Ranma Aqua-Isekai'd, by Chaos Orchid
Chapter 21: From Cold to Hot Water!
Ranma took Sweetie off her shoulders and set the little girl down. They both looked down at the still unconscious Ryōga. "If me or you reach into our weapon-spaces, we're not gonna get water, right?"
"Its called 'Weapon-space'. You have to ask, Is it going to be used offensively? Defensive is more tricky."
"Grr. Even if I was gonna use it just to splash it on the guy to get him to wake up, I could also use it to wash the Instant stuff off of me, but me bein' a girl is more of a weapon against him. The Curse is riggin' the game."
"It wouldn't be a curse if it didn't."
"Okay, I'm stuck doin' this." She squatted down by him and slapped his face. "Wake up; Wake up, Ryo-oh, Lost Boy!"
"Don't call me that!" He threw a fist Ranma was expecting and caught. Lucky for her, the loss of blood made him weaker. But he was still strong; only her techniques made it a match.
It was, fist in hand, a sort of armwrestle standoff, but the petite redhead moved her (cute) face closer to his. "Give up or I'll kiss you. Or worse. *Giggle*"
That was too much-for Both of them! Both scrambled away from the other! "Why, why'd I do that!?" Ranma cried in horror.
"I'm jealous. I'll never be able to use a seductive technique. You have to be old enough to have boobs to do that." Gloom threatened the preteen again. "I'll never have boobs."
"Technique!? Technique!? Where'd that(!) technique come!?"
"Ranma! Have you no pride as a guy!?" Ryōga accused.
"If I didn't, I wouldn't be freakin' out!"
"Just because you have the body of a incredibly built, cute girl, doesn't give you the right to act like one!"
"It does, too!" And Sweetie hit his chest with her small fist. "A girl's brain goes with that body!"
"Ack!" Ranma had a flashback to her 'date' with Tsukiko!
"I don't want to hear that! I don't want to have a pig's brain!"
"Your human mind is more intelligent, Stupid. But a boy's mind isn't always more intelligent than a girl's. There are different kinds of intelligences and girls' are better at some! All Women Heroes know that!"
"Really?" Ryōga started to calm down. "I'm always going to be more intelligent than the pig?"
"Except when it comes to pig things," Sweetie gave him a wicked smile.
"...except when it comes to girl things…" Gloom threatened Ranma, now.
Ranma leaped to her feet and approached the problem as she would a new martial arts technique to figure out. "Techniques are subconscious, trained down to the most basic parts of the brain. But they're dormant until triggered. That means they're in the past until they're set up and readied for maybe bein' used in the present by the cerebellum. I wouldn't want them to be an option! I don't Know(!) the options! It had to be somebody else's option-Eyeshadow's!"
She nearly screamed! Here she had only been thinking of how the guy she was cursed to be linked with was stealing abilities that had taken all of his hard-life to learn! Now it turned out Eyeshadow was also forcing girl abilities onto her! Wha, what if she could also do it while she was himself, a guy!?
"...Really? There are three of them? Triplets?" Ryōga asked the little know-it-all.
"Uh, huh. And that one wanted to remain a girl and found a way to stay a girl. Only now her body is trapped in the place where magic comes from."
"What?..." It had taken a while, but Ranma finally heard their conversation.
"...Manicure's cursed half," Sweetie said. "And Manicure herself doesn't mind being a girl very much, too."
"But she's knocked up!" Ranma said.
"Being pregnant isn't a torture. If it were, this world would be a lot emptier than it is."
A shiver ran through the cursed Ranma. Was that her fate? Looking forward to having babies kicking around inside her belly!?
"I have to keep my guard up! Train to heal myself and close the wound that lets one of those girl-wannabes' subconsciouses to reach mine!" she vowed.
"Let's get to the Village! Bein' surrounded by girls'll teach me what I gotta Not(!) be like!" That seemed right. She had no real, working knowledge of what girls were like! There was just what Pop had warned him about them. If he was wrong-and the Old Man was wrong about too many other things!-she could end up acting like a girl without seeing that she was. The options were ready to sneak up on her!
"I'm not going!" Ryōga told them.
"You were heading towards the Musk," Sweetie told him. "When you become a pig, the Musk will wash you with water-proof soap. Then you'll always be a pig until it wears off."
"Why would they do that? -Do they like to eat pigs that taste like soap!?"
"They like to marry them."
"Marry…. That's sick! And I'm a guy!"
