Ranma Aqua-Isekai'd, by Chaos Orchid
Chapter 28: Panda!
Ranma had lost her chance to have a trouble-free meal‒Again! Even in middle school he had had to be bothered with the bread-obsessed Ryōga. The blow-up with Eyeshadow had left emotional residue in the food, tainting its flavor and making it unappetizing. But that wasn't going to stop Ranma from eating, she swore! Digesting these bits of feelings was better than being forced to go to the Reservoir and consuming the pieces of what others couldn't stomach. In fact, if she did, there was always a chance she could be consumed by a random excitement. Especially when she was a she. Not because girls were more emotional (though Pop said they were), but because she had only been a girl off-and-on for a day now and knew nothing about how they reacted to this, that and whatever!
She cringed, then shuddered! The only feelings she really did know they had were the ones she had on her dates with Hairdo and Tsukiko. Just thinking about them made her all‒
The warming redhead dashed to the lobby. If she didn't find what she was looking for, she would search the room she shared with Kaguya. If none were there, she would even go into the unlocked rooms of the others!
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Fully dressed, the ponytailed, black-haired boy left the Sorority house. It would have probably been faster to get a packet of Instant Nannichuan from the pharmacy, but that meant having to deal with Hairdo as 'Red'. And, as a she or he, Ranma couldn't trust its owner, Cologne.
Now what was he to do? Report to guard duty? Eyeshadow would be there and if there was a place when she could pull rank of him was there, with Shé and the others backing her up.
Still, honor required him to‒
Ranma heard the now familiar, enraged squeals of a pig! "Who is Ryōga attacking, now?! Hmph! If Kaguya wants to play therapist, she should start with that guy!"
Jogging until he got a good fix on its location with his ears, Ranma leaped over the roof of a tall house unlike the others. His first glance at what he was coming down towards was a large yard full of tarps covering piles of different shapes. The house was a warehouse, it seemed.
He was on his way towards a standard landing, when he saw the little, black pig sent out of the yard. And the contrail of its blood not from a nosebleed! Ranma slammed his feet against the side of the warehouse and shoved himself towards whatever was on the other side of the tarp.
The panda only saw him seconds before he tackled it. A mid-air judo-throw and it would be on its back while he landed on his feet and in the stance, ready with another attack!
Only the panda countered the throw and held him in a crushing bear hug, his arms pinned! The air was being squeezed out of his lungs! What would Pop say to do!? Ranma grabbed fistfuls of fur for leverage and shoved his belly against the animal's. The hug continued and made the pressure even more extreme. One more maneuver before victory or defeat.
The top of Ranma's head was sent up against the underjaw of its muzzle! It being caught off-guard and having to suddenly adjust its strategy gave Ranma the advantage he needed: His diaphragm punched against its! It, too, had been pressing the air out of its lungs, and now it had less in him than he did, and the large creature needed more of it!
To both their surprise, a small ki of energy hit out from his as well!
Unable to breathe, the paws lost their grip on Ranma and it slumped to the ground. Ranma fell to one knee.
Panting, she told it, "Okay, (I guess) you been cursed (to be an) animal, (so) I went easy (on you). And (just) 'cuz (that) pig attacked (don't mean) you shoulda (been) attacked. (But) I don't think (the) women want nobody but women (in their town). I guess I gotta get (you) to their guards. I (won't) tell them I caught you at a warehouse."
"You won't have to." It was Eyeshadow and the redhead in the floral pants suit was jogging up from where he would have landed if he hadn't launched himself off the warehouse wall.
"How come you're‒ Oh! Great, just great," Ranma frowned deeply. "We're linked, so you followed my energy signature. There's no gettin' away from you, is there(?)"
"That ki zap was the biggest help," she said, knowing it would annoy him. She wanted to believe there was something he couldn't do without her. Unfortunately, it could only happen when she was a girl.
"It's blast, blast it!"
"Zap," she smiled. "It wasn't as powerful as before. I guess, because you were a guy."
"Hmph!" Ranma might have knocked the breath out of the panda without the mini-blast, but it certainly didn't hurt his technique.
"Hey! I bet mine is bigger than yours, now!"
"Good(!)" Not really. "You can use it to take Mr. Panda wherever the guards take animals." And he forced the thing up on its four legs. There was only enough ki energy left to make its fur snap and crackle with it.
"I have to take you in before it. Shé wasn't happy that I didn't bring you back the first time." And from her weapon-space, she flung a large ceramic jar of water at him. Ranma let the Instant Nannichuan be splashed off of him.
The panda rose onto its hind legs in shock! And confusion: The two child-sized, womanly-curved, extra busty, kawaii-faced redheads looked too much alike! And it absolutely knew at least one of them should not!
Ranma had a sense of deja vu when the panda's blow sent her flying. It was that same kind of strike from that same kind of beast that had made her cursed to have this body! "I know its you, Pop!" This time she didn't land in a cursed spring.
She landed instead next to another one cursed in the same spring. "A lot has happened since yesterday. Like, I now have a fiancee!" Ranma felt the knotting of Eyeshadow's stomach, and he didn't feel great about saying it, either. But she felt the need to lash out at the pain-trained idiot in ways that would hurt!
"Bwaa WAA!" It raised both clawed paws.
"Student! Blast!" And Eyeshadow obeyed her sensei. It intensified the emotional force behind the ki blast that she felt just as threatened as the other redhead. No: More so! She was a total stranger to the wild animal!
The panda was slammed a pile hard! It's claws caught on the tarp and yanked it away, with the squashes underneath tumbling off their platform and onto it. The tarp just happened to protect it from most of the smashed gunk and seeds. Mostly.
