Cause 5
-------
OK, let's get technical. It starts with a single gene. This gene is called TFM. If you have good TFM, you are normal, if you have bad TFM, you're like Akane.
Simple enough.
I wake up, and the sun is beaming down upon my stiff-in-eight-places neck. Pop's not around, and the clock says I got three hours before the fight. I roll to my knees, aching and still tired, I trudge downstairs. Kasumi; lovely, friendly Kasumi has my breakfast all waiting for me. Pop, the giant panda, is playing shogi with Mr. Tendo on the porch. Akane's playing dress-up with an all to familiar little black pig, who's giving me a stare of hatred so strong, that it could burn a hole in a shag-carpet. Nabiki's counting up the earnings from her latest extortion scam, which I'm told involved a ten person network, 2 hidden cameras and a fifty page incriminating document. See no evil, hear no evil. Lastly; the glorified, elderly master of the school of anything goes martial arts is presently swimming in a basket of freshly stolen bras and panties ranging from smooth silk to lusty lace with lots of casual every day and kinky secret stuff in between.
Welcome to my morning.
My first thought isn't my stiff neck, it isn't sleeping on the wooden floor, not the pig glaring at me from across the room, it isn't even Akane's mysterious condition. What's on my mind is Strangelouvre. Call it an obsession if that fits for you. He's everything I'd want to beat up in a person. Kodachi, rudeness, bad karma and vaginal sciences I don't need any more of these things my in my life. I'd say trust me, but you know already; my life needs simplification, not complication. I'm going into a man to man fight, but it's when I take my first sip of my morning miso soup that I realize that I'm a girl.
This is last night all over again. I wish I could realize these things sooner. Picture it, I go to fight Strangelouvre with this tits and ass body of mine. I most definately wouldn't live it down. Like I said, this is a man-to-man fight, and that is the whole point. Sure, I may turn into a girl, but what I am is a guy. I am a guy, dammit, a guy with too many women (myself included) trying to drag my life down. I deal with enough girls to have to deal with their doctors too. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to put up with women at all, ever. Mating really can't be worth all this. I finish my soup and head to the bathroom to draw a bath.
If there is a loss-of-funtcion mutation located on the TFM gene in your genetic make-up, well, I would say you're in trouble, but you can't do anything about it. The damage hs been done, so I'd be telling you a little too late.
How late? Well, how old are you?
That, plus 9 months too late.
This is all the vital stuff they teach guys like Strangelouvre. This is the nitty-gritty, urgent knowledge. Everything I ever wanted to know about TFM loss of function mutation, and it's effect on human embryological development, but was afraid to ask; third edition.
Are you paying attention?
Hit yourself.
My whole body seems to melt in this hot bath. The neck ache subsides, fades and trails away to become a warm and fuzzy-feeling weather front, working it's way south.
I open my eyes, and look straight up at the light that hangs above the bath. The bright-white light is burning a flashing-blue spot into my vision, and in the burn spot, I can see myself beating Strangelouvre. This time, complete with the proper backdrop. In this light I see my chestnut fist. In this light I see him hitting the ground, wincing. In this light I see my triumphant victory. In this light I see the shadow of a hand that comes down over my face, and shoves me all the way underwater.
I look up through the splashing waves, and the glare of the light, and the silvery rims of all the bubbles draining out of my lungs, while my arms are flailing up to grab something, like a pound of flesh. I look up and what I see is the silhouette of Mr. Big-fang wearing just his bandana. I swipe a punch at his face, and he jumps back, letting me up for some air.
He just stands there, naked and smiling, like the marble archaic statue of some great Greek hero. His face appears to me out of a halo of subtle blue and white flashes from the burn-spot of the light I'm not looking at anymore.
I'm not looking at it anymore, but I can still see it.
That's a metaphor, for something.
"How did that make you feel?" He asked, sounding like he knew he didn't have ask at all.
I say it made me feel like kicking him in the face, and seeing how many teeth I could knock out. This guy really has no shame, if he can't postpone his little right of passage or whatever long enough for me to take a frikking bath. His smile just gets wider, then he turns away from me, and pours himself a glass of water from the sink.
"Ranma, How do you think I got here?"
I ask him did he hear me or not? If he doesn't want any broken bones, or concussions, he leaves right now. Otherwise, I swear to God I'll beat his ass worse than ever. This is the moment.