"Not with Instant Nyannichuan."
"That's what turned us into a girl back at the fountain, Ryōga," Ranma told him. "And all of those knocked-up girls you saw? They were all once guys, too."
"Aaaa!" Ryōga screamed. And Ranma nearly screamed, too, thinking again of her own looming motherhood.
Sweetie waited until they had vented enough. "Then you'll go with us, Nosering?"
"I won't wear a nosering!"
"Then you'll get lost in the mountains and have a litter of piglet children."
Ryōga grumbled. "I'll go with you." Then he muttered. "But I won't wear a nosering."
Of course, Ryōga had taken a path cross country. But he hadn't exactly blazed a path. Surprisingly, he had taken the path of least resistance, avoiding the barley fields and going among the leafy tops of root vegetables. Somewhere in Ranma's mind there was room for some things that weren't martial arts related. Things important when living off of the land during a decade's-long training journey. Like there were Winter Crops, and those that were better grown on mountains. If the proper dirt could be found. He didn't know the details, but those that had lived here had to know them. And if their ancestors had been at it for, what, 3000 years(?), then the land had to have been made the best they could think to make it. That made Ranma wonder why she didn't see any terraces climbing up the sides of the mountains.
But they did have irrigation ditches running from a narrow stream turned stone-lined canal! "Water!" she cried happily, jumping down into it! "Cold! So cold!" But she was still a girl!
"You have to wash the Instant Nyannichuan off," Sweetie reminded her.
Ranma made a face, but reminded herself, "I've washed in c,cold riverrs and lakess before!" And bent down and splashed the water up onto herself.
By the time she wasn't a she, he was just beginning to turn blue. He stumbled a couple of meters away and fell into among short barley stalks. But at least they partially blocked out the late winter breeze. "I just nee,need a few,w minutes t,to heal," he told them. He wasn't very far from hypothermia.
"I'm disappointed in you, Ranma!" Ryōga sneered. "I have to take cold dips, too. I guess I'm tougher than you, even when you're not a girl."
"Th,then you do it, t,too!"
"Ha! I didn't say I liked it. I just don't…"
Ranma reached into her weapon-space and threw what she found at him. The foil packet harlessly bounced off of him. "I didn't open it!" she cried in frustration. "Next time, I will if you don't shut up, Musk Sow!" At least his anger heated him up some.
"You need some girl practice, too," Sweetie told him.
"I told you not to think that!" He was on his feet, glaring down at little pipsqueak.
"Ranma, you shouldn't yell at a child like that!" Ryōga threatened.
"I'll bet she's in her 30s or more! It's the magic mushrooms that has her bein' a kid!"
"But she is still is a child!" The idea finally caught up with Ryōga. "She's a 30-year old child?"
"Maybe 40! How old are you?!'
"You don't ask a woman to tell you her age!"
"Then you Are a woman!"
"Physically and psychologically, I'm ten-years old!"
"Ain't that middle-aged for a falcon!?"
"But I'm not a falcon, now-I'm a human! More human than you!" And she kicked his shin!
"Ow! Why you-"
"Ranma!" Ryōga charged. He closed in on his opponent quickly!
Ranma tore open a packet and in one swoop had the mixture on him. Only he was still a him as he punched out at him. The ponytailed boy blocked the punch, but saw that what hadn't gotten on Ryōga's damp clothes had bounced and blown onto his own wet clothes! Luckily, neither had enough water on them to-
"Now I can get water from weapon-space!" Sweetie laughed, splashing them from a ceramic jar.
Ryōga's already thrown counterpunch just grazed Ranma's red hair. But she wouldn't miss again as they were nearly the same height again. Nearly. Ryōga was taller. They should also have had nearly the same strength. Only nearly. Ryōga was stronger!
Ranma's training told her she was out-matched in sheer, slim, dense muscle mass. She had to use agility to stay away, but put up enough of a fight so the "other" girl would continue to burn through her energy until it was more equal with her own, and that required thinking on her feet to keep the battle going while looking for, to save her own energy, any other advantage…. "Ryōga, you're even worse at fightin' as a girl 'n me!"
"It's these weights off of my chest! They're pulling off my aim."
"They're called breasts!"
"Breasts? -Aaaa! Breasts!"
Ranma ducked and pushed her hands against the golden-haired girl's hips, making them go left then right. "These annoy me the most-Wiggle, wiggle!"
