After the emotional upheaval of the issue with Doctor Tofu things settled down for a few days. The Tendos themselves banded together to provide emotional support for Kasumi, then again for Akane when it turned out she was having a hard time coping with the news too. I kind of wished I'd cleared the issue up earlier, since I knew the whole family was going to be throwing into chaos again with the arrival of Ranma and Genma. Anticipating the event, I cornered Soun and told him about the two being cursed and a summary of the situation with the Amazons. He seemed troubled, and the anticipated missive arrived the next day. A family gathering was called, and Ember and I were asked to sit in.
"I received a postcard from a dear friend today, saying that he and his son were returning from China," Soun started once everyone was seated. He looked to me then, and continued, "Their names are Saotome Genma and Ranma. It was our intent that our children would carry on the Anything Goes school by marriage, but if what you say is true Ranma is cursed to be a woman. Is his locked like yours?" I glanced around. Kasumi was worried, Nabiki was thoughtful, and Akane looked a little green.
"I do not believe so. I've looked for him and his father with my magic and seen him as both a young man and a young woman. He is relatively handsome and she is our twin," I said indicating myself and Ember. "He wears his hair in a braid, where I prefer mine down and Ember either assumes male form or wears hers in a ponytail, so there is some difference at least."
"Then the engagement is still possible?" He asked excitedly. I looked at his daughters, who were all trying to glare holes in him.
"It might be," I replied. "He may not get along with your daughters, he may eventually become locked in his female form as I was, or he may be sterile. I am not entirely familiar with local custom, but your daughters also appear to be somewhat opposed to the idea."
"You're damn right we are!" Akane roared, with Nabiki nodding along. Kasumi looked down at the table, unsure. "You were going to engage us to some random boy without even asking!?" Nabiki turned to look at me.
"You said he was handsome?" I looked thoughtful for a moment, then made a so-so motion with my hand. I wasn't the best judge of male attractiveness.
"I'm not the best judge, but he's in good shape at least. No weird blemishes or anything. His dad turns into a panda, now that they're cursed." All four Tendos looked a little incredulous at that, but moved on. Soun started the conversation back up.
"It's a matter of family honor, girls. We swore to unite the two branches of the Anything Goes Martial Arts school. One of you will have to marry him!"
I hmm'd to myself as they argued. Ranma should be here any minute, according to the source material. How could I make this easier on everyone without derailing the plot to the point Genma just decided to run? There was a possibility Ranma would become my apprentice and eventually learn to control the change which would provide motivation to stick around, but I didn't want anyone to feel forced into this whole marriage thing. Ah! That might work.
"Mister Tendo, did the agreement specify when or how the schools had to be united? Was marriage between your children specifically mentioned? And did you make any plans for if your children were all the same gender or anything?" He looked a little put out at being interrupted, but thought hard for a moment.
"I don't remember," he replied sulkily. "We were drunk." The shouting started up again, so I used [Illusion] to silence the whole group until they looked back at me.
"So what you have is an agreement made between two men who were inebriated that you don't remember the details of. Were the mothers involved in this decision?" He shook his head. "Then the agreement isn't really a family one at all, nor is it formal. Unless you have it recorded somewhere, which might change things. My grasp of the local culture is still not what it should be, so please correct me if I'm wrong."
I felt like I was saying that a lot lately. Kasumi and Akane both looked terribly relieved. Nabiki looked at me approvingly, then back at her father.
"Is there a written agreement, daddy?" When Soun again reluctantly shook his head Nabiki fist-pumped. "Yes! That means this thing is totally optional for us!" And with that I may have completely destroyed the plot. "If Daddy and Mr. Saotome made the agreement but don't even remember how it goes, it can't be be honored! Since there's no written agreement, it can't be recovered!" Soun teared up a bit. It seemed like he'd been really hoping this would work. I spoke once again.
"So if my understanding is correct, what honor was on the line is potentially already lost since the agreement was made while drunk and the details forgotten. The gist of it still remains: your fathers want to unite the schools. I've only seen Akane practice so far, but the schools could be united if either she or Ranma were to learn the opposite branch. Passing those teachings on would also be in the spirit of the agreement, but not required. " Soun latched onto that idea like a drowning man after a life-preserver. He didn't seem to register that I meant for him to teach as well, though he might have noticed and not cared since he was already starting to teach me and Ember.
"Yes! Akane and Ranma will train together, and maybe get married too! If the combined schools are passed on, the agreement is at least partially fulfilled!" A knock sounded at the door.
