A Ranma ½ fanfict by Tangent

Pre-reading and editing assistance by:

Lord Talon;

Nevrmore;

And some guy named Steve

DISCLAIMER: ‘Ranma ½’ and all characters therein belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogagukan, Kitty and Viz Video. This fanfict has been produced for my own enjoyment and to pass on without profit. Other characters that come into play in this fanfict may or may not be pulled from other sources (including other fanficts, RPGs, manga, anime, literature, or possibly even *GASP* American comic books!).

PROLOGUE:

Ranma surfaced from the spring, wondering just what he had turned into. His self-perception was strangely diffuse, and if he hadn’t been desperately curious, he would not have noticed his change any more than his father had been aware of becoming a panda. There was no sense of the change itself; nothing felt ‘wrong’ or different…

…Except that the feeling itself was wrong, telling him that he had always had the features that he now possessed. Or rather, that she now possessed. Even as the guide spoke, Ranma was pulling open the front of her gi top to confirm that she now had breasts. Looking up at the panda that had been her father, she could read the shock in its body language, still oddly human despite Genma’s new form.

Ranma’s vision focused into a narrow tunnel as she leapt out of the spring at her father. It didn’t matter to her that her waterlogged, and now oversized, gi bottom remained behind in the spring. All that she cared about at the moment was beating her pandafied father to within an inch of his life.

Genma, still not quite aware of his own transformation, nearly broke and ran from the girl who used to be his son. Even if the girl had been his son only moments ago, his training under the Old Master had left him with many bad experiences with angry women. Still, if he ran from his own son, he’d never hear the end of it.

Genma knocked the charging girl back and to the left… right into another spring. At that point, he finally noticed his own change, and looked at his fur-covered arms in shock.

This time Ranma felt the change as it happened, and it was far from being a pleasant experience. It wasn’t quite painful, and yet it was – like a phantom ache all over her body. Unlike before, there was a horrible sense of wrongness, as her self-perception tried to tell her that she was two entirely different things, neither of which she physically matched. In the confusion this caused, her sense that she should be male finally returned in nauseating glory. She was a boy; he was a girl; they were a… a…

They were a cat.

They were a cat and a girl at the same time, or a nekomusume. Before, she had been a girl who used to be a boy, a fact that had made her angry enough to attack her father with the intent of inflicting severe pain. Now, she wasn’t even human anymore, having become some sort of cat-girl freak. To make matters worse, the part of her warring self-perception that told her that she should be a cat had awakened the dormant part of her mind that actually thought of herself as a cat.

And with that awakening came a flood of memories. Memories of pain and terror; of behavior that now caused her shame and humiliation as she now remembered everything she had ever done as a boy who thought that he was a cat. Memories that, had her father never tried to teach her the Neko-ken, she never would have had in the first place. All rational thought left her as she drew her eyes over the ultimate cause of her torment…

Genma watched in horror as his former son emerged from the new spring as a nekomusume. The pain and nausea that her body language told him of tugged at his all too often dormant heartstrings as a father. The panda took a step forward, in a rare attempt to try to comfort his son-turned-nekomusume. To try to tell Ranma that he would make it up to her somehow. Then he noticed her expression grow furious as her eyes passed over him. The hiss that escaped her lips was his only warning.

Genma Saotome, Master of the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts, didn’t even have time to dodge as his only child mauled him with the ferocity of a savage beast. He himself soon lost all awareness in a hazy sea of pain…

Ranma came back to her senses as hot water splashed over her, causing her to shake her head and twitch her catlike ears in irritation. Then she saw her father, human once more, and horribly mauled all over his body. She could even see ribs and bits of other bones where the gashes went deep enough, and blood… Too much blood, coming from too many wounds. And blood on her own clawed hands, that she knew was not hers.

"Oh, Kami-sama, no!" Ranma’s voice quavered. "No! I couldn’t have…"

"Sir go now! That way!" the guide ordered when he saw that his younger customer had come to her senses at least, if not her original body. "Is village. Bring help! I try to keep father alive till you get back!"

With that, Ranma ran faster than she ever had before, with tears streaming openly down her cheeks. Faster than she thought was even humanly possible. But then, she wasn’t human any more, was she?

Ranma Saotome, once proud heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts, had become a monster in her own mind…

END PROLOGUE