Ranma Aqua-Isekai'd, by Chaos Orchid
Chapter 14: Ranma's Roommate
"Me and Eyeshadow are supposed to be in the same bedroom? Now why ain't I surprised?" Ranma frowned. "Have you ever heard 'Familiarity breeds contempt'? I should know. The only one I almost always hafta sleep with is my Old Man, and I that's what I feel about him. And I already resent Tsukiko or Eyeshadow, whichever. If that meddlin' Cologne witch of yours wants wants her to be my fiancee-"
"Fiancee!?" most of the girls cried.
"Why didn't you put that in your betting pool?!" Facial asked Kaguya.
"Obviously, Tsukiko is family," his big sister said. "I don't want him thinking I want him to get married. Not to another guy."
"But a girl marrying a guy is normal," Yue, his older sister said. "Tsukko will feel that way, too, once she accepts that she's now Eyeshadow."
"And you should accept you're Powder, now!" Concealer said.
"I don't like Powder! You know that! Everybody knows that!" Yue was on the verge of crying. "At least little sister didn't swallow so much cursed water that she almost drowned."
The shorter redhead moved up and hugged her from behind, arms on her bare midriff. Even Kaguya looked sympathetic.
Shé quietly explained to Ranma what all the rest already knew, "The more of the Jusenkyo spring water you swallow, the more you take on the personality of your cursed body."
"What!? You mean I coulda been like that boy-idiot I was a little while ago!?" For Ranma, it felt like waking up in the middle of a nightmare!
"Yue wishing Tsukiko to be comfortable with being a girl is part of her trying to come to terms with becoming the brute, Powder," Kaguya told Ranma. Not that he was thinking of anybody but his own misery at the moment.
Shé clapped hands. "Alright, ladies, time to hit the sack! You can get to know our new recruit in the morning!"
"Hmph! I don't hafta go. I ain't a lady." And Ranma stubbornly crossed his arms.
"But you can be! In fact, why don't I remedy the problem of you being a male in an all-female dorm by dosing you with Instant Nyannichuan!"
"I'll go, I'll go!" he cried, afraid of the girl-feelings he had had during the 'date'.
"Listen, Shé, why not let Ranma be my roommate?" Kaguya volunteered. "Cologne likes to quote cliches. And for 'Familiarity breeds contempt', there's 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'."
"You're not going to interfere with Elder Cologne's plans, are you?"
"Me?" Kaguya placed her fingertips on her upper chest in a melodramatic gesture. "I'm neutral. I'm comfortable being either girl or guy. And while I don't want my little sibling to think I want them to marry, I also don't want Women Heroes to think I don't. Getting army brass on my case is not high on my to-do list."
"Ha! 'Neutral', as in pivot point. But okay. I can give Ranma another roommate tomorrow if you cause problems."
"Problems? The boy comes with problems. He does have a Chaos Seed. I'm putting myself at risk for the good of my family."
"I bet," Shé crossed her arms and gave her a 'What are the odds' look.
"Come on, Ranma." And Kaguya grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the cafeteria's exit.
"I'm only goin' with you to get the beddin' to sleep outside," Ranma bluntly told her. "I'm useta campin' not roommatin'."
"You do that and you'll miss out on the Magic Tattoo," she gave a calculating smile.
"Why would I want one!? Magic's done nothing good for me, yet!"
"You do realize we're in some of the highest mountains in the world. Not Himalayan sized, but Qinghai province is right next door to Tibet. So why can my body-conscious big sister get away with wearing only a bikini? It's not like there are fireplaces in every room here in the dorm."
"I try not to think of why I see women wearin' too little around here." But just by saying that, Ranma remembered Shé in only her ropes and, too, those animals turned naked women (and men)."
Kaguya opened the door to her room. "The Tibetans found a way for the bitter cold not to give them frostbite. And the elders of this tribe found a way to concentrate it and seal it in with a tattoo."
Concentrate; seal it; on the body. To Ranma, it added up to a ki energy technique. That meant he thought he definitely could master it himself-And without the tattoo that was the carrot to keep him here! Of course, to be able to copy the technique, he would have to, "Can I see the tattoo?"
"Oh, Ranma!" Kaguya now, coyly, pretended to be shy. "No sooner are we alone in my room, but you want to see me…indecent."
"Cut that out! I didn't mean anything by that! And you're the one who brought up the tattoo!"
"Don't shame me!" She was really hamming it up. "But, but I guess, you, uh, will be seeing me that way, indecent, even, even, naked, since we're going to sharing a room. I think I might blush!"
"I'm sleepin' outside," Ranma said, grabbing the quilt and blanket off a bed.
"You went straight to my bed!"
"And I'm leavin' straight outa here."
"Then you don't want to see my tattoo?"
Ranma wanted to tell her, Hell, no! But the lure of a new martial arts technique was too great a temptation for him to be rude to the opportunity.
The attractive girl had already begun to take off her clothes. What made it Chinese was the colorful design on its silk. What made it strange was the shoelace-like pattern of ties through eyelets that kept the front and back panels together. Her womanly figure was exposed along her sides. As long as the ties were kept tight, the tunic would be kept snug. But with one tug she loosened the only thing covering her.
"I'm, I'm doing this for you…Ranma." She even made it seemed like she was, indeed, about to blush as she, slowly, raised the hem of the front panel.
Ranma sweated. He was about to see her sex. He should look away, He wanted to look away. He was no pervert! But the tattoo, the new technique, the freedom to…so that's what a girl's sex-
Tint's manhood popped out from under the tunic. He saw that and not any of Kaguya's womanhood.
Her other hand held an empty jar with a few drops of water still dripping from it.