"That must be him!" Soun shouted, then bolted for the door. He came back in backing away from a panda carrying a redhead that looked exactly like me and Ember except for the clothing and the way she wore her hair. Kasumi calmly got up and put the kettle on, while Akane and Nabiki hid behind me.
"Are you sure the panda's his dad?" I nodded, and conjured a spray of warm water. The panda turned into an overweight balding man with glasses, and the girl grew a bit into a young man. Genma put him down and Ranma looked at me, then down at himself, then back at me. His puzzled expression was cute, I had to admit. He scratched at his face with one finger.
"I'm Saotome Ranma. This is my old man, Genma. Sorry about this."
Soun hugged him and started rambling, while the girls gave him evaluative looks. Genma stared at me, one eye twitching. Ember left the room stifling giggles, and I started the whole talk about the agreement over again with Genma. The girls glared at him whenever he tried to object, and Ranma took their side immediately. The man didn't have a copy of the agreement and had in fact never told his wife about it so it was decided by everyone except Genma, who just sulked, that the agreement itself would be enforced in such a way that one or both heirs would learn the opposite school and combine them. Marriage was optional but encouraged, as it was more in line with the fathers' original intent and would allow the family home and dojo to be passed on with a smaller tax impact. That last part didn't seem to be very important anymore, and I wondered again how much money Soun had gotten for the coins I'd conjured.
-
With Ranma and Genma staying in the third guest room and Genma obligated to get a job to help out (Nabiki insisted), the Tendo home and dojo got a lot more interesting. Ranma seemed pretty interested in learning how to control the curse but was a little wary of messing with magic, but Genma bullied him into accepting my offer to become an apprentice. When I walked the younger set to school and people saw Ranma looked a lot like me there was some explaining to do, and even though he didn't want me to I demonstrated the curse in front of the school and Kuno to ensure there was no confusion. I also placed a water-repelling spell and a backup barrier on him keyed to water such that there would be no incidents in any locker rooms, for which he was quite grateful.
After school I met a fuming Ryoga leaving the building and informed him that Ranma was my second apprentice and I was only waiting on a third from the Amazons before I started teaching them formally. He was unhappy with the news, but wanted control over his curse enough that he agreed not to disrupt lessons or incapacitate Ranma beyond my ability to heal quickly. That wasn't quite what I was hoping for, but I settled in to wait for Ranma and Akane nonetheless. Ryoga had challenged Ranma to a fight, and stayed with me still looking grumpy.
The fight itself was fascinating to watch. Ranma was much faster than Ryoga, while Ryoga was much stronger and had a slightly wider variety of techniques to call on. When he started throwing around razor-sharp ki-enforced bandannas I shielded the crowd and yelled at him for endangering them, which actually stopped both fighters for a moment. Akane was having a quiet breakdown after barely dodging out of the path one of the blocked bandanas would have taken straight through her neck, and I circled the now-continued fight to put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Eventually both fighters ended up in the fountain and I called it. Ranma was reluctant to stop, while Ryoga was both angry and grateful since he'd turned into a piglet and Ranma was still human. His clothes reappeared on him when I hit the two of them with hot water, Ranma's protections from earlier not having been enough in the face of nearly-full submersion. A drying charm and some magical landscaping left the two cursed individuals a little happier and the field looking quite similar to how it'd been before the altercation. The teens headed for home and I headed for the address Ku Lon had given me last time we'd spoken.
The Cat Cafe looked like it was almost ready to open, and the remodelling crew had already left. Xian Pu and Mu Tsu were arguing about something I didn't care about, and Ku Lon seemed to have figured out a way to sense me as she met me at the front door. When I asked about it she told me I was leaving a subtle void in the ambient energy, but that every time she was me it was less obvious. I nodded and resolved to check on the description of [Mystical Energy (Concealment)] again to see if there was anything I could do to accelerate the process of becoming invisible to the supernatural.
The conversation was fairly short, with informing her that Ranma had accepted the proposal to be my apprentice and us discussing how to make that work with the village laws. She conceded that she'd have to teach us both at least a few Amazon techniques to make everything official, but the magic the tribe was gaining had been enough to sway the council to rule in favor of the whole plan if I could persuade Ranma to participate. Since I had, Ku Lon had some calls to make and an apprentice to select to train under me. None of those present had Jusenkyou curses so while they could learn it wouldn't be as immediately useful as sending someone who was cursed. I just asked her not to send anyone who turned into a cat. She looked at me oddly, but all I had to say to explain was one word "nekoken." She paled.
