Chapter 4
Ranma entered the living room as inconspicuously as she could. Everyone else was already sitting at the table and ready to eat breakfast, sitting two to a side, with the exception of Akane and the Tendo patriarch. She casually sat down to the left of Akane, which put her mother and Kasumi on her left, Nabiki and her pandified father on her right, and Mr. Tendo across the table. It didn't take long for her to feel several pairs of eyes on her as they all said, "itadakimasu," and began to eat.
Akane, aware of Ranma's presence beside her, and curious about the result of the duel, looked over at her and said, "So, how did—" She stopped in mid-sentence, as a look of confusion appeared on her face. Then, once she realized what she was seeing, she glared at her fiancé and asked, "What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm eating," was Ranma's muffled response, without turning to regard Akane, as she continued to shovel rice into her mouth from her upraised bowl. "What else does it look like?"
In response, Akane grabbed Ranma by one of her horns, pulled her closer, and angrily said, "It looks like you're being a pervert, to me."
With her eyes closed, and her furrowed brow displaying the effort that she was putting into tolerating Akane's behavior, Ranma said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Akane, Ranma can't help it that she's horny," Nabiki "helpfully" pointed out.
"Na-bi-ki!" Akane shouted at her, now flustered on top of being irritated.
"Ranma...?" Nodoka finally spoke up, with a bewildered look on her face, as she regarded her child.
Ranma took the opportunity to pull away from Akane, then lowered her empty bowl onto the table. There was a tense moment of silence before she opened her eyes, reached out with her bowl, and asked, "Can I have seconds?"
"Of course," Kasumi replied with a smile. She accepted the bowl, filled it up with more rice, then returned it.
The two family's patriarchs continued to mind their own business, since they perceived the situation to be a land mine that they did not wish to disturb. Nabiki continued to observe what was going on, and was prepared to take any opportunity to stir things up, and not just so she could amuse herself. Akane was exasperated, so she pretended to care less about what Ranma was doing and focused on eating her breakfast. Nodoka was still confused about what was going on, but nonetheless had her sword beside her, unwrapped but sheathed.
Instead of immediately returning her attention to her breakfast, Ranma took a moment to calmly state, "Okay, I'll explain what's going on," to all those present.
"Why didn't you just say that to begin with!?" Akane yelled in annoyance, and slammed the palm of her hand upon the table.
"I was hungry," Ranma casually replied, which did nothing to quell her fiancée's ire.
After she had sampled a portion of her miso soup, Ranma began to explain — in selective detail — what had happened and what she knew. To start with, she said, "Well, basically, I'm gonna be stuck looking like this for a while."
"What do you mean?" Asked Akane, as she regarded Ranma with an inquisitive expression.
"What I mean," Ranma began to elaborate, "is that there's some force or another keeping me in this form. I can't even use hot water to become a guy."
"That's nothing new," Nabiki dryly remarked.
With a look of skepticism on her face, Akane asked, "Are you sure you can't take it off?"
"I'm positive," Ranma replied, before she ate some more of her rice.
"Maybe you just didn't check hard enough," Akane reasoned, who wanted to be helpful. She adjusted her position, so she was facing Ranma, then leaned in and reached for her head. "Where is the opening?"
"It was in the back, beginning near the top of the head and ending at the base of the tail," Ranma informed her, before sighing. "But, it's not there anymore."
Akane disregarded what Ranma had said and began to feel around for an opening, convinced that her fiancé had somehow gotten the skin suit stuck and that only her ineptitude kept her from removing it. That thought easily cemented itself in her mind when she found out how difficult it was to look and feel through the skin suit's thick and bountiful red hair.
"I don't understand..." Nodoka said, with an expression that was a mix of concern and confusion appearing on her face. "Can someone explain to me what's going on?"
Due to Ranma's hesitation to answer her mother, Nabiki found the opportunity to say, "He likes being a girl, but he got tired of becoming the same one."
"Is this true...?" Nodoka inquired of her son, with a hardened look and an edge to her voice. She now had her hand on her sword's hilt, which had been raised into Ranma's view.
Ranma would have snapped back at Nabiki, if not for the immediate threat of her mother. So, instead, she leaned back, raised her hands, waved them around frantically, and hastily sputtered out, "N-no! Of course not! She was just joking! Joking!"
"Hold still," Akane complained, as she yanked Ranma back to her original position by her hair. As she got back to her search, she added, "And you still haven't answered why you're wearing this thing in the first place."