Ranma wasn't disappointed. He really didn't want to see her sex. And he wasn't grossed out. He had seen too many men in bathhouses to care that he was seeing another guy's sex.
The tattoo was on the lower abdomen just below (if it were on Yue) the bikini line. Stupidly, it looked like a small snowman with a smiling sun for a head.
"Ranma's not disappointed? Well, I am! Where's the fun without an over-the-top reaction!" Tint had gone from emotive actor to theater critic.
"Can I touch it?"
"You want to touch it!?" And he placed his hands over his manhood, hiding his privates.
"Not that!"
"Now, that's the kind of reaction I want to see and here. Sure, Ranma, fun's over. You can touch my tattoo." He stood there, daring him to do just that.
He had no problem approaching her as a him. "I'm gonna have to press my palms on your front and on your back," he told the other guy.
"I'm ready. Go and do it."
Though Ranma had seen plenty of naked guys, he had never touched them. (Except the time Pop had taught him genuine Greco-Roman wrestling.) And since he wasn't wrestling nude with him, he was put off by the thought. It took much longer to go the centimeters between him and Tint than the meters it had taken to get this far. But he did it. He touched-
Female flesh! He had her in almost an embrace! If she leaned back, to where she were being supported by his hand, his arm-He screamed in surprise and stumbled backwards. He only stopped when he fell butt-first onto the bed.
Kaguya was now holding a jar with traces of steam rising from it. And the other hand dropped the tunic. Ranma still hadn't gotten a good look at her sex. Only his sex.
"Why did you do that!?" he yelled at her.
The wall behind Ranma's head was pounded by a fist. "Some of us are trying to sleep, you know!" Facial yelled. "Right!" Concealer agreed.
"If you learn to be to make your own Warm Yeti tattoo, then you'll have no reason to stay with us." She had know from the start what he was trying to do!?
"I'll, I'll get one of the others to let me touch them."
"That should be entertaining. But in the meantime… Turn your head, Ranma. Don't ask why, just turn."
No sooner had he, she said, "You can look, now." She had changed into a baggy nightgown. It wasn't exactly sexy, but then, Ranma didn't want to be in a room with one his eyes wanted to stay on. How could he get some sleep then(!?)
It was too late for him to lug the bedding outside and find a good spot to camp. And without a fire. Kaguya was right, it was a cold night near the ceiling of the world. Of course he could crash in the living room, but that meant he would be daring Shé to use her ropes on him.
Ranma stripped down to his tanktop and boxers and went to bed.
With all that had happened to him in just this one day, he was too shook up to fall to sleep quickly. He laid there for long minutes.
Then a thought crowded out all the others he had to process. He shot up in bed and practically yelled (if he had, the others in the other bedrooms would have heard him), "Where did that hot water come from!?"
"From my weapon-space, of course."
Ranma leaped out of bed and landed by hers, "Can Eyeshadow pull hot water outa nowhere, too?!" If Tsukiko can stop being Eyeshadow whenever he wanted to. Besides not having to look at the thieving redhead, it gave Ranma hope that he could do the same if his other half dies and he, too, would be changed by water!
"She can."
"Then if Cologne wasn't meddlin', Eyeshadow could be Tsukiko whenever!"
"Wrong."
"Wrong?"
"Right." To his puzzled look, she said, "Eyeshadow, Tsukiko, they can only do the parlor trick when they intend to use the water as a weapon. It is called 'weapon-space' for a good reason."
"But, but…It knows(!) what you mean to do with what you want to come out of it?"
"Of course it does. Usually. How else do you think you can just reach into it and hope to come back with anything close to what you were aiming for? Try it yourself."
Ranma did. Weapon. Water as weapon. He saw that crystal-like reflection hovering in mid-air and stuck his hand in it. His hand felt something, but he couldn't identify it. He concentrated harder on its feel. And he felt…like it was given to him. Like a gift? In Asian culture it was considered very rude not to accept a gift. It could lead to bad consequences. So he pulled his hand out with the gifted weapon.
It was a water pipe. ?
"Some of us have it, some don't," Kaguya said. "You'll have train to be able to be specific. Some people become so specific they end up being only able to get one or two types of things out of their weapon-space."
Training! Weapons! Martial arts! Ranma was determined to get water out. Again he was vaguely aware that something was being given him. Who or what that gifter was was still a mystery. This time he pulled out…! "Cold! It's an ice cube!"
"Ice cubes are hard water. And you can throw it like a weapon, I guess."
"And I can hit Eyeshadow with it!" he grinned at the thought.
"And Eyeshadow will remain Eyeshadow. You need a hot-water weapon to change her into Tsukiko. And even if you wanted to change Tsukiko into Eyeshadow, an ice cube won't do you any good. Only cold water(!), a liquid, triggers the change. And to keep you from trying to scald my little brother, I'll tell you Steam doesn't count as hot water."
Disappointed at his first attempts at training himself to use his weapon-space, his fatigue finally caught up with him. He was now absolutely sure he should be able to fall a fall asleep.
And he did. In fact, he was out as he collapsed onto the floor.
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NOTES:
The Warm Yeti (sunny snowman) tattoo is similar to the magic used in the Mark of the Gods arc (Chapters 142-145; S4 E16) where an embarrassingly silly face is put on Ryōga with permanent ink and can only be removed if somebody defeats him. This power of this 'tattoo', though, is not to make its wearer undefeatable but warm in cold weather, cool in hot.
And why don't the Women Heroes also have Ryōga's. Besides the clash of the different magics (undefeatable doesn't mean they can win against frostbite), there's how unlucky Ryōga's made him. In other words, it was really a curse. Magic has intentions. And those are not always logical from a human POV.