An untitled Ranma ½ fanfic [Ran/Nab, /u/]

I've shown this to some people on IRC before, by /query, but thought it'd be about time to post it in a public forum. The first chapter is about as safe for work as the series itself is, the second chapter just slightly less... and I'll probably not post the third and later here.

Any comments, criticism and/or suggestions are welcome.

Chapter 1 — Prologues, Shirts and Cliffhangers, Oh My!

It was a sunny day in the Bayankala mountain range in the Qinghai Province of China. A few meters from the Sacred Training Grounds of Jusenkyō, a tent was set up by a trio of vacationing Japanese people, looking out at the Cursed Springs.

Genma Saotome was tending to breakfast, the sun shining brightly on his ridiculous Hawaiian shirt. He liked to cook outdoors and considered it one of his specialties. Normally his wife Nodoka would cook, but never while the family was travelling like this.

The guide he had hired for the time walked up to the camp from his small hut, attracted by the smell of good food.

“Oh honored customer, you make good camp food. Brings tears to eyes, yes?” the guide commented. Genma merely smiled and growled appreciatively, focusing on breakfast. When it was done, he turned towards the tent.

“Nodoka dear, Ranma, breakfast is ready”, Genma exclaimed.

Nodoka was the first to appear, taking her seat next to her husband. After a few minutes, Ranma came out of the tent, her red hair glistening in the sun and her well-developed breast almost jumping from the unbuttoned Chinese shirt she had bought just the second day after she arrived in China. Luckily for the guide, she was wearing another shirt underneath, even if it was just a plain black T-shirt.

“What'd you make, Pops? More from your studies under the old pervert?” the grinning girl asked.

“Now Ranma, old master Happosai may have been a bad man, but you have to admit that your father learned a lot of good skills under him”, Nodoka scolded. Genma growled once more in agreement. Sometimes he really looked like a big fat teddy bear or something, and the shirt wasn't helping.

As Ranma brought the guide a bowl of food, she felt she had to ask.

“These springs look good, but is there a purpose to them? I mean, these are the sacred training grounds, right?”

“Oh yes, dear customer. Visitors use to stand on bamboo poles and try fight without falling into spring below”, the guide gratefully replied. Unfortunately, before he could continue his story, the redhead had run back to camp.

“Pops, guess what? These bamboo poles and stuff make great training”, Ranma explained to her father in a rush. It was true — the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts specialized in mid-air combat, which meshed perfectly well with what little the guide had been able to tell Ranma.

“I suppose it couldn't hurt to do some more training, girl”, he verbally agreed. With that, he sauntered back into the tent and returned wearing a slightly dingy gi with his school's insignia on it.

“This is gonna be great, I just know it”, Ranma said to herself as she took her turn to change. Her gi was in better shape and had a similar but subtly different insignia on it — whereas her dad's gi carried the insignia of his Master Happosai as a sign of lingering respect for the old demon, Ranma's gi specifically stated the Saotome School. Within moments, father and daughter were each standing on a bamboo pole suspended in the pools, as Nodoka sat at a close distance somewhere between the camp and the pools, and the guide was trying to verbalize his protests. He hadn't gotten a chance to continue his story and his Japanese was lacking. But then again, his customers were even worse in Chinese. Before he finally worked out what to say, the two martial artists had jumped at each other, exchanged some kicks and blows and landed on the opposite poles.

“Oh sir and lady, you must be careful not to fall in springs”, the guide exclaimed as the fighters wobbled a bit in regaining their footing. “Is very bad result!”

“Why? It's that cold?” Ranma joked as she turned her head towards the guide. Genma saw his opening — he had been training his daughter from the day she was able to form her first coherent sentence, which was a training request. He had found the girl talented and feared the day she'd become stronger than her father. Still, he wasn't so stupid as to use his old master's own training methods on the girl. Instead of having her run away from a crime scene, she'd just run. Once or twice, he had angered some local wildlife to provide extra motivation, but Nodoka didn't quite approve of such tactics. Still the girl was very skilled at the Arts, and he had lost a fair amount of fights recently. This was exactly the chance he was waiting for, and he paid the guide no mind.

As Ranma turned back to face her father, his foot was already too close to her face. She fell down from her bamboo pole. The guide looked shocked and paled with every centimeter the girl came closer to the spring's surface. Unlike her father, Ranma did consider the guide's warning something to heed. Grabbing the pole with her feet, she pulled herself towards it and swung around to try and land on the ground.

She misjudged and launched herself towards a different spring. Lacking the height to correct her course with another pole, all she could do was curl up and endure.

