Ranma Aqua-Isekai'd, by Chaos Orchid
Chapter 27: Ranma's Biggest Secret!
Eyeshadow spoke louder, trying to be extra-firm: "Shé wants you back at your posts!"
"Hey, Ranma!" Kaguya said as she, almost completely nude, draped an arm on her buxom brother. "Can you read bodies as well as shows say ranking martial artists can? How turned on is this cutie, here?"
"Stop teasin' her. She is your brother. I guess." Ranma was more used to seeing Tsukino as Eyeshadow (and not seeing her own female body as the redhead's double).
"That's right," Eyeshadow growled. "Stop it." But she dared not move and feel his sister any more than she was making her to.
"You're both avoiding recognizing what's important." But she did move away. "We have the makings of a Love Triangle! That's an entertainment staple!"
"The only love triangle I'm in is with my sisters." Her redness intensified and she stumbled away from her! "No, I didn't mean Love love!"
Kaguya laughed. "I didn't think you meant…." It faded quickly. "Tsukiko?"
"It's never been like this before: I swear!" her guilt had her rush to explain. "It has to go away, too!"
"Uh, right. It's just a wild impulse." Like the one where the woman hiding herself behind her hands went to the kitchen sink and turned on the cold water tap.
But she didn't use the water. Looking at the at the closest redhead…and then at the other, she told herself, "I'd better not. I could be too handsome, too."
Admitting defeat, she headed for the kitchen door, telling them, "I have some clothes in my room." She was too rattled to confidently reach for some from her weapon-space.
Though still uncomfortable, Eyeshadow thought she had room to breathe. "This is a rotten way to become interested in, uh…" she looked down at her rack, "...the opposite sex?"
"You weren't before?" Ranma asked.
Eyeshadow thought it was a put-down of Tsukiko's manhood. "Of course, you(!) the great martial artist have been out with dozens of girls and fantasized about hundreds!"
"No. I haven't."
"Oh, really?" Her eyebrow arched.
"Really, but, uh…do I?" she asked herself. "I guess I do." And she opened with, "You ever hear of the Ki Reservoir?"
"I think I have. It's the emotional energy that doesn't get used. It becomes detached from the person and stays around while it thins out and dissipates."
"Generally right. It can remain with its associations, like residue, contaminatin' it."
Ranma let out a big sigh of regret and said, "I shouldn't tell you I know how to tap into the Reservoir. But you seem to have that ability of mine without me tellin' you. So, I'd better be your sensei and teach you how to deal with it."
"Deal with it? It's not always a good thing, I take it."
"It has advantages. Well, I thought it did. You see, when I'm in a battle, I can also…shove away emotions that get in the way."
"You can…." It took a moment for that to register. Then Eyeshadow's big blue eyes widened! "You! I was feeling your(!) feelings for Kaguya!?"
"I didn't know our link would have you catchin' them! I had to send them out! I can't let her win! She won't make a pervert out of me!"
"No-She'll make a pervert out of Me!"
"Aha! I did get to you, Ranma! I knew I hadn't lost my touch!" Tint came in wearing his studded, leather tunic.
"You were eavesdropping!" Eyeshadow accused.
"You know the walls are thin here. Even Ranma should have remembered that," he smirked.
"Now that you know that what you make me feel can make your brother feel it too, give up targeting me!"
"Are you admitting weakness? That you're not strong enough to hold onto them and process them yourself? I know about acting. I know about emotions. Shows can be therapeutic: That's the challenge!"
"Stop it, Tint-Kaguya!" Eyeshadow spoke up. "You can't reach us if I can burn off the emotions. Ranma will show me how! Nothing will happen because you're my sister!"
Tint leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. "You're going to use, say,...lust? How? Targeting who?" the baritone grinned. "And as a girl?"
"I, I only have to be a girl while on duty! But that's an even better reason to hold on until it's burn itself out!"
"Aw, my Little Brother is finally growing up: Falling in love and hating it. The Drama!"
"The Code says I can fight guys!" Ranma cried, ki blasting him across the hall and into the cafeteria!
