Ranma Aqua-Isekai'd, by Chaos Orchid

Chapter 2: Animal Town

As soon as they left the giant bathhouse, they were met by a small platoon of women soldiers. Or so they were told. A half of them looked like men. And they didn't look like soldiers either, in that their armor of those who wore any and the weapons they all had were different. They weren't uniform at all. And none of their equipment looked like what modern soldiers would use.

"Elder Cologne was right, I see," said the one who looked the most feminine in her figure-fitting fish-scale body armor, but leather boots and gloves. "Her reading of the ley lines usually are."

"We have any idea what they become?" another, more hostile looking girl asked. Her armor was a weave of ropes and knots that openings for flashes of her flesh to be seen. "More girls for our tribe?"

"We're not girls!" Ranma told them. "We're on a journey to become men-among-men!"

A speartip touched his throat. "That is not something to be proud of!" said the hostile girl.

"Only being a woman-among-woman brings honor!" said a very muscular one of them. She wore only a Chinese pants suit but carried a massive chui mace.

Pop said, "Crossdresser."

"Care for fight!?" challenged the so-called woman in aiming her weapon with the solid metal, basket-ball sized spheres at him.

"Geez, Pop! Remember the Code and What it says about fightin' girls?"

"All rules have an exception."

"Good! The exception here is that these girl girls accept the others as girls. Give it a rest. They out-number us."

"They wouldn't be if the men here acted like men."

"Idiot!" Ranma saw that his Old Man was back on his kick about 'Men Are Men and Women Are Woman and That's the Way It Should be. He wondered, briefly, if his attitude would change if the curse-talk the Prune woman was giving them were true and they became woman like she claimed she had to be. "Look, if Pop gives you trouble, I'll beat him up myself, okay?" He thought he was almost good enough to do that now. Just a little more training….

The first girl who had spoken, the most beautiful of them told them, "You will have to be tied. We do not know you or what you change to."

"Sirs, not take offense! All guests enter Village of Woman Heroes like this. Look,they tie me also!" And Prune put her hands behind her back. The hostile girl caught them in a lasso and pulled.

Instead of tightening the loop, though, it stayed loose. Ranma thought if he were tied that way, too, he could easily be free of it whenever he cared to. And if it were tightened, it seemed to be ordinary rope. So, before her Old Man could reject the idea for the both of them, he allowed his wrists to be bound, too.

Their leader told them, "The special slipknot technique of the rope will tighten or loosen according to what you do. Change into an elephant and it will widen; change into a mouse and it will narrow."

"An elephant? A mouse? Hmph!" Pop snorted. This was making him even more of a stubborn disbeliever. "And if I change into a hungry bear?"

Hostile-girl instantly had a rope around him and with just a snap of her wrist, the rope became a martial arts weapon that tossed him to the ground. Before he could even try struggle, his ankles were bound. The end the girl had been holding became a noose around his neck. She smiled evilly down on his and said, "This answer your question?"

It did. After Pop agreed to behave (for how long?), his ankles were freed, he was allowed to get up (without using his hands). His hands remained bound behind his back and the other end of the rope stayed around his neck. Hostile girl claimed the length of rope between as a sort of leash. The free ends of Ranma's and Prune's were her longer leashes for them. Only the rope around Pop's wrists was cinched.

"Wēi! (Way?)" the captain of the guard called out. A falcon swooped down from the roof of the bathhouse and landed on the leather-gloved hand she held out for it. "Report we are bringing new guests."

The bird seemed to nod and then flew off to the east.

"You can go now!" she informed the…guests.

"I do not trust birds," hostile girl said looking after it.

"Not all birds are Phoenix People, Shé." her superior told her.

"Ha! You never know!" Shé answered back. "Maybe this one has hidden feathers(?)!" And she yanked Ranma closer to her, tightening the noose. (What was it with her attacking necks!?) "Spring of Drowned Whoever. Does it have a name?"

