Son Turned Daughter, Chapter 55
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 55
"Between you and Nabiki, I've pretty much run out of ingredients," the okonomiyaki chef said. "Ill have to call Ikuko and get her to call the suppliers. Maybe she can keep the business open while I'm out training." Then she got a thought and a smile, "...training to be your girlfriend, Ran-kun."
Ranma gulped the last slice of okono. "Uh, um, ‒I'll help clean up!" It was the least he could do after the free food she had given him.
He found out his mistake when he was in the confines behind the griddle-counter. Ukyo kept her eyes on him, smiling at him, leaning towards him, trying to touch him, even as she was still on the phone. It made him feel…a strange mix of emotions that left him confused. He really hoped the Doc's balancing his libido kept him from being a pervert.
Cologne noticed the flirtation and reactions, too. She didn't like it! Ranma was to be great-granddaughter's airen! That would cement the gender-changer as the Champion, The Woman Hero of a tribe of Women Heroes! Besides a few strategic uses to be gained from his male perspective, the only real use for him as a male would be to father more members of the tribe. Of course, when it came time for her to mother…
"Where are we goin' on this trainin' trip?" There: Something else to think about!
Cologne didn't know. She had been too busy filling the extra-large camping pack with both her gear and the ones she had selected for Ranma. And there was also having to deal with the second thoughts of Shampoo. (Let Benten explain what 'computer bugs' were; she barely understood it herself. Computers? She only had a vague idea of what they were or any newfangled things were. It was hard for her to believe those creatures came from them.) She pulled the map from a sleeve.
She didn't like the name of their destination.
"Well!?" Ukyo was off the phone and expecting an answer.
"It's a training ground near a kunoichi village. Kunoichi, that means female ninjas, doesn't it?"
"The Hiryū Shōten Ha is going to help me be a kunoichi(!)?(!)" Ukyo wondered.
"Aw, man! I don't wanna become a girl again! Why would Benten let me be a man again only to send me to a bunch of girl ninjas!?(!)"
"Yes. Why." the Elder of the Nǚjiézú seethed beneath her surface calm. She hated it when gods worked in mysterious ways. Did the Goddess of Femininity intend to balance the femaleness of the other Candidates by increasing the maleness of Ranma? Was that way the training ground was called, Secret Men's Playground?!
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Ranma was still wearing the dress when she skipped down the stairs wearing her own camping pack. It would have spoiled the effect of the tent dress if she hadn't put on a black belt. And somehow, the bodice was conforming to her impressive bust. (Thanks to a tailoring spell of a certain goddess of fashion.)
And by its outline, Akane could see she was still wearing the bra. "If you have only one bra, you're going to have to wash it everyday. And its a good idea to wash them right after you've worn any. And that especially includes your panties!"
"Ugh, laundry. Maybe I will go nude." Still, her hand went affectionately up to her lady bumps and sighed. "Bras make me feel feminine."
"Womanly." Akane flashbacked to the momentous time she got her first bras. They had made her so proud! And having cute lingerie was still important to her. But being a woman brought enough hassles that none now really thrilled her again. At 16, Ranma had just began her journey of discovery. Maybe she shouldn't spoil it for her any sooner than it was going to be. "If you're going to wear lingerie, we should buy some on our way."
"Do you have the money?"
"Uh, a lingerie can be expensive. It adds up."
"They are? These little things. Then why do women‒"
"Ranma: Boy! Do not wear female underwear!" Genma cried, finally breaking out of his guilty silence.
"And Akane! You as well! Do not wear any intimate apparel!" Soun now pleaded, too!
"You, you want me to be Nude!?" the shocked girl cried. Then, "Too!" She had a vision of her and Ranma-chan together in the 'deep woods', naked. It threatened to make her wet.
"Hey! Stop trying to pull my panties off, Pop!"
"Indeed: Crease!" And Pearl-san slapped the man's wrists; the redhead kicked him down the rest of the stairs; and the old woman splashed him from her pail.
[My son shouldn't be wearing panties!] the panda swung the sign the the redhead until she kicked it away even as she was pulling up her panties.
