Ranma Aqua-Isekai'd
Chapter 1: The Other Side of the Coin
He was at Jusenkyo. And was surprised by a panda. The guide said something. Splash! He was knocked down into cold water.
That grew hot. He he rose up inside a bathhouse open to the blue sky. What? How did he get here? "Hey! Anybody here?" His voice echoed in the largest spa he had ever seen. The pool was huge but shallow and the once brightly painted stone decor reminded him of depictions he had seen of ancient Asian ones. And it did look ancient, not quite in ruin, but needing repair.
"This is no time to relax, Boy!" His pop yelled. Ranma turned in time to see him doing just that, soaking in the electric blue water. Realizing he had been caught doing just that, the man, naked, leap at him to continue their martial arts training.
Out of habit, he met his sensei in another sparring battle. "Where are we(!)?! How did we get here!?(!)" He yelled as he leaped over his head and kicked off his shoulders. The ponytailed teen splashed feet first back into the pool, but only after his Old Man fell face first in the water.
Leaving a trail of spray, Ranma leaped back and on top of him before the man who had never eased up on him could get his head back above the water. Standing on him, he yelled his demand for answers again. The replay were bubbles.
"Oh, Sirs, must be customers. You want know what is what here in Zhèbiān, Kotchigawa, This-side, no?" It was a woman maybe in her late twenties wearing a Mao uniform the fit her. As pretty as she was it was most noticeable about was the long, plum-colored hair that fell from a Mao cap.
With Ranma distracted, her Old Man took the opening-and the boy was tossed back first into the water, several meters away. Now it was his sensei's turn to keep him from breathing until he ceded defeat! But his student was ready and his arms and legs tossed the heavy man the eleven meters to the dry, now wet, hard floor beside the pool.
Ranma landed a meter from the woman. She did not flinch and remained calm. Even though Ranma-he only now realized-was naked. Like his pop. "Uh, sorry!" he said, covering his dick out of politeness. He didn't want her to think they were perverts!
"Is okay. This is onsen hot spring. Both mans, womans and animals come out of here."
"What does that mean-" Before he could finish, his Old Man attacked him from behind.
He judo-tossed the sneaky idiot far into the pool. "Give it a rest, Old Man!"
"Come, I show you how to have clothes."
"Clothes?!" Pop cried and came out of the water to two leaps.
She led them away from the pool and through a stone hall with stone and past empty rooms coming off of it.
The youngest of them thought to be polite. "I'm Ranma Saotome and his is my pop."
"Genma Saotome," the man bowed (but didn't covering himself).
"What's you name, Ma'am?" Ranma asked.
"I not is Ma'am. My name Shùlín Ěr, but when I look like this, people name me Prune."
"When look like this?"
"I not always look like this. And you not always look like what you look like now, Sirs. Maybe you not remember me say there is more than one-hundred pools in Jusenkyo and each cursed? "
"Jusenkyo!? That's the last place we remember bein' at, ain't it, Pop?"
"Just so! And we swam from Japan to China and hiked to the highest mountains of that country to reach the legendary training ground!" He sounded proud, still denying to himself that something had gone terribly wrong.
"And that is the last memories you have of Nàbiān, Sonogawa, That-side. As long as you have curse."
"Curse?" Ranma asked.
"There was some mention of it from the lore I picked up about the legendary training ground," Pop the Idiot admitted.
"You now have curse like me. What curse, I not know. Not know what happen in Jusenkyo." She now went down a curved stairwell.
"Uh, what kinda curse do you have?" Ranma wondered if his curse was something like this woman's. Not that pretty woman looked like she was cursed. Maybe being cursed wasn't too bad.
"I fall in Mǔqīnnìquán, Hahaoyanichuan, Spring of Drowned Mother. Very tragic story of woman who drown 150 year ago. Now whoever fall in pool take body of mother. This my body when I not man."
"Mother?"
"You mean to try and tell us you're not a woman(!)?!" Pop said with disbelief.
"You see when I change."
"And when will that be." Pop was already dismissing the idea.
"I not know." And then the bottom of the stairs had been reached. She turned and said, "And you not know, also. I not know what make change, but it happen on That-side. Only fortuneteller can tell when. But not always. Magic not always make sense."
Now that the Saotome's mind was taken off of stranger and what she was saying, they noticed they were in a grotto full of crystals lit with the glow of the same blue water. "You take crystal. Eat crystal."
"And why should we do that?" There was a 'Hmph!' in Pop's tone as he had decided he did not trust this woman. He didn't trust women on principle.
"Because you naked and this give way to clothes!"
"A give-away?" Pop was now more interested.
"Clothes?" Ranma decided to take the chance. He broke off a crystal. It had a familiar feel of power to it. It was like, what? Then he knew. "It has ki-energy in it! It's like a battery, ain't it?!"
"I not know. I know only it is way to many thing. Weapons can come from it." And as she talked, a large crystal shape without substance appeared in mid-air by her hand. Out of it she pulled, "I have hammer again. I did think my practice allow me to have more dark weapon. I try again." She let the hammer drop and it disappeared into what would seem to only be a the reflection of light if it weren't in mid-air. She reached in and rummaged around for something else. What she found was, "Camera? This first time I have camera."
"A camera is a weapon?" Ranma asked, skeptical.
"Some use camera as weapon!" she tried to tell him.
Pop only nodded, sagely. "Remember the Saotome motto, 'Anything can be used in the martial arts'!"
