Mental landscapes are most interesting things, especially to those who can
meditate in such a way as to feel them like real lanscapes. All of the
important, traumatic, or very enjoyable occurences leave their marks, in
the forms of buildings, forests, mountains, temples, usually wherever the
event happened or something representative of it.
Usually, none of them are too bad to experience when walking around one's mental landscape.
Not so with the Nekoken.
In Ranma's mental landscape, always within a mile of wherever one would be, there was always a small, broken-down two-room building with a storm cellar. Step into the building, and before you knew it, a huge, bespectacled ogre wearing white with a black belt would grab you, wrap you in something fishy, and throw you in the Pit. The Pit was full of cats.
But not just ordinary cats.
These cats were huge, their fur almost bladelike, with two-foot claws, and sabre teeth. Their eyes glowed like makou pits, or, if you don't know what those are, they glowed like the light coming from an overjuiced LCD. Their whiskers were huge spikes, and they constantly yowled at the top of their lungs. Anyone in the pit was beset by the monster-cats, and worst of all, as fast as they ripped you apart, you would heal.
And Kodora was in there right now.
Luckily, she was old enough to distinguish these demons from real cats, which she rather liked. Ranma, on the other hand...
Later, Kodora would discover that anytime Ranma went into the Neko-ken, she would find herself in the Pit. It was horrible. She couldn't possibly understand what Ranma or her could have done to deserve it. Indeed, she felt that Ranma didn't deserve it at all. But she was sure she did. After all, anything that happened to her was deserved, right?
At least, that's what she had been taught. Unfortunately for Genma, this didn't lessen her buildup of anger towards the rotund martial artist/panda.
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Passenger
Chapter 13: Even reversed, Nekoken is still Nekoken. But in a different order.
A Ranma 1/2 fanfiction by S. Starblade
Dedicated to taking the good and bad in life, and giving only good.
Warning: I borrow many ideas and things from other people. No characters, however, and I hope anyone finding stuff of their own make in my fanfictions will realize that I have great respect for these creations.
Disclaimer: I-am-a-good-little-robot-who-will-obey-commands-and-fail-to- take-any-credit-for-these-characters-who-although-created-by-Takahashi-sama- have-begun-to-develop-in-my-care. Ow. Ow. Stop-malleting-me.
Key:
= English
" " = Japanese
[ ] = Jusenkyou Cursed Signs
{ } = Chinese
* * = Internal conversation between Ranma and Yasha
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Realizing what had just happened with his son, Genma demonstrated rule # 1 of the Genma Saotome School Of Life: My Own Life And Comfort Come First, So Screw You.
In other words, he ran away, leaving Souun and the three Tendou daughters on their own, with a decidedly less than mentally whole Ranma. The Tendous as a whole were considerably less skilled at abandoning people and saving their own hides then Genma was. Pretty straightforward: he'd been doing it his whole life.
So, the quartet of Tendous stared at Ranma, who shifted on his cushion, until he was crouched in a way reminiscent of a sitting cat, feet splayed, and hands spread on the floor between them, much like most people draw frogs sitting. Not because of a relation between cats and frogs, but because people tend to draw frogs wrong.
Akane shifted, ready to clobber Ranma if he started doing anything dangerous.
Nabiki put her neutral mask back on, and returned to a normal sitting position. Akane could probably defend her: if Ranma HAD gone insane, he probably wouldn't be using martial arts to attack.
Kasumi started to get up, moving to stand behind her father. Ranma was her friend, so she wouldn't run right away, but with how Genma had practically teleported out of the house, she was on her guard, and knew her father was her best bet for safety.
Souun was puzzled, slightly frightened (He knew his old friend had a tendency to overreact to anything that could possibly cause him discomfort, and wasn't as worried as he maybe would have been), and rather curious. Genma hadn't told him about this.
Kodora was in the mental equivalent of pain beyond excruciating, and can be excused for having no opinion on this other than to scream at the top of her lungs. Which really wasn't having much effect on anything anyways.