"Or why you'd wear it for your duel with Ryoga," Nabiki remarked, who put on an innocent smile.
Ranma only had a second to glare daggers at Nabiki before Akane pulled her head closer, who, in a low and accusatory tone, asked, "You weren't picking on him again, were you?"
Ranma reflexively opened her mouth, ready to vehemently deny doing such a thing, until she realized that she'd miss out on a good cover story. So, she closed her mouth, calmed down, and decided to act like she was guilty of picking on Ryoga. She reasoned that it would be better than telling the truth.
"So what if I did?" Ranma replied, in a challenging tone. She crossed her arms, shut her eyes, and added, "It's not my fault he's an idiot."
"The only idiot between you two," Akane yanked on Ranma's hair particularly hard as she emphasized, "is you."
"Whatever," Ranma replied dismissively, as she tried to ignore Akane's attempts to pull her hair out.
"So, it was just some teasing between friends..." Nodoka concluded with evident relief, as she set her sword down. She could understand the use of a disguise to trick a friend, instead of using it strictly for one's own enjoyment.
"If you can call them friends," Nabiki thought to herself, who felt satisfied about getting her message across to Ranma.
Ranma tried to eat her grilled fish, but Akane's tugging on her hair was becoming progressively stronger because of her stubbornness. She tried to ignore it, but having her head jerked around was making it difficult to place her food in her mouth. One of her eyebrows began to twitch, as her consternation grew.
"Would you please give it a rest," Ranma finally told Akane, in a controlled tone. "Even if I were still wearing it, you'd be pulling in the wrong direction."
Akane, who had been pulling more toward herself than anything else, realized that Ranma was right: if the skin suit had to be pulled up to get it on, and entered through the back, then — logically — one would need to pull it down to remove it, at the very least. With that in mind, she grasped two handfuls of hair and pulled down... Hard.
Thinking that the pause had meant a cessation of her fiancée's actions, Ranma had been caught unprepared for the force being applied, and she yelped when she quickly found the side of her head striking her shoulder. While that didn't really hurt her head or her shoulder, the force and angle had evoked considerable pain in both her neck and scalp.
With a growl, Ranma turned to confront Akane and angrily shouted, "That hurt!"
Everyone stopped what they had been doing, and the room fell silent. To Ranma's surprise, and the surprise of everyone else to one degree or another, she had just expelled flame from her mouth. Not only had she expelled flame, but she had blasted Akane in the face with it. And beyond her was her father, who was looking down at the singed fur on his arm with a sweaty brow. Akane's charred head, as well as her body, showed no signs of animation. Then, suddenly, she coughed out a plume of smoke and toppled over.
"Ah..." Was all that Ranma could voice in her shocked state. Then, finally, despite how obvious Akane's condition was, she finally had the presence of mind to be concerned. "Ah! Akane!"
"Akane!" She said again, as she leaned over her and gave her shoulder a good shake.
Then she felt a disturbingly familiar presence, which made her pause. Fearing the worst, she slowly looked over her shoulder. There, looming over her, was the giant, ghastly head of Mr. Tendo.
"Raaaaaaanmaaaaaaa...!" Mr. Tendo bellowed. "How dare you harm my daughter!"
Ranma dove out of the room, and was soon running down the hallway as Mr. Tendo's head pushed through the entryway that she had just left through, destroying it in the process.
"I'm sorry!" Ranma apologized while she evaded Mr. Tendo's writhing tongue. "It was an accident! Honest!"
Ranma sighed contentedly as she leaned back and relaxed in the hot water of the furo.
She was glad for this break, what with the incident regarding her newly-discovered flame breath and all. Akane had been giving her the evil eye before she had left for school, so she probably didn't have much to look forward to when she got back. Still, after dodging a bullet with her mother, no thanks to Nabiki, her main concern was getting herself relaxed.
That didn't stop her from thinking about her situation, or how she hadn't gotten a chance to explain everything that she knew about it to the others. However, when she really thought about it, she didn't really understand all that much about it herself. All that she knew was that she would have to wait and see what would happen, since she didn't have any idea of how to resolve the problem herself, while the alternative solution — if that woman's words were to be trusted — depended on being sought out by who-knows-what.
