A Ranma ½ Fanfict by Tangent

DISCLAIMER: "Ranma ½" and all the characters therein belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogagukan, Kitty and Viz Video. This is a fan fiction produced for my own enjoyment and for passing on without profit. Other characters that come into play in this fanfict may or may not be pulled from other sources (including other fanficts, R.P.G.s, manga, anime, literature, or possibly even *GASP* American comic books!).

A WORD FROM TANGENT: As you may have noticed from my other stories, I’m a big Ranma fan (No, really!). As my chosen nom de plume implies, most of my stories (and indeed, my general preference for stories by others) is for those that go off in a tangent. In "Ryo ¾" I explore the possibilities of Ranma having an identical twin brother who not only got the curse instead of him; he got it worse than Ranma ever did in the regular series. In "Bottled Nyanniichuan" I play with the idea of Ranma having a cousin who (in a startling lack of originality on my part) also has a worse version of the same curse as Ranma. In "A Wish of Honor" (which is likely to be posted at some point after this is – much later if Lord Talon has anything to say about it) I pose the question ‘what if Happosai got hold of a ring of wishes?’

(At this point, Lord Talon would like me to point out that "Bottled Nyanniichuan" is a joint project of ours, as is "Saber Moon" – Saber Moon doesn’t happen to have anything to do with Ranma, so I wasn’t going to mention it, but now that I think of it, some cameos from there appear in this fanfict, so its just as well that I did).

In all of these stories runs a common theme of a more powerful version of the curse that we know so well (in this statement, I make the assumption that anyone having read this far into my ramblings does indeed know what I’m talking about). Well, this time I’m going to try something a little different. No brothers or cousins with worse versions of the curse, any Ranma getting stuck in female form for prolonged periods of time (although I still have story ideas for that angle!) Nope! This time Ranma gets a sister!

Well…sort of…

Ranma wasn’t having a good time of it. Between the battle with Saffron, when he had lamented never having told Akane that he loved her, and the failed wedding, when he denied making any such statement, his life had acquired even more tension. What was worse was the fact that his life was approaching the status quo established a year ago, where he and Akane would endlessly argue over any little thing at all, just because they were both too stubborn to admit their true feelings to one another. All in all, the whole situation was once again making him very depressed.

He was wandering aimlessly, lost in thought if not actually lost (unlike Ryoga, who was just plain lost even when he knew where he was). While he didn’t really know if he was still in Nerima, or if he had entered another ward by now, it didn’t matter. He could find his way back easily enough when he wanted to. Right now though, he needed time away from his problems…all of his problems. So his not knowing where he was reduced the chances that anyone else knew either.

Of course someone found Ranma. This wasn’t really surprising. People found him all the time, whether he knew them or not (even Ryoga, although it usually took awhile for the lost boy). Usually, the result was more trouble for Ranma. Not always, but usually.

"You look troubled, child of chaos," Ranma heard from a pleasant voice belonging to an adult woman. The woman in question was dressed in a mismatched, but somehow appropriate ensemble. Her shoes were both red, but the right one was a tennis shoe and the other was suede running shoe. She had blue jeans with the left leg cut off Daisy Duke style, but the other leg was uncut. The white blouse would have looked good as part of a business dress, but was somehow fitting for her to be wearing it with the rest of her attire. Her hair was short and black, her eyes were blue, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. One of the reasons Ranma could tell was that there was a glowing blue symbol centered on her left breast that showed through the cloth. It looked like a stylized question mark with wings, or possibly a flying serpent.

Ranma just looked at the woman guardedly. He couldn’t get any sense that she was a threat, but her clothing, the symbol, and the fact that she had addressed him as ‘child of chaos’ did not sit well for his peace of mind. The woman, for her part, just looked back at him with a kindly expression, waiting for a response. After a while, when it seemed that she wasn’t going to do anything after all, his guard dropped.

"Yeah, you could say that," muttered Ranma as he looked to the edge of the sidewalk. There was a bridge and a train crossing nearby, but he hadn’t reached either one of them yet. The relevance of this didn’t occur to him at the time.

"Perhaps you could use a focus, something to keep your mind off of your problems without risking keeping your mind off of where you happen to be at the time," the woman observed lightly. Something in her voice hinted at hidden pain, and Ranma looked up, surprised. At that moment a train went by at speed, and Ranma noticed that the crossing gates had failed to come down. He could very well have been on the tracks when the train arrived, and he had been so lost in thought that he would never have noticed.