"I try for clothes this time." A new multi-sided shine appeared. From this she pulled out, a cheongsam. "Dress!? I not wear dress. I not woman. Only mother."
"You could have fooled me," Pop frowned at her lack of honesty.
"But it is clothes. …Hidden magic?" That legend was one of the many his sensei pop had raised him on. It was one of the techniques they were on a quest to learn. He looked at the hard, raw gem in his hand and told himself, "I don't really mind bein' naked, but others will. She musta got girl's clothes 'cuz she's a girl. I'll get guy clothes!" He hoped and swallowed.
He became sick! He wanted to puke, but couldn't! His Iron Stomach felt like it was fast eroding into rust! He dropped to his knees and held his gut. But not in pain. His training was trying to tell him his ki was adjusting to this overdose of energy! He had trouble believing it, though!
Meanwhile, Pop was accusing the strange woman of poisoning his only heir!
He didn't have time to attack. She tossed a crystal into his raging mouth. His choice was to choke or swallow. And then, he, too, was on the ground, in worse distress than the ponytailed boy. He, of course, was more pathetic.
The woman looked at the scene in sympathy. "I remember first time I make meal for others. They say because I mother I need marital training. I not know of crystals then. They find way in my stew. I and all who eat get sick like this. They not say I need marital training again. And I lose my confidence in cooking."
A half an hour of wretched dry heaves and the Saotomes were almost recovered.
As the naked Ranma forced his way onto his knees, and placed his hand on the ground for support, they fell through a crystal outline that appeared. It glowed as they did!
When he quickly pulled it out, he was holding a tang suit like he had seen in Chinese martial arts movies. It didn't mark the wearer as Manchurian bureaucrat but as a practitioner of kung fu! He smiled through his distress. "This is better than a dogi, what I normally've been wearin'. I always wanted to wear this thing!"
But one last wave of piece of his power puzzle ground into place and he dropped the red shirt and black pants, losing them to the portal.
When he at last felt well enough to reach into his clothes-space again, he pulled out, "A green leotard!? That's the last thing I'd wanna wear! It don't even look like my size! Only a girl could or would wear that!" And the disgusted jock threw it back to wear it came from. In his hand went again, "Gimme back those kung fu clothes!"
Success!
He had it on before his Old Man could recover enough to effectively reprimand him for not wearing the more appropriate and patriotic dogi that Japanese belted martial artists like judoists and karateists wore! Pop stubbornly refused to find anything else in his clothes-space. But the youngster reminded his sensei, "Anything-Goes style is based on kenpo and kenpo's just Japanese for kung fu! And I like this style!"
Energy had to be lost in the overdose from both the crystal downgrading and their own reservoirs as they adapted themselves to the flood of foreign ki. And they hadn't eaten very well in weeks of their China journey. The Saotomes were famished! "Where can we get some food, Woman!" Pop was in no mood to even pretend to be gentlemanly.
"Can we pull food outa nowhere?!" Ranma grinned wide at the idea.
Prune pulled out a tea set.
"That's not gonna help my hunger!" And Ranma reached into his own hopefully foodspace. "Hey-yeah! I did it! Noodles!" And he immediately bit into them.
His teeth bounced off of them. "What!?"
He pulled on them and found out that they stretched. "They're made of rubber cement!"
Pop coughed, wheezed and spat on the what he had found in his own whatever-space. "Terrible! Tastes like gunpowder!"
"Crystals is Way to Weapon-space,," Prune reminded them.
"Clothes are weapons?" As soon as Ranma said it, he suspected they could be. But what was really on his mind the protest, "Food can be used as weapons, can't it!?"
"Food as weapon usually poison," Prune reminded them.
"So that means we gotta get outa here to eat!" Ranma said loudly to be heard over his growling stomach.
"I take Sirs to woman who help: Elder Cologne of Nǚjié zú, Joketsuzoku, Woman Heroes."
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NOTES:
Prune is the cursed form of the Jusenkyo guide who was with the Saotomes when they themselves became cursed at Jusenkyo. Cursed to be a mother, she has given birth to a daughter, named Plum. Her cursed body was on That-side at the time and, so, the girl remains there, being raised by Prune or Shùlín Ěr, whichever body is there in That-side at the moment.
Shùlín Ěr is a complicated pun. The Chinese words mean "Grove-Son" is based on Waka-rinai, which can mean "Child-Grove". But Wakarinai can also mean "Unknown", which was what Google-search gave me for the Jusenkyo guide's name. It is to honor Rumiko Takahashi, who loves puns. (If this doesn't sound like real Chinese, think of it as a dialect.)
And, so, this is How Ranma Gained His Trademark Chinese Outfit. It will be a while before it comes over to him on That-side. Then somewhere along the line, he'll lose access to clothes-space while Genma and Ryōga keep theirs. And that green leotard? He threw it in randomly and it ended up away from where all the other clothes were. It will come into his girl hands later. Even before he meets Kodachi?
According to the Fanon of Aqua-Isekai, these crystals can not only open a way for non-living things to enter That-side reality, but can migrate there for arcane reasons. And that is how Akane, Nabiki, Kasumi and Sōun gained, respectively, their hammer-space, cameras-pace, tea-space and armor-space. The crystals found their way into the very first meal Akane cooked for them during her marital training. Fearing she had poisoned her family, she lost her confidence. It would be the Ranma on on her side of reality being superior to her in everything including cooking that motivated her to attempt to attempt the marital arts again.
Note, too, that the crystals explains where Ukyo got her weapons and giant grill when she first fought Ranma at Furinkan.