Fight mechanism. It's the moment when you start pumping adrenaline, it's the moment you know you're going to course all your energy into fist after fist of demolishing power. Your muscles tense, your heart pounds, your whole body feels charged like an electrified fur coat. This is the moment that I was saving for Strangelourve, and knowing that Ryoga is taking some of that energy away, and making me use it on him, that just makes me want to fight him even more. Acting like he doesn't even hear me, he turns to face me, taking a sip from his water glass, then setting it down, smooth as wax-paper. He says to me;
"Up the stairs, turn left, down the hall. It was that easy. Dr. Noitaru is right, all I have to do is confront my fear of you, and I can truly become a man. I'll never be lost ever again."
Crack. Crack. Crack. That's my knuckles. I don't say a word, standing there, naked and ready to unleash. He can get out now, or the beat-down shall commence.
"Something on your mind?" He asks
I tell Ryoga I'm happy that he's confronted his fear, I'm happy he's found his way around a two story building, I'm happy his courage is coming to him. I tell him that's as far as my happiness stretches. Everything else about me is massively pissed.
Get the Hell out of here.
"Ranma, I hate you! And I'll be damned if I do anything you tell me to do."
It rains, and it rains, and it rains. Finally, the damn bursts.
I jump out of the bath, and I'm going to see how hard I can kick his face. Picture a perfect set of five toe prints indenting into Ryogas forehead. Now picture them 3 inches deeper. This probably would have worked, had not Ryoga still had his glass of water. Cold water might as well be kryptonite.
Splash.
I'm wet with cold water, cause and effect, now I'm a girl. My face kicking plan I quickly abandon, and I try just to keep myself covered up. Ryoga, he's such a bastard. No sooner do I land then he grabs my wrists. He swings me back against the wall, pins my arms down, and presses his body against mine.
Fear mechanism. It's that moment when adrenaline starts pumping in your veins. Your throught clenches up, and you can't breathe, let alone scream. It's that moment when your whole body shivers and tenses, stresses and pulsates. All the strength you muster drains into panic and confusion. My breasts pressed against his chest, his tight grip around my wrists, pressed up against the bathroom tile. With the heat of my panic, the fresh hot vapors from the tub and his body like radiation all over me; I swear I'm being steam-cooked.
"You threaten me all you want, Ranma. I know your weakness, and I'm not afraid to use it against you." he says, "I'm not afraid, period."
His eyes look into mine, but they seem to look through me, this is a speech delivered to the warm tile walls. I feel like nothing. The invisible man/boy/girl, whatever. That's not the point. The point is, there is no point. I try to flex my arms forward, and he just torques my small wrists right back into the wall. The point is I can't make a point. I'd try to kick, but I don't dare move my legs, lest I get more than I ever asked for. One wrong move, and I'm...you could say...fucked.
We stare eye to eye, both our chests heaving. My breasts touch his pecs with each breath we take.
Together.
Apart.
Together.
Apart.
The worst of enemies in the worst of situations. Ryoga says that Dr. Noitaru told Ryoga to be ruthless. If Ryoga wants to break his own fear, he has to attack in ways the old Ryoga wouldn't. So this is Noitaru's idea, not Ryogas'. Noitaru told him to subdue me at my weak point. Ryoga says he didn't want to, but that Noitaru said that what he wanted wasn't the point.
But, if you ask me, the point is this is pointless.
Ryoga is the one who's here. I don't care what Noitaru told him to do, Ryoga is the one attacking me. He has to listen to me, he has to stop, he has to find some other way to do this right of passage thing, or he'll end up hurting everyone involved.
You want to know the best way to shut someone up? Put your lips over their lips.
Shock mechanism. My jaw clenches up. His tongue slides across my teeth. Nothing makes sense. Adrenaline, confusion, anger, surprise, fear all swirl together, and dissolve into a shock that BAM hits your brain like a jump-start and fizzles every nerve like a fuse. How did this happen? This can't be happening. All your quivering muscles clench and knot. Your lips, his lips.
How did that make you feel?
This can't be real.
This can't be going on.
This can't be happening.
Ryoga pulls back, and looks into my wide eyes, and flushed red face.
"Ranma" Ryoga says "I must defeat you. I must become a man. I'll see clearly then. I will be complete when you are gone."
