The Jusenkyou Guide sighed as his door slammed open. Without turning from his work, he called out to the intruder, "So sorry. I've been meaning to install a rotating door there. It just not right that guests be bothered with complex tasks such as turning a doorknob."

His polite apology was countered by the approach of heavy footfalls. Painting on a fake smile, the guide turned to face his guest. The first glance prompted another look-over. One and a half meters of voluptuous curves and righteous female indignation, one hand pulled back to deliver a slap, all rapidly froze as she took in the sight of the beaker of liquid in his rubber-clad hands. Her eyes quickly traced a path from the liquid, out through the hut's crude window, to the springs outside, and back again. By the time the rebound carried her eyes to the cup, her posture was entirely casual, a hand raised to brush a lock of lavender hair back from one lovely ear.

The guide blinked distractedly for a few seconds, and then noticed the way that the amazon's eyes followed his hand. After a moment's thought, he came to a realization.

"Oh, how rude of me. You must want something to drink after walking all the way from Joketsuzoku. Sit down. I'll find you something. You really don't want to drink this," he said, motioning with his other hand.

The comment was enough to break her out of her stupor. She drew her self up and, perhaps coincidentally, away from the container. "You led that redhead witch to the village. Where is she?"

"Oh! The Kiss of Death. Yes. I don't suppose..." he began and then flinched at her glare. "No, I don't suppose so. Far be it from me to sick my nose in Joketsuzoku business. You should find what you want in the guest registry over there. It should be the last entry."

The amazon eyed him suspiciously before picking up the indicated item. She quickly flipped through the pages until she found the correct entry. "Ranma," she hissed. She spent a few more seconds looking over the book before she tossed it aside. Without any further acknowledgment of the guide's existence, she stormed out the door.

The guide stared after her blankly for the next few seconds. "Strange girl," he noted, and turned back to the table.

In front of him, a parchment had been stretched out for cleaning. After using a glass rod to stir up the mixture he was holding, the guide used the resultant foam to wet a small brush. A few well-practiced passes of the brush removed the dirt from a palm-sized portion of the material.

While he waited for the excess fluid to evaporate, the guide allowed his mind to wander. "Poor Miss Customer and Mr. Panda. All the crazies are out for blood now. I wouldn't want to be in there when they finally catch up."


º•o•º•o•º•o•º•o•º
Toy Dojo
A Ranma ½ Fanfic
by Wordblindness
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Chapter 4: A Little Info
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Splash. Even before wiped the water out of my eyes, I knew something was horribly wrong. Looking down, I took inventory.

Ten fingers: check
Ten toes: check
Two of these: check
One of those: check

I wondered why I had been so worried. What a wacky imagination I had, thinking that I could feel my body shift around. What were the chances of that happening?

Splash. Even before wiped the water out of my eyes, I knew everything would still be perfectly fine. Nothing wrong here! I glanced down.

Full breasts: check.
Rounded hips: check.
Ability to ask for directions: check.

"Damn it!" a soprano voice quavered. Was that really my voice? "I'm a woman. What else could possibly go wrong?"

"SWEETO!" Without warning, my chest tripled in weight. My efforts to dislodge Happosai became more frantic as I heard him mumbling, "Aren't you a pretty little thing? You should move in with me. I'll keep you safe from those bad men."

To Saotome's load amusement, I started slamming into the walls pervert-first. "I shoulda known it. Oof! All these years. Ack! 'Just stopping by for a Urg! drink with Auf! an old friend.'" I stopped to fix the top of Happosai's bald head with a heated glare. "You were just trying to get me into bed, you bastard!" I screeched.

"Hey!" His head came up. "That's not funny. You were a man back then."

I used the presented opportunity to yank him off of me by the nostrils. "And why ain't I one now?" I screamed. I took several deep breaths in a attempt to calm down, but the appreciative looks I was receiving ruined the effect. "What did you do to me?"

"I usually refer to that as feeling you u—"

"I know that, you pervert. Why am I a woman?"

Saotome took this chance to butt into the conversation. "Well, technically you're not a woman; you're just a little girl," he taunted. "Quite appropriate too, considering the way you've been—"

Sadly, the true depths of Saotome's death wish were left unexplored that day, as he was suddenly knocked out due to the incidence of a small bolt of plasma. After assuring myself that he would stay down for the count, I collapsed the ring in my hand back down to the Dragon Whisker. Whistling, I went to tie it back into my hair, when I was stuck by a sudden realization.

"Hey, my hair isn't growing. Maybe that stupid hair formula finally wore off."

