Chapter Eight
by Lionheart
I O I O I
Minor sex scene in this chapter. Skip it if you don't like it, just go to the next break.
I O I O I
As an eleven year old Kodachi was even more slender and svelte than before, although she noted her strength had not dropped, nor had her conditioning. Possibly something to do with the youth magic. It had wound back her years, but not her training.
So it was child's play to excuse herself to the toilet while the others were busy with sewing and teaching charms and lower herself out of a tower window using her ribbon. One thing she had learned, especially in the Kuno estate, was the more treacherous and uncertain the ground the more vital it was to know your home territory.
She was tempted to follow that Weasley girl. She had become sort of friends with her, though Kodachi was still feeling her way with that concept. Having friends was a new thing for her, and she was a bit concerned if she could do it right and not mess it up.
However, of more immediate concern was her current state of comparative helplessness. Kodachi was no stranger to being drugged, and she'd been quite fully aware of herself and her situation when, last night, a crowd of small blue kami flew in the room and put everyone to sleep with clouds of sparkling powder.
Everyone but her. She had a rather surreal resistance to those things, having cultivated it.
But as much as she'd resisted the compulsion to follow trancelike, those pixies had managed to command her as effectively as though she had been sleeping. The drug did have an effect, just a reduced one on her body, and so she had obeyed. Then a good bit of acting had been required to pass herself off as sleeping when she'd found those responsible. It had been possible to position herself and adjust her pace to linger and listen to them talk, however, and she had learned a great deal doing so.
There was apparently a war going on between European wizards, and the one entitled dark was not defeated, only in hiding. One of their teachers, Severus Snape, was still his servant according to the pigtailed girl, and according to her mother it was not going to be long before open fighting returned, and she was trying to prepare them all for it.
All nicely meant, but the descendant of Hecate would much rather be an active participant than a casual observer. And sadly she had to acknowledge her current lack of power made her far inferior a player to the pigtailed girl, who had her mother and friends.
She paused on her way to the dungeons, struck by a thought: It was not the pigtailed girl and her mother she ought to be counting as rivals, as they had assisted her, including her both into the night march to those marvelous teaching tools and during the much more private and intimate setting of those extra lessons during the day.
Kodachi had not had so much help from anyone; no, even from the Weasleys. This Malfoy woman seemed honestly intent on including her if she wanted to be included, and her help was of no small import.
Indeed, as she had left them the Nerima girls were engaged in some very anxious tutoring of other girls. They seemed genuinely intent on filling out the measure of the words of the pigtailed girl's mother, helping anyone who seemed opposed to her enemy.
The former Kuno girl was not willing to go quite that far about it, as that approach just felt too innocent. She knew how many faces could turn from friendly to rival in an eyeblink once the person learned your name, or other such silly nonsense.
For one thing, she had already made one enemy at this school in the person of Filch. That nasty, wicked man had abused her good graces, acting horribly when all she'd done was ask for directions to the Hufflepuff common room! She was going to see her brother, and the filthy peasant had gone so far as to roughly grab her, sneer in her face, verbally abuse her and suggest vile punishments for simply inquiring as to the way!
She wasn't going to act like her newly discovered, dearly beloved brother was on another planet just because of some silly hat saying different words to each of them!
So she had two stops tonight. Oddly, she found the second first: the Potions classroom in the dungeons. Walking in, she stepped gingerly over the smashed furniture, around piles of ash, steaming stone or pools of smoky liquid, to where the wall separating Snape's office had been smashed in from the classroom side, crushing a pensieve and scattering potion supplies and books with bits of rubble laying on them.
Books were what she was there after. Knowledge was power, after all, and she had already identified her best subjects. Potions was where she stood the tallest above her classmates and so the wisest place to begin playing up her advantage.
Rummaging through those piles, she felt gratified that none of the various liquids had fallen over this grand avalanche of volumes (though there was a shelf lined with bottles hanging at a crazy angle over it, held on merely by a bent pin), and soon Kodachi had selected those books that suited her; Copies each of Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Potion Making, Most Potente Potions, and dozens of other works. Some were obviously old school texts, a few no longer in use; and finding a copy of Basic Potion Making with cramped notes in a steady hand, the slender gymnast recognized the work of a genius and found everything, over a dozen books, by this Half Blood Prince person.
Seeing she had at least two copies of every book present, and everything (including loose papers) in the handwriting of that Half Blood Prince, the former Kuno jumped away, ribbon slashing out behind her to drop the dangling rack of bottles onto the pile of papers, starting a greenish-blue blaze as she left toward her second destination, grateful for the expanding bookbag she'd thought to bring with her as she skipped out over the hoof prints stamped six inches deep into the stone flooring.