He jumps back, and bolts out the window, leaving me standing there. The light I'm not looking at is still burned into my vision, and I can still feel the Ryoga that I'm not pressed up against. He's left a giant Ryoga-sized cold print from my shoulders down to my knees, and over my lips. Now I'm all alone, seeing and feeling things that aren't even there.
This is when my back slides down the tiles. This is when I rest my head on my knees, and clutch my legs to my breasts. I curl up in a ball and I try to feel warmth in all the places Ryoga left cold. This is where I stay, crouched for a quarter of an hour, while I cry.
TFM is a gene that is maternally inherited. That means you get it from your mom. If this applies to you, that is if you have a TFM gene, then you got it from the egg cell that was fertilized by the sperm cell. This formed a complete 46 chromosome single human cell that was you.
Not everyone uses their TFM gene, and they get along fine without it. Some people use their TFM gene, and they do fine with it. But then there are people like Akane. People that had the divine and beautiful miracle of life fuck them over big time. People with a busted TFM gene will need to have a special doctor later on in their life.
They'll need a doctor like Dr. Strangelouvre. A doctor like the guy I have to defeat. I dried my tears, and splashed myself with some warm water. When that water hit me, no joke, all my sadness
Splash
turned into anger. I couldn't be sad for myself anymore, I could only be angry at Ryoga, Strangelouvre, Noitaru. I have become a walking, ticking two fisted time-bomb, wanting and waiting to go off at something. I got dressed fast, and headed out to the dojo for some warming-up. Kicking and punching the morning away, I was breaking cinder-blocks when Akane walked in.
The TFM gene encodes for a receptor. Every cell in your body has got receptor proteins on their membranes, they pick up little bits of junk in your blood, and when they do, they tell the cell to speed up, slow down, do this, do that, live, die, any number of commands. I know this is boring, but it's important. I mean there she is, and this changed her whole life, but I didn't know it at the time.
"Ranma, don't fight Strangelouvre." She says "I'll be honest, I didn't even want you to come with me to that doctors office yesterday."
She went on and on about how she was sorry he slapped me with the glove, and got into an argument with him. So it's not my fault, and I don't have to fight anyone. She just doesn't get it. I refuse to be weak I refuse to back down, I refuse to be hurt, I refuse to lose. I am fighting Strangelouvre.
"Then I'm coming with you." She says. But no she's not.
"Yes I am." She says "He's my doctor after all."
Akane says this is her doctor, but this is my fight. This is my battle, and there's no way I'm going to back down. There's no way I'm going to ask for support. This is something I have to do, and Akane has nothing to do with it.
When all the guys were saying, 'Let's go build a boat to sail to the Americas', or 'Let's go find the highest mountain in the world, climb to the top, and become Gods' or 'let's build space ships, and lunar rovers and terra-formers, and let's make space our playground' What were the women saying? I don't really want to know. Because I'm pretty sure it was somewhere along the lines of 'Let's go get new curtains' and 'Let's add a second bedroom' or 'Let's switch to naturally decaffeinated coffee made with Arabica beans' That sounds about right. Not very glamorous, but hey, that's just fine. That's the way it is. If men will continue to seek out the next plain of existence, and if women will continue to be there to make that new plain livable for us all, then cause and effect, goddammit, alright.
Man Woman Cause Effect Vice Versa. Great.
What does Akane want, if she wants me to back down, she's not taking the attitude of a martial artist. She doesn't have to like the fact that I'm fighting but she could at least support me.
Akane asked if she should support me at all, since she's known Strangelouvre longer than she knew me.
Look, I say, if she wants to root for her 'Special Doctor' Over me, than that's just great. I turn and leave. She follows.
So if TFM is like a receptor you can think of it as kind of like a post-office. Any letter that is addressed to TFM gets sent to TFM, cool? Now let's say that something is wrong with the p.o. box, like it has no address on it. Picture a hormone as a signal, a letter, that is addressed to TFM. Some old mailman is handed this urgent letter addressed to TFM, and he goes to work and checks up and down the line, but can't find the right box. The letter never gets delivered, the message is lost. All this happened before Akane was even born.
3-foot long French bread. Strangelouvre stood there in the park at noon with 2 loaves of French bread. Hi Kodachi. This is just to weird. Kodachi is here for no apparent reason, and Strangelouvre has bread.