"No," Happosai corrected absently from the head of the table. "Hair Potion Number Nine only works on men."

I turned to see that he had used the distraction to set up what looked like a fairly elaborate presentation. In addition to a slide-projector, he set out a row of stoppered beakers, a thermos, a planter, a towel, a camera, a mirror, and a small wooden maze. Happosai always liked to be the center of attention, so he equated a good speech with flashy gimmicks and toys. My headache was getting worse.

"Aren't we missing something?" I asked. "Tea? Pastries? Oh, I know: my freakin' manhood! A joke's a joke, but I think you better put me back to normal, right now!"

"All in good time. All in good time," Happosai assured me. "We have a lot of ground to cover, and if I start shuffling the agenda...well, who knows what parts might go missing?"

There was no point pressing him for information while he was in this mood. I was pretty sure he was bluffing, but it was nothing worth missing parts over, especially when we were talking about my missing parts. I could be patient until I got a chance to redirect the conversation. Damn! I had been so sure that I would be able to squeeze him for, at the very least, some tea and pastries.

"This had better be worth my time," I growled as I returned to my seat.

"Oh, it will. It will," He replied. "That is, unless you don't have the balls to grasp the opportunity I'm offering you. Get it? Don't have the balls? Bwahahahaha!"

"Grrrrrrrr."

"Okay. Okay. No need to get your panties in a twist. Sheesh! Hehe, panties."

•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o

After a little fiddling, Happosai got the first slide up. It was a map of China, covered with a menagerie of symbols. I managed to spot dragons, foxes, swords, fruit trees, and a what appeared to be a carousel horse before Happosai started his explanation.

"The wilds of China have always had a special place in the hearts and minds of storytellers from around the world. Tales from Asia and Europe have long populated the area with every manner of ghost, demon, and bug-eyed monster. What you probably don't realize, what few of your generation even suspect, is that, up until the sometime in middle of the twentieth century, those stories were not far from the truth: China contained several of the biggest hotbeds of supernatural activity in the world."

"It's hard to say exactly when the state of affairs ended." Cha-chick: the street was dominated by the giant portraits of Chairman Mao. "Between World War II, two revolutions, and the beginning of the Cold War, everyone was taking any news coming out of China with a grain of salt." Cha-chick: a table overflowed with piles of pamphlets in various languages. "There might have been some clues in and amongst all the propaganda hailing the end of oppression and superstition, but if so, it was ignored. Sure, in their quest for 'the ideal scientific and democratic society' the Communists could knock down temples and burn books, but what could they possibly do about more intangible institutions? Nothing! Or so we thought." Cha-chick: a man desperately pushed back against a bulging door. "It was easy to assume that the Chinese, always somewhat embarrassed by their unearthly neighbors, had just gone on to a whole new level of paranoia and secrecy on the subject. It wasn't until the Sixties that it became clear that China's normally turbulent supernatural activity had mellowed down to barely three times the global average, and nobody could explain why.

"I stumbled across what I believe is the answer on an expedition through Central China to find the ruins of Pandala, the legendary seat of the ancient panda civilization." Cha-chick: two spear-wielding pandas stood in front of a gate, driving off another panda who held an upside-down copy of Mating for the Completely Clueless in its paws. "You see, given number of supposedly mutant pandas that have shown human-level intelligence—"

"Yes, yes," I said, "I know all about your stupid theory on pandas. I've told you before: I don't want to hear about then; I don't want to see then; and I really—and I mean really—don't want to get involved in anything to do with them."

"Oh, right—the incident with the the cursed canning jars." Happosai hemmed and hawed a bit before asking, "Just out of curiosity: do you have a problem with anything that looks like a panda, or just real pandas?"

An air-raid siren started going off in my head. "It's not those pandimensional pandroids again, is it?"

"No. I—"

"Zombie pandas from the Beyond?"

"No! You—"

"An ancient militant order of monks practicing the deadly art of panda-fu?"

"Don't be ridicu—"

"A freakish parody of a panda, brought to life by a mad artist using tools bought at the estate action of a cult of demon worshipers?"

Happosai had finally had "ENOUGH!!!" He glared at me for a few seconds before continuing, "If you really must know, then watch."

•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o

Time seemed to slow as the liquid approached the body of Happosai's unconscious assistant. When it hit, the effects were immediate: Saotome's body started to twist, and warp, and mold in a queasy fashion. My stomach gave a liquid lurch as I made the connection with my earlier transmogrification.

"It always takes a little time for the transformation to take hold the first time," Happosai commented as he watched the form convulse. "After that, it's almost instantaneous."