Filch's office was not hard to find once she'd oriented herself. That bent little man was out stalking the halls looking for students out of bed instead of guarding his roost.
A swipe from her ribbon slashed the lock cleanly off, then the hinges when the door failed to open. Stepping over the fallen wooden portal, Kodachi entered intent on mayhem. Then she found the confiscated items and a thought occurred to her.
Taking everything that Filch had taken from the students over the years gave her a useful perspective on what items were popular and illegal at Hogwarts. Putting those back into circulation should annoy this awful little man tremendously. Then there was his list of forbidden items, she took it, intending to drop it in a fire somewhere other than her common room. Kodachi doubted whether that wicked little freak kept that whole long list memorized, and replacing his notes on what he hated would require whole new experiences with any number of items!
The svelte gymnast even found a vault, and slashing open that metal door revealed a most precious collection of powerful items confiscated from students across the years. Grabbing an invisibility cloak and swirling it around her shoulders, Kodachi emptied that chamber into her now strained bookbag, and, leaving behind a bomb with some truly interesting powder contents by the entrance to the office primed to explode when disturbed, bounded away to return to her dorm.
She still had enough time to sew herself a wonderful dress before retiring to sleep, and she already knew those sewing charms the pigtailed girl was no doubt still laboring to teach her dorm mates. She'd be as fancy as them in the morning, apart from a regrettable lack of jewels.
And that lack could be attended to.
"Sasuke!" She called into the quiet.
With a slight 'bamph' her servant appeared, kneeling before her. "Yes Mistress?"
She'd been surprised during the Sorting that first night to hear the Hat call out "House Elf", but even more amazed when she caught the newly transformed person's name as the same as her old retainer.
Apparently her old family had not been quite ready to lose her and sent the family's ninja servant to follow her, even to Hogwarts... which had proved useful. "I require jewelry to wear for the morning. Run back to Japan and fetch me my mother's chest, will you?"
"At once, mistress Kodachi!" Sasuke, the ninja elf, vanished without a sound.
I O I O I
Professor Minerva McGonagall was walking back to her office after having stayed up late going over petitions from parents, when she heard voices around a corner of the corridor ahead. Something made her stop, and it wasn't just hearing a girl crying her heart out. It was something deeper.
"Snape took a hundred points away from Gryffindor just for catching me up after hours!" Ginny protested, almost incoherent from her tears.
"Hm, must have caught him in a more foul mood than usual. Any other teacher would have docked us four points, but I can understand him feeling snippy after being humiliated in front of the school like that." One of the twins replied. "He was probably lurking around, waiting to take his temper out on one of us. I'm sure he gave you a detention, too. Sometimes I think that vampire can't sleep at night unless he's taken a bite out of a Gryffindor during the day."
"Yah," the other replied. "Supposedly you can ask for an unfair judgment to be reviewed. But don't bother going to McGonagall. She's too concerned with being impartial to be supportive. She's so busy being Deputy Headmistress first and Transfiguration Teacher second that there's no room in there for Head of Gryffindor House, or at least we've never seen her display any sign of it."
"Yah, she's never stood up for us. Not like Professor Malfoy. I wish I could listen to her lay into Snape again! That was the most beautiful speech I ever heard!"
"I'd like to watch her beat him across the hall again, my beloved brother. Never have I seen something so lovely in all thirteen years of our lives!"
The voices cut off as she heard a voice speak from behind her. "Ah, Professor McGonagall, there you are. I've been looking for you. We need to discuss what we are going to do to protect Professor Snape from Nodoka Malfoy."
Minerva McGonagall's face went stony, as it did when dealing with delinquent students, and her pricked pride replied in loud tones. "And who will protect the children from him, Albus? Snape's behavior since you brought him on board has been illegal, immoral and disgusting! He shouldn't be allowed near children, much less trusted to teach them. Our twelve year olds act with greater maturity! That man should be in jail, rotting with dementors infesting his brain. And if you want to protect him, I'll gladly see the pair of you leave this school together! And I will use my influence for that purpose!"
With that she turned on her heel and walked smartly away, as she crossed the corner she could see the trio of Weasleys had stopped their conversation to stare at her in stunned awe. It made her feel oddly triumphant to have earned those looks of admiration as she walked away from the poleaxed look on Dumbledore.
She stopped and looked at the trio of Weasleys. "And a hundred points to Gryffindor for being brave enough to be up out of your quarters at night on a mission of mercy. I see that plate of cream you've got and presume it to be for Miss Malfoy's kneazel kittens? Good. Ginny, if you have a detention you may serve it with me, eating ice cream while we pet the Malfoy's darling pets. Good night to the three of you."