"Oui, Oui, mon amis. I inviteed haer teu obsearve yoeur undeuing."
I strike an attack stance, and I say come on, bring it.
"Yeau aer ov zee skuel ov anyzing goes mershal arts, yeas?"
I say yeah, anything goes, only pronounced properly.
"Mon amis, zis ees what goes." And he tosses me a loaf of the bread, I catch it.
"I chelenge yeau to..." and he smiles, sneers "French-bread-fuu."
This is not a test. six weeks into development. The whole body is armed with these TFM receptors. Every cell is awaiting this signal, if it does get the signal, it will go one way, if it doesn't get the signal, it goes another way. But since the receptor is broken, the signal never makes it. It's the opposite to the burn that was in my eye. The light is there, she should have seen it, but not one part of her had the ability to see it. Strangelouvre explained all this to me, after he beat me.
He also explained French-bread-fuu before he beat me. Anyone can hit a guy with a stick, an axe or anything hard and do damage, but there was a sect of martial arts, located in France that asked the question, could something as soft as a loaf of bread be used to win a fight. The answer was yes. Strangelouvre challenged me to this fighting style, and as an anything-goes martial artist I had to accept. The rules were simple.
1. You do not break the bread.
2. You do not break the bread.
3. You cannot attack the body with your extremities or any weapons other than the loaf.
4. When the bread is broken, or when one of us is on the ground the fight is over.
And that's it. He can't be serious. This is just a joke.
"Thesis no joke, Mon amis. I aem quite frank. Befoar we begin, howevair, tell moi. Why deu you weesh to know Mamuaselle Akane's condision?"
At that moment, even I wondered. I couldn't get into a more 'none of my fucking business category than this, but ever since I found out about it, I've wanted to know. I told Strangelouvre that it was because we live together.
We don't like each other, or anything like that, we're just familiar with each other.
"Really?" He asked "How seu?"
I sigh. I sigh because she's my fiancée.
"Iz zat zee treuss? Zen yeau do have ze right to kneau, but before I tell yeau, fight moi."
He strikes an aggressive attack pose, the tip of his bread pointed at my head.
"Aer yeau ready, mon amis."
Yeah, I say, bring it on. There's no way he can knock me down with a loaf of bread.
That's when he charged me. I took a defensive pose to deflect the bread off my wrist, and see if I couldn't trip him as he raced by. There was nothing in the rules about tripping. I couldn't tell you what really happened. What I do know is, that when he hit that bread across my wrist it hurt. Then I saw a blur, and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, looking at my piece of bread, flipping through the air. It was coming down toward me. before I could even get my hands up in front of my face, Strangelouvre swung at it, and it broke into two pieces that landed by my left leg and two feet off my right ear. He then placed the butt of the bread in my abdomen. It hurt. He then brought it up and poked my chest with it. It was surprisingly soft.
"Mon amis, yeau were unprepair-ed for ziz battle yeau are defeated, and heve been humilateed before bolse zee maddame Kodachi and zee mamauazelle Akane. Yeau must walk home in defeat..."
He kneels down and gets real close to me to say this next part. I want you to picture it. You pick up the letter. You open it up. The urgent message that no-one read is inside. You unfold the paper and you look at it. It says:
This is testosterone, repeat this is testosterone.
Abort female development, initiate male development.
Urgent!
Call off-female development and begin male development.
The following programs are to be aborted:
Vagina, Mammary gland, labium major, labium minor, Clitoris, Müllerian duct Enhancement. ETC.
The following programs are to be initiated:
Penis, prostate, scrotum, vas defrans, seminal vesicle, Wolfian duct enhancement. ETC.
We are becoming a boy.
Repeat
We are becoming a boy.
The message ends and no-one read it.
Strangelouvre looks at me, he says;
"And your fiancé has testicles."
What can I say?
Holy fucking shit.
to be (I hate AOL, but it's a free e-mail account, so I'll take it)
Final ad:
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A man.
He is everything you could ever want to be,
and he has a vision.
He will take you into a new world, where you will be the proud ruler of all that you see.
Or he will kill you trying to take you there.
He refuses to let you live in shame, where you are exploited by everyone, even yourself.
If he has to break you to set you free, he will do it, and you will love him for it.
