Ranma Aqua-Isekai'd, by Chaos Orchid
Chapter 15: Ranma Sensei? Kohai? Elder?
Ranma could see the clouds as he soaked in the onsen. The design and decor of the stone hot spring was inspired by ancient Bharat (Indian) bathhouse, but even by modern resort standards, battered place was the largest he had ever heard of. It could hold everybody in a town-sized village. And was. As was traditional, it allowed mixed sex bathing and few made any attempt at modesty. In fact one, the one that seemed like she should be the most modest, was wading around, here and there, making sure everybody got a good look at her body.
That was until her immediate boss roped her in and tied her up. People laughed. Ranma looked away.
"My sister, the exhibitionist. Too bad for her the steam is hiding her best bits," said the girl casually lying on the marble apron beside him. (Her most womanly parts remained out of his view, though.)
"It's not bad to me," said a guy with thick eyebrows in the water next to him. He, too, was looking away. And from both women.
"Get over it, Little Bro. A girl seeing another girl nude isn't a big deal. It's the same with guys, isn't it, Ranma?"
"How would I know!? I only been before to places where only guys don't got clothes on!"
"Ooh, CFNM!?" she chuckled to Ranma's confusion. "I mean, you seeing another guy naked isn't a big deal for you. Or am I wrong?"
"I don't go around seein' naked guys on purpose!"
"Me, too-And I don't go around seeing naked girls on purpose, either!" the guy said. "And I try not to stare at them, too. ...much."
"No wonder you haven't been on a date. Living a dorm of girls in a village of girls and you are not only still a virgin, you haven't even been on a date."
"I've been on a date! And as a guy, too!"
"You were on a date with a girl!? I'd like to see her," And his big sister pulled out a jar.
Ranma was splashed with cold water and the hot water was gone-All of the pool water was gone. Everything and everybody was gone. She was falling like a skydiver without a chute! It was so disturbing and emasculating to feel the wind playing with her soft body as she plummeted.
But she quickly had think of something else: Animals and naked people were all around her, again, but they were floating and sleep. Or dead. It was a challenge to her mid-air maneuvering techniques to avoid them. It required concentration. Concentration that always had the distraction of her soft, rippling body in the background.
Finally she was past the layer of the undead cursed. Now she could think about landing. Did she have time to-
She was caught! She didn't have to look-and she didn't-to know she was being held by a girl and that she, too, was naked. There was no mistaking the squishiness over steel-hard muscles. "You are saved by a Woman Hero!" she said like somebody out of a campy comic book.
"My hero!" Had she actually said that!? Camp on camp!
The redhead her equal in size set her down on a chair. Its table was set for two with a candelabra. Everything about it could have come directly from a romantic, old movie set in the fanciest of restaurants. How she knew that, she didn't know. Like she didn't know how she knew she should be in the tight and low-cut gown she now had on, complete with a corsage.
The redhead, though, was still naked. The only safe place to look at her was into her big, blue eyes with the blue eyeshadow over them. They were such lovely, sparking eyes. It made her jealous; she wished she had eyes like those. There was only one problem with them, though. They weren't a boy's.
"You wish to date a boy? That makes you again damsel in distress! Let me be your hero once more!" And from a copper teakettle, she poured hot water on herself.
And changed into Ranma! He was Ranma Saotome? Then who was she?
"Lemme have that teakettle!" When she yanked it away, hot water was sloshed out of its spout and found its way down her decolletage! "Hot! Hot!" she cried, yanking the gown's cups off her boobs and cooling them with a lacy fan.
"Water only changes the other Ranma, the one in the real world. But since I've become him in this magic world, I'm linked to him: I can see that you are never distressed by him again!" And he pulled out a bucket. "This is the Other Pail of Preservation: It locks the body that's not cursed in place!" And he ladled its water onto himself. He didn't change.
In an overly dramatic gesture, he tossed away the pail and opened his arms, inviting her to come into them. "Now you can be a woman for the rest of our lives!"
"I can?" And she looked at the naked man before her. On purpose.
