The next morning Kasumi was unusually cheerful, and Akane took one look at us before giving her sister a thumbs up and a giant grin. Nabiki ignored it, since she hadn't had any caffeine yet. Soun and Genma gave me wary looks but said nothing, and Happosai hadn't come down for breakfast yet. Ranma was still in the bath. I hadn't known it was possible to feel like the world's luckiest guy/girl/shapeshifter-thing and the world's biggest asshole at the same time, but the guilt was slowly diminishing, as was the euphoria.
Time passed, and with it my regrets and misgivings. Ranma came home with an enchanted piece of paper on his back to get ready for a date with a boy at school, and I disintegrated the thing before dispelling the remainder of the magic it had contained. Another talk with Gosunkugi (and a threat with The Shovel) convinced him to give up the remaining paper dolls. When he turned his back I used one of the things on him, compelling him to give up his pursuit of Akane and use his time more productively.
Since I was walking the kids to school again to spend more time with Ukyo, the giant flying minotaur thing that attacked them was laid out with a simple sleep spell. I remembered this guy from the series. His name was ridiculous, and because of some stupid village tradition he couldn't change it himself unless the one who named him died. Considering he was named (and cursed) by Happosai, he wasn't going to have much luck with that. I hit Pantyhose Taro with some conjured hot water to turn him human and conjured steel cables around him. If he turned back like that he was going to have a bad time. A potentially fatal time, actually.
He was an asshole of the highest calibre in my humble opinion, but he didn't necessarily deserve to die. Just to double check, I pulled a live chicken out of my inventory. It seemed fine, and its health bar was full. I shoved it back in, then put Taro in there too. Akane, Nabiki, Ranma, and Ukyo were all staring at me in shock since I hadn't bothered to disguise using the inventory as hidden weapons. Had they never seen a girl shove a guy into an invisible inventory screen before?
"Was it the chicken?" I asked, fishing for a reaction. Akane and Ukyo cracked up laughing, while Nabiki gave me a look that clearly indicated I was insane. Ranma just kind of stared wide-eyed at the spot the guy had disappeared into thin air. I started walking again when everyone was relatively calm, and they followed. I'd talk to Happosai about this if he got out of the cave again before I left.
Later that evening Ukyo started playing with the food cart to get used to it and discovered a jar of Kuonji secret sauce she'd made during the brief period she'd known Ranma as a child. I had to heal the poor girl when she got sick from it, asked why she seemed so upset that the sauce hadn't worked. When the story came out that she felt like a failure at the family art because she hadn't been able to make it properly, I scoffed at the notion and said something must have happened to it in the intervening time. She could make a new batch now and I'd age it however long it needed to prove it. She reluctantly complied, mixing up the recipe that was supposed to age for ten years. I took it and created a very small instant dungeon with 100,000 to one time dilation, then put the sauce inside and left. Fifty three minutes later Ukyo had delicious sauce and I had a happy daughter.
When I heard about an extremely young girl was introduced as Ranma's new homeroom teacher, I called to set up a meeting with her. Ranma was a little unhappy because the girl had somehow drained a couple students of most their ki when they talked in class, turning her into an adult. I think he mostly just wanted to learn the technique, though. My introduction to Ninomiya Hinako was brief. I told her I was a specialist that knew Happosai, and that I could help her stay an adult for longer. None of that was a lie, really.
When she agreed to at least let me examine her I made a bit of a show of looking her over and asking her to turn around. She looked like a pre-teen, and her ki generation was unusually low due to some pathways that appeared damaged. I nodded, then generated a [Mystical Energy (Generator)] in my hand to create a constant stream ki and enclosed it in glass. After setting it on the desk I instructed her to drain it like Happosai had taught her, and did my best to memorize the technique. [Copy] flared and gave me a temporary ability to use it, but I wanted to learn how to drain someone at long range without any real preparation so I continued to go over it in my head while Hinako's technique slowed to a trickle. I'd created the generator itself with mana but set it to generate ki so that she couldn't accidentally destroy it with one technique.