He is the savior, that will rescue us all from the bondage of convenience.
But he will only save you if you do exactly as he tells you to do.
I
WANT
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TO
HIT
ME
AS
HARD
AS
YOU
CAN
Fight Club
Read the damn book.
----------
I am Joe's
OK, let's get technical. It starts with a single gene. This gene is called TFM. If you have good TFM, you are normal, if you have bad TFM, you're like Akane.
Simple enough.
I wake up, and the sun is beaming down upon my stiff-in-eight-places neck. Pop's not around, and the clock says I got three hours before the fight. I roll to my knees, aching and still tired, I trudge downstairs. Kasumi; lovely, friendly Kasumi has my breakfast all waiting for me. Pop, the giant panda, is playing shogi with Mr. Tendo on the porch. Akane's playing dress-up with an all to familiar little black pig, who's giving me a stare of hatred so strong, that it could burn a hole in a shag-carpet. Nabiki's counting up the earnings from her latest extortion scam, which I'm told involved a ten person network, 2 hidden cameras and a fifty page incriminating document. See no evil, hear no evil. Lastly; the glorified, elderly master of the school of anything goes martial arts is presently swimming in a basket of freshly stolen bras and panties ranging from smooth silk to lusty lace with lots of casual every day and kinky secret stuff in between.
Welcome to my morning.
My first thought isn't my stiff neck, it isn't sleeping on the wooden floor, not the pig glaring at me from across the room, it isn't even Akane's mysterious condition. What's on my mind is Strangelouvre. Call it an obsession if that fits for you. He's everything I'd want to beat up in a person. Kodachi, rudeness, bad karma and vaginal sciences I don't need any more of these things my in my life. I'd say trust me, but you know already; my life needs simplification, not complication. I'm going into a man to man fight, but it's when I take my first sip of my morning miso soup that I realize that I'm a girl.
This is last night all over again. I wish I could realize these things sooner. Picture it, I go to fight Strangelouvre with this tits and ass body of mine. I most definately wouldn't live it down. Like I said, this is a man-to-man fight, and that is the whole point. Sure, I may turn into a girl, but what I am is a guy. I am a guy, dammit, a guy with too many women (myself included) trying to drag my life down. I deal with enough girls to have to deal with their doctors too. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to put up with women at all, ever. Mating really can't be worth all this. I finish my soup and head to the bathroom to draw a bath.
If there is a loss-of-funtcion mutation located on the TFM gene in your genetic make-up, well, I would say you're in trouble, but you can't do anything about it. The damage hs been done, so I'd be telling you a little too late.
How late? Well, how old are you?
That, plus 9 months too late.
This is all the vital stuff they teach guys like Strangelouvre. This is the nitty-gritty, urgent knowledge. Everything I ever wanted to know about TFM loss of function mutation, and it's effect on human embryological development, but was afraid to ask; third edition.
Are you paying attention?
Hit yourself.
My whole body seems to melt in this hot bath. The neck ache subsides, fades and trails away to become a warm and fuzzy-feeling weather front, working it's way south.
I open my eyes, and look straight up at the light that hangs above the bath. The bright-white light is burning a flashing-blue spot into my vision, and in the burn spot, I can see myself beating Strangelouvre. This time, complete with the proper backdrop. In this light I see my chestnut fist. In this light I see him hitting the ground, wincing. In this light I see my triumphant victory. In this light I see the shadow of a hand that comes down over my face, and shoves me all the way underwater.
I look up through the splashing waves, and the glare of the light, and the silvery rims of all the bubbles draining out of my lungs, while my arms are flailing up to grab something, like a pound of flesh. I look up and what I see is the silhouette of Mr. Big-fang wearing just his bandana. I swipe a punch at his face, and he jumps back, letting me up for some air.
He just stands there, naked and smiling, like the marble archaic statue of some great Greek hero. His face appears to me out of a halo of subtle blue and white flashes from the burn-spot of the light I'm not looking at anymore.
I'm not looking at it anymore, but I can still see it.
That's a metaphor, for something.
"How did that make you feel?" He asked, sounding like he knew he didn't have ask at all.
I say it made me feel like kicking him in the face, and seeing how many teeth I could knock out. This guy really has no shame, if he can't postpone his little right of passage or whatever long enough for me to take a frikking bath. His smile just gets wider, then he turns away from me, and pours himself a glass of water from the sink.
