Away to Neverland
xxx
On the nature of Magic and Magical Artifacts.
Magic is change. At its core, every act of magic can, to a greater or lesser degree, be classified as an implementation of a specific change. Whether a change of an items properties, in Transmutative magics, a change of the perception of something, with Illusory magics, or other, less easily quantified changes. Magical energy does not, as some have theorized, bear a true sentience unto itself, but nevertheless it seems to have the rudiments of comprehension, unified by the driving and overpowering desire to cause some kind of change. And change is, always and forever, chaos. This is why, as a learner studies magic, the most complex and intricate of preparations are required to begin with even the most simple of spells. It is not that magic is an orderly thing, and will only respond when called properly. It is because magic is chaos, and when called without proper bindings and shackles, limiting and directing it in even the most minute of details, it will slip free and wreak whatever havoc it can manage in the most unexpected and random of fashions. The simple fact is that, once the secret to the use of magic is understood, it is distressingly simple to do, and magic itself is more than eager to be used, however, by its nature it is not ever 'satisfied' with the magician's intent, and without proper restrain will continue to flow and change things until the user, which by that point is no more than a conduit through which the magic pours itself, can take no more and expires. With experience and diligent practice, of course, the need for such bindings is lessened as the caster learns to shape, contain, use, and restrain the magic through pure force of willpower alone.
Creatures that are intrinsically magical in nature are somewhat different, already being instruments of change, and are covered in their own particular sets of notes.
Moving along, while the nature of magic is limitless and unrestrained chaos, provided that the proper precautions are taken it is typically quite safe for the practicing magician. I will note two particularly important precautions: First, that a magical purgative be taken after any ingested magical concoction has fully run its course, and second, and likely more important given the magician's tendency to collect and hoard things, that any and all magical artifacts or enchanted trinkets not in use should be stored in individual and specifically warded containers. This is because, unlike spells, which have a fixed duration in which the magical energies are 'live', so to speak, and then go completely inert while leaving the effects behind, magical potions and artifacts will continue to have minor, but active, traces of magic for long periods of time. For potions, this time is not easily determined, and for artifacts it lasts for as long as the artifact exists. Both cases are a danger, as the active magic still bears the instinctual desire to change things, and multiple sources of the magical traces will pull and twist at each other until a critical mass is reached and 'something' happens. How long it will take for this point to be reached, and what will happen when it does, is very difficult indeed to determine. Usually, and especially in the cases of ingested traces, these effects can in no way be considered beneficial, however, they cannot occur without two differing traces of magic to pull upon each other. Which is, of course, why purgatives should be taken as soon as possible, because while a single trace of ingested magic is not particularly capable of anything on its own, sometimes the ingestion of potions cannot be pre-planned, and a second trace added to the first will leave the imbiber with the constant threat of suddenly sprouting new appendages, or new organs, or waking up one morning to realize that they have been impregnated with a clone of themselves, which I understand was quite disconcerting when Lord Sparrow made the discovery. Quite obviously, he was forever after exceptionally prompt in purging potion traces from himself, although in retrospect he was somewhat fortunate, as he bore no lasting physical harm from the ordeal. He did, however, spend several years in a mental institution, while his new son was cared for by wetnurses.
On the other hand, simply throwing a number of artifacts into a contained space and waiting to see what happens when magic chooses to exert its will can bear unique and almost always unexpected results, typically far and away beyond what any mortal dabbler in the arts could have managed, for good or ill. I, myself, have unsuccessfully attempted this gambit in my research attempts to find a way to creat a fully sentient, independent doll, and I know of at least one other magical dabbler who seems to go out of her way to attempt to cause this effect as much as possible.
On a final note, living in an environment with high magical density bears no particular effects that I am aware of, as it is naturally inert until an attempt is made to make use of it, save that creatures of a magical nature find it a more comfortable place to call home. This, in and of itself, brings to bear a significant assortment of risks but is a secondary effect at best, not at all related to the quantity of magic itself.
~A brief excerpt from the compiled research notes of Alice Margatroid.
xxx
The first bit of the morning went mostly as planned. Ranma had pried himself loose of the bed as everyone slowly started to wake, and shared around leftover fried meat chunks he'd cooked at some point and then stuffed into non-space. To be perfectly honest, he wasn't sure when, exactly, he'd done this, but it was probably fine, as he'd noted that for some reason, time seemed to cease temporarily for whatever he stored there. Admittedly, he hadn't fully caught on to that until he'd realized just how very, very wrong the time displayed on a watch had gotten, but that was fine too, as keeping food fresh and keeping temperature the same indefinitely was the only real purpose he could think of for such an effect at the moment.