Finally the writhing pile of flesh solidified into the form of a large panda. The beast sat up groggily, attempting massaging its forehead with one stubby paw, and then growfed angrily as it noticed its lack of articulate digits. It shot a hostile glare at Happosai before waddling out the door.

I stared out the empty doorway, trying to form a coherent question. I had worked my way up to "Wha?" when my thoughts were interrupted by the rapid clatter of the slide projector. Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-chick. I turned in time to view the last few panda-centric slides, before they were whisked away in favor of a studding view overlooking a cluster of bamboo-studded springs.

"This is Chouchuanshan or, as we would call it, Jusenkyou, the Land of Cursed Springs. It didn't always carry this harsh title. It was actually once considered a very holy place." Cha-chick: it was a baptism of sorts, or at least it involved water and flimsy white clothing. "Anyone immersed in the waters was reborn, freed from the shackles of magic, fate, and infirmity. Fed by the purest of glaciers and the deepest hot vents, the springs formed a mighty vortex of power that even destiny dared not touch. To many, it was a last chance at redemption. Unfortunately, someone else had a different use for the springs.

Cha-chick: a proud warlord rode at the front of a mighty army. "Magic was always a stumbling block for those that would wield power in China. When it comes to educating the unwashed masses on the benefits of civilization, it doesn't help if every Tom..." Cha-chick: A villager with a glowing sword fought off a ring of uniformed men. "...Dick..." Cha-chick: An old man stood at the edge of a river, throwing handfuls of fire out at a boat. "..and Harry..." Cha-chick. A ghostly presence, cradling a dagger, crouched behind a throne. "...has the power to educate you back. It's even worse when every hill, stream, and forest can do the same" Cha-chick: panicked men desperately fled a giant landslide. Cha-chick: a watery spirit shattered an earthen dam, scattering dozens of laborers with their yokes and buckets. Cha-chick: a heavy tree branch mashed a woodsman to a fine pulp.

"Don't forget armchairs," I interjected. "There is no end to the heinous acts that can be perpetrated through the vicious use of an armchair."

Happosai wisely chose to ignore me. "As if the practical problems weren't bad enough, the situation was often just plain embarrassing. You think your living relatives can be mortifying? (Do not deny it; I know your sister too well.)" Cha-chick: I was fairly certain that I'd been on this ride at an amusement park. "Well, try having a few dead ones show up for tea every Thursday night." Cha-chick: where those extremely small people or really big shoes? "How about explaining the arrangement with that oh-so-silent partner to every time a new religion or government blows into town?

"The frustration wasn't limited to the Chinese lords either." Cha-chick "Every group that traveled to China, whether for trade or conquest, came back with some story to tell" Cha-chick My attention started to wander around the table. "...Mongol warlord sweeping down in a reign of terror..." My eyes stopped on the beakers. I ignored the three empty ones; that left three more. Cha-chick Let's see, each beakerful of water would change a person to a particular form. "...dynasties fell due to..." Happosai had hinted that, however briefly, I would be able to regain my masculinity sometime that evening; that made one beaker that must contain man-water. Cha-chick Saotome would need to change back; that made two. I just had to eliminate one possibility. "...Opium Wars, many Europeans..." No, I couldn't be completely sure that Happosai had wanted to use the panda-water immediately, so I couldn't act too precipitously. The question was: if I could find the man-water, should I immediately try to grab it? Cha-chick Like it or not, I would be using this girl form for the foreseeable future; it was the perfect camouflage. Was it worth pissing off Happosai just to assure myself that I could change back? "Are you listening to me at all?"

My eyes snapped back up to Happosai. "Sure! I was just wondering...um," I fumbled for a good excuse. "What's so big about magic? Yeah, it can be a pain, but so can thieves, unions, and natural disasters. It's nothing that can't be taken into account."

"You fail to grasp the scope of the problems I am talking about." Happosai thought for a few seconds. "Poets often compare the Great Wall to a sleeping dragon, winding its way across China. This is ironic, because according to certain sources, one ancient segment was built to cover the remains of a dragon slain by rampaging demons. A body miles long, strong enough to support uncountable tons of stone, and he was the loser. We are talking about disasters greater than anything nature could ever design, troubles that no army of warriors could face head-on. As long as this type of magic ran wild, the rule of human kings was but a paper-thin illusion."

