Son Turned Daughter, Chapter 53
An unusual disclaimer: Ranma1/2 is the trademark of Rumiko Takahashi and VIZ Communications, and its characters have been borrowed without permission. And Son Turned Daughter was originally written back in 2002 by fanfiction author Tangent. Please see the first two chapters of this series under his pen name. This series has been written for noncommercial use only.
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Events are speeding up again! A whole slew of people, places, things that appear only appear much later in manga and/or anime canon are going to start appearing now! Son Turned Daughter has and will greatly mix and shorten the timeline.
And Ah!/Oh! My Goddess people, places, things are also being added to this mix!
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Chapter 53
"Why are we fighting for sex!" Akane at last screamed. "That's what boys do! I had a hentai horde after me!" Until the Truce Enforcement Club's Lysistrata rule was ended. "All of the girls at school were during its Battle of the Sexes!"
"Akane kind of has a point," Ukyo lowered her Battle Spatula. "As a street vendor I've seen a lot of things, and it's mostly the guys who'd be going at each other like we've been."
Shampoo flipped a solid chui mace and casually caught it again by its wooden handle. "Shampoo fight to fight. Mans must first defeat Womans Hero."
"Yeah, about that," Ukyo said.
"A woman shouldn't just give up when a pervert out-muscles her!" Loud Girl Akane told the idiot!
"That's right!" the redhead agreed. Until Ranma thought, Whose side am I on?
"No fight then," Shampoo said.
"Right!" Ukyo joined in.
"Then Shampoo win. Have Airen all to self!"
"That's not right! I have a better claim on Ran-chan‒KUN than any of you!" Ukyo became loud!
"Do you see how important winning the Test is?" Benten invited an answer.
"I'll win it, then!" the cocky redhead said.
"Shampoo no have win Test. Airen already defeat Shampoo."
"What happened to 'Shampoo fights just to fight'?!" Akane accused.
"No Test and you go back to being my slave!" Ukyo reminded her, thoughts of how to torment the annoying girl with a Kiss of Death wish forming.
"Do you want boys fighting over you, Akane?" Benten asked, fidgeting with the ring on her left pinkie.
"Of course not!"
"Is not battling what makes a true martial artist?" Actually it was about the art of self-discipline, but these impulsive youngsters still lacked that desire.
"Yes, but…." Akane remembered how good it had felt to beat off the best sports artists morning after school morning.
"It will not be boys you will be Tested against, but, rather, these girls," Benten gracefully gestured to them.
'Girls,' the mini-Benten said into her ear. 'Defeat them and I'll be superior to them. I'll be deciding who sleeps with who, won't I(?) And there are four of us girls. While two are busy…'
Akane flushed and blushed!
"Inspiring as always," Cologne frowned at the Muse Goddess of the Arts. Which included hentai, apparently.
Gambling can also be an art form. Benten said, "As I have said, a lottery will decide which of the many special techniques each of you will be separately trained in before your showdown battles."
Crouching and raising in one fluid motion, she brought out a blue-on-white porcelain urn from the bottom shelf of the serving cart. Among a number of blue-paint flowers, vines and leaves was a long snake. What made it disturbing was its head: an old man. Raising out of the urn's narrow neck were six chopsticks. "The one closest to me will come first, the next second, third and Ranma, the furthest, last."
Akane hesitated, but liked the idea of being first so stepped forward. She took her stick. Around it was wrapped a slip of paper.
Unfurling the slip, she read, Bakusai Tenketsu. "Breaking Point?"
Remembering the tools-only tournament of yesterday, Shampoo taunted, "Is perfect for Hammer Girl!" She was pretty sure it would prove to be the weakest of the special techniques.
But it made Ranma groan. Akane was her girl friend and s/he wanted her to be her girlfriend, but s/he knew how violent she was capable of being.
Shampoo's grin went from ear to ear as her slip read, "Tenshin Amagurike!"
"Sweet chestnut Ticket?" Ukyo asked. Then mumbled, "If it's about food, I should've got it." A Lot of her attacks were food-based. She was a chef, after all.
Ranma caught something moving on the urn. The snake? If it did, it wasn't doing it while s/he was daring it to.