Ranma-neko looked around. He could smell that toy-food-enemy had just left. Also here were what seemed to be (from oldest to youngest) friend- relative-parent, kind-foodprovider-warmlap, distant-unknown-stranger, and, of course, female-competitor-sibling. Ignoring the real cat as a kitten (it being almost insignificantly small, scarcely larger than appropriate food, and cat-smelling), Ranma-neko decided to go after toy-food-enemy. It felt like playing. But female-competitor-sibling was in the way. Oh, well. She was a competitor-sibling. She probably wouldn't mind being gently nudged out of the way.
Kasumi, Nabiki, and Souun gaped as Akane was sent right into the wall by what seemed to be a tap on the side from Ranma, who was darting past her out of the house on all fours, much faster than anything they had seen before.
Akane wasn't hurt, mostly surprised, and couldn't collect herself enough to be angry. Confused, she looked to her father for an explanation.
Souun simply shrugged at the three looks he was getting. "I haven't a clue. Maybe Saotome-kun will tell us, he seemed to know what was going on..."
The Tendous looked at each other over the remains of dinner, and nodded. Then they all posed, fists together.
"Its: Operation Panda Retrieval!!"
The cat named Toltiir looked at them all and sweatdropped.
******
Kodachi Kuno, on her way to Furinkan to sabotage the locker room, barely caught a roofhopping white blur out of the corner of her eye before something very large plowed through where she had just been standing. Largely because it had shoved her out of the way.
KANNG went her head against a chimney-stack, and she was out like a light on the roof.
Ranma-neko scented her poisons, and gave her a wide safety margin in his chase after the nearly-spherical gi-clad martial artist.
******
Hiroshi and Daisuke, stepping out of a comic shop with their manga (and doujinshi), stopped and stared as something odd, even for Nerima, occured right in front of them.
"'Roshi?"
"Yeah, Dai?"
"Did I just see what I thought I just saw?"
"What did you think you just saw?"
"I thought I just saw a panda in a white shirt with spectacles hanging off one ear jump out of the canal and run for its life, with a guy in red-and- black with black hair chased it on all fours, meowing."
Daisuke turned his head, and saw that his friend was looking the opposite direction from the one he had.
"I don't know, 'Roshi. I was looking over there."
Hiroshi also looked, and froze.
Gojiro was standing there, deep in conversation with Rodan, King Kong, and John Cleese. They were all having coffee, despite the difficulties the three monsters were having with human-sized coffee cups.
The two boys looked at each other.
Hiroshi nodded. "Yours is better."
******
Souun and Akane had grabbed their favourite naginata and mallet, respectively, and were about to set out when they realized that Nabiki and Kasumi weren't with them.
"Come on!" Souun shouted heartily. "They're getting away!"
Kasumi stood there patiently, while Nabiki gave the armed Tendous a critical look.
"And which way were they going, Daddy?"
"....." Came Souun's immediate response.
"I thought so."
Souun had the good grace to look embarassed and sheepish. Akane just stomped off, certain that this was some plot to confuse her or something. She did that sometimes, so the rest of the family ignored it as usual.
Nabiki shook her head. "Lets just go back inside, 'Tousan. After all, Mr. Saotome has to come back here eventually, right?"
******
Eventually being the operative word. Genma, hiding in a rice paddy, currently had no idea where he was. Which still put him ahead of Ryouga, who sometimes didn't realize he had no idea where he was.
Speaking of whom...
******
Ryouga, looking more down than usual, was hopelessly, pitifully lost. The worst part was, he'd begun tunneling his way out of the collapsed cave. He'd had no luck making it out of his tunnel into the fresh air yet.
He used the technique again, and felt a few drops of water leak through. He had just enough time to turn around in order to run for it, when he was thouroughly doused. The disgruntled green rabbit stuffed his clothes into his pack, before hauling it out through the hole.
Poor Mrs. Ishibara took one look at the green rabbit hauling a huge backpack out of a hole in the ground where her koi pond used to be, and decided that maybe a glass of wine a day was too much, and the Good Housekeeping people in Amerika had been wrong. This caused her to miss their lovely article about zucchini keish.