"You?" I nodded, then added a bit more information.
"Ranma too, I think. His father really isn't the brightest." Ku Lon shook her head in horror and muttered under her breath about putting the warnings before the actual techniques, which earned a laugh from me. I'd been reminded of several instances of the same error in the Potter-Verse and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, particularly Doctor Strange. Do not use animal hair for polyjuice potion, indeed. She shot me an odd look, but didn't ask what was so funny.
Three days later Ku Lon told me Xian Pu had finally gotten fed up with Mu Tsu and used some spring water they'd brought from the village as part of Ku Lon's luggage. Mu Tsu now turned into a duck, and I had my third apprentice. I was kind of disappointed that the lack of female representation, but Ranma would have to do. As the teacher I didn't count. Also I wasn't entirely certain I was one gender or the other anymore. Shapeshifting tended to blur the lines, and I'd been through a hellishly embarrassing experience that was a little damaging to my lingering sense of masculinity. Thankfully the products required were easy to conjure and Ever-Cleansed mitigated a lot of the mess.
Washu said the whole thing was a learning experience, and I that I shouldn't run away from it. Regardless, I was very tempted to turn back into a guy, identification showing me as female be damned.
-
My schedule shifted after that, with afternoons being devoted to martial arts tutelage by Soun and teaching my teenage students how to access their mana. Some careful tinkering and a lot of theory had allowed me to mimic the method Ember had used with Kasumi. Using knowledge we'd gained through study and various [Mystical Energy] abilities she had found a way to ignite a small spark of magic using ki, at which point the body and spirit sort of adopted the spark and started it growing. It was pretty similar to what had happened with my divine energy when I created [Holy], actually.
[By doing something special, you've created a new skill: Mystical Energy (Awaken)!]
Some careful application of medical knowledge [Transmutation] and [Holy] corrected Mu Tsu's eyesight when it became troublesome during lessons, and he was tasked with documenting the process in return. Having a common (and interesting) thing to study, Ryoga and Ranma both helped a bit and Ku Lon started the editing process and asking questions when necessary. As they learned, so did I. The mixed energy my students produced as a byproduct of having both mana and ki looked a hell of a lot like the descriptions of chakra in my books related to the Naruto-Verse. They were missing something, bet the behavior was nearly identical.
All three took a break when Akane needed help training for some sort of gymnastics competition, but it only took a few days and seeing them cooperate like that was amazing for someone who'd read the manga and watched the anime. Mu Tsu and Ryoga had both hated Ranma, but between the changed circumstances, the shared interest in my teachings, and the discipline I enforced they'd become friends of a sort. Oh, they still fought. Ryoga had found out Ranma was the one to accidentally push him onto the unstable ground that led him to fall into the Spring of Drowned Piglet and was not at all happy about it. Mu Tsu was still a little jealous of Ranma since Xian Pu kept eyeing him like a piece of meat, but he didn't seem to realize that since he'd stopped bothering her and gotten his eyes fixed the girl gave him the occasional once-over too.
Ku Lon took the time the boys were helping Akane to set me on the task of learning Amazon Wu Shu and the Breaking Point technique, since I already had a working knowledge of ki and was now formally allied with the tribe. The oath not to teach anyone in that world that wasn't family and require anyone taught to take the same oath helped too. I didn't really benefit much from the endurance portion of the Breaking Point training, but the technique itself proved invaluable. It allowed me to see weak points in inanimate materials with a little focus, then cause them to either blow up or fall apart by injecting energy in those weak points. Since it had transformed into a Gamer skill when I'd first succeeded, I was a little worried about the implications. The description said it might evolve to work on living beings with enough practice, which was something it couldn't do in the series itself. I wasn't sure I wanted this skill to reach level 100. Either way I'd need to practice it in a quarry or instant dungeon to avoid significant property damage.
[Quest Update! Learn ALL the things!]
When my students returned and my tutelage under Ku Lon slowed I started them on [Mystical Energy (Sense)] as a way to build up to the fine manipulation they'd need to use in order to control their curses. They would advance much more quickly if they were well trained in seeing and/or sensing what they were doing, after all. I'd decided early on that they would need the technique and some form of control exercise in addition to their mana pools to shapeshift with any reliability. They'd also need some rudimentary medical knowledge to reduce the strain of the magic trying to compensate for the lack, then they'd get their hands on the actual technique via observing Ember's unshielded aura when she performed it.
