This story is a collaboration between myself and Greenicedragon1789, written as part of his Ranma challenge. Though this story will be somewhat different than his guidelines.
Summary: The events of the manga turn out to be nothing more than a dream Akane had, until Ranma shows up for real. Knowing what might happen, Akane strives to do things better this time. However, things won't go exactly as planned, because the events of this story will not follow the manga. They will be closer to the anime, but still will have several notable differences. For example, the curses will all be different than canon, and character backgrounds will be altered a bit too. Some OOCness is to be expected here.
Also, this story will be a rarity here, a Ranma harem. Akane will be the main girl here, but here Shampoo and Ukyo will get him too. Not right away, but it will happen and it will be handled as I see most appropriately. No other girls will be added.
All I ask is you at least give it a chance.
Chapter One
Before they could reach the front door, it opened and in strolled a panda, walking on hind legs and carried a small red-haired teenage girl struggling against the ursine animal to no effect.
At least, that's what Akane was prepared for.
The front door opened, and indeed there was a red-haired girl being held by an animal. But this animal wasn't a panda. It was a mule.
'A mule? This wasn't part of the dream. Mr. Saotome was a panda, not this horse-donkey hybrid.'
"What the-?" Soun asked as the unusual sight.
The redhead was squirming, trying to escape being pinned under the mule's hooves. "Let me go already."
Reacting as best she could, Akane moved the mule's legs off the girl's back and helped her up. "Excuse me, are you Ranma Saotome?" 'I already know, but I can't just say that now can I?'
The redhead adverted her eyes and looked quite uncomfortable. "Yeah, I'm Ranma."
Soun was glad to hear this and engulfed his visitor in a hug. "I'm so glad you came."
'Three... two... one...' Akane counted off until...
Soun's eye's widened and he took notice that his guest apparently had something he hadn't seen before. He took a step back to look at the redhead, somewhat in denial. Akane was tempted to reenact what Nabiki had done at this point but chose to keep her hands to herself.
"Looks like Ranma's a girl Dad."
"A... girl?" Soun flustered, then fainted. Akane struggled not to laugh at this, and to avoid doing so got her sisters to help drag him back inside the house. Not knowing what else to do, Ranma and her mule followed them inside.
Soun wasn't out long. When he came to he was laying on a futon in a sitting room surrounded by his daughters and Ranma.
"Poor Father, he must be so disappointed." Kasumi said.
"He's disappointed? He's not the only one." Nabiki commented before giving the redhead a flat look. "Some fiancee."
Seeing Ranma's discomfort, Akane came to her defense. "Knock it off Nabiki. It's not Ranma's fault she's a girl." 'It's true, it's his stupid father's fault he got this curse.'
Nabiki ignored this and looked at Soun as Kasumi told everyone he was waking up. "This is all your fault Dad. Couldn't you have checked if Ranma was a boy or a girl?"
"I assumed my friend's son was a boy." The Tendo patriarch answered.
Nabiki grabbed Ranma's breast. "Does this look like a boy to you?"
"Would you stop that?" Ranma asked.
"Nabiki, stop that." Akane said, batting away her sisters hand before turning to Ranma. "I'm sorry about that. My name's Akane by the way. You want to be friends?" Ranma quickly relaxed and gave a small nod. Akane's heart felt warm. "You practice martial arts right? Want to have a quick spar in the dojo?"
In no time the two were in the dojo facing each other. Ranma looked as if she was waiting for something while Akane, dressed in her yellow gi with a red obi, was just happy to see her fiancee again. "Ready?" She asked, and Ranma nodded.
Well aware of what would happen, Akane did not get irritated at Ranma for dodging all her punches or not punching back. "You know, this might be more fun if you tried fighting back." She told the redhead who kept reading her moves and dodging accordingly.
Ranma then jumped and flipped over the youngest Tendo to tage her from behind, but Akane was already prepared for this and managed to tag Ranma at the same time. Thus both girls had the others finger poking them on the forehead. Ranma was surprised Akane reacted this way, but relaxed when Akane started laughing, breaking the brief tension.
"You're pretty good." Akane said wiping a small amount of sweat off her forehead. 'Of course I already knew that.' "At least you're a girl. I can't imagine what everyone at school would say if I lost to a boy."
"Huh?" Ranma asked, not getting the reference.