After knocking that food back, they'd left the yakitori lady's home, and less than a minute later Ranma's arm shot upwards, flicking his umbrella out of the ki-pocket through the sleeve of his coat, and it snapped open just as a flock of birds took off overhead, spilling water down directly at him.
And then, as he took a brief moment to bask in the feeling of accomplishment that came from dodging the water that would trigger his curse, he sneezed. This was not in and of itself an unusual event, as bodily functions could and did happen no matter what. What was unusual was that when Ranma sniffled slightly afterwards and reached up, she realized that her hand was too small. It took her several seconds of blank staring before she belatedly realized, in a sort of horrified rush, that she was, indeed, currently female, and that no, it wasn't some trick of the eyes.
"But... no way..." She whispered, umbrella dropping suddenly from nervous fingers.
She quickly withdrew a thermos filled with hot water, usually kept in reserve for sudden emergencies more important than random splashings, which could wait a little, and dumped it over her head. After a moment, he sighed in relief after confirming that he was male again.
"Oh... that's good. I was worried that the trigger had changed entirely... water gives me some control, but sneezing... man, that would have been tough. I guess... that means that there's two triggers now? Geeze, how did that even happen?" He grumbled idly to himself.
"Yeah, not that this isn't fascinating, but we're burning daylight." the yakitori-lady interrupted. "You can freak out once you're out of the forest."
"... Right." Ranma agreed, shaking himself and starting forward again, hesitating only a moment to gather the umbrella he'd dropped.
A few hours passed as the sun slowly moved through the sky, and during that time Ranma felt several sneezes starting, which he was only barely able to avoid. By the time they reached the edge of the forest, he was irritated, and his sinuses were starting to ache.
"Well, it's been fun, kids... but this is as far as I go." the white-haired guide declared, floating down to land on the ground.
"You don't leave the forest? Can't imagine that being good for sales." Ranma muttered quietly. Not quite quietly enough, as it turned out, as she arched an eyebrow and shrugged, pulling out her cigarrettes again.
"Hey. I said I was a yakitori vendor. I never said I made a lot of money off of it. But yeah, I mostly sell to the Eientei rabbits. And Keine, sometimes."
She shrugged and blew out a small cloud of tobaccoo smoke, then turned and waved a hand idly as she started to walk back into the forest.
"Lake's that way. Can't miss it, it's the only lake in Gensokyo. Mansion's on the north shore... you'll find it eventually. Try not to get lost again, 'kay?"
Ranma grunted, then pinched his nose shut as his sinuses tickled, holding it closed until the sensation passed, knowing he was only prolonging the time before an inevitable slip-up.
"Ugh... I'm going to have to sneeze sooner or later. This is the worst. Maybe I should have agreed to learn magic after all? Alice might have known why this happened..."
"I'm sure it'll be fine." The fairy replied. "And anyway, there's nothing saying you can't go back to her place."
"Maybe later. Right now, I'm going to see about finding that gatekeeper. I need to punch someone in the face until one of us can't move anymore."
xxx
When they reached the lake, the first thing that Ranma did, heedless of the curse, was to strip off down to his boxers and undershirt, wade hip deep out into the water, and dunk her head beneath the rippling surface. She held it there until her breath ran out, and she surged back up to gasp in deep lungfuls of air. Sure, she was soaked to the bone now, but her sinuses had quieted and there was now no hint of the headache that had been slowly building since he'd rose. It was, she felt, a relatively even trade of discomfort for discomfort.
"Hey... hey...! Why are you trying to drown yourself, lady?" A childish voice piped, as she rubbed at her eyes.
She almost sighed before opening them, as it was starting to seem like she couldn't go anywhere without running into some distraction or other, and looked up to see what could be mistaken for a young child floating several feet above the surface of the water, staring curiously at her. Well, could be mistaken for a child were it not for the six jagged icicles floating behind her like some kind of detached wings, at least. They were something of a clear givaway that this 'child' was not quite what she immediately seemed.
She ignored the question and turned instead to the other fairy floating nearby.
"Friend of yours?"
"I'm sure it's slipped your mind, but I'd never been to Gensokyo before we came." The fairy responded dryly.
Ranma just stared her down, waiting patiently for an actual answer to the question she had asked. After only a few moments, the fairy sighed.