For the time being, this was a moot point, other than that Ryouga, as usual, surprised someone by being in an odd place.
******
Ranma-neko, on the other hand, knew exactly where he was. He was on his way back to his territory. He'd had enough fun chasing food-toy-enemy, and was getting hungry. Maybe kind-foodprovider-warmlap would give him something.
Leaping over the wall into the Tendou-ke yard, Ranma-neko headed for the kitchen, where kind-foodprovider-warmlap was usually to be found. Indeed, there she was, with food. Ranma-neko sat down and complained about the lack of food in an appropriate place (i.e. his stomach). She turned to see him, and called out something.
Ranma-neko could feel friend-relative-parent and distant-unknown-stranger approaching from other parts of the building, but as they posed him no threat, he payed them little heed, waiting for kind-foodprovider-warmlap to produce food for him.
Kasumi looked down as Ranma padded forward and gently pawed at her skirt.
"Prrauu?" he questioned, eyes wide with an unspoken question.
Deciding to hazard a guess, Kasumi reached over and grabbed a handful of the cooked hamburger she'd been using, and crouched down, holding it out on her open palm to the cat-minded boy.
******
Souun and Nabiki, arriving in the kitchen doorway, stopped, the door- curtain resting on their heads, and stared.
Kasumi was sitting on her haunches, petting Ranma on the head with one hand, and he was eating something out of her other hand. He was also, somehow, purring between bites.
After a few moments, Kasumi smiled up at her sister and father, and Souun unfroze. Nabiki was still wondering what the heck was going on. What on EARTH was Ranma doing??
Souun walked carefully over, careful to stay nonthreatening, and peered down at Ranma, who ignored him completely. Food came first.
"Kasumi?" Souun began quietly. "That's some good, quick thinking. I'm proud of you."
Kasumi grinned, further confusing Nabiki. Her sister hadn't done much other than smile in... in....
Well, ever.
"Thank you, Otousan. I suppose now all we have to do is wait for Ojisan Saotome to return, ne?"
Soun rubbed his chin with one hand. "Unless we can break Ranma out of this and ask him. What usually brings people out of this sort of thing?"
All three of them thought long and hard. And realised that, given Ranma, usual things probably wouldn't work. And food hadn't worked either, this was proved by how Ranma'd remained in place, watching them, after Kasumi finished feeding him the handful of hamburger. He was still purring.
Then Nabiki got an idea. "What about the curse? If we activate it, maybe that will bring him out of it?"
Souun shrugged. "It's worth a try."
******
All of a sudden, the Pit was gone. Kodora sat up. She was in the yard, and a little bit wet on the head. Something felt... off, though.
Souun, Nabiki, Kasumi, and Akane, who had just returned, stared at the small girl, who looked even more unusual than normal.
Her quills, still a soft brown, were still in a loose ponytail, though they seemed thicker somehow. She was also entirely covered over the rest of her with the short, soft brown fur that had been coming and going, Kasumi recognised it. There were stripes on her cheeks, darker brown than her fur, in the shapes of wide lightning bolt symbols. Her fingernails had become pointed, now resembling claws.
Kodora looked down at herself, and nearly passed out.
She tried to say something , but the soft fur that now covered her body seemed to have extended into her mind as well, the words were hard to find.
"Can someone..." Her speech was full of pauses as she searched for appropriate words. "Can someone... to help... Kodora into... house? ...am not... feeling quite left."
"Right." Nabiki stated dully. "You're not feeling quite right."
"Is not... is not what I say? To helping me.... please?"
Zombielike, Kasumi moved to help Kodora to her feet, and walked her into the house.
The other three Tendous drifted into the house as well, moving on autopilot. The only coherent thought between the five people in the Tendou- ke was:
"This just keeps getting wierder."
******
"So, Ranma acts like a cat when his fear of them peaks?"