"Oh, just some idiot making trouble for me. Let's just say if you were a boy he'd probably be trying to kill you. But since you're a girl, he may try to date you instead." She tried not to laugh at Ranma's horrified look. "Don't worry, I'll defend you if he tries anything." She then left the dojo, allowing Ranma to relax and let this sink in.
As she walked down the hall, she managed to see the mule open the door to the furo room and close it behind it. 'So that is Genma. Why on earth is his curse different but Ranma's isn't? Is it possible my dream predicted a few things wrong? Oh well, I can accept that as long as I marry Ranma for real.'
Later that hour Nabiki passed by the main room where her father was sitting opposite a man she had never seen before. What caught her attention the most was both were silently crying over something.
At the same time, Kasumi was showing Ranma, who was hefting a travel pack on her back, to the guestroom. It was a simple room but it would do for their guest. "Ranma, please use this room." The redhead nodded and she deposited the back on the floor. "Why don't you go and take a bath now?" Kasumi offered while holding out a folded towel.
"Uh... no thanks." Ranma denied, holding up her hand for emphasis.
"You must." Kasumi insisted, placing the towel in the redhead's hands. "You must be sweaty after all that exercise, right?"
"Y-yes." Ranma admitted, hoping to avoid any trouble.
"Good. I'll show you where it is." Kasumi said. She lead Ranma to the furo room back on the ground floor then went into the kitchen to start on dinner.
"Hey sis, who's that strange man in our living room?" Nabiki asked, now dressed again in normal clothes.
Kasumi waited until she closed the refrigerator door to answer. "I don't know. Oh Nabiki, would you tell Akane to take her bath while there's still time?"
Nabiki agreed and went to find her sister.
Akane once informed, wasn't sure just what to do about it. But a part of her strangely wanted to see Ranma naked. 'I know it's perverted of me, but... maybe there are times being perverted is okay. Besides, Ranma will be mine anyway and he won't do anything inappropriate to me. Weird, I feel like that dream helped me mature quite a bit in one night.'
While she wasn't exactly a nympho now or even in a hurry to sleep with Ranma, Akane found she no longer felt like every boy was just a rapist waiting to strike. Ranma certainly wasn't. If he wanted to rape her or Shampoo or Ukyo or even someone else, it wasn't like he didn't have the strength or speed to do it. In fact, now Akane suspected Ranma in her dream could have easily avoided her hits at least most of the time, and only let her hit him to get some of her anger out of her system before she did worse.
'I don't want to hit him anymore. I want to hold him, be held by him, kiss him, and earn his love. I swear, on my mother's grave, that I will not be a hit-first-ask-questions-later kind of girl like in my dream. Fate must have given me that dream for a reason. I have a chance to avoid all my own mistakes and help Ranma with the other problems. I will not throw that away.'
Knowing she couldn't get out of her bath without an answer for her sister, Akane went into the furo room, a sliding door separating her from the tub itself. 'Ranma's right on the other side, either male now or about to become one. What should I do?' She asked herself, eyeing his clothes in the hamper. 'Ooh, I know.' She thought with a grin as she got an idea.
First she untied the ribbon in her hair, then slipped the top of her gi off, blushing in anticipation. Then her bottom half came off and her underwear followed. Grabbing a pink towel and throwing it over her shoulders, she looked at herself in the mirror. 'If he's going to give me a show, I'll give him one too. Let's see how little sex appeal I have after this.' She then slid open the door.
Apparently Akane did this a bit sooner than in her dream, for Ranma at that moment was still female and starting to enter the furo. The redhead saw this and tried to avoid the change, but one foot was already in the hot water and the change started. Akane's eyes widened as she saw for the first true time the transformation of her love interest. And unlike her dream, this time he was dry and his extra appendage was much more clear to her eyes.
Both froze for a bit, but only Ranma was frozen out of shock. Akane just hid her smile and blush by whistling impressed then faking passing out on the tiled floor.
"Akane? Akane?" Ranma shouted, thinking she was really passed out.
Unable to keep herself from smiling, Akane groaned to avoid actually doing it and faking recovering from a headache. "Whoa, I just had the craziest dream." Technically it wasn't a lie. She then opened her eyes. "Wait, you... Ranma?"
He stepped back. "Uh... yeah. Sorry about this."