"You, you can do that(!)?(!)" Eyeshadow didn't know how she should feel.
Ranma stared at her hands, seeing their auras 'look' like rising smoke. "I thought I wasn't ready for that technique."
Recovering from her surprise, the other redhead hurried to see if, "Kaguya, are you hurt!?"
"Sure. Why shouldn't I be?" Tint groaned, forcing his back to come off the table and sit up on the bench. Only to grab a spot above a kidney. "I should have paid more attention to how stuntmen fall."
"Ranma must know that!" she looked over her shoulder at the real martial artist. Reluctantly, Ranma nodded. Then to his sister, "I'll teach you when she's taught me!"
"Could you first learn how healing is done?" he almost laughed "-Ouch!"
"Sure!" she said, reaching to help him up onto his feet.
"It would help if you weren't a Short girl," the sister with the 18 cm male body smiled.
"Oh, yeah!? Show her how strong I am, Eyeshadow!" Ranma demanded.
And she proved she could be stronger than she-or even he-had ever been. But she discovered what really counted were techniques that had been trained into the reflexes their redheaded bodies now shared. Even Tint had to say, "Okay. You're the martial artist you wanted to be, Tsukiko."
"I'm the martial artist! She's a parasite, feedin' off of my(!) abilities!" Ranma reminded them.
"Do you think you can zap Ranma for me, Tsukiko?" he…joked?
"You had it coming, Kaguya," she reminded his sister.
"I do have it coming." A mood change? Him acting. "And so does our public! They're looking for a different kind of love story to help them out of emotions they're stuck in!" His smirk was in full force as he looked at them. "Like you two. Therapy."
He left Eyeshadows arms and headed down the hall towards the lobby and front door. "You two had better figure out what you're going to do with your unused emotions! I'm getting an idea on how to give the Women Heroes just the love story they need."
Ranma thrust out her hands. The blast fizzled. "What? I have to recharge?" She hated herself for what she said next. "If Pop were here, he'd know."
"I'm not going to let you zap my sister. She deserves it, but…. Okay, maybe next time."
"You think I'm gettin' the extra power from you(!)? I'm the one givin' power to you!" Ranma's pride told her.
"Maybe I Should see if I can zap you."
"It's Blast! Ki blastin'! Get it right, or I'll blast you!"
"You blast. I'll zap!"
"Zap is what you'll do! Only I have what it takes to blast!"
"Oh, yeah- Oh, no! We're feeding off each other's emotions, aren't we!?"
Ranma stopped to analyze the situation. But it had become a struggle to distance herself from her emotions with somebody also trying to flush them… "I think I'm feelin' some splashin' back onto me."
"And some of what you're feeling are my emotions?"
"It's mostly mine! But, uh, I think I can learn how to separate your flavor from mine."
"Then I can do that, too. We can become untangled from each other!"
"Only, it's gonna take practice. We gotta…" Ranma didn't want to say it, but she had no choice, "...we gotta get to know each other. Emotionally." Grr!
"Do you get the feeling Kaguya might actually know what she's talking about? That sounds like therapy."
"No, it don't! I'm your sensei and I say it's trainin'! We'll train ourselves to be only ourselves. I mean, me bein' me and you bein' however you are!"
"You are my sensei. Elder Cologne said you were.
"But she also said I have command over you. And Shé is my commander: Shé wants you to be out with the guards to learn your duties."
"Not until I get lunch! -The fries!" And Ranma rushed back into the kitchen.
She was relieved to see she hadn't left the wok on the stove. Sampling one, she smiled. "They're okay! They're just not enough. Hey, Eyeshadow, get me the tofu for makin' burgers while I make more fries."
"You can eat field rations! I'm in charge of you and you have to report to Shé or she'll do something to both of us!" Brr! She had seen Shé do some weird rope tricks. And there were ones worse than the Whip.
"You're not in charge of me, and Shé ain't, too. I outrank you. I outrank just about everybody," she smiled as she headed into the pantry.