Cha-chick: a more panoramic show of the springs revealed mountains in the distance. "Jusenkyou must have seemed like a god-given opportunity to whoever first saw the possibilities. The only had to trace back the springs' source, hollow out a small mountain, drop in some plumbing, and presto—they had Jusendou, a factory for eradicating every bit of magic that could be carried, dragged, or lured there. Jusenkyou became little more than a sump, a temporary resting place for those magics too stubborn to dissipate during their first trip through the works. Now, instead of curing curses, the springs are far more likely to bestow one on anyone foolish enough to enter.

"Luckily, because they have already been weakened at least once, these curses tend to be easy to reverse or cure—"

"How? HOW?" I demanded.

"—or just as easily strengthened, particularly in the case of the transfigurations," Happosai finished.

"I'll be good," I promised.

"Not comes the fun part: a demonstration," Happosai said. He removed a moss-covered rock from the planter and started to carefully pry off a couple of long strips of the hairy growth. "After I found Jusenkyou, I couldn't resist playing around a bit. One of the things I learned was that, although the curses tend to require a living target, there were ways of working around this limitation." He smeared a packet of gel onto the camera and then started to wind one of the strips around it. "In straightforward cases like your own, the transformation takes along the bones, hair, skin, digestive system and several other body parts that contain dead or foreign matter. It was just a small intuitive leap from that to this..." He set the completed green lump down in the wooden maze and then drenched it with the contents of another beaker. After a few seconds, a small white rat was running through the labyrinth.

"The moss needs a surface to grow on; it's an integral part of how the moss collects nourishment, how it grows, and how it spreads. From a certain, admittedly strange viewpoint, a moss-covered rock could be constitute a single living organism. Once you accept that premise, the variations can be quite interesting." The rat rounded the corner and spotted sizable chunk of cheese. It took off so fast that the green lump was still rolling when Happosai lowered his thermos. "Especially in our situation." With a clicking whir, the lump shot out an instant photo.

•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o

After diving over the table in a third attempt to snatch the Thermos from Happosai, I looked up from my crumpled position and saw Saotome in the doorway, sipping at a steaming cup of tea with one hand and holding a cat in the other.

"Quick! Circle around. He had some sort of cure in—Hey!" I shook off the last of my daze. "When did you become human again?"

He just looked at me weirdly for a few seconds, then he tossed his tea onto me.

"Hot. Hot! HOT!" I quickly pulled the steaming cloth of my shirt away from my stinging but thankfully flat chest.

"Serves you right" commented Saotome icily, as he fingered the scorch marks on his own outfit.

I laughed nervously as I fanned my shirt in an effort to cool it off. "So that's it then: that water gives us the curse, and hot tea breaks it?"

Happosai turned from where he had been happily stripping moss off of the camera. "Not quite. Your curse is still there; it's just kind of...bent out of the way. Cold water..." A pile of shredded moss became a pile of mutilated mouse chunks. "Hot water..." As the parts reverted to moss, they took on silky-looking brown color. "It's actually a little bit more complicated than that, but you can read the whole file later. Luckily, your first curse is extremely potent, so it won't reverse except under fairly extreme—"

"Wait! Wait! First curse?" I asked, "As in one among many?"

"Thought this was going to be simple, did you?" drawled Saotome.

Happosai rolled his eyes at the byplay. "You can't honestly believe I would waste my time dumping water over you twice, just to get some sort of sick kick out of playing with you mind."

Saotome and I both managed to remain quiet for a few long moments.

"Well..." Happosai waxed indignant.

"Now that you mention it..." I ventured

With the air of a wronged martyr, Happosai slid the handmirror down the table toward me. I caught it and studied my reflection.

"I could pass for sixteen," I admitted grudgingly, "but not myself at sixteen."

Happosai smiled in amusement and started in with a ridiculous accent. "Too bad. You fall in Spring of Drowned Immortal Pill. Very tragic story of Immortal Pill chucked into spring by your sister there one week ago." Both of them snickered at this before Happosai waved aside my look of incomprehension. "Don't worry about it: you'll laugh later. Lets just say I took a gamble, and it payed off handsomely. It's a good thing too; those little suckers are getting harder and harder to track down these days"

I thought about that for a bit. "So...I'll never grow old, and I'll never die?"

"No, no, no. Everybody assumes that when they hear the name. It's one of those funny cultural things that don't translate well without the proper background. Its goes something like, if you have pure heart, the Immortal Pill will speed your growth toward true enlightenment and immortality. Obviously, that will be useless to you—"

"Hey!"

"—so we will just have to settle for the side effect: a highly idealized version of the constitution you could have theoretically developed through clean living. You are as healthy as it is possible to be: no toxins, no clogged arteries, and not even so much as a pimple or a wrinkle. As you noted, you could easily pass for a well-developed teenager. How long you stay that way will depend solely on the lifestyle you choose." He motioned to his own shrunken body with a strange mixture of pride and humility.