"That's a no. No, I've never seen her before, inside or outside of Gensokyo's boundary. Really though, do I ask if you know every human we meet, when that's clearly not the case?"
Her pained diatribe went unanswered, as Ranma had mostly stopped listening after the first no.
"Whatever. In any case, I was just soaking my head for a moment. But hey... don't you think introductions should come before weird questions?"
"You never asked the guide what her name was. Not even once." the fairy pointed out, grumbling to herself.
"You should introduce yourself first!" The other, new fairy argued, looking very somber and serious about the declaration as she crossed her arms over her chest. "After all, I live here, so that makes you visitors!"
"Fair enough." Ranma agreed. "Ranma Saotome, wandering martial artist. Don't know her name." She finished as the fairy started to open her mouth, only to shut it with a click and an irritated glower.
"Well, maybe if anyone would listen when I try to say it..." she seethed under her breath.
A delicate waft of mist brushed over her, and she immediately stopped bickering, having suddenly remembered that there was, in fact, a very powerful being around at all times, who could make her existence very painful indeed if she ever started to cross the lines of what was apparently tolerated.
"I'm Cirno! The strongest!"
"... Strongest what, exactly?" Ranma asked after a moment, feeling that this was a reasonable question, and that it needed clarification. Rather than answer, Cirno just seemed to stagger slightly in midair, and Ranma pressed the assault. "The strongest fairy? The strongest girl? The strongest punches or kicks? The strongest brain? The strongest heart? Tell me... what about you is the strongest?"
"I... you... I..." Cirno stammered for a moment, before the other fairy interrupted.
"Hey. Stop toying with her. That's a cruel question. She's an ice fairy."
Both Ranma and Cirno turned blank eyes to her and she sighed, rubbing at the bridge of her nose.
"Fairies are 'eternal', bearing a form of psuedo-immortality, and come into existence with concepts. Rocks, trees, clouds, starlight and moonlight... that sort of thing, to make the parallel clear. There's always rocks, trees, and clouds wherever you go, and so those fairies exist for as long as they do. Not all fairies are lucky enough to be born of permament concepts, though. Things like ice, snow, flowers... these things are seasonal, they come and go. And so, the fairies existence comes and goes with them, unless they're exceptionally fortunate in where they come into existence." She lectured. "A snow-fairy coming into existence near the global poles, for example, where snow exists year-round would functionally be in very little danger. If they aren't so lucky... normally, once spring had come, especially in the sudden and unanticipated fashion that it did recently, a fairy of ice, such as Cirno would have 'melted', fading away to nothing within a day, and a new one would be born to take her place when the next winter came. Simply by having enough innate ability to preserve her existence outside of winter's protection proves that she is quite powerful indeed."
The blank stares continued. After a moment, she sighed and paraphrased herself.
"She should be dead. Because she isn't, that automatcially makes her the strongest ice-fairy I've ever met, at least."
"... Eh, good enough." Ranma decided. "But... on that note, what kind of a fairy are you, anyway?"
"That's a rather personal question, don't you think? In any case, I'm-"
"HEY!" Cirno interrupted, instantly freezing the patch of water that Ranma had been standing in only a moment before. "There's a powerful enemy before you. Pay attention!"
Ranma landed gently on the patch of ice and rolled one shoulder idly.
"So... I guess you want to play with danmaku. What a pain... I have somewhere to be."
Ranma paused, then grinned.
"I have a better idea. You can freeze things, right? I know a little about cold, myself..." She drawled, temperature slowly lowering around herself, until her breath frosted as she exhaled. "So... let's play a little game with that, hm? We'll see who can make it colder."
If Cirno's squeal of delight was any indication, then she was more than happy to comply with this new idea.
xxx
In the end, the competition lasted several hours, and was only called off as a sort-of draw when the fairy dryly pointed out, from beyond the limits of the little game, that the air was starting to liquify from the chill. This was redacted into Cirno's technical victory when it became clear that, while she was relatively uneffected by the long exposure to the ridiculously low tempereatures, Ranma could barely move.
She kindly tossed him into the lake and made idle chit-chat with the other fairy for another hour or thereabouts, while Ranma's muscles slowly thawed. It was another hour after that when Ranma crawled back out, shook herself vaguely like a dog, and collapsed in the noonday sun for another hour or so, until all the feeling had returned to her limbs, and she had recovered her full range of motion.
"You know..." She said, dryly, rising with a soft groan. "Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that whole thing wasn't the best idea I've ever had."
