Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½. Nor do I own 28 days later, which this is loosely based off of.
Divergence notes: The Neko-ken did not occur.
Chapter 1:
In one of many universes it occurred that one Ranma Saotome, age six, was knocked by his father into a cursed pool of Jusenkyo. This, alas, was not the end of troubles for our dear Ranma.. Skipping across the first pool he, now she, fell in a second. Upon climbing out of it his poor, poor, thief and fraud of a father face-planted into a pool of his own.
But the true story begins ten years later:
"Genma you made it!" Genma and Soun clapped each others backs, careless of the rain drenched them. "Quick, come inside."
"It's good to see you, Soun, it's been far too long."
"Where's your son? Wasn't he coming with you?" Soun looked over Genma's shoulder, peering out into the rain.
Genma noticed Soun's three daughters standing in line, whispering amongst themselves. "Ah, yes, the agreement. It's probably best you not mention that to Ranma, there's been a few complications."
"Wahh?"
"Ranma, get down here!" he bellowed into the sky.
"What's up Pops? Is this the house we're staying at?"
Soun immediately fainted as his daughters stared with wide eyes at Ranma's strange form. "What is he?" asked Akane. The nude, female creature floating in front of them seemed to be made entirely of partially opaque air, a few leaves swirling inside her limbs.
"What do you mean 'he'? That is definitely a girl," replied Nabiki. She reached forward to touch Ranma's breast but Ranma danced around her hand without even noticing, sending Kasumi's hair awhirl as she flew into the kitchen.
"Oh my," said Kasumi.
"Some fia-" Akane stopped as Genma motioned her to silence. Soun came to his feet just as Ranma sped back to stand in the open doorway.
"Daddy can I ask EverCloud-sama to put a few holes in the roof? There's not enough windows in this house."
Genma frowned sternly. "What did I say about lightning bolts?"
Ranma cocked her head to the side. "Lightning bad?"
"Indeed."
"Genma, how did this happen?" asked Soun.
"We were cursed." Genma pulled off his glasses, polishing them with a white rag.
"You still look human to me," said Nabiki.
It was at this moment that an acorn struck off Genma's bald head as a number of squeaks came from the shadows of the yard. "They've found me!"
"There's hot water in the kitchen," Ranma informed him, laughing as he sped and dumped the kettle over himself.
Drying himself off, Genma did his best to look unruffled. "I fell into the pool of drowned man hated by squirrels. I return to normal with hot water, but cold water reactivates the effects. My son here was cursed by the springs of drowned air sylph and water nymph, otherwise known as a naiad."
"So he's a pervert then. I've heard about nymphos before," declared Akane.
"I don't think he's that kind of nymph," commented Kasumi.
"How does a water nymph drown in the first place?" added in Nabiki.
Hands protected from the water, Genma draped a sopping-wet black silk robe over Ranma as she shifted from airy sylph to solid nymph form, only a slight point to her ears revealing her supernatural origins.(1)
"So do we get to see her as a male?" asked Nabiki.
Ranma shook her head rapidly. "Daddy you know the clouds get upset when they can't feel where I am."
"Hmm, perhaps later," said Genma. "I'll need to check the roof for leaks first, anyways. If you think this rain is bad you should see what happens whenever he turns back to normal."
"They're just trying to make sure I'm alright," said Ranma. "The mermaid I met said all the sylphs and nymphs moved to a dimension with fewer farts but EverCloud-sama is still worried they died from not getting enough wind and rain." The faces of the Tendo family went slack. "Can I have an apple?"
)Time Skippage(
"I can't believe Pops is making me go to school again. I can learn things just fine on my own."
"I'm sure," said Nabiki incredulously.
"What are you doing up there, anyways?" asked Akane from underneath the sisters' shared umbrella.
"Walking?" Ranma switched to walking backwards along the fence, rain streaming through her hair.
Akane blinked. "Don't you think should be wearing something a bit more substantial?"
"Eh?"
"What she's trying to say is that you look like you stepped out of an adult magazine. Anyone can tell from a glance you're not even wearing a bra under that thing."
Ranma stepped off the fence. "I don't get it."
"You don't get a lot of things, don't you?" said Nabiki condescendingly.
Any response Ranma might have made was interrupted as Akane charged into rain-soaked Hentai Horde. "I hate boys!"
"She's fighting," said Ranma. "Can I fight too?"
"That robe of yours looks like it will fly open in a fight and I suspect Kasumi would never forgive me if I let you get charged with public indecency, so no."
"Public indecency?"
"Think naked men in public," replied Nabiki.
"Eww."
"Are you sure you're sixteen?" Staring into Ranma's guileless face Nabiki just sighed. "Follow me, I'll take you to your classroom."
The first thing Ranma did after introducing herself to the class as a martial artist was open each and every window, causing several girls to glare at her as they threw on jackets. However Ranma fielded the disapproval of the female half of the class and the lust and perverted questions of the male half with equal innocence. "Three sizes? What are those?" Akane, who had just entered the classroom, took the opportunity to deck the boy who had asked that particular question.
"Buckets, Miss Tendo."
Her sodden garments were steaming as she stomped into the hallway, wondering if she should have a match with the boy turned girl to blow off some steam after school or simply hand her a baseball bat and tell her boys equal badness.