The girl woke up and sat straight up in bed! Cold sweat covered her and dampened her underclothes.
The wall behind her was pounded from the other side, "Stop that screaming!" And other walls were pounded with other girls yelling at that girl to stop yelling! Finally a pillow was thrown and hit her!
"Why did I volunteer to be your roommate, again? Be warned, I'm not a morning person." Kaguya's short hair was a bedhead mess as she swung her feet onto the floor. She yawned and scratched a hip her nightgown didn't cover. She wasn't as attractive as the last time Ranma remembered seeing her.
"I was in a bad mood before you!" And the girly-fied Ranma made to get out of bed. Her feet barely touched the floor. And she had to look past weighty boobs to see them. "Man! I was me when I got into bed."
"You didn't get into bed." Kaguya stood up (to be higher) and smiled. "Eyeshadow put you to bed."
"The redhead!?
Kaguya chuckled. "Good thing I was here or who knows how far thing would have gone. You two where really groping each other something fierce!"
"Groping!? Why was she even in here in the first place!?" Her heels off the floor, she was unable to stomp effectively.
"Because you do martial arts in your sleep. Your twin sister was the only one who could effectively challenge you and tuck you in."
"Because she's using my(!) abilities!"
The bedroom door opened! It was Tsukiko "I was trying to do you a favor! Did you want to sleep on the cold floor?!"
"I've slept on the ground more 'n I have in beds!" And she jumped and was face-to-face with him. Face-to-face, but looking up at him. (Short! Short! Short!)
"Okay, then! Wake up more miserable than you are now!"
Ranma pulled out an ice cube and shoved it against his neck
"EEyai! That's cold!" And he twisted Ranma's arm to force it away.
A pressure point press and the cube accidentally dropped into Ranma's baggy, saggy tanktop. It was this redhead's turn to yelp. But only for a moment as the ice fell past her valley and through and out of her undershirt.
"Why didn't you change!?" she cried out in frustration. "Didn't enough melt on you?!"
"You could drop a glacier on me and I still wouldn't change! Melted ice doesn't count! Freezing isn't cold!"
"Cold water can be too cold!? That makes no sense!"
"And hot water can be too hot," Kaguya added.
"I want it to, but magic doesn't have to make sense!" Tsukiko reminding himself as he told the other cursed guy.
"It plays by it's own rules! I gotta find a way to use them against it!" And she also challenged him to keep her from getting by him and out the door.
Only to slip on the ice cube!
She was caught by the handsome guy with the thick eyebrows.
Challenge the magic of a curse and Ranma's other half on That-side is likely, among other possibilities, to encounter a sudden downpour. On This-side Ranma became a boy. In another boy's arms.
"Boy's love!" Facial giggled.
Ranma screamed and lashed out at the boy! It had been reflex that had made Tsukiko save the girl. Now that he had time to think of it-and because the guy was much heavier-he dropped the ungrateful idiot. The ponytailed boy's instep hit the back of his knee and they both(!) went down.
If they were in a Boy's love pose before, they were in an even more compromising one now, with one on all fours, straddling the other.
"Are they going to kiss?" Concealer asked.
"No!" Ranma brought his hands up to shove the guy away from him.
Only for his hands to sink into boobs! "That hurts, you know!" the soprano yelled at him. And she kneed him in the balls!
Eyeshadow went to her feet and into the Stance, ready to inflict more damage on the guy who had squashed her before she even knew she had to get used to having breasts again.
"Why'd you hafta go and change!?" Ranma yelled, forcing himself to ignore the pain.
"Oops! My timing was a little off," Kaguya said. She was holding a small, leather water bladder that Ranma only vaguely remembered having seen hanging on the wall beside her bed.
Ranma was in the Stance, now, too.
"Fight! Fight!" more than one of the Sorority crew cried, bringing others in the dorm to try to see past those in front of the doorway.
"What are the odds, Kaguya?!" Facial asked.