"Ranma, How do you think I got here?"
I ask him did he hear me or not? If he doesn't want any broken bones, or concussions, he leaves right now. Otherwise, I swear to God I'll beat his ass worse than ever. This is the moment.
Fight mechanism. It's the moment when you start pumping adrenaline, it's the moment you know you're going to course all your energy into fist after fist of demolishing power. Your muscles tense, your heart pounds, your whole body feels charged like an electrified fur coat. This is the moment that I was saving for Strangelourve, and knowing that Ryoga is taking some of that energy away, and making me use it on him, that just makes me want to fight him even more. Acting like he doesn't even hear me, he turns to face me, taking a sip from his water glass, then setting it down, smooth as wax-paper. He says to me;
"Up the stairs, turn left, down the hall. It was that easy. Dr. Noitaru is right, all I have to do is confront my fear of you, and I can truly become a man. I'll never be lost ever again."
Crack. Crack. Crack. That's my knuckles. I don't say a word, standing there, naked and ready to unleash. He can get out now, or the beat-down shall commence.
"Something on your mind?" He asks
I tell Ryoga I'm happy that he's confronted his fear, I'm happy he's found his way around a two story building, I'm happy his courage is coming to him. I tell him that's as far as my happiness stretches. Everything else about me is massively pissed.
Get the Hell out of here.
"Ranma, I hate you! And I'll be damned if I do anything you tell me to do."
It rains, and it rains, and it rains. Finally, the damn bursts.
I jump out of the bath, and I'm going to see how hard I can kick his face. Picture a perfect set of five toe prints indenting into Ryogas forehead. Now picture them 3 inches deeper. This probably would have worked, had not Ryoga still had his glass of water. Cold water might as well be kryptonite.
Splash.
I'm wet with cold water, cause and effect, now I'm a girl. My face kicking plan I quickly abandon, and I try just to keep myself covered up. Ryoga, he's such a bastard. No sooner do I land then he grabs my wrists. He swings me back against the wall, pins my arms down, and presses his body against mine.
Fear mechanism. It's that moment when adrenaline starts pumping in your veins. Your throught clenches up, and you can't breathe, let alone scream. It's that moment when your whole body shivers and tenses, stresses and pulsates. All the strength you muster drains into panic and confusion. My breasts pressed against his chest, his tight grip around my wrists, pressed up against the bathroom tile. With the heat of my panic, the fresh hot vapors from the tub and his body like radiation all over me; I swear I'm being steam-cooked.
"You threaten me all you want, Ranma. I know your weakness, and I'm not afraid to use it against you." he says, "I'm not afraid, period."
His eyes look into mine, but they seem to look through me, this is a speech delivered to the warm tile walls. I feel like nothing. The invisible man/boy/girl, whatever. That's not the point. The point is, there is no point. I try to flex my arms forward, and he just torques my small wrists right back into the wall. The point is I can't make a point. I'd try to kick, but I don't dare move my legs, lest I get more than I ever asked for. One wrong move, and I'm...you could say...fucked.
We stare eye to eye, both our chests heaving. My breasts touch his pecs with each breath we take.
Together.
Apart.
Together.
Apart.
The worst of enemies in the worst of situations. Ryoga says that Dr. Noitaru told Ryoga to be ruthless. If Ryoga wants to break his own fear, he has to attack in ways the old Ryoga wouldn't. So this is Noitaru's idea, not Ryogas'. Noitaru told him to subdue me at my weak point. Ryoga says he didn't want to, but that Noitaru said that what he wanted wasn't the point.
But, if you ask me, the point is this is pointless.
Ryoga is the one who's here. I don't care what Noitaru told him to do, Ryoga is the one attacking me. He has to listen to me, he has to stop, he has to find some other way to do this right of passage thing, or he'll end up hurting everyone involved.
You want to know the best way to shut someone up? Put your lips over their lips.
Shock mechanism. My jaw clenches up. His tongue slides across my teeth. Nothing makes sense. Adrenaline, confusion, anger, surprise, fear all swirl together, and dissolve into a shock that BAM hits your brain like a jump-start and fizzles every nerve like a fuse. How did this happen? This can't be happening. All your quivering muscles clench and knot. Your lips, his lips.