"Ranma. Ranma Saotome of the Saotome School of-"

"Indiscriminate Grappling!" Pop quickly yelled to drown his heir out.

"You mean 'Indiscriminate Groping", don't you, Pervert!"

"Geez, Pop!" He could more easily talk now as Shé had dropped his leash. Pop was trying to keep them from finding out they were Anything-Goes Martial Arts. But why? Was he afraid the School's bad reputation-because of his kilometers' long list of petty crimes-had reached even here, to the high mountains of nowhere Asia? It might be a good strategy to not let them get an idea of how they could fight them, but it went against their training method. Skills were learned and sharpened by meeting challenges, the tougher, the better. Their opponents needed to know they had to bring their best skills into the contest!

"I look forward to facing you on the Log of Judgment!" Shé told her sensei-in-age-only.

"Ooh, Sir, you have wife, no? You not win fight, okay? Tragedy if you win!" Prune told him.

"Ugh! Do not make me sick!" Shé said. "I lose to no man!"

"Our guests will all be find judgment!" her leader said in what sounded like recruitment talk, "They always do! Jusenkyo is, after all, a training ground for martial artists, butōka."

"Wǔshù jiā!" corrected Shé. Others nodded or grunted in agreement.

"Fine by me if it's a martial arts contest!" Ranma said, "I don't give up!"

The Captain of the Guard said, "Shé, take your choice of three and escort our guests back to our Village of Women Heroes. The rest will stay here and guard the secrets, of course."

Two of them were the manliest of the "Women Heroes", including the one who had challenged Pop. (And who had to be looking for a chance to fight him. Too bad her superior, Shé, had first dibs.) The fourth was just the opposite of them, a cute redhead too short yet busty and curvy to be taken seriously by the Saotomes. She wasn't even wearing armor. Ranma thought it could be because the teen was too young to have earned the right to wear one. Or maybe, since all of the women used different weapons, her specialty was unarmed combat? If she did, he'd like to test himself against her. And it wasn't because she was so cute. Man, was she cute!

"Tǐn Tǔ (Tint?), Ài Shàdōu (Eyeshadow?), you guard boy! Pào Dàér (Powder?), I guard Loudmouth," Shé said. "Let's go!"

The redhead, Eyeshadow, was given the rope leashes of both Ranma and Prune. It was probably to allow her partner, the streaky-haired Tint, to keep her Chinese version of a naginata free to be used at a moment's notice. Unusually the sword at the end of a pole seemed it might even be used as a makeshift spear. Crew-cut Powder had her colorful but deadly Chinese maces. All Shé seemed to have were her ropes. But she had already proven she could expertly wield them like weapons. Ranma's mind went to imagining all they could possibly do. And the more weird her imagination went, the more he wanted to learn her techniques. (Oh, right, there was at least that spear could she pull out of her weapon-space.)

After a short walk, they went over a familiar hill and Ranma saw that they had gone through the last pass before, now after, Jusenkyo Valley. Over the other side should be nothing but…A large village he had never seen before!? "Where did this come from?"

"This Dòngwù-zhèn, Dōbutsu-Machi, Animal Town," Prune told him. "Is where people with animal curse live if they not go to outside world."

"Village for people with an animal curse?" Ranma tried to interpret what she was saying into standard Japanese. She couldn't have meant it to be taken literally. People don't become animals? That was only in legends. Of course, her sensei did believe in legends. They wouldn't have come to Jusenkyo if he didn't. "It still don't explain why it wasn't here when we came into the valley hours ago!"

"Places exist on This-side that not exist on That-side."

"Isn't that obvious, Boy?" Pop said as if he understood it. He just had to pretend he was wise.

The only road led through the village. A fork in it was just after it, outside its other gate. One was the one they had taken to Jusenkyo Valley.