"Anybody who bets against Ranma's going to be the loser," Kaguya said. "Little Brother may be as good as he is, but she doesn't have his experience." She knew enough not to bring up the combat disadvantages that came with a woman's body when up against a man's. Not in front of a group of Women Heroes. There were workarounds, but them wanting her to be in her male body when on duty told her even they, very grudging, knew they didn't always work.
"I'm surprised you're passing up the chance to take bets." How often was Facial a loser(?)
"The girl is my brother," Kaguya said with a sigh of regret. "I don't like seeing him get hurt any more than he has to."
"You will all have your chances to bet," said a woman behind the others in the hall.
"Shé!" the girls cried. It was their squad leader. They all made way for her.
The older woman wearing ropes and the welts from sleeping in them came to the doorway, giving all a good view of her. "Eyeshadow and Ranma will be doing a lot of sparring. The boy…"
"They're both boys," Highlight said out loud.
"The new boy…"
"He's new-to-being a girl," Eyeliner said out loud.
"Ranma(!) has been assigned to be Eyeshadow's sensei!" Shé said hurriedly before anybody else said anything else.
"I don't want her to get as good as me!" Ranma told them. "Unlike her, I earned(!) my abilities!"
"And you are to see that Eyeshadow earns those," Shé told him. "You are given free reign to see that she does. We'll even help to recreate whatever hardship you had to go through."
"Hey! That's unfair! " the redhead said, "I have seniority here! I'm even probably older than he is! I should be his(!) sensei!"
"You are."
"What?!" the two asked at the same time.
"Whatever your gender, you obviously have more experience in being a Woman Hero and a warrior.
"When it comes to teamwork, you are under her orders, Ranma."
"Ha! Eyeshadow is the lowest ranking among us!" Eyeliner grinned.
"That makes Ranma kohai of kohais!" Highlight also grinned.
"Kohai only counts when you're with a group! I ain't never worked with a group that's a team!" Ranma protested.
"What an idiot," Kaguya said, shaking her head. "He's telling the guard squad why he can't be trusted to be one of them."
"Set up a betting pool, Kaguya!" Facial said with all the enthusiasm of somebody who had just made Bingo!
"Let's just hope he doesn't mess up when we're really fighting, Concealer worried.
"You do not like it, Ranma!? Then graduate out of guard duty and become an Elder!" Shé told him.
"You can be an Elder without bein' elderly?" Ranma asked. "Hmph! That explains how Cologne became one."
"It doesn't! Cologne used to be elderly," Shé said. "Now she's doomed to be getting younger and younger."
"What!? Huh? Gettin' younger is a doom?"
"That is not important right now." And Shé pointed directly at him. "This is about you and your motivation! Think of your training of Eyeshadow as preparation for an Official Elder Match!"
"It's gotta be official? I can't go and challenge Cologne right now!?"
"It would just be counted as a match where you are merely testing yourself against the other so that you may learn what you must do to improve yourselves before the recognized match."
Ranma's frown went deeper, but it was something he understood was done in martial arts. A fight outside of a dojo witnessed by others who are qualified doesn't count, either. It could get you disqualified, in fact.
"But how well you train Eyeshadow be one of the determining factors on whether you are even given the chance to be in a deciding match! All Elder Candidates must show themselves worthy. That is, to think first of what is good for the greater good of Women Heroes! Otherwise, somebody like Nylon could be claiming a spot among the Elders."
"But even cursed, that bull-headed guy ain't a woman. Hey! I hafta be a woman to fight an Elder, then, don't I!? I lose when I become a guy-And I got no control over that!"
"In the land of the cursed, once a match begins, it doesn't matter which body you have. All that matters is that you know what it is like to be a Woman Hero."
"Ranma! You also know what it's like to be a man!" the redhead said with hope in her voice. "If you become a male Elder, then you can be the champion of all the men in the Daddies' Compound!"
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NOTES:
The dream-Ranma's boy-centeredness is an example of how her memory of her time under the influence of the Instant Changers has influenced other parts of her brain. Only time and repetition will determine if it is long-lasting.
The floating undead is one of the Secrets of Jusenkyo Onsen. It was inspired by Philip José Farmer's "River World" series. The similarities should end there.