"Hiryū Shōten Ha."
"Aiya!" Shampoo cried out. "Heavenly Blast of the Dragon!"
"I got the jackpot!?" Ukyo almost dared to grin.
"Indeed you have, young woman," Cologne said, hopping out of the kitchen on her staff. "And I could not have asked for a better pupil." But her large eyes turned to Ranma, "Well, almost nobody else."
"What? You're my teacher for it?"
"Excuse me," the ancient woman said, dropping down from her staff. And down it went on the other side of the table. Two odd sounds were almost heard, followed by a rise of a dust cloud.
"What was that!?" Akane asked.
"Bugs. Two of them."
"The mother-and-daughter sold you a place with bugs!?" Ukyo had a vision of the Health Department forcing her to close her place and pay for exterminators.
"The Onsens ran a clean cafe!" Akane insisted.
A voice said, "I executed a bug." While Ranma and her friends had been distracted, somebody had come into the cafe. It was Pearl-san and she was holding her bamboo ladle and pail. "Are there any more?"
"For now." Cologne glared hotly at Benten.
"Why should there have been more than three?" she casually said. "I'm 'Lady Luck' and the Candidates to be Honorary Women Heroes have selected the talents that most suit them personally."
"We shall see," Cologne grumbled. "It usually takes more than luck to win a gamble."
"So! My messenger gave me a summons," Pearl-san said.
"I take it she is to teach the most brutal technique?" Cologne asked Benten.
And Benten nodded, gesturing to the student-to-be. "This is her."
"Akane Tendō?!" Pearl-san laughed. Until she remembered, "Kasumi."
Akane was too excited to pick up on that. Instead she bowed low to her sensei, "I dedicate myself to learning Bakusai Tenketsu from you, Master."
"Breaking Point!" her concern began to blossom into a worry! It would pain her fellow Angel-host Kasumi to sense the suffering her little sister would have to endure during the training. She could even break character and interfere!
Cologne thought she understood, "The young woman that I saw with you yesterday will most likely be too preoccupied helping in cleansing the town of bugs to follow you out of it."
"I will divine maps for you and Cologne, so that you may be at the optimum locals, away from interference," Benten said. "Where they will do only a minimal of havoc."
"She's a fortune teller?" Ukyo asked. Ranma shrugged.
"Meanwhile, me and my trainee," and Benten reached out and clasped Shampoo's hand, "will stay here and we will add debugging to her tenshin skillset."
"Shampoo must grab and squish bugs?!"
"You're not afraid of bugs, are you, Sugar?" It was Ukyo's turn to taunt.
"Shampoo no afraid!" But she did shudder once or more.
"But they will follow us!" Cologne was not mollified.
"Of course they will. And you know why. But most of will stay near me," Benten confidently assured them.
"Most bugs near Shampoo, too?" And she freed her hand.
"It will be a challenge," Pearl-san said as she considered the situation. But as the Ruinmaster, traps were her hobby‒perfect for teaching Bakusai Tenketsu‒and it intrigued her to find out effectively they may work against the little aliens.
The goddess addressed the Elder, "This is the price that must be paid for there to be…" (Cologne tensed for a second) "...Honorary Women Heroes." (Cologne's only relief was that Benten hadn't said Daughter Tribe. Still, blackmail was blackmail.)
The Official Representative of the Joketsuzoku in Japan barely bowed, but she bowed.
After a couple of moments of nothing seeming to be happening, Ranma spoke up, "Is it my turn, now!? I'm the only one who ain't gotten a special technique to battle with!
"And I'm supposed to be the Tsui-whatever!"
Pearl-san laughed! "You fell into a trap."
"What do you mean by that!?" Ranma was ready to believe the old woman s/he didn't trust.
"There are two more sticks in that box, I see?" When Ranma nodded, she told her, "When you look at their slips, they will most likely say the same thing."
"What? Akane and them could've picked one of these."
"But they didn't, because they are Chinese chopsticks."
"Shampoo know trick. Choose Japanese chopstick!"
"Managing expectations is part of the magician's art," Benten looked like she could have bowed like a successful one. "And gambling."