Ranma frowned. The ki blast had been stronger than the one she had used against Tint. But, then, she didn't know she could produce blasts and she hadn't put the same emotional energy into hers. And, truth be told, she could never really blast Pop effectively, no matter how much he might deserve it. "Hmph! Don't say I ain't never given you a martial arts lesson."
"How, how dangerous is that panda!?"
"The Code says he ain't supposed to fight girls. But I think he'll make an exception for me." And she casually rested an arm on top of her shoulder. "And for you, once he knows you're really a guy, too."
"And you zapped Tint, even though you know he is my sister."
"Loopholes are for anything-goes." The panda pulled the tarp off of itself and began on getting its long claws free of it. "Are you ready for your next lesson?" she said, taking her arm off of her.
"Come to think of it, this is gonna be a lesson for me, too. It's only something I saw Cologne and your sister do. Okay, here goes: Hot water as a weapon!"
Nothing came out of her weapon-space. "Hunh? What gives!"
"Idiot! Hot water is harder to get! It takes more energy than cold! And before that, you should practice the loopholes."
Yeah, Cologne was cunning and Kaguyo was, as the elder had warned her, warped. (No argument there.)
"And only Sis could think of a way to use a weapon against herself."
Eyeshadow knew! Ranma had wanted to use the hot water on her to turn her into a guy, all to get back at Pop by letting him think he was interested in dating a guy. Ranma did feel like an idiot. And she hated it!
"I can use cold water against your panda." And she brought out a bucket of it.
Before Ranma could ask what good that would do, his furry pop was charging towards them at them on all fours. Its sharp teeth wide open!
Splash! Mr. Panda was replaced by a woman! A naked, stocky, middle-aged woman. Fundamentally thunderstruck by the change, she was thrown off balance by the enormous, pendulous boobs dragged and bounced off the ground. She jerked back, lost her balance, gave up, fell and rolled off of them. Both of the redheads were wincing with sympathy pains.
But not for long. "Which curse is worse, Pop?! At least as a panda, you have a bear rug to land on!"
"I'll make being a girl unbearable for you, Ranma!" Pop's voice had risen a full octave higher.
To Eyeshadow, the two idiots were trading puns, all while avoiding the obvious one.
"I felt that! Stop thinkin' of me as an idiot!"
"Truth hurts."
"Then I'll give you truth!" Ranma and the woman began trading blows as if nothing had changed between them. Though their feelings-made-raw towards the other certainly had! "You're supposed to be gettin' the experience that goes with the powers and abilities you stole from me! This is the jerk who gave them to me!"
"You've been and are going to be my only student!" the naked woman told them as hit the girl in the gut, a payback for taking the breath out of her as an it. The blow wasn't as effective as she had wished as her enormous knockers got in the way.
Ranma did manage to grab the cloth from the Old Man's head. "Ha! Bald! Even as a woman, you're bald!" There, that ought to hurt her!
Pop reached up and felt the familiar lack of hair on top of a very unfamiliar head. "Women aren't meant to be bald," she said morosely. At least give her one benefit for being female.
Eyeshadow told her, "Elder Cologne has some dragon whiskers that can cure that." Baldness ran in her family, too.
"Really!?" And she gave up the fight to give her attention to something more important.
"Only thing is, Old Man," Ranma said, spinning the covering around a finger, "it's Elder Cologne that wants Eyeshadow, my fiancee, here, trained."
Genma turned to the other redhead and said with all the gravity she could produce being in some body naked, soft and weak, "Well? Aren't you going to bow to me? That is what is expect when a student apprentices to her master."
Eyeshadow hesitated. She could feel that Ranma felt this was a way to punish her for not having to go through the hardships she had to endure to become a true martial artist. The woman really was a jerk‒and worse.
But it was a challenge. A challenge! She had never before felt how vital they were for a martial artist! To life! She doubted Tsukiko would feel their allure as much as she did. She had to be getting the lust for action from Ranma!
She bowed. If Ranma could do it, so could she! She would show her! She would become her equal. No: Once she was trained, she would have her own powers and abilities! Hers, not Ranma's!
Ranma stopped being a girl and became a guy.
And one she was trained and had her own experiences, she would train Tsukiko, to be as good as‒better than!‒the male Ranma!
Ranma growled. He was in a no-win situation. …Or was he?
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NOTES:
Ranma didn't become an high-testosterone Beard by taking Instant Nannichuan because Tsukiko is in transition. Most of his packets are less potent. They are there to assure him he can change when he feels the psychological need to appear to be male. That has been less often than before, though.
Ryōga is okay, of course, and is as Rumiko Takahashi wished him to be: Able to be conveniently lost when he's no longer needed for a story.
Genma used his Umi-senken burglary skills to get past the guards and find a place to shelter that had food: The warehouse. (The Impostor Ranma arc, Manga Chapters 290 - 300. He also knows Yama-senken, for, literally, house-breaking.)
The warehouse workers witnessed what was happening and assumed the guard Eyeshadow and the now (in)famous Ranma were there to take care of the intruder and thief.
The simple answer as to why Ranma's first half, the one in the same world as Akane, isn't able to ki blast is because his cursed doppelganger is in the other world, with the other Ranma. The technical answer is the differences in female and male emotional energy, yin and yang, builds up a ki charge sort of like static electricity. And one of the two Ranmas is always male. Eyeshadow, though not so much Tsukiko, has been trying to adjust to having to be a girl; neither Ranma has. Ironically, it is only when Ranma can't now (last chapter) easily discharge emotions that the excess ki power builds up.