After soaking in the furo for a few more minutes, she concluded that it was time for her to get out. She stepped out and decided to face the large mirror that was on the wall, behind the faucets. She was already familiar with all of the red hair that she had, but only now could she see just how massive it was, even while wet. The yellow horns on the sides of her head appeared as she had felt: they began above her ears and extended behind them, where they tapered into points. She hefted her breasts, felt their weight, and guessed them to be about the same size as before. Then, she swung her red-colored tail around, so she could see it, and thought of how odd it was to have a fifth limb of sorts.
However, she felt as if she were missing something... Had it been something said by that mysterious woman? Although, now that she was staring into her own eyes, she noticed that they had become red...
"Wait... She had said something about wings, hadn't she?" She suddenly realized. She hadn't been paying attention at the time, but it wasn't like she had been expecting someone to talk to her either.
There certainly didn't seem to be any wings; none that would be of a size for any practical use, at least. Still, just to be thorough, she decided to take a closer look at her back. She folded her arms behind her neck, lifted them up, and pulled her hair up with them. After making sure that her hair would stay out of the way, she turned her back toward the mirror and looked over her shoulder.
"What the...?" She muttered, as she gave her back a critical look.
There was something there, alright, but they didn't look like wings. On each shoulder blade was a reddish, vertical protrusion of some kind, though they didn't seem to extend from her back more than an inch. She shifted her shoulders around, but that didn't do anything. Then, it occurred to her to try and move the things on her back, and she was surprised when a pair bat-like wings — which were the same color as her tail — sprung into view.
"So, I do have wings..." She thought, somewhat awed by that fact.
She put her arms down and faced the mirror head-on once more. In it she saw a girl with a wild mane of red hair, red eyes, equally-red tail and wings, and a pair of horns. The girl certainly looked like she was part dragon; or a dragon half, as that mysterious woman had called it.
"Rowr~!" She growled at the mirror, with her hands raised and fingers spread out and curled, as she pretended to be a fearsome dragon. However, instead of fearsome, the act seemed to be more cute than anything else. It was kind of endearing, actually, but still...
"Ranma...?" A familiar voice came from the changing room.
Ranma turned around to face the shōji, and saw a shadowy figure through the frosted glass. "Mom?"
"May I come in?" She requested.
"Oh, uh... Sure," Ranma acquiesced, despite having some reservation about her mother seeing her as she was. It wasn't because she was naked: her mother had seen her naked many times before. It was normal, really. She was just concerned about the non-human parts of her, that were now on full display.
Nodoka slid the shōji open, stepped into the room, then closed it behind her. When she turned about to face her child, she stood silently for a moment and took in Ranma's appearance. The wings were new, but — despite the non-human parts — her body did not appear to be all that different from her usual female form overall. It felt strange to see her child in her current state, but she was beginning to understand that strange things weren't uncommon in her life.
With a touch of concern, she asked, "How are you feeling?"
"Alright, I guess..." Ranma awkwardly replied. She rubbed the back of her neck, since she didn't know what else to say.
"So... You've been stuck like this before?" Nodoka inquired.
"A few times," Ranma admitted. "Usually for technical reasons, though. This is only the second time I've literally been stuck."
"Then I'm confident that you'll have this sorted out, too," Nodoka stated with a smile, feeling reassured. Still, the mother in her just had to add, "But, if you should ever need anything..."
"Don't worry, mom," Ranma said with a smirk. "I'll be a man again before too long."
Nodoka studied her child again for a moment, fondly, for she saw the man that she was despite the feminine exterior. Then, remembering another reason for her visit, she said, "Oh, and I'd like for you to stay home today. I don't want you going to school in those dirty, torn clothes that you had been wearing earlier. And, I won't have you tearing more holes in anything else, so you won't have anything to wear until Kasumi and I properly modify a new outfit for your current form."
Feeling a mixture of relief and embarrassment, Ranma said, "Okay..."
"I left one of my nightgowns out for you," Nodoka informed her. "You can wear that until we're done; I won't mind. Will that be fine with you?"
Ranma had the urge to say, "sure, no problem; it's not like I haven't worn something like that before." But, instead, she wisely chose to say, "I'll live with it, somehow."
Nodoka shared a smile with her child before she left. Ranma, left alone with her thoughts, suddenly wondered how long it would take for Kasumi and her mother to modify a pair of boxers and pants. Still, so long as certain people weren't around, she wouldn't really mind lounging about the house in a nightgown. Of course, she figured that she should pretend to be uncomfortable with it while she was around her mother — just in case.