Even as far away as he was when he first saw it, Animal Town, had houses and buildings of many different heights and widths. It seemed a mess without pattern. One that seemed tall enough for a giraffe could be nextdoor to a one too short for anything larger than a squirrel. But, of course, there couldn't be-

His trained eyes did picked up a giraffe rising above the village's wall. And more unbelievably still, a flying squirrel landed on its head! "It's gotta be a hallucination or something," Ranma told himself even as he focused and saw more animals coming into his awareness. At first they were other animals acting as sentries above and along the wall, monkey, goat, python, raccoon and others. Then when they were down the hill and on more level ground, he could see through the gate at other, more ground-liking animals, like dog, anteater, horse, sheep and others.

When they at last came to the town gate, a rabbit held up a sign, with kanji Ranma thought could say something like, [Halt! State visit]

Shé told it. In Chinese.

The rabbit stared at Pop and then at Ranma. (Rabbits can frown!) It then turned to the guard fox and held up another sign. The fox saluted and sped off into the town. The sign, like the first one, then disappeared like the things Ranma had seen being pulled out of crystal spaces.

"We wait here for Năi Lōn to join our party," Shé told the "guests".

Minutes later, the Saotomes' trained senses sent out an alert! Some ominous shadow had come between them and the sun. When they looked at its cause, Ranma had to say, "Now I know I'm hallucinatin'!" Flying on wings too small for it's furry, giant body was a man with a horned ox-head!

"A Minotaur," Pop said when he could get his mouth to work.

"That is Nylon," Shé told them. "He is Niuhōmanmaoren, Yeti-holding-eel-and-crane-riding-ox."

"And I thought what I'm seein' is unbelievable," Ranma said. "Hearin' what it is makes it more so."

It heard him and bellowed like an enraged bull!

The effect was ruined when he suddenly turned into a man and fell several meters to the ground. He was wearing clothes by the time he hit the ground-Hard! The impact had to have been made worse by the chain metal vest he had on. It would have been better for him if he had left himself naked.

"Is he alright?" Ranma asked.

"Fool forget he can change whenever," Shé said.

"But he heal fast!" Eyeshadow smiled. It sounded as if she might have a crush on him.

Rabbit sent over a panda over to the downed soldier. The black-and-white animal picked him up, brushed the dirt off of him and held him there until he could stand on his own.

And when he had healed himself, he stood at attention and reported for duty in Chinese.

"Speak Japanese," Shé told the man in his mid-twenties or so.

"I'd rather not." Nylon had an arrogance about him.

"You under my command while we guard guests!" Shé reminded him. "And we go to village of Joketsuzoku, Woman Heroes."

"Women," Nylon grumbled. But it looked like he was stuck doing what he was told. The question was, How long would he put up with it?

As the town's official representative, he at least got to lead the group of outsiders through the town. (Other members of the gate guard brought up the rear.)

The weirdness only increased for the Saotomes. There were humans, men and women (trainers?), living among the animals, but it was seeing things like hens, pigs, crocodiles, frogs and others trying to act like humans that made Ranma think of old cartoons and children's story books (not that his Old Man had ever liked him seeing those).

There was one type of animal missing and it was making Ranma nervous. Looking around for them, searching yet desperately hoping not to see any, he at long last had to ask, "Where're the c,c,cats?"

"What kind of cat?" Eyeshadow asked.

"Don't make me name them!" Just the thought of it was raising his anxiety.

"It's a cat holiday and they're on a retreat," Nylon told him.

"Seriously?!" Ranma's tension broke! He could really relax? Luck was on his side for once?!

"Perhaps it would be better if they were here," Pop smiled wickedly at him. "Sooner or later you have to defeat-"

"Shut up! Shut up! 'Indiscriminate Grapplin'!" By repeating the lie, he was threatening to reveal that they actually belonged to the Anything-Goes school.

It worked, and his so-called sensei kept quiet for the moment.

But his belly wouldn't be quieted. And once it growled, Ranma's became even louder. "Hey, Prune, where's the food you said we could get(!)?!"