She nodded firmly and was gone around a corner.
I O I O I
"Pigtailed girl, may we talk?"
Ranko looked up at the head currently parting her curtains. Unlike most of the other girls, she was not sharing her bed for this sleepover. Without a word, she sat up, pulled her knees in and patted the covers next to her, watching the other girl carefully.
Kodachi slipped in the four-poster, and waited while Ranko cast silencing charms so they could not be overheard from outside. She'd just returned from a short detour to the Great Hall (where she'd tossed certain bits of incriminating evidence into a fire) and found the girl she'd most wished to talk to had already gone to bed.
"This is about Nerima, isn't it?" Ranko asked as she put down her wand.
Kodachi nodded. "I admit, I was surprised to see you here. I did not expect to see anyone I knew as I arrived. Tell me, you must tell me. At first I was unsettled to find you here, but on analysis we have no more reason to fight. Please tell me, whatever happened to Ranma? He... he was your brother, wasn't he?"
Ranko sighed long and hard before answering that question. "Well, if you're here then you already believe in magic, right?"
Kodachi nodded.
Ranko's eyes closed in pain. "I don't wanna tell this story. Informing my mom was bad enough."
"Please?" The request was reasonably stated, and showed some emotion on the other side as well. "At first I merely felt attracted to him because I was alone, and he showed me kindness. Then, when it became obvious that I could not have him, I continued the pursuit so that I could be protected of that maniac fate made my horrible older brother, who fought all the harder on my behalf and was thus incapacitated all the more often. But when I saw you and felt, I admit, a flash of jealousy return I found that my feelings for Ranma were not as much a sham as I had thought. Please, at least tell me that he is well."
Ranko shuddered a few moments.
"Please?" This was almost begging.
"Okay." The redhaired girl scowled at herself, for being such a soft touch. "I'll tell you, but you have to promise to keep this a secret. I'm embarrassed enough as it is."
"I so promise, pigtailed girl."
"Call me Ranko, it's easier that way. And the tale properly starts in China. There, in a remote mountain province is a valley of cursed springs. The touch of the water there will turn anyone into whatever creature drowned in that spring, and there are over a hundred pools. Genma, and he's another story all by himself, took Ranma there before you met him, thinking it was an advanced training ground because he didn't speak a word of Chinese."
"That sounds most unwise," Kodachi allowed when the redhaired girl paused.
Ranko shuddered, saying, "There is no limit or end to Genma Saotome's dishonor, and his greed and his idiocy stretch almost as far." She would have spat the taste of his name out, but she was in her own bed and didn't want to soil the covers.
"I... note that you did not come here bearing his name." Kodachi said delicately, hoping to coax out the story for that one as well.
"Yah, like I said that's another story, and if I don't start at the beginning I'll never finish." The girl winced. "Anyway, both of them got cursed. Genma turns into a panda when he gets hit by cold water, and hot water turns him back."
Kodachi gasped, figuring things out from there. "But that Nabiki woman! She told me! And you were scared of..! During our gymnastics match, when I threatened you in the ring with that kettle of hot water!"
"Yah," Ranko nodded, depressed. "I'm Ranma. This is my cursed form, only now I'm stuck with it."
I O I O I
"Ranko... Ranma-sama, why do you trust me with your secret?" Kodachi trembled. "After all of those terrible things I did to you?"
Her response was a dry chuckle. "Well, my kneazle likes you. That's one reason. Another is that you never did act half as crazy as you tried to sound, and you helped me out when you didn't have to. That was pretty rare back then, and it stood out enough for me to notice. Also, nothing you did was half as bad as what the Tendos did to me constantly. Look, you don't really know what happened back there, do you? I mean, you were always out on the outskirt, just jumping in occasionally for a few fights. You didn't even go to the same school as the rest of us. So you don't know the backstory, do you?"
"Very little, I am afraid," the Hecate admitted.
"Genma was friends with Soun Tendo, and they both trained under the same master, an old pervert called Happosai. You probably saw him doing his panty raids, you did go to an all-girls school after all."
The gymnast nodded, feeling violated by the mere recollection.
"Yah. I see you've met him. Anyway, Soun and Genma made a promise to marry their kids together. So a couple of years later, after Genma had taken me all over China and Japan on a ten year training journey where we didn't stay anywhere for very long, he dragged me off to Nerima and basically retired. He sat down on his lazy ass with his old friend, some sake, and a shogi board never intending to move or work again. The trick is that I had to marry Akane and start up the dojo that Soun had quit running so I could support their lazy carcasses."