Hinako looked down at herself in wonder, now in full adult form without having had to drain a living being to achieve it. She had more energy than she knew what to do with, really. The little glass ball she'd gotten the energy from was already glowing with a near-full ki aura again, and it had only been a few seconds. When I asked her to discharge the technique at me she looked alarmed, but a little cajoling brought her around. The ki blast felt like getting hit with a truck, but it was nothing my regeneration and a little sticking to the floor with chakra couldn't handle.
[By doing something special, you've created a new skill: Energy Affinity (Ki)!]
Good. That was a start on both lowering the cost of ki techniques to even more ridiculously low levels and more importantly resisting the damage caused by direct contact to offensively-utilized ki. I asked her to drain me next, enough to top off whatever she'd just used, but when she tried she didn't get anything. Resisting the urge to facepalm I let some of my aura out in the form of ki and asked her to try again. It seemed this particular technique needed something to latch onto before it could start the energy drain. Being able to see it again gave me more data, too.
Hinako was by this time kind of spooked. I could conjure balls of infinite energy, was completely immune to her most powerful offensive ability without even trying, and didn't seem to mind the tremendous amount of ki she'd drained at my instruction. I ignored it and said I would like to try and heal her based on the knowledge I had. She didn't look any less scared, but I told her all I would need was to hold her hand for a moment. In truth I might have been able to do it without physical contact, but I wanted this to be as easy as possible since I'd never tried to alter the internal energy pathways of another person before. The knowledge was there, pieced together from observation, study, and the Medical Genius perk.
Using a mixture of [Holy] and [Mystical Energy (Mastery)] to manipulate the ki pathways that I saw and heal any damage incurred, I matched them up to the pattern I'd seen in healthy adults. Hinako went slightly green then passed out, and I quickly leant down to examine her again. She was still in adult form, but there were some irregularities in the patterns of energy running through her body that were slowly returning to what I'd call normal. Not normal for her, normal for a healthy adult with a slightly above average ki pool. As they smoothed out her heart rate picked up and her eyes started to flutter. She woke to see me sitting near her as if to observe, but not so close as to be creepy. I hoped.
"If my observations are correct, you should be cured Miss Ninomiya. There is a chance you could relapse, but I'll be in the area for a while. I'm renting space from the Tendos, so you can reach me there. If you need energy, use this," I said tapping the glass ball generating ki and tweaking it slightly to generate a bit more yin than yang. "If you're still alright in a year, you can use it to make your plants grow more quickly. Or give it to Happosai, should you encounter him again." Hinako nodded absently, staring at the little ball in wonder as I left.
When I made it back to the dojo I immediately set to creating an energy draining skill of my own based on what I'd seen. I'd already been aware of most of what I needed and could have truthfully built the skill without seeing it in action, but I'd found that having knowledge of what needed to happen increased the effectiveness and the efficiency of the end product. I held up a hand and concentrated.
[By doing something special, you've created a new skill: Mystical Energy (Drain)!]
[Quest Update! Learn ALL the things!]
A thought conjured a ball identical to what I'd given the teacher and another summoned up an instant dungeon. Using the skill on the ball made it dimmer and [Observe] indicated it was losing ki. My own mana regenerated quickly enough that it had never actually dipped to cast the drain spell, so I started throwing around blasts and balls of ki with my other hand.
[By doing something special, you've developed the skill: Mystical Energy (Bolt)!]
[Quest Update! Learn ALL the things!]
Really? Aside from the quest there wasn't much of a reason to make that a skill. I'd done it using pure energy manipulation, which fell under [Mystical Energy (Mastery)]. I'd figure it out later and possibly customize it a bit like Jee-Han had done. He'd started with something similar and built most of his offensive repertoire out of it, just slamming mana into things in different shapes and such. I had what I wanted, regardless. I'd helped someone at basically no cost to myself and gained a couple of the remaining techniques I wanted to learn in the progress. I could study the Ultimate Weakness Moxibustion at any time, and I wasn't sure I even needed Ranma's sleep-fighting technique. For that matter, how do you bring something like that up?
'Hey, Ranma! I noticed that when I attack you in your sleep you automatically dodge and try to throw me out the window,' I thought to myself sarcastically. Yes, that would go over well. Maybe I didn't need his help, though. Between [Dreamwalk] and [Multi-Focus] I was already aware of the passage of time while I was sleeping and able to do other things. I'd have to try it that night. I hadn't actually slept in over a year, but I was sure Ember would be willing to randomly attack me a couple times for one night.