Taking a moment to puzzle out the sentence, Kodora nodded. She resisted the sudden urge to go curl up on the stairs and take a nap. She probably wouldn't have fit on one stair anyways. This was taking some mental effort to remain humanly coherent. Fortunately, she'd always had a strong will.
"And, why, exactly, does this happen?" Nabiki continued the questioning.
Kodora got a look of extreme concentration on her face, and the others waited for her to call up the neccessary words. Eventually she got them untangled from her mental fur enough to try to sound right.
"Is Toy-Panda fault. When Ranma.... of smallness... to drop in pack.... of cat with pit. No food.... in hole for... pack eat.... fish Ranma attatch. Special technique.... Nekoken... to learning from... many time fall. Manual... father read... sticky. Warning miss. Having... try again... lose scared. Not working... cause Ranma-neko. Old lady... friend crazy end." Mentally, Kodora nodded satisfactorily at having managed to get through that without losing track. She was having trouble paying attention to the ideas, especially with that mouse just so far up in the wall behind her...
The Tendous sat around the table with a notepad, trying to make sense of what the small girl had said. It was fairly obvious that she was used to being able to use words far better, and that she was frustrated by her sudden loss of one of her favourite tools. That and her ordinarily near- infinite attention span. With much arguing, they managed to get as far as deciphering that whatever had happened had involved a lot of hungry cats and tying fish to something, and a martial arts technique was involved, when suddenly, Kodora jumped from her seat.
They watched in surprise as she sprang from a sitting position basically straight up the wall behind her, putting a fist into it like a (relatively) low-grade martial artist would put a fist through plaster. This wall happened to be hardwood. Swiftly, she withdrew her hand, dropping to the floor on all fours. There was a soft squeaking, and then her fist moved to her mouth, and the sound went silent. She closed her jaws slightly with a soft crunch, and then swallowed the mouse whole.
Souun, Akane, and Nabiki turned green, and Kasumi just stared.
Kodora took a moment to register what she had just done, and coloured some herself. Although she turned a bit red, more embarrassed than anything else.
It HAD tasted very good. She had never been too squeamish a person in the first place anyways. It wasn't as tasty as a nice, Indian calamari curry, but it was very good nonetheless.
On the other hand, the Tendous' wall might need repairing. Maybe she oughtn't to have done that.
Souun eventually cleared his throat. "Ah... Kodora? What happens when you turn back into Ranma while you're... like this?"
The small nekomusume blinked. "Kodora... not knowing. Is never before... happen."
The Tendou patriarch nodded shakily. "Maybe we should try it?"
Before Kodora could formulate a response, the man had already returned with the warmed kettle, and was pouring it over her head.
Ranma came back to the fore, looking normal aside from the expression of sheer terror and all the sweat.
The Tendous relaxed considerably.
"What happened?" Asked Ranma.
"Well, son, you were telling us something about a fear of cats?"
Ranma shuddered. This would be difficult to talk about. But... he supposed he had to do it. After all, the last thing he remembered was a big, horrendous, sharp-ended white feline monster. Whenever that was his most recent memory.... well, things tended to get reduced to small pieces in the immediate vicinity. Besides, Kodora hadn't told Kasumi about it, and they may as well tell her at least.
And so long as everyone else was here... what the heck. Besides, Kodora might be able to fill him in on whatever happened while he was telling them. Come to think of it, that was his first time goint into Nekoken since she had Joined him.
This ought to be interesting.
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Bleah. I don't think this is quite up to the rest of the fanfiction, but I'll go ahead and post it anyways. After all, all the rest of this so far has been rough drafts also.
That's right. Nothing in this fanfiction so far has been gone back over or rewritten. Not even a spell checker. Which makes the positive comments I've gotten all the more a surprise.
Anyhoo, tell me what you think about the flip-side of the Nekoken! And next chapter, we may get some more Furinkan High Hazards.
Remember, review as much as you like, so long as it's constructive. If you just say "This is good." or "This sucks." without any sort of an explanation, I'll probably ignore it.