“Oh, is so very bad, dear customers! Poor girl fall into Maonīchuan”, the guide rattled as he and Nodoka ran over to the spring in question.

“Into the what now?” Nodoka asked, worried about the bubbles on the surface. She couldn't quite make out her daughter's shape below the surface, and when her clothes surfaced, she nearly fainted. Genma jumped from pole to pole, over to the disaster area and down to catch his wife before she fell into another spring right behind her.

“Good catch, honored customer. If woman fall in that spring, honored customer would have two daughters”, the guide joked, trying to mask his nervousness as to Ranma's fate.

A very wet cat clambered out of the spring and the guide started to explain.

“Maonīchuan has very tragic story of cat what drown here long, long time ago. Now whoever fall in this spring become cat. Very tragic.”

“You weren't kidding then, when you joked about this other spring?” Genma asked as he picked up his transformed and visibly shaken daughter. The guide merely nodded in reply.

“Not to worry, honored sir. Curse can be reverted with hot water, but cold water turn daughter back to cat”, the guide offered. Genma growled again, though it was uncertain what the growl meant.

Unnoticed, clouds started to gather overhead as the party walked back to camp, Genma still carrying his feline daughter in his arms, mewing helplessly. Ranma didn't like this new form one bit — it was cute, but very weak. When they had arrived, Genma handed Ranma over to Nodoka, and used the campfire and the guide's assistance to heat some water. Nodoka gestured for the two men to turn around as she set the cat down in front of her and carefully poured the hot water.

Ranma was glad to be back to normal and happily accepted the shirt Nodoka held out, the same shirt she had been wearing when she got up. Ranma liked fairly loose fits, so she had bought the shirt a size or so too large. As she buttoned it up, it covered the important bits just fine, so there wasn't quite as much of a hurry for pants. But before she could take and put on the pants, she overheard Genma and the guide discussing her fate.

“Is there a way to fix this permanently? If I wanted a pet, I'd just go and get one. I never wanted one that's part-time and actually my daughter.”

“Honored customer, I understand. There may be way.”

“Well, what is it?”

“If daughter is lucky, Nyannīchuan, or Spring of Drowned Girl, may revert curse. But honestly, I not too certain. Is this spring right here.” The guide kicked a small pebble into the correct spring, just because pointing was too ambiguous.

Forgetting all about pants, Ranma dashed across to the springs. The clouds had been gathering, and halfway to the spring, tell-tale ripples from the pebble identifying it, the first raindrops started to fall. Just as Ranma jumped towards the spring, she started to transform again. Before she had shrunk enough to fall out of her shirt, she was submersed in the magic spring water that she hoped would cure her…

When Ranma resurfaced, she was at her regular size, the first hint being that she was still in her shirt. Unfortunately, a rather bad error in judgment made itself clear when Ranma shook her head to clear off some of the water.

Chapter 2 — Tendō

The tall, dark man with the mustache trembled as he held the postcard in his hands. He nearly tore it up in his excitement. The Saotomes are coming back he chortled to himself and looked at the small photograph on the table. It showed a much younger Genma and Nodoka, the latter holding up her red-haired baby daughter. Collecting his resolve, he stood up and walked away.

Kasumi was tending to the kitchen when her father stuck his head in and called for her to come to the living room he had just vacated. She just hummed an okay and finished what she was doing, took off her apron and made her way to the living room as she was told to do.

Nabiki was reading a magazine in her room when her father repeated his call. Mumbling an okay through her snack, she got up, adjusted her clothes and tried to go down to the living room when her father called her back.

“Do you know where your little sister is, Nabiki?” he asked. Nabiki stood in thought for a bit and looked back at the wall clock in her room.

“At this hour, she's probably still on her morning run. She should be back in time for whatever you have planned, Dad”, the middle sister replied as she slipped past her father.

A few minutes later, all three Tendō sisters were sitting at one side of the table in the obvious order, with their father Soun opposite from them.

“So what's this about, then?” Akane asked, still a little flushed from her morning run. In response, her father slid the old photograph across the table.

“This is my old friend and training partner Genma Saotome, his wife Nodoka, and their child Ranma”, the Tendō patriarch pointed out. “I haven't seen them in person for several years now. The last time I did, Kasumi was still an infant.”

“That must've been quite a while then”, Nabiki teased. Kasumi poked her in the shoulder in reply, whispering to Nodoka that she was only two years older.

“Alright, so what about 'em?” Akane restated. She was still not so certain where her father was going with this.