"Sorry about what?" She asked, leaning up and letting her bare body still be seen. She was a bit embarrassed, but she was also feeling much bolder than usual.
"I... uh... I can explain everything."
"I'm listening." She told him.
He suddenly felt body-conscious. "Could you stop staring at me like that?" He covered his manhood, which Akane could have sworn was bigger than her dream led her to believe.
Acting accordingly, Akane now avoided staring at him and handed him a towel before covering himself up. "I'm sorry I just walked in unannounced like that, but in my defense I did think you were a girl. How did you change like that?" She already knew, but couldn't tell him that.
"It's a long story."
"Why don't we get my family so you won't have to tell it more than once?" She offered. He nodded. "You go ahead and finish your bath. I'll wait and then we can get dressed and you can tell us everything."
"I'm not a freak." He quietly said, as if afraid she was going to say otherwise any second.
She surprised him by taking his hand in her own. "Did I say you were Ranma? I admit this is weird, but I'm certain there's an explanation for it."
He looked surprised by her acceptance, but nodded. "Thank you."
She smiled. 'Oh yeah, things will go much nicer this time around.'
In time, after sunset but before dinner, the Tendo's were gathered in the living room again, but this time Ranma and Genma were there too in their natural forms. Kasumi and Nabiki were quite surprised to see them and both girls noticed the obvious similarities between girl-Ranma and boy-Ranma.
"Girls, this is my dear friend." Soun said from close by Genma.
"I'm Genma Saotome, and this is my son."
"Ranma." The pigtailed young man stated, worried about their reactions. He kept his focus mostly on Akane, since she gave him a subtle reassuring look.
"So what is this then?" Nabiki asked.
"Are you really her? The same girl from before?" Kasumi added.
Ranma was hesitant to answer, and Genma personally wanted to get this over with. "I'm not sure how best to explain this, so..." He then stood up. "How about this for starters?" He then lifted his son by the collar and threw him in the koi pond before Ranma could react or escape.
Two second later a female Ranma surfaced, shook water off her, and yelled. "What did ya do that for?"
"Oh my." Kasumi said. "Now he's a girl."
Genma walked up to the pond side. "The shame. To see my son like this."
Angered by this, Ranma got out while Genma was busy pitying himself and kicked his father into the pond. When he got out, much to the Tendo girl's surprise, he was a mule. "Who are you to talk? You're literally a horse's ass."
Akane smirked. 'Good one, I've got to remember that.'
"Father, you certainly have some unusual friends." Kasumi told Soun as the odd father and son started trying to hit each other.
"They weren't always like this." He told his children. "It must have something to do with their trip to China. But before we pressure them to explain, let's give them a moment to work out their frustration and get back to normal."
Within ten minutes, that happened and Ranma and Genma, in normal forms, were seated again in the living room trying to explain their situation.
"It started one month ago." Genma started. "In order to continue our warrior's conditioning, my son and I crossed into China to find a new place to train. It was in China's Quanjing region in the Bayankala Range, Qinghai Province, that we finally came to the legendary training grounds of Jusenkyo. The guide there tried telling us about the history of the training grounds and the legend attached to it, but..." He trailed off.
"Let me guess, you didn't listen." Akane finished for him.
He nodded. "Jusenkyo looks like a place with a hundred cold water springs clustered close together, with numerous bamboo poles sticking out. It looked like training we had already accomplished, but since the place was renown and we had already arrived we decided to give it a try anyway. Only then did we discover exactly why it was called accursed. Apparently long ago, something drowned in each one of Jusenkyo's cursed springs, and from then on anyone who falls in or gets splashed with water from those springs becomes cursed to transform into whatever drowned there."
Ranma looked angry at the memory, and Akane couldn't blame him. The rest of the Tendo's let this sink in.
Soun spoke first. "Jusenkyo, I've heard of this dreaded place before, but I never suspected the legend of it had any value. Until now that is."
Ranma turned to his father. "You just had to take us there, didn't you Pop?"
Genma stood up. "Ranma, you sound just like a girl!" He then grabbed his son, but before he could throw Ranma Akane got up and grabbed his arm.
"Enough! Mr. Saotome, Ranma has very right to be mad at you. I would be too if I were him!"
"Even so, he should have been willing to lay down his life for the art." Genma countered.