I'd have them conjuring light and changing the color and brightness for the first control exercise in strength, then move on to changing the color and material of small objects for finesse in shaping the mana itself and seeing how changes were applied to non-living objects. Safety lectures would feature heavily, and I'd transform the boys myself so they could learn to change back before I let them experiment with changing themselves. Until I said they were ready they were never to practice without me around. Ember taught them [Holy] at some point, and I started hearing them murmur about me being a minor kami of some sort. Since it was either laugh or cry, I let them catch me in the form of a pure white kitsune surrounded in a [Holy] aura one day.
-
Late June of that year we started having problems. Kuno was apparently determined to find a weakness and defeat the Red Witch so I'd stop interfering in his pursuit of Akane and corruption of the populace. It hadn't happened quite like this in the manga, but he eventually found out from Nabiki that I'd negotiated for cats to be banned from the Tendo property for the duration of my stay and started getting obnoxious about it. I loved cats, but the Nekoken drawback made me terrified of them. Since he couldn't seem to coax any onto the Tendo property he started leaving raw fish and catnip along the route we used when I walked the kids to school. The first time I spotted one I reflexively teleported the poor thing into the canal beside the road. The yowling of an unhappy kitty suddenly exposed to water set me on edge and Ranma had actually climbed a tree on the opposite side of the street.
More and more cats started appearing in the coming weeks. Some were herded there by Kuno retainers and employees, while some were simply attracted to all the delicious fish and mind-blowing catnip around the place. Ranma snapped first, entering the nekoken state then a territorial rage that pushed the cats themselves straight toward me. My mind blanked, and I woke in the form of a housecat curled up in Ember's lap with Guinevere singing from her shoulder. Ranma was faced the other way shivering in fear, and I would have gone back into the berserker state if not for Guinevere's calming influence giving me enough time to turn into something else.
My revenge against Kuno was fairly simple, but I have no idea if he ever faced any actual consequences for the mess. I let the council know who'd been leading all the stray cats in and dirtying up their nice neighborhood with raw fish and catnip, then donated a sizable sum of money to animal control to relocate and sterilize the ones that were still in the area. Spay and neuter operations were performed in bulk, and with the money donated I was told most of them found good homes. I wished it had been all of them, but I knew feral cats were difficult to keep as pets in the best of times. I suspected they were actually downplaying the number they'd had to send to the Tashirojima to try and make me feel better about giving them money. At least none of them had been euthanised. Being sent to live on an island with thousands of other cats wasn't so bad.
Ranma's reaction to finding out such a place existed was hysterical. He went white as a sheet and swore never to go there if he could help it, even going so far as to mark all of his travel maps with warnings. We were both teased for a while until I started explaining the process of learning the nekoken to people in private. Genma got a lot of glares for doing that to Ranma and a few people (Soun included) offered to get the household a big dog to keep the cats away. I mentioned that I'd warded against them and got a few odd looks, but they went ahead and got a pair of dogs anyway to come with us when we left the Tendo compound. Not wanting to admit to a weakness Ranma very rarely went out with his beyond the need to care for it, but I named mine Mister Fluffers in English and took him with me just about wherever I went. Everyone else called him Tadashi. It didn't matter to me though, since he came when I called for Mister Fluffers.
Ku Lon started training Ranma with me after that, and we both got to experience sticking our hands in a campfire to retrieve roasting chestnuts. I ended up having to deactivate my [Energy Affinity (Heat)] to achieve the necessary motivation, and both of us made liberal use of [Holy] to heal ourselves in between bouts of practice. We did manage to learn the skill though, and it was amazing. For me it was a passive boost both to my dexterity stat and basically everything dexterity did that could be scaled up by using it actively. I was finally starting to approach being anime-style ludicrously fast, and actually did leave behind a plaid aura with [Illusion] once or twice for laughs. Nobody seemed to get it except Guinevere, who fell off the building she'd been watching me from howling in the bird equivalent of laughter. I was starting to get very suspicious of that bird, but Washu just snickered at me whenever I started talking about her.
[Quest Alert! Learn ALL the things!]
Late July brought with it a trip to the beach for the entire household. Even the Amazons showed up. It was an exciting weekend full of weird contests and people hitting on the red headed triplets of Ranma, Ember, and myself. I practiced walking on sand without leaving footprints as a variant of the chakra control exercises I'd been learning, then on the ocean at night since it was significantly more difficult than using a still pool of water or the various rivers and canals around Tokyo. Skills leveled up and people had fun, then Genma got really drunk and started stealing things from the other people on the beach and we left with Ranma dragging an unconscious panda along in the sand behind us.