And for the last time, about the names: I use whichever spelling (hiragana or accepted American) I feel like for that particular name. So enough comments on that already.
See you all next time! Ja ne!
Usually, none of them are too bad to experience when walking around one's mental landscape.
Not so with the Nekoken.
In Ranma's mental landscape, always within a mile of wherever one would be, there was always a small, broken-down two-room building with a storm cellar. Step into the building, and before you knew it, a huge, bespectacled ogre wearing white with a black belt would grab you, wrap you in something fishy, and throw you in the Pit. The Pit was full of cats.
But not just ordinary cats.
These cats were huge, their fur almost bladelike, with two-foot claws, and sabre teeth. Their eyes glowed like makou pits, or, if you don't know what those are, they glowed like the light coming from an overjuiced LCD. Their whiskers were huge spikes, and they constantly yowled at the top of their lungs. Anyone in the pit was beset by the monster-cats, and worst of all, as fast as they ripped you apart, you would heal.
And Kodora was in there right now.
Luckily, she was old enough to distinguish these demons from real cats, which she rather liked. Ranma, on the other hand...
Later, Kodora would discover that anytime Ranma went into the Neko-ken, she would find herself in the Pit. It was horrible. She couldn't possibly understand what Ranma or her could have done to deserve it. Indeed, she felt that Ranma didn't deserve it at all. But she was sure she did. After all, anything that happened to her was deserved, right?
At least, that's what she had been taught. Unfortunately for Genma, this didn't lessen her buildup of anger towards the rotund martial artist/panda.
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Passenger
Chapter 13: Even reversed, Nekoken is still Nekoken. But in a different order.
A Ranma 1/2 fanfiction by S. Starblade
Dedicated to taking the good and bad in life, and giving only good.
Warning: I borrow many ideas and things from other people. No characters, however, and I hope anyone finding stuff of their own make in my fanfictions will realize that I have great respect for these creations.
Disclaimer: I-am-a-good-little-robot-who-will-obey-commands-and-fail-to- take-any-credit-for-these-characters-who-although-created-by-Takahashi-sama- have-begun-to-develop-in-my-care. Ow. Ow. Stop-malleting-me.
Key:
= English
" " = Japanese
[ ] = Jusenkyou Cursed Signs
{ } = Chinese
* * = Internal conversation between Ranma and Yasha
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Realizing what had just happened with his son, Genma demonstrated rule # 1 of the Genma Saotome School Of Life: My Own Life And Comfort Come First, So Screw You.
In other words, he ran away, leaving Souun and the three Tendou daughters on their own, with a decidedly less than mentally whole Ranma. The Tendous as a whole were considerably less skilled at abandoning people and saving their own hides then Genma was. Pretty straightforward: he'd been doing it his whole life.
So, the quartet of Tendous stared at Ranma, who shifted on his cushion, until he was crouched in a way reminiscent of a sitting cat, feet splayed, and hands spread on the floor between them, much like most people draw frogs sitting. Not because of a relation between cats and frogs, but because people tend to draw frogs wrong.
Akane shifted, ready to clobber Ranma if he started doing anything dangerous.
Nabiki put her neutral mask back on, and returned to a normal sitting position. Akane could probably defend her: if Ranma HAD gone insane, he probably wouldn't be using martial arts to attack.
Kasumi started to get up, moving to stand behind her father. Ranma was her friend, so she wouldn't run right away, but with how Genma had practically teleported out of the house, she was on her guard, and knew her father was her best bet for safety.
Souun was puzzled, slightly frightened (He knew his old friend had a tendency to overreact to anything that could possibly cause him discomfort, and wasn't as worried as he maybe would have been), and rather curious. Genma hadn't told him about this.
Kodora was in the mental equivalent of pain beyond excruciating, and can be excused for having no opinion on this other than to scream at the top of her lungs. Which really wasn't having much effect on anything anyways.