"You think?" The fairy shot back. "Geeze... you should be dead too. Ever since we met, it's been nothing but one freakishly powerful being after the next. Is this normal for you? How are you still alive?"
"That which doesn't kill you, leaves you stronger in its wake. The life of a true martial artist is fraught with peril, and all that. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like all hell going through it, of course. It's like the breaking point... you learn to shatter rocks by being slammed repeatedly with boulders until you learn exactly where and how to strike and manipulate your ki in order to cause a cataclysmic reaction within the stone, and the technique itself isn't even the real point of the training. Through this, I believe I have found a far deeper and more thorough understanding of the nature of 'cold'."
"Do you want to play again?" Cirno asked immediately, with far too eager of a sparkle in her eyes.
"... Not right now. I need time to meditate on what I've learned from this. Next time we play, though, you won't win so easily."
"Oh, 'easily' he says. Do either of them have any idea how cold the air had to get before it started to condense? Everything in the earth below them froze and died. It'll be years before anything can grow in it again." The fairy grumbled quietly, more or less ignored.
"How boring. So! What'cha going to do now?"
Ranma paused, then glanced at the sky, checking the position of the sun.
"I was going to look for someone today, and deliver a formal challenge. I don't know exactly where they are though, only that they're the gatekeepers of a mansion off the north shore of this lake. It might already be too late for that today, by the time I find them-"
"Oh! You're talking about the red house, and the dancing guard!"
"Dancing...?" Ranma asked, bemusedly.
"Yeah! She does funny, slow dances every morning. Like, um... sort of like this."
Cirno began moving her arms and legs awkwardly, in a crude enough fashion that it took Ranma a moment to realize that she was actually pantomiming something very like some kata forms he knew.
"Tai Chi? That's not actually a dance, but it sounds like that's the right place. I don't suppose you could lead me there?" Ranma asked, pulling her clothes and coat back on over mostly-dry underclothes.
"All right, but you have to remember to come back and play with me, okay?"
"That shouldn't be a problem."
"Okay! Follow me!" Cirno declared, instantly speeding off... directly over the lake.
Ranma stared for a moment, then frowned darkly.
"... I can't fly." She grumbled, focusing ki to her feet and preparing to sprint even as Cirno shrank into the distance. The fairy quickly guessed what was about to happen and flitted over to nestle in the coat's hood.
"Alright. Never tried this before, but let's go!" Ranma yelled, shooting off across the water, fast enough not to sink unless she was so foolish as to stop.
As she drew near, Cirno looked backwards over her shoulder and grinned, then sped up further. Fine then. If she wanted to turn this into a contest, then Ranma would happily oblige. The water spraying up behind her doubled in height as she ramped her speed up.
There was no point in passing the fairy by, of course. It wasn't like Ranma had any idea where they were going, so it would be entirely counterproductive. Matching her flight speed, though, keeping right on her tail no matter how fast she went or what way she zigged or zagged, having turned the simple task of leading Ranma around into a game? That, she could do.
Minutes passed, and Cirno finally swerved in towards the water's edge, slowing down drastically. Ranma found, to her unfortunate surprise, that while she had no trouble keeping up the pace, or speeding up, coming to a sudden stop was significantly more difficult. She blew past the ice-fairy, eyes darting for something to use to kill the momentum... tree. There was a tree, not far from the shore. Not particularly tall, but it would have to do... she rocketed forward, slowing herself as much as she could on her own, and then shot vertically up the tree. At the very peak, just before it became too thin for her to control herself, she pushed off into a slow leap and backflip, landing on her feet and sliding backwards until she came to a final stop, back at the waters edge and right next to Cirno.
As the ice-fairy clapped, delighted at the showmanship, Ranma forced a grin and decided to pretend that was what she had intended to do all along.
xx
A.N.
SILLY FAIRY, YOU STILL DON'T GET A PAST. Although, actually, I will admit, I'm considering what her 'youkai power' should be. At the moment, I'm waffling between 'manipulation of color' and 'manipulation of some manner of fruit'. If the second, it could be pomegranates, strawberries, or maybe plums. Hm. Now, you may think I'm trolling you here, but I'm actually not this time. Need I remind you that Heart Is An Awesome Power? Still don't believe me? Alright, we'll start with color. If I go that way, then it would at first be exactly what you're thinking. Change the color of anything into any other color. This seems useless at first, but... who's to say color is limited to the visible spectrum? She changes herself to some color that can't be seen by the naked eye- Bam, invisibility. Or she fiddles around with someone else's colors. You know that thin layer of clear stuff coating your eyeball? Bam, now it's black, and you're blind until she feels like turning you back. Moving along to manipulation of (random fruit). She can manipulate anything about this fruit. Flavor, texture, juiciness... shape, density and rigidness... sharpness and explosive potential... Basically, super fruit hax. I can work with that, or the color thing, although I'll admit that any real use of either would have to wait until she'd both gotten a little bit more powerful in and of her own right, and actually choke down the humiliation long enough to own up to what her ability is, so a more creative person can suggest ways it can actually be used in a combat situation. So, this isn't an immediate thing.