How did that make you feel?
This can't be real.
This can't be going on.
This can't be happening.
Ryoga pulls back, and looks into my wide eyes, and flushed red face.
"Ranma" Ryoga says "I must defeat you. I must become a man. I'll see clearly then. I will be complete when you are gone."
He jumps back, and bolts out the window, leaving me standing there. The light I'm not looking at is still burned into my vision, and I can still feel the Ryoga that I'm not pressed up against. He's left a giant Ryoga-sized cold print from my shoulders down to my knees, and over my lips. Now I'm all alone, seeing and feeling things that aren't even there.
This is when my back slides down the tiles. This is when I rest my head on my knees, and clutch my legs to my breasts. I curl up in a ball and I try to feel warmth in all the places Ryoga left cold. This is where I stay, crouched for a quarter of an hour, while I cry.
TFM is a gene that is maternally inherited. That means you get it from your mom. If this applies to you, that is if you have a TFM gene, then you got it from the egg cell that was fertilized by the sperm cell. This formed a complete 46 chromosome single human cell that was you.
Not everyone uses their TFM gene, and they get along fine without it. Some people use their TFM gene, and they do fine with it. But then there are people like Akane. People that had the divine and beautiful miracle of life fuck them over big time. People with a busted TFM gene will need to have a special doctor later on in their life.
They'll need a doctor like Dr. Strangelouvre. A doctor like the guy I have to defeat. I dried my tears, and splashed myself with some warm water. When that water hit me, no joke, all my sadness
Splash
turned into anger. I couldn't be sad for myself anymore, I could only be angry at Ryoga, Strangelouvre, Noitaru. I have become a walking, ticking two fisted time-bomb, wanting and waiting to go off at something. I got dressed fast, and headed out to the dojo for some warming-up. Kicking and punching the morning away, I was breaking cinder-blocks when Akane walked in.
The TFM gene encodes for a receptor. Every cell in your body has got receptor proteins on their membranes, they pick up little bits of junk in your blood, and when they do, they tell the cell to speed up, slow down, do this, do that, live, die, any number of commands. I know this is boring, but it's important. I mean there she is, and this changed her whole life, but I didn't know it at the time.
"Ranma, don't fight Strangelouvre." She says "I'll be honest, I didn't even want you to come with me to that doctors office yesterday."
She went on and on about how she was sorry he slapped me with the glove, and got into an argument with him. So it's not my fault, and I don't have to fight anyone. She just doesn't get it. I refuse to be weak I refuse to back down, I refuse to be hurt, I refuse to lose. I am fighting Strangelouvre.
"Then I'm coming with you." She says. But no she's not.
"Yes I am." She says "He's my doctor after all."
Akane says this is her doctor, but this is my fight. This is my battle, and there's no way I'm going to back down. There's no way I'm going to ask for support. This is something I have to do, and Akane has nothing to do with it.
When all the guys were saying, 'Let's go build a boat to sail to the Americas', or 'Let's go find the highest mountain in the world, climb to the top, and become Gods' or 'let's build space ships, and lunar rovers and terra-formers, and let's make space our playground' What were the women saying? I don't really want to know. Because I'm pretty sure it was somewhere along the lines of 'Let's go get new curtains' and 'Let's add a second bedroom' or 'Let's switch to naturally decaffeinated coffee made with Arabica beans' That sounds about right. Not very glamorous, but hey, that's just fine. That's the way it is. If men will continue to seek out the next plain of existence, and if women will continue to be there to make that new plain livable for us all, then cause and effect, goddammit, alright.
Man Woman Cause Effect Vice Versa. Great.
What does Akane want, if she wants me to back down, she's not taking the attitude of a martial artist. She doesn't have to like the fact that I'm fighting but she could at least support me.
Akane asked if she should support me at all, since she's known Strangelouvre longer than she knew me.
Look, I say, if she wants to root for her 'Special Doctor' Over me, than that's just great. I turn and leave. She follows.
So if TFM is like a receptor you can think of it as kind of like a post-office. Any letter that is addressed to TFM gets sent to TFM, cool? Now let's say that something is wrong with the p.o. box, like it has no address on it. Picture a hormone as a signal, a letter, that is addressed to TFM. Some old mailman is handed this urgent letter addressed to TFM, and he goes to work and checks up and down the line, but can't find the right box. The letter never gets delivered, the message is lost. All this happened before Akane was even born.