"I am not your son. You made me a daughter." There was no resentment in her voice as before. "And I am going to look and act like one."
"Akane, you are not bringing any silky darlings with you?"
"D~ad! Silky darlings?!" Just hearing her unmentionables (in mixed company) made her feel exposed in them.
[Remember, Ranma: Camp Natural]
"A fine sentiment! Getting back to nature!" Soun agreed. Before he realized, "What am I saying(?)" A daughter of his au naturel…!?
"There will be none of that!" Pearl-san told them. "Do I look like somebody who tolerates extra-marital affairs?" Only if Destiny encourages it, and she hadn't felt that for these two youngsters yet. "I told you I'm pure enough to still be a shrine maiden: At my age!"
"And you are always seen wearing a traditional kimono," Soun noted approvingly. Then, "...while camping?"
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With everything in order, Ukyo, hefting her pack, locked up her brand new restaurant. Ranma was more weighed down by the pack he was carrying as he was also carrying Cologne's camping gear. All she had besides her green-with-red robe, white headband and slippers (neither thought of the old woman's lingerie) was her staff and the map she was studying.
"We can take a branch line train, transfer to a spur line and then to a bus. Ah, Japanese public transportation, their Big Investment."
"So we won't have to do much hiking," Ukyo smiled.
"I'm afraid we will have to hike quite a ways to arrive at Isolated."
"Isolated?"
"That's the name of the kunoichi village."
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Though she hadn't felt a call, Pearl-san did feel a warning. "Akane, Ranma: Leave‒Now!" And she pushed them towards the door.
[Soun! We must confess! Warn our heirs of‒]
The old woman pivoted around and broke the wooden sign with her bamboo ladle. "You must not interfere with the Dao! Even I must not know what wicked deed you have done!"
"Dad did a wicked deed?" Akane asked.
"He hangs around Pop. Of course they've done wicked deeds."
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While Pearl-san was in her house making her own preparations, Akane and Ranma went to the clinic.
"Dr. Tōfū, can we have some hydrogen peroxide?" the redhead asked. "It's for laundry. And wounds. We're going camping."
"I have enough to spare," he said with his usual warm smile.
"And can Ranma have a change of underwear?" Akane asked.
"Bras and panties, please!"
"I have them for my patients' emergencies. They're substantial, but very basic, I'm afraid."
"Basic, huh?" Ranma understood but was still disappointed. "I'll save my lacey, shin set for when I'm not doing basic.
"Knowing when to wear what has to be feminine(!)" Giggle. "Fashion!" (Akane rolled her eyes.)
"Uh, I don't remember my sizes, Doctor; I've been wearing tap panties and chemises. But we found out I can wear Nabiki's panties and Kasumi's bras."
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Ranma told herself to be grateful for the doctor's generosity. And they were lingerie. White, cotton lingerie, but they were the type she saw the other girls in the school locker room wear. Though, again, none were this plain.
"You appear to be have adjusted to your curse, Ranma," Dr. Tōfū asked. "Did your night in the love hotel satisfy your concerns about‒"
"This isn't the time for therapy, Dr. Tōfū!(!)" an embarrassed Akane interrupted. "We are going on a training trip!"
"Oh? As you know, I'm a martial artist myself and have also studied extensively on the subject. Is there a special technique that you'll be striving for?"
"Yes!" Akane smiled, eager to tell him about‒
"Konnichiwa!" Pearl-san greeted and was greeted. She wasn't in her typical komon kimono but a miko uniform: a white kosode with a scarlet hakama. She did have hiking boots, and two hiking poles. Her ladle and pail were firmly attached to a utility belt.
"You understand about Daoism, of course, my knowledgeable doctor," Pearl-san said. "And its ideal of Pu?"
"Pooh?" What could Winnie the Pooh have to do with…. Akane felt stupid for thinking the thought.
"Yes, there are a number of techniques where it is important for the student not to know what they are…" signing up for. The doctor had been analyzing Akane. If he gave her a hint of what she could expect, it would surely deflate the enthusiasm and confidence that she would require. "...until they are tested by them."