"I understand. The arrangement is not so uncommon in our home country. A side effect of revering the elderly, I am certain." Kodachi prompted, "But something tells me the arranged marriage did not suit you?"
"No. It didn't. From the start Akane was repulsed by my curse, and... well, whatever her reasons we never got along. Not a single day went by that I'd care to live over again. I don't think I had three happy minutes strung together, and I don't even want to start talking about her problems. I had the excuse that for most of my life I'd had no real human contact except for Genma, who was a perfect example of BAD behavior, so flinging me into an arranged marriage was throwing me off the deep end tied to an anchor. I had to learn everything from the ground up, but first I had to get rid of all of the useless garbage he'd burdened me with before I could learn how to behave like a human being and not a rat. Akane didn't have an excuse that I could see. The stuff she had to deal with was really minor by comparison and she behaved worse than I did. Her sisters and dad didn't help things a bit."
"And what of Kaneda? He was also a Tendo, was he not?" The former Kuno tried to keep this flow of information going.
The cursed girl chuckled miserably. "That was Akane, only she'd gotten her own boy-girl transformation. It wasn't a curse like mine, though, and she couldn't turn it off. It was a one-way permanent switch."
Kodachi quirked a grin. "So that freakishly strong lowborn commoner became a man? How fitting. One could tell it was going to happen when she came to school wearing a beard. Tatewaki told me about it."
The girl she was sharing secrets with snorted, in a very ladylike way.
"I doubt he told you the full story. She got both the strength and the beard from the same source. I stayed there most of a year, and she didn't start out so bad. But she was always getting some magic boost to power her up, and with each one she got worse and worse in temper and attitude. Akane didn't ever lose one bit of those powerups, either. The Super Soba was one of the first, if not the very first one, and it made her, as you so elegantly put it, freakishly strong. She hit me the day she got it and I didn't get out of the hospital for over a week. That was also the last time I let her get a free hit in on me. The consequences were just too dire."
Kodachi nodded attentively, and Ranko felt the need to elaborate. "It wasn't just the hospital stay, and it wasn't just her beard. She took me out of action, and with Shampoo and Ukyo and Cologne all worried about me they let Happosai eat a bowl of that soba in peace, and that was a nightmare from then on. But almost worse than a mega-powered pervert with no real limit on strength was that Akane got real messed up, even worse than before. She had to go to school with a big shaggy beard that wouldn't shave off (Happosai didn't mind his, of course), and when Sayuri, one of her closest friends, made a joke about how she thought I was usually the gender-confused one..." Ranko took a deep breath and found she was near tears, but forged on. "She slapped her. It was the first full day she had her soba strong muscles and, to be honest, she's never been all that good at controlling herself. But this put her more off than usual. Anyway, Akane tore Sayuri's head clean off with that swing, caused it to fly across the hallway and splatter against a wall like a melon shot out of a cannon."
Ranko trembled, and Kodachi laid a hand on her in understanding.
"I wasn't there. Maybe I could have stopped her, but probably not. Akane just got angrier around me, so perhaps it was best that I wasn't there to blame. It would've been me she killed, and I would've been dead before she realized she'd done it. Anyway, after gaining a beard and killing Sayuri, Akane went from Most Popular Girl to practically Untouchable and Unclean overnight. Nobody would talk to her or look near her unless they had to. Cologne says that she observed her lose bits of her sanity to that and denial, and I have to say that I agree with her. Even more than before, Akane could never be convinced that anything was ever her fault, especially not killing her friend. No one knows why she wasn't prosecuted for Sayuri's death, but most suspect your brother was the reason behind that. Even though he laid off talking about her and trying to date her, most think he protected her one last time."
Ranko had, by now, shrunk in on herself and wasn't paying attention to what her audience already knew and didn't. She was back there, reliving the memories and reciting them aloud.
"When I got out of the hospital Akane's older sisters had already grown terrified of her rages , and her temper tantrums were tearing up the house. Her father and Genma had bowed down, caving in utterly to the super-powered Happosai and became his active assistants once again. So I had to fight them and Happosai together, plus Akane and Ryoga started double teaming me every chance they got. Cologne says that I got substantially better in skill, and much faster and stronger over that whole period. Then they started to get in five way group attacks on me and I know I improved then. A couple of months later Happosai told me there was a cure for the soba-strength, but it has to be taken in the first twenty four hours. Fat lot of good that did anyone then, but of course the old freak didn't want anyone taking his strength away when he was vulnerable, so nobody could cure Akane's either."
"I think I have dealt with that sort of person before, Ranma-sama." Kodachi stated, before realizing that the other girl couldn't even hear her. That actually frightened her, that the fears of the pigtailed girl had gotten to her so badly, and she was so vulnerable.