"Yeah, just my luck," Ranma growled. "So that means it's rigged! What kind of shitty technique are you sticking me with(!)?"
"Only one way to find out," Pearl-san smiled.
Gritting her teeth together, Ranma opened one of the slips meant for her. After taking a deep breath, s/he read. Blinked. Thought what s/he thought s/he had to be a wrong. And read again.
Shampoo and Ukyo looked over her shoulders.
"Tenshin Amaguriken,"
"Hiryū Shōten Ha,"
"AND Bakusai Tenketsu!?" Akane felt cheated! That was supposed to be HER very own special technique!
"Three sticks, three techniques," Benten smiled.
"She really is a tsuhuayi!?" Pearl-san was no longer amused.
"Pearl-san! You will not translate that or Fàngkāi into Japanese(!)" Cologne warned dead seriously.
"Do you understand?" Benten's threat was delivered much more politely. But hers was the far greater threat.
The little, old woman felt smaller. She nodded.
"Why can't we know!" Ranma cried out the loudest, but her Fangkai also felt the same frustration at the vital secret being kept from them.
"Your training will tell you. And much more convincingly than words" Benten, the Goddess of Words, lightly clapped her hands and put them together and bowed as if front of shrine. It was shallow and brief, but it did indicate great respect for…the Tsuihuayi and her Fankai?(?)
It appeased them. It pleased them. They felt special.
And Ranma felt smug. "I always could master a technique after only a time or two(!)" That must be what made somebody a Tsui-whatever! Three‒Three!‒special techniques! The others only could handle one at a time. Maybe only one.
"Okay! When do we begin!" s/he asked, enthusiastically ready.
"Cologne and…."
"Pearl-san," she told the elegantly beautiful woman.
"Pearl…san," Benten was about to pass quiet judgment on it before she remembered the odd, strange and bizarre appellations many artists who worshiped her used. "...and the Fankai in their charge can leave as soon they collect the equipment they will need for camping."
"Camping!" Akane smiled. Her dad didn't often take his daughters camping. 'Camping is not really suited for girls,' he told them. And Nabiki was determined to prove it, while Kasumi 'spoiled' it by making it as homey an experience as she could. This was her chance to be an honest-to-good camper!
Except she really didn't enjoy roughing it. Still: She was on her way to martial arts journeys‒plural!‒like her dad and the Saotomes!
For Ukyo, "Crap! I finally get away from street vending with my own restaurant, and a rent-free bed I haven't had a chance to sleep in, and I've got to go back to camping(?)!"
"Shampoo is great camper. But Shampoo will no camp like other Fàngkāi."
"Camping's been my life. But I ain't got no teacher, yet!" Ranma wanted one! One not her idiot Old Man!
"I must divine in which order you are to go to them," Benten told her. "We shall do that in the hot spring in the basement."
"You know about the old, closed bathhouse?" Pearl-san, born in Nerima, asked.
"Ask Cologne to invite you there. The decor is rather artistic."
"It's no surprise to me that she knows," Cologne said. Of course, it would be sensed by a water goddess like Benten.
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The white snake kami Ugajin made sure each girl got the technique that best fit with their talents (the original zai in Benzaiten).
Like the other gods, Benten tries to avoid reading minds. That's because it could very well break the plot history that connects the past to the future, changing time. Both past and future still and already exist in Yggdrasil's database.
And any changes to the database causes glitches in the reality-controlling Yggdrasil Computer System are manifest as six-legged dustbunnies with bunny ears that poof out of this existence when hit. Of course, only adepts able to see their aura-adjacent wavelength can see them. One can break a piece of reality. The more bugs there are at any one place, the more reality is threatened. (On top of this canon, this story, for entertainment value, will add new lore.)
Angel originally meant "messenger". Through the Yggdrasil hook-up, Urd's told Pearl-san to go to the old Bathhouse Cafe. Is Belldandy's telling Kasumi anything? (A human host exists in the equivalent of a god's subconsciouses.)
In Ah!/Oh! My Goddess, Skuld is a champion debugger. She, too, is a water goddess.
Benten was originally a river goddess who became the Goddess of Everything that Flowed.