Many were surprised to note that Ranma was very nearly fluent in English. "I spent some time in America a few years ago," Ranma informed them. "EverCloud-sama got a little carried away making a hurricane for my birthday so I ended up landing in California. I spent a couple months at the beach there before coming back."
A number of students were understandably confused by references to a hurricane and EverCloud-sama, but they brushed it off quickly enough. Much like with Sunnydale citizens, obliviousness was a virtue in Nerima. "Do you speak any other languages? Perhaps the language of romance?"
"Ya, I speak a little french. I haven't learned Spanish or Italian yet but I do know Portuguese from when EverCloud-sama brought me to the Amazon Rainforest when I was ten. It was amazing there, I don't know why people are so afraid of it. EverCloud-sama's like a funny old grandpa some times, he knows all the cool places in the world." Ranma raised a finger to her lips, pondering what other languages she knew. "Well, I know cloud-speak, of course, and I can say 'hello' and 'food here!' in dolphin-speak."
"Is she serious?" whispered Yuka to Akane.
"She sounds whackier than Kuno," said Sayuri.
"Believe it or not, I think she may actually be telling the truth," said Akane as she vainly tried to scrub the impossibilities from her brain. "Ranma's under a curse. Apparently ten years ago she used to be a guy, but now turns into a girl-thing whenever hit by cold water.
Yuka and Sayuri replied in unison, "No way!"
By sixth period Ranma had resumed sylph form, discarding her robe by the windowsill to let it soak in more rainwater as she lazily floated around the room. The class, particularly its male students, were understandably quite distracted. When the period ended the teacher gladly fled the room. "Ranma, come down here now and put your clothes back on!" cried Akane.
"Don't do it Ranma! We love you as you are!" The boy dropped and begged forgiveness as Akane's eyes swung towards him.
"Come on, Ranma, we need to go to gym class."
Yuka and Sayuri were understandably more open to the idea of a curse after seeing Ranma transform into an elemental being of air. "You're not going to let her change with us, are you?" asked Yuka.
"Ya, I mean she's still a guy, right? I don't want him peeping at us in the shower."
Akane's pervert alarm was tingling but she was having trouble following through with her normal pervert response. "I don't know... maybe if she – he, whatever, keeps her eyes closed. Honestly she seems more like a little kid than anything else."
"Can you bring my robe back to the dojo? I'm going to go exploring!" Akane proceeded to slap her own forehead, drawing her hand down her face as she watched Ranma slip through the screened window without breaking it before flying off into the distance.
"I can see what you mean," said Yuka.
"She might need a leash." Akane and Yuka turned to stare at their now blushing friend. "What? It's just an idea."
Thirty minutes later at the Tendo Dojo Ranma slipped into the kitchen, swirling around the smiling Kasumi. "Hello there, Ranma."
"Hiya Kasumi. Japan is weird. I met a funny man in the woods with red eyes. He was all like 'Rarr!' and then he tried to bite me but I flew away real real fast."
"That's nice dear. I think our fathers are out on the porch."
Slipping slowly through the house, Ranma began to hear a very troubling conversation.
"So that's why you brought him here then. Perhaps the agreement is still possible." Ranma's eye poked around the corner as she made herself as translucent as possible. Soun took a drag on his cigarette as he finished speaking.
"There's a chance, but for now I was hoping your daughters could help him. It would be best if he could spend some time as a male. He's hardly spent three months as one in the ten years he's been cursed but as this point I'm just hoping to make him remember he's still human." Genma made a move on the shogi board. "His mother would probably kill me if she knew he ended up like this. If he likes it here I may try and leave him with you as I continue searching for a cure."
Ranma soundlessly fled upstairs, switching back into naiad form as she sank into the furo's warm waters. The water had no effect on her because of her double strength curse which required boiling water to reverse her form to male. Curled into an unbreathing ball beneath the surface of the water Ranma tried to remember what her mother looked like. 'Is that really what Dad thinks of me?' Unaffected by the lack of air, Ranma watched as her long hair billowed out around her. 'Maybe I should try harder. I don't want Mom to be ashamed of me in Heaven.' Feeling the vibrations of someone's footsteps Ranma lifted her head from the water.
Akane, clad in naught more than a towel, was midway through the process of yelling 'pervert!' and smashing Ranma with the mallet of justice when she spoke.
"Akane, can you teach me how to be human?"
Meanwhile, the muted television downstairs flashed to the technical difficulties screen as the reporter's blood splashed the camera.
()
Footnotes:
Ranma nymph form = Ranma female form from anime for simplicity's sake.
End Chapter 1:
Honestly not sure what I was thinking when I decided to write this, other than that a friend convinced me to watch the ova for High School of the Dead. Anyone who's seen it knows that in a world of zombies anything is possible.
Is Ranma ooc? Possibly. Should this have been filed as a crossover with 28 days later? Perhaps, save for the initial infection occurring in Japan rather than England. Did the nymphs and sylphs truly flee for a dimension with less flatulence? Only God truly knows.
Are fart jokes inappropriate given the seriousness of a zombie plague? Cable Guy Health Inspector forbid.
Please review. This brand of zombies is flame resistent.
P.S. This may actually be the first time in my life I've ever told a fart joke, but I guess we all lose our innocence eventually.
P.P.S. My next update will likely be for Flying with the Fox.