"Anyway, sometime after that this Prince Herb from China showed up looking for what he called an 'Unlocking Kettle'. It turns out that his tribe lives near those cursed springs I visited, and they had magic items affecting the curses. This Prince had fallen in the Drowned Spring of Girl and somehow got splashed with a magic ladle that locked him in that form. But I didn't know any of that, got in a fight with the guy over something, and he splashed me so that I was locked too. We all went hunting after the Unlocking Kettle in kind of a race, Ryoga got locked as a pig and Mousse got locked as a duck on the way. Then, when Herb and I got into a fight over the kettle when we found it, we kinda brought the mountain down on us and the thing got smashed flat by a falling boulder. Herb took that personally and disappeared with his followers, and I haven't been a boy since first meeting him."
"I recall that day, you came and said to me that the boy of my heart would not be returning." Kodachi's voice was choked with tears as she impulsively hugged her former rival. "I hated you, and did not know what it meant to you, or what you had lost."
"Thanks, but it was worse than you know," The hug caused the real person within to surface for a moment before Ranko's voice dropped to a whisper. "Akane's dad had sworn that if I hadn't come back as a man, HE'D marry me to join the schools. So I couldn't ever go back to that home again. I went and asked Cologne if I couldn't stay with her at her restaurant. She said that was okay, so I did."
"A great deal of stuff happened. Cologne hired me on as a waitress, and without Nabiki scamming it all I had some spending cash for the first time in my life. They started teaching me Chinese, and in the process I learned to be better about my own language. Actually, it was the first time I'd been around real people who had an interest in my learning how to do anything but fight for them (though, of course, they helped me learn alot about doing better at my martial arts, too). I find that kind of amusing, that it took a group of what I'd thought of as backwoods barbarians to civilize me at last. My life improved substantially when I was there, and we went through a ton of stuff together, and always came back the better for it. My getting stuck as a girl even took alot of the pressure off, and I was able to really get to be good friends with both Ukyo and Shampoo during that period, also.
"Then came that trip where we all got suckered in to go to Toma's Island. Those guys had their own magic pool there whose water turned anything into mostly a man, kinda crossed a bit with whatever it was before it got changed. Toma showed us by dousing a crab, before he kidnapped all of us girls because they didn't have any on his island.
"Anyway, I made a mistake and tried to rescue Akane. She got offended and belted me a big one, flinging me out of that mountain and herself right into that pool of magic male water. Genma and Ryoga got to it, too, before the newly male Akane destroyed the whole place and sank the island. It didn't work quite like anyone had hoped. Akane came out the best, merely a 'pretty-boy' kind of guy who'd make a great crossdresser, and she did for a time give that a try until she finally noticed that she was the only one ever to use the girls' locker room. All of the real girls were too scared to say anything, but no way were they changing with 'her'. So they all lined up outside the nurse's room. I think that's when she finally gave in and started going by the suggestion her dad made on the boat ride home. Kaneda was the name he would've given her if she'd been born a boy, or so he said, an she used that.
"The others didn't turn out so good. Genma got thick, heavy nails like claws, long, sharp and pointy teeth, big round ears and a tail, and black and white fur everywhere except the top of his head. Ryoga was the worst. He got a pig's snout and curled tusks, two thick fingers and a thumb per hand, black fur all over so his head hair fell out, a short, curly tail and swine ears. He looked like some kind of fantasy monster, I think they called them orcs. Anyway, with those hands he couldn't use most of his old trademark weapons anymore, and he got a huge potbelly outta the change - because that's the type of pig he was, a potbellied pig. They're always small and cute, but it ruined his damage tolerance to have that lard all over. Every hit sent shockwaves out all over his body. Plus, he squealed alot, and grunted. That made him embarrassed to talk; and he ended up ugly as sin, so that didn't help him avoid feeling shy. Of course he blamed me for it, somehow. I've given up trying to understand why he thinks I am to blame for everything. I have to admit, though, his life sucked alot more after that change. Nobody thought he was cute anymore, and people even called out anti-monster squads whenever he hit a major town. So whenever he could, he stayed around the Tendo place and had Kaneda lead him around by a heavy chain leash.