"Oh, Young Sir is correct!" And the purple-haired woman in the Mao uniform slipped out of the loose binding holding her hands behind her back. "I go get take-out!"

Without thinking, Ranma slipped out of his own. "Why wait for take out?!"

"I'll go with you!" Pop smiled at the thought of a meal. But, "Errk!" the noose around his neck and the rope around his wrist tightened. Shé kept her hold on him. He was not going with them.

"Nylon, follow!" she ordered.

The young man grumbled again, but went with Ranma and Prune the guide.

Ranma screeched to a halt once he saw the kanji over the restaurant. He read them as [Cat Cafe]! "It's almost enough to make me lose my appetite." He slowly peaked inside. "There's no cats in here, right? They're all on their retreat, right? (They can't retreat far enough for me.)"

"What's the matter!?" Nylon asked even as he slapped Ranma's back so hard it sent the teen inside.

"Nothin'! Nothing's the matter!" Ranma told himself more than the born-bastard.

A big rat-like thing mooed loudly and angrily and tossed a sign at Nylon! The man easily broke it with a backhand of his fist and had to break another and yet a third that was thrown at him.

"What's goin' on?" Ranma asked Prune.

"Nutria not want Nylon change into Ox-crane-eel-hairy-man again in shop. Too big for little place."

Ranma had to admit the low-ceilinged place wasn't built with even humans in mind, let alone the giant Nylon had replaced. "Yeah, if he does become an ox-and-so-on, he'd be like a bull in a China shop."

The nutria got its way. Though Nylon hated to give in, he did. But Ranma got the impression once he was off-duty, the guy could be looking for trouble. They had to be blackmailing him or something to keep him under control.

Prune told the rat-like animal, "Three order of ramen, put on tab of Elder Cologne."

It nodded and dropped two bricks of ramen into a steaming pot. But when it looked for a third, it couldn't find one. It went back to mooing moodily. It scurried on the countertop and picked up a small, foil packet. After opening it with her rodent teeth, the animal poured its powder into a small pail of water. With its small, tumbless paws, it lifted the pail and poured it over itself.

Ranma nearly freaked when he saw the rat replaced by a naked woman! "How, how, how?!"

"Instant Nyannichuan," Prune told him.

The still naked woman with the fairly big breasts bowed to her customers and said, "I now tall and can reach noodles in backroom. Be back in short time."

"Ooh, too bad for her," Prune said. "Her other half on That-side still alive."

"That's a bad thing!? She'd want her other half dead(!)?" Ranma asked, not sure of what he was saying.

"If other half dead, she no have use instant shapechange. She can then change with hot water."

"And be that much closer to dying here, too!" Nylon snorted from the doorway.

"People and animals all become like Bilbo Baggins and wish life not like butter scraped over too much bread. Too long life is still too long."

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NOTES:

My apologies to those who actually know Chinese (Mandarine, Cantonese, etc.). I have used Google to search for names that would be "oh, so clever" when matched against English words. Consider my errors to be caused by the dialect of these people and animals. Again, it is all in the spirit of Rumiko Takahashi's fondness for puns.

No, the redhead, Eyeshadow, is not the same as Ranma's cursed girl-form, though she was cursed in the same Spring of Girl. According to Aqua-Isekai lore, anybody who fall into the same pool will have similar qualities overwritten onto their own individual bodies. Think of fraternal not identical twins.

Nylon, of course, is the other half of Pantyhouse-Taro. His brain was never on That-side, so all he knows is what he's known on This-side. That means there can be personality differences between the two.

See the Naban Mirror story, Season 3, Episode 09 - Ranma Goes Back to Jusenkyo at Last" for what the village of Animals and the Joketsuzoku look like here in This-side. Something had to have happened between that time in Cologne's past and Ranma's present that destroyed the walled version of the Amazon's village on That-side. Being on This-side, that didn't happen to these villages. (And, yes, my main inspiration for Ranma comes from the animation.)

The idea that the half on This-side can still be alive while the other half on That-side is dead has story implications.