Ranma-neko looked around. He could smell that toy-food-enemy had just left. Also here were what seemed to be (from oldest to youngest) friend- relative-parent, kind-foodprovider-warmlap, distant-unknown-stranger, and, of course, female-competitor-sibling. Ignoring the real cat as a kitten (it being almost insignificantly small, scarcely larger than appropriate food, and cat-smelling), Ranma-neko decided to go after toy-food-enemy. It felt like playing. But female-competitor-sibling was in the way. Oh, well. She was a competitor-sibling. She probably wouldn't mind being gently nudged out of the way.
Kasumi, Nabiki, and Souun gaped as Akane was sent right into the wall by what seemed to be a tap on the side from Ranma, who was darting past her out of the house on all fours, much faster than anything they had seen before.
Akane wasn't hurt, mostly surprised, and couldn't collect herself enough to be angry. Confused, she looked to her father for an explanation.
Souun simply shrugged at the three looks he was getting. "I haven't a clue. Maybe Saotome-kun will tell us, he seemed to know what was going on..."
The Tendous looked at each other over the remains of dinner, and nodded. Then they all posed, fists together.
"Its: Operation Panda Retrieval!!"
The cat named Toltiir looked at them all and sweatdropped.
******
Kodachi Kuno, on her way to Furinkan to sabotage the locker room, barely caught a roofhopping white blur out of the corner of her eye before something very large plowed through where she had just been standing. Largely because it had shoved her out of the way.
KANNG went her head against a chimney-stack, and she was out like a light on the roof.
Ranma-neko scented her poisons, and gave her a wide safety margin in his chase after the nearly-spherical gi-clad martial artist.
******
Hiroshi and Daisuke, stepping out of a comic shop with their manga (and doujinshi), stopped and stared as something odd, even for Nerima, occured right in front of them.
"'Roshi?"
"Yeah, Dai?"
"Did I just see what I thought I just saw?"
"What did you think you just saw?"
"I thought I just saw a panda in a white shirt with spectacles hanging off one ear jump out of the canal and run for its life, with a guy in red-and- black with black hair chased it on all fours, meowing."
Daisuke turned his head, and saw that his friend was looking the opposite direction from the one he had.
"I don't know, 'Roshi. I was looking over there."
Hiroshi also looked, and froze.
Gojiro was standing there, deep in conversation with Rodan, King Kong, and John Cleese. They were all having coffee, despite the difficulties the three monsters were having with human-sized coffee cups.
The two boys looked at each other.
Hiroshi nodded. "Yours is better."
******
Souun and Akane had grabbed their favourite naginata and mallet, respectively, and were about to set out when they realized that Nabiki and Kasumi weren't with them.
"Come on!" Souun shouted heartily. "They're getting away!"
Kasumi stood there patiently, while Nabiki gave the armed Tendous a critical look.
"And which way were they going, Daddy?"
"....." Came Souun's immediate response.
"I thought so."
Souun had the good grace to look embarassed and sheepish. Akane just stomped off, certain that this was some plot to confuse her or something. She did that sometimes, so the rest of the family ignored it as usual.
Nabiki shook her head. "Lets just go back inside, 'Tousan. After all, Mr. Saotome has to come back here eventually, right?"
******
Eventually being the operative word. Genma, hiding in a rice paddy, currently had no idea where he was. Which still put him ahead of Ryouga, who sometimes didn't realize he had no idea where he was.
Speaking of whom...
******
Ryouga, looking more down than usual, was hopelessly, pitifully lost. The worst part was, he'd begun tunneling his way out of the collapsed cave. He'd had no luck making it out of his tunnel into the fresh air yet.
He used the technique again, and felt a few drops of water leak through. He had just enough time to turn around in order to run for it, when he was thouroughly doused. The disgruntled green rabbit stuffed his clothes into his pack, before hauling it out through the hole.
Poor Mrs. Ishibara took one look at the green rabbit hauling a huge backpack out of a hole in the ground where her koi pond used to be, and decided that maybe a glass of wine a day was too much, and the Good Housekeeping people in Amerika had been wrong. This caused her to miss their lovely article about zucchini keish.
