Ranma Aqua-Isekai'd, by Chaos Orchid
Chapter 19: Breakfast Among Real Heroes
The Instant Nynnichuan washed off of Ranma and she was himself again.
It also washed off of Ryōga-and Eyeshadow was now holding a much heavier person with solid muscle! And a torn dress. He clutched at its remnant as he was dropped. Scrambling up against the fountain, he kept the rag up in front of his manhood. "What's happening!? I was cursed to be a pig, now a girl, too!?"
It was bad enough for him that townspeople had been and were gathering around his naked body, but immediately before him were the other, short redhead and a young child. And of everybody in his sight, not counting Ranma or the huge monster behind him, it was the preteen that bothered him the most. Unlike the other five closest to him, she had a calculating look on her cute face.
"Clothes," Sweetie said.
Eyeshadow gave a deep sigh of resignation before reaching into her weapon-space.
Ranma, now on dry land, got into his before her and dangled a kung fu-style outfit similar to his own in front of the curled up guy who had attacked him-twice, both versions! "Here! Take this. Unless you like(!) bein' a crossdresser!"
"I don't!" Ryōga yelled, grabbing the black pants and white, sleeveless shirt.
"I've had to accept it," Eyeshadow frowned, fidgeting (cutely), still uncomfortable with the thought.
Ranma frowned at Sweetie, seeing her as a little girl who liked playing games with guys' sense of manhood. Even his 'fiance(e)'s'. Getting the boy with the bandanna into male-appropriate clothes was a victory over her.
But there was something that required more attention from him-and them! His trained senses had been keeping him alert to any threatening move behind him. As he turned to face it directly, he tapped the guy putting on his clothes, "Hurry. We're gonna need help again when that ox-man gets outta control."
But, though scowling, the huge monster remained on laying on its side…as if waiting.
Then it reacted like the one it was waiting for had arrived. "Fela said there're guard creds to be had," a man carrying a large, open basket of mostly root vegetables. With him was a dog with ceramic bottles in the small cart it was pulling. It didn't take the grocer long before he noticed the monster looking hungrily at him.
He smiled!
"No, you don't!" Ranma warned the two-story but curled monster. "You're in for a real, no-holds-barred fight if you try to eat my breakfast!"
"Breakfast!?" Ryōga cried, now standing dressed and with his enemy. "It's been days!"
Sweetie hopped up onto the rim of the fountain and addressed the townspeople. "Everybody! A day's ration is going to disappear if you don't empty your packets into the fountain!"
Mostly men rushed forward, tearing their packets of Instant Nyannichuan and dumping them into the running water. Many of them were glad to be rid of them.
The ox-man wasn't happy. It glowered, its teeth visible and gnashing, but it made no other move.
Eyeshadow leaped onto a part of the rim close to the Most Cursed. "I understand, but there is no other choice! Your move!" she said, confidently falling into Ranma's battle stance.
And Ranma leaped on a part of the rim on the monster's right hand, ready to battle to save breakfast!
Splash! Ryōga fell into the fountain. "Hey!" Ranma cried, getting away from the danger with all his reflexive speed.
He found himself holding onto the thick, brown fur of the ox-man.
Already greatly annoyed, it reached to yank him off and toss the vermin into the instant cursed water. Ranma wouldn't let it; he rapidly, repeatedly punched the weak spot on its wrist.
Wash! Eyeshadow used Ranma's abilities to create a large wave that turned the ox-man into a woman. And Ranma into a girl. Neither of them were happy about that.
"At least I can eat, now," the wet, green-haired girl in Nylon's armored vest and silk pants, both fitting reasonably well on her tallish, slim body.
"Not before me!" Ranma said, leaping for the basket of food.
But somebody was already there ahead of her. "Ryōga, you pig!"
"What did you call me!? It's your fault I was! It's your fault I'm now a girl! Prepare to die, Ranma!" She was as mad as a wet hen. Both of them were.
The fight wasn't one of their best. They weren't used to hips that moved in a different way from male hips, or soft bodies that shifted about, throwing their added weights in directions different from the direction they themselves intended to go. The breezes they stirred up gusted against them more; their ears picked up more noise; everything was brighter; and, more disturbing of all, smells triggered more emotional memories than was usual. It was all so new to them it was almost sensual overload.