"Things got worse for me then, as Kaneda got ahold of a magic Battle Dogi, and it shot his skill level from pathetic on up to where it was a real workout to avoid his super-strong, soba enhanced blows. Once he put that thing on, he never took it off or wore anything else ever again. As far as I know he still hasn't, and by the time I left he stank and the dogi was getting stained so badly it was changing color toward brown." Ranko shuddered. "But what really upsets me is what Akane/Kaneda used it for. She, or I guess he, wanted people to respect and admire him again, like they had before the soba. But the way he went about it was to approach someone, say something nice, and if they didn't immediately throw on a big smile and act like best friends Kaneda would get angry and force them, and if anyone did try to act as 'friends' he'd immediately make impositions on them. He became a phenomenal bully overnight. People started moving out of the area in droves. You couldn't get anyone to go to Furinkan. The whole school shrank to four students, and that was only because they wouldn't let Nabiki, Ukyo or me leave. Despite how terrified Kaneda made her, Nabiki was still one of the few people who could calm him down when he got angry. Miss Hinako helped out alot when they brought her in at last, specifically to control Kaneda. She really kept the freak squad under control. She was everyone's best defense against Happosai, and was just as great against his pair of student-servants, also Kaneda and Ryoga. All five of them together couldn't handle her. She and I got to be great friends for a good long time, until the end came.
"Anyway, sometime after that Princess Herb returned from China looking for revenge. She blamed me for the loss of the Unlocking Kettle keeping her in her cursed form, came back with dozens of various cursed waters, and started to throw them around using the Locking Ladle to try and 'motivate' me to find some other way to cure things. She hit the Tendo House first, thinking I'd be there. Even worse, she went in the middle of the night to catch everyone asleep. Kasumi got locked as a horse, Nabiki got locked as an octopus, and then things started to get weird. Herb used 'Spring of Drowned Invisible Yeti' on the guy she thought was my dad, and 'Spring of Drowned Man-Eating Old Crone' on Soun. It was only after I got here that I learned those are magical creatures, a Demiguise and a Hag. By then Herb had splashed enough people and woken them up that she had a fight on her hands. Kaneda and Ryoga drove her away with chi blasts fueled by anger and depression, and since she was not looking to fight them, Herb left shouting that I should hurry up with a cure if I didn't want more people cursed.
"Of course, I wasn't there, and no one who was could think clearly. Nabiki and Kasumi were helpless, Soun wanted to go eat the neighbors, and Genma had disappeared with their old master to go try out his new invisibility for stealing things. Ryoga ran off somewhere, while Kaneda just lost his temper and broke stuff. So I didn't get that warning and Herb came the next night to the Cat Cafe where I was staying. During that first night she'd lost many of the labels off the casks she'd been using, so her first move was to splash and lock Cologne with 'Spring of Drowned Twins'. The pair of her beat Herb down so fast that it wasn't funny. We'd all been training together against the omnipresent Tendo/Happosai menace, and she had gotten alot better herself by that point. She took the Ladle away and she mailed Herb back to China by slow boat cheap freight. The casks of cursed water had broken and gone down the drains during their fight.
"Then Ryoga came back, after having busted up some shop escaping from police in some other town and stolen a Magic Koi Fishing Rod on his way through. I don't know what the orc wanted with it, maybe to get some girl to love him in spite of his face, but anyway he didn't get to keep it. No sooner had he arrived back in Nerima than Happosai stole it from him and went to party. The old letch tagged Miss Hinako and one of our two Colognes before we even really knew what that rod did, and then they switched sides to protect 'their Happy' and suddenly everything went straight to Hell. Two of our heavy hitters had just changed allegiance, throwing all of the balance of power to their side, and from there everything just snowballed out of control.
"I tried to salvage things by fighting Happosai for that rod." Ranko shuddered violently from within Kodachi's arms. "And I failed. I got tagged by the rod too. I started to fall in love with that ancient, evil, perverted old freak. But he was just too crazy to stick around and solidify his victory. He had a district to enslave, and pretty ladies to ensnare. Nabiki pulled me onto Kasumi's back, and the pair of them got me back to our Cologne, who was waiting with Shampoo and Ukyo. They packed everything up from the Cat Cafe into trunks, and fled off into the night. I don't recall any of that, as I was well dosed with sleeping drugs.
"Anyway, Cologne took me to this mage-for-hire she'd just learned of in another district, and it turned out to be my mom. She removed the love spell from me. And Shampoo's curse wasn't locked, so she got rid of that too, but the locked ones are beyond her skill, especially since we had to leave the Ladle behind with the other Cologne, Happosai and his crowd. But we did get our bulk stockpiles of Jusenkyo Products, instant spring water and so on that mom is using to research a cure.