"Personal experience, huh?" I commented. Something was itching at the back of my brain, and I finally remembered what it was. "So why do I need the girl curse; I think I would be quite happy with just this one."

Happosai chuckled a little bit. "Well, about that...you know how your sister can be?"

The clues suddenly lined up rather nicely. "She pissed off a bunch of people collecting this stuff, and now you need someone that looks like a suddenly young version of her to take the heat."

"Glad we understand each other," Happosai agreed, "but cheer up; its better than dealing with your own mess."

I let a little of my skepticism leak out through my eyes.

"It's not like any of her enemies will be out to kill her." He paused in thought."Well, possibly a few will—a half-dozen on the outside, but you still come ahead from the trade."

I told myself I could be calm and rational about this. "Do you know why my sister and I haven't had much to do with each other for the last two decades?" I asked. "It isn't that we don't like each other; we get along great. It is because of situations like this one.

"It was the same thing all the way through childhood. She would make some oblivious comment and offend someone. The worst part was she would never realize she had done anything. Suddenly, she would be confronted with several dozen people who were furious with her for no apparent reason, and she would get mad. After things escalated, I would end up getting involved in an effort to calm things down. Somehow the whole mess would suddenly become my fault, and more and more people would get involved just for the pleasure of telling me so. After a certain point, I would lose my temper, and by the time the dust cleared, the town council and the local insurance adjusters would start giving very obvious hints that it would be worth our families while to move somewhere far, far away. So, we would, and the whole process would start over again.

"If my parents hadn't been making out like bandits from the 'going-away presents' I think they would have thrown me out over the mess"

"Well, don't worry about it too much," Happosai assured me. "If we need it, we'll have a fair amount of weight to throw around during this operation."

"So...are you going to tell me about it, or just continue with the history lesson," I announced.

"If someone didn't find in necessary to interrupt, and knock-out assistants, and generally make a nuisance of himself," Happosai replied, "we would be done by now,"

Now, what could I say to that?

•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o•o
"Now, where were we..." Happosai looked over the contents of the table. "Ah, yes. You should look at this." He tossed over the photo, which had finished developing. It showed an incomplete map of a wooden maze with a large piece of cheese at the end. "If I was to stuff that into another ball of moss, the new mouse would go straight to the cheese." he explained, "Unfortunately, someone knocked over my planter while he was diving over the table, so you'll just have to take my word for it."

Cha-chick: An elaborate suit of samurai armor, covered with the now familiar moss, lay on a table. "The application this effect was fairly obvious: martial arts scrolls, plus large doll, plus water, equals instant martial artist. Once I had a that proof of concept down, I would be able to...well, I'm sure you can imagine the possibilities."

"Unfortunately the plan was...well, a flop." Cha-chick: A young man sat on the same table, bawling like a baby. "Soun's personality was...unbalanced. He had a hundred lifetimes worth of knowledge on how to fight, but he had no other way to interact with the world. Put him in front of a rampaging demon, and he was in his element; ask him what he wanted for dinner, and he would melt down into a quivering pile of indecision. Genma and I spent a year traveling with him, slowly coaxing him out of his shell, but in the end, we admitted that he would never be able to cope with the real world. There was just something missing in him, something we couldn't analyze and put on a scroll. Long story short, we locked his curse and set him up at a nice little dojo with a caretaker to watch over him. Eventually, they got married and had three daughters."

"That's all very interesting and touching and all," I commented, "but what does that have to do with me?"

Happosai sighed. "You know, this really would have been much simpler if you had just let me tell everything in order. Yet another thing that your sister found out (on the trip you will never let me get around to telling you about) is that, when the curse is locked, the hidden form can be passed on to the following generations. There are now three doll-turned-humans ready to be studied, ones that don't have the flaw of the original. We just need somebody to get close to them: someone intelligent, and resourceful, and reliable. We were thinking about sending Genma's daughter."

That was a relief. For a second there, I thought they were talking about sending me. "Hey, Saotome, you old dog," I said. "I never knew you had any kids."

"Just one," he said. Suddenly he was crushing the air out of my lungs. "And I think I'll call her Ranma."

"Oh....joy," I gasped out.


Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and all associated characters and concepts belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Kitty, Fuji TV, and Viz Communications. I am borrowing them for non-commercial entertainment purposes only.
Author's Notes:Lots of exposition, no story. Hopefully the next chapter will have more substance.