“They've just finished their training vacation in China, and will be visiting us for a short while”, Soun finally explained. “I can't help but wonder how their child grew up.”

As if on cue, the doorbell chimed. Immediately, the whole Tendō family got up and ran towards the front door; Soun and Nabiki actually running, Kasumi running in a distinguished fashion and Akane not really running at all — she had done plenty of that already.

Walking up to the procession from the entrance was what basically amounted to an ugly guy and his hot daughter, his wife trailing a short distance behind. The girl was wearing a fluffy cap that didn't go all that well with the rest of her outfit, her hands hidden behind her back.

The stout man just growled and smiled.

“Ah, Saotome, you're back”, Soun happily exclaimed as he bumped his fist against Genma's. He then turned to the girl standing next to his old friend.

“I'm Ranma Saotome, sorry 'bout this”, she apologized for nothing Soun was aware of.

“Sorry 'bout what, girl?” the Tendō patriarch asked.

“Sorry about having to impose on your hospitality longer than we intended to”, Nodoka spoke up from behind her husband. “It seems we were declared presumably dead in our absence, and the city council sold our house. We found out when we arrived to drop off our camping supplies.”

“We'd have come earlier if I hadn't gone to those council guys and got ourselves 'legally alive' again”, Genma took over, while making air quotes at the appropriate moment. “But now we're technically homeless, so until that's resolved we hoped to crash here. Surely you'd accommodate your old drinking buddy and his pretty daughter?”

On cue, Ranma put up the cute face that had helped halve the costs of the boat trip back to Japan. It made Soun feel like brushing his teeth.

“Of course, of course, make yourselves at home. The Tendō compound is large enough to fit the seven of us, I'm certain”, the tall man said between laughs as he held one hand behind his head.

“Now, I don't think you've met my pretty daughters yet, have you?” Soun rhetorically inquired as he adjusted the brown gi he habitually wore.

“Only Kasumi, when she was just this big”, Genma jokingly replied, holding out his hands with an approximately toddler-sized distance between them. Kasumi, expectedly, just barely suppressed a giggle, hand at her mouth.

“Well now, come in, come in”, Soun insisted.

When the entire party was gathered in the living room, backpacks collected in a corner, Soun began introductions.

“This is my old friend”, Soun said as he indicated the burly man sitting across the table.

“Genma Saotome. Pleasure to be here.”

The Tendō sisters each remembered the old photograph. Genma had lost his hair since then, they realized, and his gi was adequately aged, but other than that he didn't look very different.

“This is my wife”, Genma passed along, indicating the elegant lady seated next to him.

“Nodoka Saotome”, she introduced herself with a bow towards Soun Tendō, revealing the Saotome Honor Blade strapped to her back. It was a very effective tool to keep her husband in line, who was still struggling, sometimes, with his past.

“And I already introduced myself earlier, so yeah.”

“Before we continue, there is something you should be aware of that happened back in China”, Genma announced. At his friend's expression, he wondered out loud how to best describe the problem, then walked over to Ranma, grabbed her by the shirt and deftly threw the surprised girl into the Tendō garden's koi pond.

“What'd you do that for, ya jerk?” the indignant redhead exclaimed, her cursed features readily obvious as she clambered back into the room.

“Wait, what? Cat ears?” Akane said when she saw the relevant organs stick out from Ranma's hair. They were the same red color as her hair but still visually stuck out, her regular human ears gone. She also noticed with just a little fear that the girl's nails had grown sharp.

Nabiki was more intrigued by the tail that stuck out from the cursed girl's perky bottom. It was all wet and funky-looking at the time, but Nabiki imagined it'd be a very pretty, smooth tail, considering the girl's hair and ears.

Kasumi had always liked cats, among other domestic animals, and didn't seem to mind the idea that much. She did, however, mind that Ranma dried herself up in an animal way and got pond water everywhere.

“So yeah, we had a little accident during her training when we had stopped at this old, sacred training grounds”, Genma started to explain. Initially, Nabiki tried to listen, but found her attention drawn to the buxom, red-haired catgirl, intricately cleaning herself in the obvious way. A single glance and a quick smirk confirmed that Ranma knew she was being watched.

When Ranma tried to get a reaction out of Nabiki by cleaning her foot, she got rapped on the head by Nodoka.

“What did I tell you about licking your feet, young lady? If you want to clean those, do it the regular way. You don't know where they've been!”

____________________
Wife make lunch - Shampoo
Opera - give it a spin
Spare some of your free time?
<GreyMaria> I walked around the Lake so many goddamn times that my sex drive was brutally murdered
Kawa rocks

— byuu