3-foot long French bread. Strangelouvre stood there in the park at noon with 2 loaves of French bread. Hi Kodachi. This is just to weird. Kodachi is here for no apparent reason, and Strangelouvre has bread.
"Oui, Oui, mon amis. I inviteed haer teu obsearve yoeur undeuing."
I strike an attack stance, and I say come on, bring it.
"Yeau aer ov zee skuel ov anyzing goes mershal arts, yeas?"
I say yeah, anything goes, only pronounced properly.
"Mon amis, zis ees what goes." And he tosses me a loaf of the bread, I catch it.
"I chelenge yeau to..." and he smiles, sneers "French-bread-fuu."
This is not a test. six weeks into development. The whole body is armed with these TFM receptors. Every cell is awaiting this signal, if it does get the signal, it will go one way, if it doesn't get the signal, it goes another way. But since the receptor is broken, the signal never makes it. It's the opposite to the burn that was in my eye. The light is there, she should have seen it, but not one part of her had the ability to see it. Strangelouvre explained all this to me, after he beat me.
He also explained French-bread-fuu before he beat me. Anyone can hit a guy with a stick, an axe or anything hard and do damage, but there was a sect of martial arts, located in France that asked the question, could something as soft as a loaf of bread be used to win a fight. The answer was yes. Strangelouvre challenged me to this fighting style, and as an anything-goes martial artist I had to accept. The rules were simple.
1. You do not break the bread.
2. You do not break the bread.
3. You cannot attack the body with your extremities or any weapons other than the loaf.
4. When the bread is broken, or when one of us is on the ground the fight is over.
And that's it. He can't be serious. This is just a joke.
"Thesis no joke, Mon amis. I aem quite frank. Befoar we begin, howevair, tell moi. Why deu you weesh to know Mamuaselle Akane's condision?"
At that moment, even I wondered. I couldn't get into a more 'none of my fucking business category than this, but ever since I found out about it, I've wanted to know. I told Strangelouvre that it was because we live together.
We don't like each other, or anything like that, we're just familiar with each other.
"Really?" He asked "How seu?"
I sigh. I sigh because she's my fiancée.
"Iz zat zee treuss? Zen yeau do have ze right to kneau, but before I tell yeau, fight moi."
He strikes an aggressive attack pose, the tip of his bread pointed at my head.
"Aer yeau ready, mon amis."
Yeah, I say, bring it on. There's no way he can knock me down with a loaf of bread.
That's when he charged me. I took a defensive pose to deflect the bread off my wrist, and see if I couldn't trip him as he raced by. There was nothing in the rules about tripping. I couldn't tell you what really happened. What I do know is, that when he hit that bread across my wrist it hurt. Then I saw a blur, and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, looking at my piece of bread, flipping through the air. It was coming down toward me. before I could even get my hands up in front of my face, Strangelouvre swung at it, and it broke into two pieces that landed by my left leg and two feet off my right ear. He then placed the butt of the bread in my abdomen. It hurt. He then brought it up and poked my chest with it. It was surprisingly soft.
"Mon amis, yeau were unprepair-ed for ziz battle yeau are defeated, and heve been humilateed before bolse zee maddame Kodachi and zee mamauazelle Akane. Yeau must walk home in defeat..."
He kneels down and gets real close to me to say this next part. I want you to picture it. You pick up the letter. You open it up. The urgent message that no-one read is inside. You unfold the paper and you look at it. It says:
This is testosterone, repeat this is testosterone.
Abort female development, initiate male development.
Urgent!
Call off-female development and begin male development.
The following programs are to be aborted:
Vagina, Mammary gland, labium major, labium minor, Clitoris, Müllerian duct Enhancement. ETC.
The following programs are to be initiated:
Penis, prostate, scrotum, vas defrans, seminal vesicle, Wolfian duct enhancement. ETC.
We are becoming a boy.
Repeat
We are becoming a boy.
The message ends and no-one read it.
Strangelouvre looks at me, he says;
"And your fiancé has testicles."
What can I say?
Holy fucking shit.
to be (I hate AOL, but it's a free e-mail account, so I'll take it)
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Fight Club
Read the damn book.
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I am Joe's