Ryōga brought her fists together and down on top of his adversary's head.
But Ranma dropped slightly faster and became low enough to bring her hands around Ryōga's ankles and shove them up! The girl fell backwards-
Into the stream! The running water washed off the Instant Nyannichuan. "Ranma!"
"I did you a favor: Now we've both had our mornin' baths!" she teased.
"Why, I ought to-" He made to splash water at her, "But I won't. That's what you want me to do, isn't it!? Stay a girl!"
"I can still jump in there with you." But after one icy dip, she didn't look forward to another so soon.
Suddenly, Ryōga was gone. Only a little, black pig remained.
"About time!" She fished it out by its bandanna while picking up its clothes with the other hand. "I can carry you now and rush you to the Village. Smaller bodies lose heat faster, though. Good thing, Gramma Witch is a pharmacist!"
"Hey! What about me!" Sweetie cried as the redhead started putting distance between them.
"Does c,cold waterr do something t,to you?" She had forgotten.
"I can only get hot water if I use it as a weapon!" she called after her.
As Ranma approached the Village gate and its guards, a falcon landed on her head and pecked at it. The redhead swatted it away with the hand holding the pig.
Rinse, Sweetie's mother, was on duty and told the falcon to land. Ranma overheard it being given a stern lecture. She doubted it would do any good. If they had had the same mother-little kid relationship for tens of years, it hadn't seemed the talking-to's had done much good. Unless, that is, Sweetie had been even worse at one time. A girl who thought more like a falcon, maybe?
There weren't many three-story houses in town and Cologne's was only a few blocks from the gate.
There was an obstacle between her and the Witch, though. Hairdo. She could avoid him by leaping on the roof and coming in through the trapdoor.
*Sneeze! Sneeze!*
"You're gettin' a cold, too, Ryōga?" She asked the shivering animal in her hands. Her jog had warmed her some.
"B,b,bwee, b,b,b,weeee *Sneeze!*"
Ranma decided to bit the bullet and go in through the shop door.
"Red!"
"Patient!" she told him, holding it up between them.
"Patient?!" He forgot his infatuation for the moment and thought only of his job as a pharmacist's assistant. "From Animal Town?"
"To(!) Animal Town is my guess. So, are you vet enough to tell me what to do? It has hypothermia!"
"Nannichuan!" the slightly out of breath Cologne told them as she opened the inside door.
"Nannichuan!?" It took a moment for Ranma to realize, "Oh! Ryōga won't be a small(!) animal, then. Give me some water!" she said, taking a packet of the stuff from the basket on the countertop.
"Come!" Cologne told them. "A hot bath is what it needs." Ranma followed her with the pig.
Near the backdoor to the outhouse was a room that reminded Ranma of a furoroom. It had the smell of rotten eggs from the hot spring water piped in from Jusenkyo Onsen. She guessed it was after here that the sulfur and other minerals were filtered out before going to the rest of the house. "Okay, in you-
"-Hey!" she cried when she suddenly found herself-somehow!-stripped nude by Cologne.
"Ill get you both dried clothes." And the Witch left with their wet clothes. Ranma had no modesty, but she was glad the beautiful woman was going to give them what they were used to: a Men's Only bath area.
Not bothering to soap and wash first, the sweaty but still chilled girl jumped in the steaming water with the pig, only then tearing the packet open.
Both his and Ryōga's expanded bodies pushed a large amount of water out of the tub and down the floor's drain. More water went there than there normally should have been. Their muscles had grown to bodybuilder size. Never had Ranma felt stronger! And that was while he was just sitting. But he could feel even greater muscles.
"Don't touch me!" Ryōga cried. He now had a short beard.
"It ain't my fault! Move away from me!" A beard of his own brushed against his neck.
"You move! You owe me, Coward!"
"I ain't no coward!"
"I'll make you move!" With no room to punch properly, Ryōga took to grappling with his bathmate! Naked male skin against naked male skin!
He was the one closest to the side of the furo; it was he who lost his breakfast down the drain.
Cologne laughed.
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NOTES:
The girl options are all Manicure's fault? Eyeshadow has two older sisters her subconscious knows as examples of How Girls Behave. And Kaguya(Tint) is willing to use just about any girl (or boy) tactic.
Yes, after Shampoo will, in the future, give Ranma Instant Nannichuan, he doesn't suddenly gain larger muscle and more hair. But That-side is not This-side. The mixture has been altered. Think Happosai.