"Are you feeling my anger and resentment?"
"A little," she said coming out with tofu. "But I'm protected by knowin' I'm as good as an Elder."
"You think you're that good?" Eyeshadow tried to sneer, but didn't feel like she could do it sincerely.
"You didn't hear? I guess you didn't; it was, what(?), only an hour ago(?). I defeated Scent on the Log of Judgment. That makes me her equal. Her better, actually." Ranma let herself bask in what she was feeling from Eyeshadow.
Until reality set in, "Only technically! You didn't claim you were fighting to be an Elder, did you? And even if you did, Scent would still be older than you! And Cologne is older than her and Cologne says you have to obey me!"
"Hunh!" Ranma shook her head in wonder. "Beautiful Chick Cologne is older than that shriveled up little Elder that looks like an elder. Very elderly. That's still hard to believe.
"Still, Cologne'll only be an elder until she's a youngster. She has to take her youth-serum magic mushrooms soon. Then I'll fight Scent again and….
"Aw, man! I can't be an Elder while I'm still a youngster, right? Maybe Cologne can give me mushrooms that'll make me even older than Scent."
"You are joking, right?" Eyeshadow checked to see if she could feel if she was.
"Finish coatin' the potato strips, so I can fry them up," she said while frying the ground ferment beans. "How like beef does your tofu taste?"
"Even if you become 300-hundred years old for 300-hundred years, it won't do you any good, Ranma!"
"Get me the seasonin's."
"Ranma! You have to be a woman(!) to be an Elder of Women Heroes!"
"Look at this body and tell me I can't be a woman."
"You have to be a woman almost all of the time! They'll lock you into being a woman if they think you're not learning how to be(!) a woman! Mocking them! Their Elders have to understand how women think and think what's good for women!"
Ranma looked down into the sizzling oil. "I'm suddenly not havin' fun."
"Look, Ranma, I understand. I have the same curse as you, after all. And they're giving you the same choice as they're giving me. I could go to directly to the Fortress of Real Heroes or I could see what it's like to be a Woman Hero. They're letting me become a…man once in a while so I can hope to get over the psychological barriers by easing into being a woman. Or, um, "Real Hero"." Where men being half-a-man could support each other deal with their shared trauma.
"Or you can be like me and leave!" Ranma said, stepping over to grab slices of barley bread to put her burger in, taking a detour for the spice jars.
"Once I have enough training as a guard, I'll be able to join a colony. Then I'll only have to live by the colony's laws and rules. And some are hundreds, even thousands of years different from the Women Heroes' ones."
"I already have enough trainin'! And you have the abilities it gave me. Be good to me and maybe I'll take you with me." She took a big bite of the sandwich. "Hm,Mm…tastes more m-beany 'n meaty." But she finished it and went for the pantry again. "You're still not coating the fries."
"Ranma, you're not taking this seriously!"
"I'm tryin' not to! Aw, geez! Man!" And she spun around to face her. "Dammit! You're messin' with how I handle my emotions! Now I gotta learn how to get rid of them Differently!"
"Or not to!"
"You're one to talk! You do the same thing, don'tcha!? That's why you seem to be okay with bein' a girl! You're okay because you don't let yourself feel that you're not! At least I'm doin' it to become a man among men!"
"I give up! I'm going back to Shé! Let her lasso you and haul your ass off to guard duty! Or jail! Or, or…. I don't care!" She was already running for the front door.
"Hmph! Just like a girl!
"I guess.
"How am I supposed to know!? I ain't never really spent time with them!
"It's gotta be her fault! His(!) fault! His fault! His ideas about girls must be oozing up outta her girl-contaminated subconscious or something!
"They don't feel(!) like guy emotions!
"Or are they feelings guys have about girl feelings?
"AAAA! I don't know nothing about emotions!"
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NOTES:
Yes, Kaguya has a scheme. And it has already begun to come together. But how well can she bring out the performance she is looking for from her improv actors? And then there is Ranma's Second Fiancee.
Tsukiko/Eyeshadow remains on course to be another "Akane".