For the time being, this was a moot point, other than that Ryouga, as usual, surprised someone by being in an odd place.
******
Ranma-neko, on the other hand, knew exactly where he was. He was on his way back to his territory. He'd had enough fun chasing food-toy-enemy, and was getting hungry. Maybe kind-foodprovider-warmlap would give him something.
Leaping over the wall into the Tendou-ke yard, Ranma-neko headed for the kitchen, where kind-foodprovider-warmlap was usually to be found. Indeed, there she was, with food. Ranma-neko sat down and complained about the lack of food in an appropriate place (i.e. his stomach). She turned to see him, and called out something.
Ranma-neko could feel friend-relative-parent and distant-unknown-stranger approaching from other parts of the building, but as they posed him no threat, he payed them little heed, waiting for kind-foodprovider-warmlap to produce food for him.
Kasumi looked down as Ranma padded forward and gently pawed at her skirt.
"Prrauu?" he questioned, eyes wide with an unspoken question.
Deciding to hazard a guess, Kasumi reached over and grabbed a handful of the cooked hamburger she'd been using, and crouched down, holding it out on her open palm to the cat-minded boy.
******
Souun and Nabiki, arriving in the kitchen doorway, stopped, the door- curtain resting on their heads, and stared.
Kasumi was sitting on her haunches, petting Ranma on the head with one hand, and he was eating something out of her other hand. He was also, somehow, purring between bites.
After a few moments, Kasumi smiled up at her sister and father, and Souun unfroze. Nabiki was still wondering what the heck was going on. What on EARTH was Ranma doing??
Souun walked carefully over, careful to stay nonthreatening, and peered down at Ranma, who ignored him completely. Food came first.
"Kasumi?" Souun began quietly. "That's some good, quick thinking. I'm proud of you."
Kasumi grinned, further confusing Nabiki. Her sister hadn't done much other than smile in... in....
Well, ever.
"Thank you, Otousan. I suppose now all we have to do is wait for Ojisan Saotome to return, ne?"
Soun rubbed his chin with one hand. "Unless we can break Ranma out of this and ask him. What usually brings people out of this sort of thing?"
All three of them thought long and hard. And realised that, given Ranma, usual things probably wouldn't work. And food hadn't worked either, this was proved by how Ranma'd remained in place, watching them, after Kasumi finished feeding him the handful of hamburger. He was still purring.
Then Nabiki got an idea. "What about the curse? If we activate it, maybe that will bring him out of it?"
Souun shrugged. "It's worth a try."
******
All of a sudden, the Pit was gone. Kodora sat up. She was in the yard, and a little bit wet on the head. Something felt... off, though.
Souun, Nabiki, Kasumi, and Akane, who had just returned, stared at the small girl, who looked even more unusual than normal.
Her quills, still a soft brown, were still in a loose ponytail, though they seemed thicker somehow. She was also entirely covered over the rest of her with the short, soft brown fur that had been coming and going, Kasumi recognised it. There were stripes on her cheeks, darker brown than her fur, in the shapes of wide lightning bolt symbols. Her fingernails had become pointed, now resembling claws.
Kodora looked down at herself, and nearly passed out.
She tried to say something , but the soft fur that now covered her body seemed to have extended into her mind as well, the words were hard to find.
"Can someone..." Her speech was full of pauses as she searched for appropriate words. "Can someone... to help... Kodora into... house? ...am not... feeling quite left."
"Right." Nabiki stated dully. "You're not feeling quite right."
"Is not... is not what I say? To helping me.... please?"
Zombielike, Kasumi moved to help Kodora to her feet, and walked her into the house.
The other three Tendous drifted into the house as well, moving on autopilot. The only coherent thought between the five people in the Tendou- ke was:
"This just keeps getting wierder."
******
"So, Ranma acts like a cat when his fear of them peaks?"
Taking a moment to puzzle out the sentence, Kodora nodded. She resisted the sudden urge to go curl up on the stairs and take a nap. She probably wouldn't have fit on one stair anyways. This was taking some mental effort to remain humanly coherent. Fortunately, she'd always had a strong will.