"My life, yes. My manhood is another story!" Ranma told him before throwing him into the koi pond. Akane stepped back and let him do this.
Unseen by the others, Nabiki and Kasumi leaned close together. "Is Akane acting weird here or is it just me?" Nabiki whispered. Kasumi just nodded.
"This is certainly tragic." Soun commented as Genma the mule tried to kick Ranma into the water too, but Ranma dodged too well. "However..." He produced a kettle of hot water and poured it over Genma, who brayed and bucked in pain. "When doused with hot water, you return to normal."
Genma as a human panted. "It needn't be quite that hot."
Soun ignored this and turned to the still male Ranma. "And in your case, cold water turns you into a girl, but hot water turns you back into a boy again. Right?"
"Umm... sorta." Ranma replied.
"Sorta?" Akane repeated, confused.
He looked away, unable to make eye contact with anyone. "My curse is a bit more complicated than that."
"What do you mean?" Akane asked. 'His curse at least looks the same as it did in my dream. Is there more to it than that though?'
Ranma nodded but still avoided eye contact. "After I got my curse, I panicked and tried to get rid of it right away. I figured if I jumped in the drowned man spring I would be cured. Unfortunately I jumped into the wrong one, and got a second curse."
"Then the guide told us you can't cure the curse that way." Genma added.
"What's your second curse?" Soun asked.
Ranma sighed. "Here, let me show ya." He then somehow became a girl, WITHOUT GETTING WET, but after a brief moment the girl body changed. The lower part got larger and the pants seemed to just melt away. As soon as the transformation normally was, Ranma had gone from all girl to part girl part horse.
"Whoa, a centaur?" Nabiki asked in disbelief.
Ranma nodded. "I jumped into the drowned horse spring and got a second curse. Since girl is my main curse, that's what I turn into first, but I can become part horse too. Just not all horse. At least it only happens when I want it to."
"Wait, how did you change without water?" Akane asked. That caught her attention more than the centaur part.
"It's hard to explain, but for me I can change whenever I want to without water." Ranma answered, returning to male form.
"Then why were you a girl when you showed up?" Nabiki asked.
"It had been raining and I was still wet. Water still changes me even though I can change without it." He told her. "After that, what was I supposed to do? Change right in front of you all?"
No one argued that point.
Akane thought this all over. 'So Ranma's curse is different too. I suppose I can get used to this. I just hope he's still the same Ranma I fell for.'
Soun thought it over too and chuckled a bit. Ranma was confused, but the Tendo patriarch just put his hand on Ranma's shoulder. "Well now, your problem isn't so terrible after all. Now, my eldest daughter Kasumi, she's nineteen. My middle daughter Nabiki, age seventeen. And my youngest daughter Akane, age sixteen. Pick whichever you want, and she'll be your fiancee."
Already knowing what would come, and fearing any possible change to that, Akane spoke first. "If Ranma doesn't mind, I'll fill that role."
Ranma was surprised, but not as surprised as Kasumi and Nabiki were. "What? You're volunteering?"
She nodded. "Yes. I feel like I can trust Ranma to not be like the boys at school. Besides, were either of you going to volunteer?"
Neither one of them wanted to, and had already prepared to sidestep the responsibility onto her, but they never expected Akane to actually beat them to it. "You sure about this?" Kasumi asked.
Akane turned to Ranma. "Ranma, you won't mistreat me or do anything to me I wouldn't want done right?"
Ranma shook his head. "No way. That's just wrong."
Akane smiled. 'Why didn't I have faith in him before?' "In that case, I'll keep being your friend and try to be a good fiancee to you, as long as you try to be the same to me."
Ranma did not know what to say. On his way here he was so certain that the girl he was about to meet wouldn't want to be engaged anymore than he did. "I'm not ready to be married yet."
"I didn't say we'd get married tomorrow Ranma. But I'm sure our fathers will give us the chance to get to know each other and develop something on our own." 'Maybe if we actually want to be a couple they'll ease up on the schemes to push us together.'
"I'm... afraid it's a bit more complicated then that." He told her.
"Why?" Akane asked.
As if on cue, two people appeared in the backyard. "Ah, finally found you. Thought you could get away from us did you Genma?"
Akane could not have been more surprised to see them. 'No, it can't be.'