"Yes! Tested! This is a test!" Akane's enthusiasm soared. "I'm going to meet the test, and become a woman hero!"
"Woman hero?" Or Woman Hero? Shampoo's tribe? "Pearl-san, I would like a word with you."
"I am sorry, Dr. Ono, but even after the long train ride, it will be walking hours before nightfall.
"Come, students!"
"May I ask where you are headed?"
"The Northern Japanese Alps!" Akane told him as she waved goodbye.
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Women traditionally walk behind the man, and that was what Cologne did with Ranma. She was keeping her eye on the newly sexually awakened young man. And staying in back of him was her choice when they were seated, Ukyo next to her. Like now on the otherwise empty bus.
"Remember, Ukyo-san: I am your master. I can always make your training more difficult than it needs be."
"Right: Chaperone." Ukyo fought to not rub her thighs together.
"Ha(!) I can handle difficult!" Ranma told them. Except when he thought too long on girls.
"He really can be stupid at times, can't he?"
"And love can be stupid. (Why do I want to be a Candidate, again?)" Because her persistent crush on a 6-year old boy had set her on a course to be threatened by a Kiss of Death by somebody else with crush on him. Slave or not, the amazon would make things difficult.
And then there was Akane Tendō. Sigh! Why couldn't love be simple.
The bus driver announced, "End of the line."
"(I certainly hope not)" Ukyo muttered.
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After the bus, it was more than a three-hour hike with full packs along an uneven, winding path, before they came upon their first sign of civilization. "There's the sign!" Ranma announced.
"Wow. It really does say, Isolated Village of Kunoichi," Ukyo said.
"...Straight Ahead!" Ranma completed the reading, pointing unnecessarily.
Cologne bopped him on the head with her staff. "Neither of you are ready to challenge women apparently raised from childhood to be assassins!"
"Ninjas aren't always assassins!" Ranma told the foreigner. He rather liked Sasuke. (Much more than Gosunkugi.)
"They, the female ones, should have been: Then Confucianism wouldn't have ruined the status and lives of women! The kunoichi and miko are, as understand it, two of the few remaining ways that women could hope to be men's equal."
"I have to almost agree with her, there, Ranma. Things aren't as nearly as bad now, but I still get much more interference while being a girl than when I'm pretending to be a boy. Don't tell me, you haven't noticed how differently you are treated when a girl!?"
"Uh, yes?" The truth was s/he did. But his idiot Old Man had raised him on the road and away from people most of the time, and it had left him with weak social skills. S/he had honestly, mostly, thought that the differences in her treatment was because her lack of girls' social skills. S/he did like those that the girls showed her better than what the boys had given him for ten years. She and then he want to be accepted by them. (Though, worryingly, having a male libido now…)
"Now, we turn and walk away as if that sign has intimidated us," Cologne said.
"But‒"
"No Buts!" the little old woman said, hopping on top of his heavy pack, again. Riding him, she re-used his pigtail as a rein "We will go back the way we came and find a site to train where their spies will think, for a while, we're ordinary excursion campers!"
"Oh, yeah," Ukyo cracked sarcastically, "Don't we look ordinary."
"But we will get to battle them!?" Ranma asked.
"You will. Let us hope they are not cold-blooded killers."
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Shampoo the eavesdropper was lying in a bed, passed out.
Benten was in the basement hot spring of the Neko Hanten. She was nude and in all her divine glory. The rite she was performing was complicated and long. Dozens of dog-sizes bunny bugs were floating and scurrying about, causing havoc: a geyser in the the huge bathing pool; its scalding rain falling as snow; snowflakes hitting as hail and ricocheting; floor tiles hovering; the light bulbs going from green, to red, to ultraviolet…
Finally, one destroyed distance. The other side was probably near Cologne and her charges. The Goddess of Flow swiftly had the energy currents send a few of the bugs through the portal.
Then hurried to force it close it up before others could follow.
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The Tao of Pooh is famously a 1982 book written by Benjamin Hoff. The Te of Piglet is the 1992 companion book.
Though Benten is a 'glitch', a fault, that the Yggdrasil System normally can program around, she can game it at times.