Eyeshadow gave them a few minutes of practice being female before she stopped the fight. Hip-bumping the golden-haired girl and then breast-bumping the other redhead, she told them, "Nylon's already begun eating her breakfast, idiots."
Both Ranma and Ryōga screamed and rushed to get their shares. There already wasn't much left and they thought of beginning their battle again when the five kids' pregnant fathers returned with cooked food.
The problem now was they had to share it with their kids. All eyes of the townspeople were on the three outsiders, Nylon, Ryōga and Ranma, to see that the kids received first choice. Even Sweetie and Eyeshadow got to go before them. The three had to settle on vegetables and juice until their time had come. "I was promised a feast," Ranma grumbled.
"Be thankful!" Ryōga yelled at her.
"Like you should be thankful you're a girl not a pig?"
"A girl?" Only then did Ryōga look down and realize she couldn't see her feet because of the shelf growing out of her chest.
"Keep you noseblood off of the food!" Ranma saved a tray of rice balls.
"Wow! You really do have to get used to being a girl," Eyeshadow said. "Even I wasn't that bad." She brought out a handkerchief and gave it to the newest girl. While the golden-haired girl with the yellow bandanna caught her blood in it, she asked her, "What's your name? Why were you at Jusenkyo?"
"Ryōga Hibiki." It was awkward speaking while holding her head back and pinching her nose. "I was after Radba! He radaway frob our fight!"
"I don't runaway from fights!"
"You did!" A long spout of blood came out when she took the handkerchief away.
"When!? Tell me when?!"
"I already told you! It was the day after our biddle school days edded!"
"Middle school?" Ranma frowned and searched her male memory. It took a couple of moments. "Are you the Lost Boy?"
"I'm Ryōga Habiki!" Blood again spouted.
"You're still the Lost Boy! I waited three days for you to show up!"
"And I(!) showed up od the fourth!"
" 'Cuz you got lost!"
"We're both here and now…." The small girl's body she had couldn't afford to lose any more blood. She fainted.
"Man! Girls actually do faint?" And Ranma shivered at the thought that that could happen to him as a girl, too. She could lose a fight even before it began. Worse: What if she was fighting.
"Don't be stupid!" Eyeshadow told her. "It's because he's not used to being a girl."
"Hmph! Me, too. And I don't get nosebleeds. In fact, I ain't never had a nosebleed!"
"Then maybe there's something wrong with you," Sweetie came out from the sideline. She had a calculating look and a wicked smile.
"Don't even think what I think you're thinkin'!" Ranma told her. "Whatever that is!" She couldn't hit a kid, could she? But she could a falcon, right? She just had to wait until she became one again.
The preteen had a ceramic jar she had gotten from the dog cart and she poured it on the unconscious body. The golden-hair girl with the yellow bandanna changed into the black-haired Ryōga Hibiki.
Ranma glared at Sweetie, but instead of asking anything from her, she went to the grocer. "Gimme some water."
But there were no more jars in the cart. (What was happening to the outsiders had become a morning 'dinner theater' for the gathered townspeople with everybody sharing food with their neighbors. Neighbors. Helping the outsiders could ruin the entertainment factor.)
So, unless she found some uncontaminated water, she was stuck as a short, cute-but-curvy girl for a while. Thinking that was what the Kid wanted was more annoying thant actually being a girl. But not by much.
Squatting beside Ryōga, Sweetie used one of her grandmother's healing techniques to wake him. "Ring! Ring, wake up."
"Ring?" Ryōga asked groggily.
"Short for Nosering," she grinned.
"I don't have a nosering," he frowned.
"You will. Gramma has one that will help you from getting lost."
"I'm not(!) the "Lost Boy"! I'm not that nickname I was teased with! I tracked Ranma all the way to China!"
"And became cursed, too," Eyeshadow said.
"That was the fault of the red-haired girl who knocked me off the cliff!
"Wait! Red-haired girl?" And his eyes narrowed as he looked at her, studying her. "Show me your knees. -You, too, Ranma!"
"My knees?"
"I'll never forget the knee that kicked me in the head and made me fall into the water that made me into a pig!" He was almost recovered enough to fight once more.
