User:Starfallen/Saya no Ranma


 * Caveat: This fanfic takes place after Manga issue 38, at the very end of the Ranma 1/2 series, and should therefore be considered a continuation. If you'd like to know what went on before, please purchase the manga and read it.

From the outside, I was tranquil as a summer pond. My breathing was slow, even, and deep. My lotus position was perfect, of course, as was my hand positioning. I was pushing against the boundaries of my body with my Ki, as I was instructed.

"It's not bad, Son-in-law, but mastering just the outward signs of the technique is not going to do you any good," Cologne stated.

Inside, I was seething. I've tried for weeks to even start this out-of-body projection stuff, in the hopes that I could read the number written on a small scrap of paper that Cologne kept in a well-guarded locket.

The locket was buried deep within her massive, yet deflated, 300-year-old Chinese cleavage. I wouldn't try to sneak my hand in that horrific valley for all the tea in Ch...well, for anything.

"If you want to actually project before you're old enough to marry me," I heard her say, while suppressing a shudder, "you'd better speed up your progress. Ryoga could find himself in the spirit realms before you at this rate."

I bet he's managed to find his porcine little ass while lost, actually.

Not too long ago, Akane and I found ourselves looking each-other in the eye from across a Shinto altar, about to be wed. The fact that my father dressed me in a suit while I was unconscious non-withstanding, I was ready to actually go through with the ceremony. As usual, the tender moment was broken by a motley collection of armed lunatics. With the chance at a peaceful wedding broken, I gave in and joined the fun, especially as there was a chance that I could use that Jusenkyo water to get rid of my curse, once and for all.

Not long after the wedding, Cologne presented me with a bill for the year's worth of take-out from her restaurant. Apparently, my old man started a tab in my name and the Nekohanten has been happily letting the bill rack up all this time.

Funny, I thought someone was actually paying the take-out bills for the last year.

To make a long story short, Cologne gave me three options: I could marry Akane, but then she would make me pay her for the noodles for the entire last year, to the point where we would have to sell the Tendo home and dojo simply to survive. I could marry Shampoo, and she would forgive the debt entirely. The last choice, I could try learning a new technique or two and read the number off of an old laundry ticket she had around.

Last choice it is, right?

"You're stalling. We'll pick this up again tomorrow, when you have more focus," she stated, then kicked me out and locked up for the evening.

"So, Saotome, learn to free your mind and get in touch with your inner girl, yet?" Mousse teased.

He was armed with two of the most dangerous weapons in Nerima: Deadpan snark and an umbrella.

The reason for the umbrella, of course, is to keep the dreary drizzle off of him and his robes while I soaked to the bone, triggering the change to female that has accompanied me for the last year and a half. I'm sure you're already familiar with Jusenkyo and its effects, so I pass on rehashing the same old story and gripes now.

"Yes, Mousse, and she told me you were given the wrong form at Jusenkyo, since you're clearly blind as a bat," my new soprano voice teased in return.

He chuckled, "You said, once, that you didn't want to marry my beloved Shampoo,"

"No, actually I've said that several hundred times," I interrupted.

"Alright, well, here's your chance to prove it. Read Cologne's ticket, then marry your Akane, so Shampoo can be free to be mine."

"I don't think she's interested in you," I replied, "and if it were that easy to read the ticket, I'd have done it by now."

"Cologne has something in her bag of tricks that might help you. If you promise me that with my help you'll stop hounding Shampoo and marry your Akane instead, I'll get it for you."

"Deal, duck-boy."

Several hours, a kidnapping, six fights, a troupe of pastel-colored ninjas, two water buffalo, training in 'Martial Arts Hair Styling' and a 'Hello Kitty' toothbrush later, Mousse and I found ourselves outside Funrinkan High School. I was covered from head to tail in bison fur while Mousse is completely free of split ends. Also, he was holding a tiny, unassuming leather-covered box.

"This, Saotome, is the Prism of Projection. Some eighty years ago, a man with an English accent brought it to our village for safekeeping, stating that he'd recovered it from a terrible group of men in America. The elders took it for safekeeping immediately and buried him in the sacred grounds of the valley of Jusendo, that his soul might be protected from whatever hunted him."

"Oh? What did he die from?"

"Who said he was dead?" Mousse replied. I have to admit I stared at him for a minute before realizing he must be joking.

"Um, so how do I use this thing?"

"You stay here, Saotome, and find someplace you can meditate undisturbed. Take the crystal out, gaze into it, and search for nothingness like she said."

I nodded, held out my hand for the small box, and realized that even now he was willing to betray me. Cologne clearly said to search for "peace", not "nothingness" ... I had a suspicion that were I to look for the wrong thing, they'd be busy in the morning identifying what strange force must've killed me.

"You got it, Mousse. I'll do just that. Best of luck with you and Shampoo."

He handed the box over. With such specific (and wrong) instructions, I was sure that the prism would react to my desires somehow, so we were at least on the right track.

Mousse took off (figuratively, he was a human rather than a duck) back to the Nekohanten while I sat under the eave of a nearby shop and examined this latest relic.

The box itself was nearly as large as a box of ben-wa balls, yet was half that deep at most. The leather, oddly, was quite soft and had a pattern that reminded me a little of my own skin, russet brown, and the box was clad with a heavy lead locked clasp and hinges.

In short, it looked like the real deal. I have to admit that I was a little grossed out by the human-skin leather outside, though.

A mere moment later, the box was open, its lock shattered with all sense of subtle theft gone. Ignoring the soft, deep purple velvet interior, Ranma plucked out her prize.

The prism itself, resembling not much more than a short, worked rod of electric blue quartz, strangely seemed to emit a purplish light that made nearby objects appear brightly colored, albeit wavy and transparent. What really caught her attention was that she didn't need to look through the rod itself to do this, but that simply being near the rod was enough. Her perfectly still hands rippled like a distant road on a hot day.

Further adding to the mystique and her sense of wrongness about the rod, the actual size of the various facets seemed to slowly change as she looked at it. Looking at once facet, it was clearly six inches long... too long, in fact, for the box it came in, but turning it over, it appeared to be less than an inch square and fit easily in her palm.

"Weird. It's probably left over from one of the American nukes. I'll probably have my hand fall off now."

A splash of hot water under a corrugated tin roof later, and Ranma was back to being male again.

While he wasn't terribly interested in visiting Ukyo at the moment, nor was he interested in discussing kunai technique with Konatsu, he did have a bit of use for the Ucchan's Restaurant; They owned a fairly sizable storage shed in back, and he was shown some time ago where the key was. A matching set of backpacks stood ready in the corner, so that Ukyo would be able to run off with her fiance at a moment's notice if he were to make such a decision.

No, he wasn't here to propose that Ukyo run off with him.

Sitting lotus style again, he slipped the prism out of its grotesque box in the dark, noting the shadows of oddly-shaped objects in impossible and dark tones shimmering on the walls. He rotated the prism slowly, wondering at why the shadows didn't turn with the source of the light. Surely there weren't things in-between the prism and the walls to cause such obscene silhouettes?