"And, why, exactly, does this happen?" Nabiki continued the questioning.
Kodora got a look of extreme concentration on her face, and the others waited for her to call up the neccessary words. Eventually she got them untangled from her mental fur enough to try to sound right.
"Is Toy-Panda fault. When Ranma.... of smallness... to drop in pack.... of cat with pit. No food.... in hole for... pack eat.... fish Ranma attatch. Special technique.... Nekoken... to learning from... many time fall. Manual... father read... sticky. Warning miss. Having... try again... lose scared. Not working... cause Ranma-neko. Old lady... friend crazy end." Mentally, Kodora nodded satisfactorily at having managed to get through that without losing track. She was having trouble paying attention to the ideas, especially with that mouse just so far up in the wall behind her...
The Tendous sat around the table with a notepad, trying to make sense of what the small girl had said. It was fairly obvious that she was used to being able to use words far better, and that she was frustrated by her sudden loss of one of her favourite tools. That and her ordinarily near- infinite attention span. With much arguing, they managed to get as far as deciphering that whatever had happened had involved a lot of hungry cats and tying fish to something, and a martial arts technique was involved, when suddenly, Kodora jumped from her seat.
They watched in surprise as she sprang from a sitting position basically straight up the wall behind her, putting a fist into it like a (relatively) low-grade martial artist would put a fist through plaster. This wall happened to be hardwood. Swiftly, she withdrew her hand, dropping to the floor on all fours. There was a soft squeaking, and then her fist moved to her mouth, and the sound went silent. She closed her jaws slightly with a soft crunch, and then swallowed the mouse whole.
Souun, Akane, and Nabiki turned green, and Kasumi just stared.
Kodora took a moment to register what she had just done, and coloured some herself. Although she turned a bit red, more embarrassed than anything else.
It HAD tasted very good. She had never been too squeamish a person in the first place anyways. It wasn't as tasty as a nice, Indian calamari curry, but it was very good nonetheless.
On the other hand, the Tendous' wall might need repairing. Maybe she oughtn't to have done that.
Souun eventually cleared his throat. "Ah... Kodora? What happens when you turn back into Ranma while you're... like this?"
The small nekomusume blinked. "Kodora... not knowing. Is never before... happen."
The Tendou patriarch nodded shakily. "Maybe we should try it?"
Before Kodora could formulate a response, the man had already returned with the warmed kettle, and was pouring it over her head.
Ranma came back to the fore, looking normal aside from the expression of sheer terror and all the sweat.
The Tendous relaxed considerably.
"What happened?" Asked Ranma.
"Well, son, you were telling us something about a fear of cats?"
Ranma shuddered. This would be difficult to talk about. But... he supposed he had to do it. After all, the last thing he remembered was a big, horrendous, sharp-ended white feline monster. Whenever that was his most recent memory.... well, things tended to get reduced to small pieces in the immediate vicinity. Besides, Kodora hadn't told Kasumi about it, and they may as well tell her at least.
And so long as everyone else was here... what the heck. Besides, Kodora might be able to fill him in on whatever happened while he was telling them. Come to think of it, that was his first time goint into Nekoken since she had Joined him.
This ought to be interesting.
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Bleah. I don't think this is quite up to the rest of the fanfiction, but I'll go ahead and post it anyways. After all, all the rest of this so far has been rough drafts also.
That's right. Nothing in this fanfiction so far has been gone back over or rewritten. Not even a spell checker. Which makes the positive comments I've gotten all the more a surprise.
Anyhoo, tell me what you think about the flip-side of the Nekoken! And next chapter, we may get some more Furinkan High Hazards.
Remember, review as much as you like, so long as it's constructive. If you just say "This is good." or "This sucks." without any sort of an explanation, I'll probably ignore it.
And for the last time, about the names: I use whichever spelling (hiragana or accepted American) I feel like for that particular name. So enough comments on that already.
See you all next time! Ja ne!