AD&D Plottling Intro (AKA MageOhki wanted RanmatehSunElf)

Step. Step. Strike.

Ranma Saotome, heir to the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts twisted through the air, carving through the space before her with a rising snap-kick. The attack flowed into a series of punches as the redhead's inertia sustained her meager altitude for another few seconds before gravity claimed her once more. She dropped back into the inky mist that obscured the very surface she practiced upon, but ignored the calve-high fog as it swirled in response to her movements. She blurred forward, striking the empty air with a series of blistering punches before executing a feint to roll out of her imaginary opponent's reach.

Around her blurring form, the void persisted; neither truly day nor night. It was an in-between, providing just enough light to see fifty meters in any given direction before fading into an insubstantial ether that lacked form or dimension. Before she had taken to the katas, Ranma had walked. And walked. The nothingness seemed to persist regardless of which direction she chose while she appeared to be its sole inhabitant. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, she turned to the art.

'Stupid wish,' The martial artist grumbled derisively from the privacy of her thoughts, but continued to perforate the air with a flurry of kicks and punches before dropping back, frowning. It was still off. The kata was flawed; not in its content but in her own execution therein. Any witness to her performance would have been hard pressed to even perceive a flaw, but she could. Her timing was off... Her balance not quite right. 'Good enough' simply wasn't in Ranma Saotome's vocabulary and her performance continued to nag at her. It was horribly reminiscent of another time when her balance and timing were off.

Along with her reach, her hair color and her gender.

Ranma frowned at the idea and finally dropped out of the stance to contemplate the hand she had held in reserve to execute another strike. It wasn't hers. She wiggled the dainty fingers as she had already done several times before, as if to test that she was, in fact, their current owner. While she had come into their ownership a couple years back thanks to an ancient Chinese curse, those particular hands bore some resemblance to that of her birth gender. These fingers were not those. They were sun-kissed, almost golden in hue. Their complexion matched that of her arm and the rest of the skin hidden beneath the Chinese silk she wore, seemingly radiating vitality in spite of the dark atmosphere around her.

A supernatural tan was something she could shrug off. The ears, however… Those were a different story entirely. The same fingers that she had been studying drifted to her right lobe and found a long, angular point instead. The index finger that wasn't hers traced along the ridged line of the ear that wasn't hers, absently estimating their length to be nearly X cm. Lacking a mirror, she could only guess at their appearance, but they still weren't hers.

Hell, she wasn't even sure if they belonged to a human.

"Just wonderful," Ranma mumbled aloud, clenching the fingers into a fist before letting her arm drop to her side in futility. How the tan and the ears fit into the wish was beyond her, and for now, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot she could do about it. She was alone in the void, near as she could tell. There was her, the fog and a whole lot of—

"Do you like them?"

Ranma's eyes widened with the female voice and she spun around toward the source of the unexpected question. The martial artist was confronted by the obvious details first as she confronted what appeared to be a woman walking toward her from the shadows. She had long, black hair that floated around her, each strand seemingly traced by a brilliant energy that matched the white power bleeding from her eyes. A cloak lined with radiant stars billowed gently to the same breeze, causing the fog around her to swirl into a minor tempest as she strode out of the darkness toward the redhead at leisurely gait.

The martial artist stood by, waiting in a stance that wasn't. The woman didn't appear to be a threat and certainly didn't have the physique to be one… A physical threat, at least. Ranma could feel the power buffeting her gently as the stranger approached, nor did the armor go unnoticed. She wore a bodice of dark black leather and studs that tapered into a skirt. The outfit showed a generous amount of cleavage and leg, but they went ignored in favor of the potential threat she represented. The martial artist eyed the gnarled wooden staff that accompanied the woman, floating within her personal space as if teathered to some invisible leash.

The strange woman paused, then began a wandering around the Saotome as if to appraise her work. She absently nodded with satisfaction as Ranma tracked her movements around her person, still unsure what to make of her arrival. Seconds turned to minutes and the redhead's patience began to wear thin.

"Don't suppose you wanna tell me what this is all about?" Ranma interjected blandly, gesturing to herself as a whole and capturing the woman's undivided attention for the first time The glowing eyes considered the request for a moment until she replied with a slightly puzzled look.

"You don't like it?"

The mysterious woman sounded genuinely concerned that her victim didn't approve of the alterations, but that didn't stop Ranma's brow from scrunching up in irritation. "Are you kidding? I can't even see it, let alone like it, lady."

"Oh, if that's all…" The woman affected a minor shrug and gestured at the air. Lines of power rose from the mist and began to weave themselves into a coherent structure, taking the mirror set within an elaborately carved oak frame. Ranma's ire immediately stalled upon catching sight of herself in its reflection. The martial artist tilted her head, barely able to comprehend what she was seeing while the woman stood aside, studying the reaction.

The near-golden skin had been somewhat expected, but the entire package was a lot to take in. Ranma found her fingers once again tracing the pointed ears she could now visualize in full, tilting her head to get a better look at them. Her hair had likewise undergone subtle alteration. The vibrant shade of crimson that was a product of her mother's heritage remained, but now it seemed to almost glow at the right angle.

She fingered a lock of hair while leaning into the mirror to study her own face in greater detail. The curse she had come to call her own remained recognizable, but… the proverbial devil was in the details. The porcelain complexion it once held was another casualty to the sun-kissed hue of her skin, while the features themselves had been sculpted to sharper angles. As a guy, she could appreciate the striking beauty inherent in the original curse. That beauty had been transfigured into the exotic spectrum

Ranma's gaze invariably drifted downward to the rest of her body. The changes wrought upon it were more subtle once the unnatural skin tone was discarded as a factor. Her height and figure were roughly the same- if not toned and sculpted to smoothness -and a small portion of her pride continued grumbled at the petite stature she would apparently retain. Not that it mattered much… The curves were still in all the right places and her bust hadn't lost any of its potency. Simply put, the being that Ranma Saotome was all but gawking at in the mirror was luminous beauty incarnate.

Nor was there any way she could be mistaken for human.

Even her eyes had taken on an ethereal note. The familiar blue irises she had spent the better part of two years getting used to had also undergone a subtle change, lightening to a shade closer to that of sky blue. Ranma tilted her head closer to the mirror, eyeing their seemingly liquid composition. The redhead glanced away for a moment, staring at the self-satisfied woman who was presumably responsible for the changes before looking back into the mirror, shaking her head. Ranma pulled open her silk shirt, looking down at the valley of golden perfection before turning back to the woman.

"Ya realize I'm a guy, right?" The martial artist stated without enthusiasm, watching as the woman cocked her head in contemplation.

"Apparently you do not understand the gravity that which has befallen you, so let me elaborate." Any trace of humor drained away from the woman's demeanor as she folded her arms, preparing to lecture the redhead. "This realm is not your own. You do not belong here. Had I not found you and crafted the body within which your soul now resides, you would be little more than a restless spirit fated to the whims of entropy."

Ranma blinked, trying to break down the explanation to its simplest elements and failed. She shook her head outright. "I got no idea what that even means."

Notes—Well, yes. Yes, it does have 'suck' written all over it. Please admire my exceptionally well honed ability to filter out horrible fics before they reach fruition. See what my prereaders have to put up? Invariably I have to run up to anything that looks shiny and poke at it and write a couple hundred words before they get tired and say something like, "Shouldn't you be working on Hell is a Martial Artist?"

It's like taking care of a three year old, I swear.