"Mom did something, some type of curse or other that works at a distance like a challenge or something, when she was removing that love spell from me, and no more magic devices are going to work for Happosai again, ever. The catch is that her curse is broken if he ever gets me caught with that koi rod again. According to what Cologne said (our Cologne not the one we had to leave behind because she'd been charmed by the enemy) Happosai has to use a scroll to boost his chi draining abilities every few years or he'll die. Once before he was locked in a cave and couldn't drain female chi, but he had some other kind of device that sent him into hibernation, and that won't work for him now. So I've got a soba strong, ancient pervert with grandmaster abilities running around with hordes of powerful followers, and who has to change me into his adoring sex slave or he'll die.
"The way my mom explained it to me is that he can't activate anything magic, but that stuff already in effect isn't changed. So those under the koi rod's spell don't get released, but he can't use it to ensnare anyone else, except me of course. About the only positive thing is if he dies the love spells are all broken, and we should see things shift our way again, a little. But if I die first he may get released from that curse. We aren't sure, and aren't going to risk that. Mom says that she's not certain, but people who follow Happosai because of magic constraints might not be able to use magic stuff either, until he gets cured. So it's doubly important I stay out of sight for a good long while.
"After I woke, I met my mom again and she explained that we could come here in search of a cure and hide out at the same time."
"So you are running from your past as well." Kodachi concluded, then sighed, hugged her former rival. "I spent the summer out of the country, and when I returned found a letter that sent me here."
I O I O I - START LEMON
Kodachi held the whimpering pigtailed girl to her chest, thinking things over and considering what to do. Then she silently came to a decision: Her Ranma-sama needed her, and what she had offered before was now called for.
The svelte gymnast slid out of her pajamas, casting a locking charm on all the curtains so they could not be interrupted, and doing all this in ways measured so as not to disturb her darling where she cried. Then she went about gently undressing her beloved.
Her beloved? Yes, she had never truly felt anything like this for anyone else. To her own surprise, what had started out as a gesture, then a successful measure to avoid Tatewaki had changed and grown without her even being aware of it into something much more. She put her head down, cradling the pigtailed girl's face to her chest, and began murmuring soft words of comfort while she reached out to stroke her back, then sides, working one hand around to her breasts.
Ranko's bosom was so large, even as an eleven year old! Her distress was so deep that she didn't even really notice as her own body gradually grew more excited. Kodachi put her own underdeveloped nipples where Ranko could both see or touch them as she pleased, and keeping one hand making long, steady, reassuring strokes along the pigtailed girl's back to offer comfort one way, carefully delved with the other, now devoted exclusively to those round, generous mounds of the redhead's bosom and making occasional forays into the V that formed between her legs, testing for hints of appeal or resistance and teasing her legs wide open so that her mate lay out across her with her own legs wide apart, offering her female center of being to gaze or touch.
Both girls were clad only in panties by this point, Kodachi because she hadn't wanted to move enough to remove hers, and the equally did not want to add any more shocks to her soon to be lover. However, she was able to apply a gentle touch over that smooth fabric to tease a swift gasp of breath from the girl.
Ranko's eyes came open then, and in them Kodachi found desire. She lowered herself to tease and meet with a tender kiss, which Ranko returned with enthusiasm, overwhelming the former Kuno with her response and surging up to overturn her and be on top herself, arms and knees astride her as her breasts dangled down, gently swaying.
Voice unsteady, low and husky, Kodachi offered throatily, "My darling Ranma-sama, as I had offered before, I am yours. You may do anything you wish to me. Please," she bent back her head and closed her eyes. "Make me your own!"
Ranko proved to be quite adept at pleasuring a female body.
Those things she did with her tongue! And her lips! There was just no way that any of them could be real! She must have sucked both of the gymnast's breasts at once, and licked her pussy all at the same time! While as an eleven year old her breasts were quite a bit smaller than before, and her chest was never massive to start out, cradling all of one of them inside her lips ought to be more than any girl could ask of her lover, and that tongue just managed to be everywhere at once! It penetrated her as deeply as any penis could have done, and the former Kuno just orgasmed explosively time after time, having her fluids lapped up with an energy that brought her over the brink again until finally she lost consciousness from the pleasure overwhelming her mind and overloading all of her senses.
Her throat had become a bit sore from her screams by the time she passed out and the pigtailed girl released her.
I O I O I - END LEMON
Kodachi wasn't sure when she became aware that she and the pigtailed girl were not the only ones in that bed. Her eyes blinked open in startlement to meet Ukyo's gaze, a blanket of purple hair across the covers an indicator that Shampoo was in there with them as well.
"So you got Ranchan talking about Nerima again, did you?" Ukyo grinned softly. "We've had to do this for him, too. Every so often he has to be reminded that people care, and that he really is a boy deep down, and making love to a beautiful woman is about the only thing we've found that fits both needs at once." The brown-haired chef shrugged. "So, welcome to the club. When this boy gets cured he's going to make you very happy."
