself.
"If we don't stay together, we might get separated!"
"Good!" he told her, putting both hands behind his back, and away
from her. "Then I can change time without your-" And just like a
skater spins faster with his limbs in, so, now, too, did Ataru!
"Lum!!" he wanted her to hold his hand now: Any hand! A foot,
even! He fought against momentum and put his limbs out until he
was spinning less quickly. But now he was no longer spinning
smoothly; his thrashing about was sending him out of control,
deeper and deeper into the teacup of time. "Lu-Ummmm!!..."
"Ataru!!" Lum yelled, using her flying power to try and reach
him.
+++
In still unaltered time:
Ryuunosuke was dressed in his best clothes, the same clothes he'd
worn the last time he'd gone out with Ran. He had on black,
polished oxford shoes, and a white oxford shirt, his slacks were
navy blue, and his sweater-vest was gray; he even wore a
correctly noosed red tie. Maybe it was a little stupid wearing
this when he wanted to know how to be a girl; but you dress up
for a girl like Ran, right? After all, he was going out with
somebody special, and these were the best-his Only best-clothes
he had.
"Once I know how to act like a girl, people won't ever think of
me as a guy, again! I can wear dresses, and nobody'll stare, and
point, and say I'm just a stupid guy in a dress! I can relax, and
be the girl I was meant to be! I could then... I could then
wear..." and a mirage, like the kind that pull men lost in a
desert after them, appeared before his thirsty spirit, "...a
girl's school uniform... sailor suit... fuku!"
The problem with this fantasy vision was that Ryuunosuke wasn't
in it; Ran was.
He at last came to a vacant lot. There on top of its grass knoll
was the pink UFO saucer. The ramp was down, as if welcoming him.
+++
Ataru felt like a drip as he fell back into time.
"Ataru! Ataru!" It was Lum's voice! She had followed him. He
couldn't even get rid of her in time! Maybe what she'd told him
earlier was all a lie!
"Shinobu! Shinobu!" a preschool little boy who looked more than
just vaguely familiar called out.
The little dark brown haired girl ran from the little boy.
But he caught her. Only to be shocked by the cloth Lum doll
holding onto the back of his head.
But that didn't stop him: He immediately chased the teenage
beauty Sakura.
And got shocked again, while the real bikini-clad Lum flew
overhead. "Ataru! When are you going to learn your lesson?" she
said as she watched the little boy glom onto every girl, teen,
and pretty woman he came upon, only to be shocked again and
again.
+++
In still unaltered time:
Ran looked at the mega-huge close-up of the one and only true
love of her life, the Oni Rei, arguably the handsomest male
humanoid in the universe. She set the tray with her daily
offering of food before the shrine, "Don't look at me that way!
No! No! It's you, and only you, I wish to date! There is no other
in my heart!"
She crawled up on the table, getting closer to her idol, "But
you're not here! A girl can't sit home and wait every evening! I
need to keep in practice, for when you do call for me!"
"Oh, yes, I know! I wish I wasn't stuck on this primitive planet,
too! But, soon, soon, I promise, there will be no more Lum for
you to love, and you can give me all of your attention!" Ran
kissed the picture of the giant screen.
"Yes!! Yes!!" she hopped down, and kept on hopping. "You do
understand!"
The doorbell chimed.
"Until after the date, when I tell you all about it!" she said,
pressing a button to have the screen draw a curtain over the
picture. ""That will prove you have nothing to be jealous over!"
+++
"What kind of monster are you, electrocuting little kids!!" Ataru
screamed.
"I wasn't electrocuting you! I was trying to condition you not to
chase after girls!" the second bikini-clad Lum, the one he'd tea
traveled with, defended herself.
"Well, you failed! I still chase girls!" he stabbed himself his
thumb, proud of his words.
"I could try it again!" Lum brightened.
"No you can't!!" he ordered.
"You're right," she sighed.
"I am?" he looked at her suspiciously.
"History cannot repeat itself. We cannot do the same idea over
again without a significant change in plot."
"Is that why we're back way before Ran's and Ryuunosuke's first
date?"
"We're back here because you wouldn't hold my hand when I asked
you to!"
+++
In still unaltered time:
"Uh,... Hello, Ran," Ryuunosuke stumbled.
"Ryuunosuke!" Ran greeted him with good cheer. "You really
should not've met me at my place. And not so early! It's not
something a gentleman should do!" she was serious, but her tone
told him that she forgave this boy so very na