Of course, if any of you peoples out there think of something better, by which I mean 'seems completely useless at first, but there's some way to hack it enough to make a DM openly weep', then I'll probably steal it out of your reviews, when that time comes. So, uh, yeah. Fair warning.
Regarding the lack of China in this episode: I AM A LYING LIAR WHO LIES ABOUT THINGS. Yeah, that ended up being delayed, after my freeze-off plot bunny hit, and I remembered that Cirno's supposed to live in/near the lake, or something. So, uh, yeah. That got delayed a bit. They'll still face off, probably next chapter, and I recently got ahold of that MMD thing (search it on youtube, I guess, because I don't feel like explaining if you don't know), So if I ever figure out how that works, I can probably translate their epic struggle into AN INTERPRETIVE-DANCE BATTLE WHICH WILL MAKE DEMONS WEEP FROM THE BEAUTY, or just punch each other in the face repeatedly. But Awesomely. Eventually.
Oh, hard truth time. I actually don't know, off the top of my head, exactly how cold it has to be before air starts to liquify. If it starts to liquify. Hell, I don't know, it sounded good in my head, and I don't care enough to check up on the SCIENCE! involved in that. I could probably google it but, again, apathy. So yeah.
Hm, glance-through... yeah, Mokou's out of the story now... well, until we hit the plot of IN, anyway, and I'll have to look up which order the games go in before that happens. I think that's next, after I've sufficiently mangled and traumatized the IaMP plot, but I could be wrong, and once that's done there would be in-betweeny plot stuff first anyway, so... yeah, get there when I get there.
Whaaat else... oh, the sneeze thing. Well, I've always felt that there was no way that there could possibly be no aftereffects whatsoever from all the magical crap Ranma ends up involved in, and ingesting, and so... yeah, you aren't buying this at all are you. Not entirely untrue, but I'll admit, I just wanted to screw around with him. So, extra triggers, and justification. And actually, I'm pretty sure it's canon justification, for the Touhou half of things, anyway. I read something, somewhere on the Touhouwiki that corresponds directly to the artifact thing in Alice's notes. It involved stuff in Marisa's house, so I think it was on Marisa's page. Or linked to her page. Or something. Look, I don't remember, but I was reading it while I wrote Alice's Notes Excerpt up there, so I know it's on the site somewhere. I just fleshed it out a bit, that's all, and then linked it directly to Ranma suffering. He will find more gender-swap triggers as time goes by, he has several of them now. It's just that a sneeze happened, so it's the first one he noticed. And they all just switch whatever gender he is currently, and he can still use the appropriate temperature water to change. Not like I locked him, or anything.
... Oh, also. On power/stage rankings and stuff. I'm thinking about being flexible about how stage ranking affects power level and whatnot. Like, maybe this person just isn't any good at Danmaku, or this one is really weak but is good at it so it doesn't matter, or whatnot. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that every character from touhou is already ludicrously powerful. Ranma is also ludicrously powerful at this stage. He fits, more or less, with the rest of the obscenely overpowered cast, it's just that most are more obscenely overpowered than he is. This includes stage one bosses. Seriously, Manipulation of Insects means oh jesus, bees, MILLIONS of BEES, wait, no, those are WASPS, BLAAARGH. And so on. Seriously, if Wriggle was throwing Bee-maku around instead of Danmaku, then nobody would have ever passed IN stage one. Ever. They would swell up, go into anaphylactic shock, and die. Because BEEEEEES. Enough said.
Also, there's a new name on my favorite author's list. Iced Fairy. This person is very good. Laser Eye Surgery, particularly, is one of those 'Best Thing Ever's. Once you're done here, you should take a look at this person. Stories are short but I have no right to complain about such things, and they're good, and I don't get why there are so few reviews. If there were more writers in the Touhou section of FFnet like this person, that would be great.