'He has already done better at that than I could even have imagined' would have been Kodachi's reply, if she could have found the voice to speak it.
The pretty okonomiyaki chef suddenly went serious. "There's only one thing I want to ask you, girl: Don't hurt him. Whatever you do from now on, don't reject him. If you do, it will destroy him, and I'm afraid if you do that we'll have to kill you."
There was no doubting the serious intent of her words. But her face brightened immediately and there was an inward facing fear so as to take the hurt out of it. "The same applies to us, I'm sorry to say. We've all got to be careful of the boy inside of this girl's body. Nobody's immune, so we've all got to share the danger with the joys. You've just joined up, so you had to know the rules, that's all. When Shampoo and I agreed to share him those were the terms, and we quickly learned that it was more than just territorial feelings on our part. It was the way things had to work if our love interest was going to survive this."
"What injured my Ranma-sama's heart so?" Kodachi wondered aloud. Inwardly, a wisp of thought was still busy conjuring thoughts about when she could do this with him again.
Ukyo gave a sad shrug. "Ranchan's been rejected by everyone he's ever known; and that, sad to say, includes us, you, and even his mom. Sometimes the rejection wasn't real, like you've never turned away from boy-Ranma, and his mom never sent him away no matter what that louse Genma said, but he believed them at the time and it hurt his emotions as if it was a real rejection when Genma told him a tale or you attacked the 'pigtailed girl'. That awful family he stayed with didn't much help things either, Sugar. At her worst, Nabiki treated him like a chunk of meat without any right to have feelings, and Kasumi as an obstacle to having a clean home, and those were the nicest two in that household!
"Genma wasn't ever his dad, but he raised Ranchan and made him think he was. So when the lying thief turned against him to support Happosai wholeheartedly that was hard to take as he was losing the only lifelong companion he had to betrayal. Mister Tendo had called him 'son' and likewise turned against him. Ryoga was supposed to be his friend, and you don't want to know all of the dirty things he did to hurt Ranchan. Then Akane was by far the worst. She never stopped hurting him, even though he did his best to protect her. And that was probably the worst betrayal of all - when he had to go from protecting her to protecting himself against her, to protecting other people from her. She killed people he was trying to protect from her, you know. Smashed them dead while he was busy fighting Ryoga or one of his other enemies. She'd get angry and someone would have to die. That's it, no other reason. And it wounded Ranchan deep inside to have to regard her as a serious threat, an enemy to be stopped from killing, when all he'd wanted was to have her as a friend."
Ukyo lay down beside her, propping her head up on her arm before grabbing a pillow. "But I think what put him in this state was all that stuff there at the end, our whole flight from Nerima. Getting caught under a love spell by Happosai is enough of a nightmare all alone, but Ranma Saotome never loses, and we lost, Sugar. We lost just as hard and as bad as you can lose and got lucky we were able to scurry out with our tails between our legs. That broke his whole view of the world, Kodachi, and we've not had very long to help pull him back together yet."
The cute chef yawned widely, covering that with a dainty hand. Her eyes fluttered closed. "Anyway, looks like the slumber party was a big success. They're sleeping four to a bed out there, and we wisely reserved our slots with Ranchan early on, so we were the only girls to break that locking charm you put on the curtain and sneak in, then we reset it. I hope you don't mind a little crowding. Good night, Dachi."
"Good night, Ukyo-san." Kodachi whispered, wide awake from all this information as she listened to her bunk mates breathe deeply in their sleep.
I O I O I
Author's Notes:
This is NOT your standard Ranma Universe, so it didn't produce your standard Ranma. So there you have your explanations behind his OOC behavior, and why and how everyone ended up here in England. Their massively AU history even sprang out of a very simple change - Akane never lost her powerups!
Sudden fits of inexplicably violent anger are Akane's single most defining characteristic, but coupled with super strength makes for a very bad combination.
And her 'all-passion, no-reason' approach to things does not lend itself to any great degree of self mastery. Spoiled children with super powers is ALWAYS a disaster!
If you want to see what someone does with great power, see what they do with a little - and Akane has never showed the slightest shred of self-control. So, when she had much more massive power... well, you get the story outlined above.
Nodoka is working on a cure, so Ranma won't be in girl form forever. But for now it does make for a very complete disguise against their pursuers for him to be ACTING out the girl part to the hilt, rather than resisting it all out and playing the tomboy.
And acting a girl as part of a scheme is something he's done before. The only switch here is the duration, that's all. Well, and the stakes behind it. It's only the future happiness of every person she's ever cared for on the line, that's all.