[By doing something special, you've created a new skill: Sleep Fighting!]
[Quest Update! Learn ALL the things!]
-
Things were going well. Kasumi and I were mostly happy, but I think it annoyed her a little when I pointed out cute guys in her class that she might get to know better [1]. Ranma was currently sulking since he'd gotten himself into a cheerleading contest that required him in his girl form to encourage Kuno, and not only did he not want to do any such thing Kuno also completely ignored him/her after exposure to me. Miss Ninomiya had started hitting on Soun, which he took with grace but did not return. Then a postcard from Ranma's mother arrived in the mail. It was time to see if my work had paid off: would Saotome Nodoka deem her son manly despite the curse?
I met the kids at school to walk them home, which earned some concerned glances but wasn't terribly unusual. When we encountered a red-headed woman in a traditional kimono heading for the Tendo dojo I prompted Ranma to introduce himself. He looked at me oddly, but followed my instructions only to receive a massive hug from the woman in question. His panicked look was great, but Nodoka's barrage of questions was going straight over his head because of it. I stepped forward.
"Missus Saotome. It's a pleasure to meet the mother of one of my apprentices. I am Wrin Black," I said with a bow. She looked startled, but immediately composed herself and returned my greeting with a bow of her own. Ranma looked like he'd been slapped with a fish. In the series he wasn't even sure if his mother was alive or not at this point.
"What exactly do you teach my son, Miss Black?"
"Well you see, his father was unprepared to offer usable advice on his relationships. I stepped in to help. My main focus is magic, though. Your son suffered a curse while training in China. The kami that created the springs lure people into them. If something has already drowned there the victim is cursed with a form similar to the one who drowned, but if the spring has never taken a victim before the spirits attempt to drown the one who falls in. It is ancient blood magic, and to overcome such a thing requires talent, rigorous study, and a great deal of discipline." Nodoka's eyes were wide as saucers at that point, so I gestured to Ranma who promptly turned his hair as red as mine then back to black.
"How are you so knowledgeable of such things at your age, Miss Black? And what curse did my son receive?" She asked shakily.
"Missus Saotome, despite my appearance I am in my seventies. I could age myself if you like, but I find this form fits the local area and causes people to underestimate me. As for your son, he received the very best curse for someone who would eventually wind up with two girlfriends: he was turned into a female. I dare say he's learned quite a bit from it," I said with a lurid smirk at Ranma and Akane, who both blushed and looked away. Nodoka dropped a cloth-wrapped bundle that I knew contained the Saotome honor blade and stared at Ranma in a mixture of horror and awe. Deciding it was probably better to keep the momentum of the conversation than let her contemplate the crazy-ass suicide pact she was no doubt thinking about, I asked Ranma to demonstrate.
"Ranma, would you mind demonstrating the curse for your mother? I can conjure water if you haven't managed to trigger it manually yet." The boy nodded, looking unsure, and turned into a copy of my current form. Nodoka jumped. "And back again, please?" His nod was more confident this time, and he turned male again.
"Now, student. Have you had any luck blocking the water trigger I showed you, yet?" The boy looked contemplative, then made a so-so hand motion. I grinned and turned back to Nodoka. "I'm so proud! Already shapeshifting on his own with only about a year of instruction in magic! The boy is a prodigy to be sure!" Ok, maybe I was laying it on a little thick. Ranma was excellent at this particular branch of magic, but that was because he was very motivated. The only other things he excelled at in the area of magic were [Mystical Energy (Sense)] and hydrokinesis. Then again, I wasn't sure I'd know normal if it hit me with a stick at this point. Maybe students usually took longer than that?
"Regardless, he's coming along nicely," I said to the Saotome matriarch. "With just a few months more practice I think he'll be skilled enough that I can break the curse itself with his help. After that he'll never need to assume that form again, though he will have the option. And of course, being a shapeshifter will be quite the advantage in other pursuits if he continues to study the medical texts I loaned him." Akane's blush had been receding, but now it looked like she might actually start glowing. She was poking her fingers together in front of her and looking at the ground shyly. Coincidentally, hearing that the curse itself would be broken made Nodoka slump in relief and smile with genuine happiness. I turned back to Akane, Nabiki, Ranma, and Ukyo.