"Ryōga, you're always gonna want to fight me, right?"
"Of course, I will! And it's not just because of the bread! It's because I had to chase you all the way here in China! Uh, unless we're now someplace else, It's not Japan, I'm pretty sure. -Still(!), I wouldn't have been cursed…"
Ranma let him ramble. "Alright, then. Eyeshadow, you got my abilities, but you ain't got my experience. That's what I'm supposed to be trainin' you to get. That means my problems have to be yours, too.
"Ryōga, that's the red-haired girl who need to be fightin' when you're not fightin' me."
"What!?"
"Her!" The guy was on his feet, his fists ready.
But they remained only ready. "I, I can't…I can't hit a girl."
"You can if you know she's really a guy. Hot water makes her a guy again!"
"But how can I be sure that's true? Um, water turned me into a girl, so, uh…. Oh! I understand! This is one of those lands of legend that I never heard of where the only girls are girls that once were men! Uh, right? -Like the opposite of the floating island of no one talks about!"
"He loses his way in his thoughts, too, huh?" Eyeshadow commented. "I really should tell him the truth."
"And lose a sparring partner? A partner who don't have the common sense to hold back?" And Ranma looked at the girl Nylon. "The ox-man holds back."
"He's still dangerous. Do you think Ryōga's dangerous?"
"When not a pig? He was when I knew him in school. I've hadda face dangers and hardships all of my life. Don't make bein' able to do what I can do so nice, now, does it?"
Eyeshadow's spine stiffened. She had just been taunted into accepting a revenge that rightly or wrongly belonged on Ranma. "Alright, Ryōga, you can try and defeat me, but not here! There are too many innocent men and children in this town. But the next town is where the Women Heroes live! You can not only challenge me there, but they won't mind you testing your skills on them, too."
"Women heroes?" He looked around at the mostly male population. "I…can fight women, but not men?" He was clearly having a hard time adjusting his personal code. "Everything really is opposite here?"
"Gramma will explain everything to you, Ring," Sweetie said.
"I will not wear a nosering!"
"Then she won't give your own weapon-space! After you change back from being a pig, you'll be a naked man again-every(!) time."
"Maybe I won't become a pig again," he tried to confidently tell himself. "The curse could have worn off."
"He's tempting the Curse," Eyeshadow shook her head. "Right now, his other half is a pig, but, somehow, it could find the hot water it needs to have the body it desperately wants to have."
"It'd be easier for us to get him to the Village if he did become a pig. But…." And Sweetie sighed.
Eyeshadow understood. "I see. The Curse doesn't want to make our lives easier, either, too."
"You girls finished yammering? I need to get medicine!" the woman Nylon managed to sneer.
Ranma remembered that this had all started when Tint had "challenged" him to get Nylon out of town before he spontaneously turned into a monster the size of a building again. It turned out, though, he was at the pharmacy for medicine that would keep him human-sized. Tint should have known that! He hadn't. He had thought that anybody who couldn't be a woman without the Instant stuff had to leave the women-only place.
Ranma remembered all of that, but now saw that Nylon may have an additional need for medicine. She was itching. And on her sleeveless arm a rash seemed to be developing. Uh, had Cologne been trying to tell him that before he had swallowed some Instant "man-maker".
BRR! She shivered at the thought of how it had made her feel. She would never-ever!-swallow any of the Instant stuff again! And now(!) she had to worry about when it only came in contact with his skin!? Hey! What happens if she's already a girl when…
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NOTES:
Eyeshadow has, so far, used the same excuse for wearing feminine clothing and doing a few other feminine things that the That-side Ranma will adopt: It don't matter if I ain't a guy while I'm doin' it-Bein' a girl gives me an out!
Yeah, Nylon is nicknamed the "Most Cursed" mainly because of his stories-tall size. He has come to expect to be the Monster Everybody Wants to Test Their Skills Against. Add to that his allergic reaction to the size-changing Instant mixes and no wonder he has an attitude.
Will Ryōga end up wearing a nosering? If he does, it won't cross over to That-side, where Shampoo currently only lives. When, say, Ranma is hurt, the injuries stay with whichever body he is in and do not cross the Jusenkyo barrie. I would say a piercing counts as a wound.