"Children, we're expected back at the Tendo dojo for practice soon. Please don't delay Missus Saotome too long, but remember to give her contact information."
Things evolved from there pretty much without my help, so I bent down to pet Mister Fluffers. I didn't really like dogs in general, but he'd grown on me. Unfortunately as a large breed dog he probably wouldn't live more than a few years longer, but I'd remember him fondly either way. He growled at cats and would lunge if they came too close, but never actually attacked them. The Druidic magic I used on myself was no help as it was both incredibly complicated and designed for humans to use on themselves. I hadn't yet found a way to do the same for others, but regular exposure to [Holy] energy was keeping him happy and healthy. Nodoka agreed to return to the Tendo dojo with us and meet her long-absent husband.
-
Well that was loud. Nodoka screaming at Genma and threatening him with a sword, I mean. The whole lurid story about Genma agreeing to return Ranma to her a "man among men" or commit suicide along with his son came out before I decided to throw up a silencing barrier over the pair, and Ranma was looking at me like I was the incarnation of everything that was good in the world for teaching him to overcome the curse. Akane and Xian Pu, who'd been visiting for the afternoon's training session, both looked grateful. Ukyo looked suspicious, but was also smiling. She'd probably already worked out that I knew about the contract and had taken steps to prevent disaster. Soun just looked grateful that I'd silenced the couple.
The afternoon martial arts training went well, with Genma joining in the instruction and Nodoka watching after a while. After that I cast cleaning spells on everyone and had my students meditating on their magic, so everyone else except Nodoka left. In spare moments I spoke to her about my goals for the boys: they should be able to break the curses themselves with my help, but I'd only do so once they were proficient with blocking the water triggers. After that I would move on to honing their healing skills and teaching them teleportation before declaring them journeymen and breaking the apprenticeship so they could continue to study on their own or pursue their own ambitions unburdened by Jusenkyo.
Ranma's mother seemed to be quite interested both in the mechanics of the curses themselves and what I'd been offered to take three students. I'd already told her most of what she'd need to know about the curses, so only the hot and cold water bits were necessary to round out her knowledge there unless she wanted to study magic herself. She didn't, but was still interested in what had persuaded me to teach them. When I explained my deal to both learn from and teach the Amazons she nodded knowingly, but my motivation for teaching Ryoga and Ranma wasn't as clear or easy to explain. From her point of view I'd basically done it just to help, and while that was fine from my point of view she was very traditional. She seemed to consider receiving limited instruction from Genma not enough to repay me, and went to speak with her husband.
I didn't really care what they did, as long as it hurt no one and wasn't overly generous. I already knew most of the Anything Goes school from the Weirdly Specific Martial Arts perk, and was gaining very little from the instruction aside from sparring experience. Ryoga still felt he owed me a debt too, but I didn't intend to call it in. His parents still hadn't come home, but they'd been able to exchange letters and now knew to try and make their way home so I could break their family curse for good. I was getting kind of impatient though, and may just end up scrying for them and using teleport to get it over with if they didn't show up soon.
Mu Tsu's debt was already paid, by my estimate. He'd shown me how to use his hidden weapons technique even though I really didn't need it, Ku Lon had taught me several special Amazon techniques, and both she and Xian Pu were honing my skill in Amazon Wu Shu. They could work anything else out amongst themselves.
Nodoka stayed in the third guest bedroom with her husband that night. Guinevere might have been up, but I kind of doubted it. She wasn't always mentally present even when the bird was awake, probably because she had her own adventures to go on. After a bit of pondering what to do myself I decided to visit Jusenkyo again and see how much more of the cursed spring water I could get now that it'd had a year or so to refill. This should be somewhere around the time when Herb would be visiting the springs in the original timeline, too. I wondered briefly if they'd discovered that the locking ladle was missing yet. I tapped Ember on the shoulder to wake her long enough to explain where I was going before teleporting to Jusenkyo valley in China.
When I got there the springs were full again, which was great. What was less great was the armed contingent of Musk warriors talking to the guide, who pointed at me and ran away as soon as he saw me. Dick move.