"You…you saved my life…" Ranma observed in quiet awe.

"Yes, Ranma, in this time I did, as I cannot in another…" she broke off, the pain in her voice becoming more evident.

"I…I got hit by the train, didn’t I," Ranma asked in a soft voice. "In that other time, I mean." Somehow he knew, just knew, that this woman was a Kami.

"Y…yes, Ranma, you did, and there is nothing I can do about that," she choked out, trying not to sob. Ranma let her cry on his shoulder, and wondered at the irony of his comforting a goddess. "There is a limit to what even the Kami can do, Ranma, even so powerful a Kami as the Daughter of Chaos. In my case, Kami-sama has seen fit to impose a constraint on my intervention in the local timelines." Ranma tried to understand what she was saying, but parts of it just passed right over his head.

"What do you mean?" he asked, confused.

"As the Daughter of Chaos, I am aware of many realities in the sea of time, some I can effect, and others I cannot," she explained quietly.

"Huh?" was Ranma’s intelligent response.

"If I directly save a life in one time stream, that life is guaranteed to perish in a divergent timeline," she continued, her tone becoming drier, as in a lecture often repeated.

"I still don’t understand," pointed out Ranma, honestly.

"Because I saved your life here, you went squish in another reality," she said irritably. Ranma got a quick flash of otherworldly insight as two more timelines diverged from this point. One in which the woman cursed him to be a girl for a long period of time, until he ultimately found a cure. Another in which she had cursed him to be a girl forever. He blanched, realizing that she had done just that, and that it was only luck that he was in this timeline where she had not.

"Ah…thank you," Ranma bowed deeply out of respect and gratitude. Both for saving his life, and for not ending up in one of those other realities where she had lost her temper with him. He was very relieved when she smiled at him.

"Here, a little something to occupy you in your troubled moments," she said as she handed him a leather bag that felt like it was full of hard, rounded and blocky pieces. "I hadn’t meant to reveal what I was to you, but I can appreciate the irony of chaos better than some of the local Kami. My name is Reilynn. I doubt that you’ll see me again in this lifetime, but you may meet one or more of my children. They seem to like you." With that, she vanished as if she had never been there.

Ranma thought about this, and shuddered, not knowing if this was a good thing or not.

END PRELUDE

CHAPTER ONE: Someone to Understand Me

It had been several weeks since Ranma had gotten the puzzle ball from Reilynn. He only took it out when his life seemed to be spiraling out of his control, which amounted to once or twice a day. He had part of it together already, but the pieces seemed to change in shape and quantity between attempts. Sometimes there would be more; other times there would be less. It was obviously magical in nature, and it seemed to work best when he tried to clear his mind or think through his problems.

Today was particularly bad. He and Akane had a big argument over a misunderstanding that had to do with his fiancee problem. Shampoo had glomped onto him again while he and Akane were walking home, which was something that happened at random intervals, but those intervals had gotten much shorter recently. Then Ukyo had shown up, so she, Shampoo and Akane had started to yell at eachother again. Ranma had had enough of it, and this time he had let them know in a tone that had caused the windows of nearby houses to rattle. He was sick and tired of their always arguing over him, of their always getting him in trouble, and of having too many fiancees period.

This caused them all to start yelling at him instead, but he wasn’t having any of that either. He shouted right back at them, as angry as he had ever been with all of them at once. Feelings were hurt on all sides indiscriminately, and in the end, Shampoo and Ukyo had run off in tears, and Akane was close to tears herself. When he started to feel guilty and tried to go off to apologize to the two, Akane had started another argument with him, making him angry all over again. They both said things that they really didn’t mean, and had hurt eachother tremendously. Neither of them had actually broken the engagement, but it had been a very close thing indeed.

Ranma silently cursed himself for not being able to tell Akane how he really felt about her, and for having hurt her feelings so badly. It just seemed that she, and everyone else for that matter, just couldn’t understand him. Or perhaps it was just that he was unable to make himself understood. He needed to focus, and the need was so bad that it practically hurt this time.

He fetched the leather bag from his things in the guestroom, taking it into the common room downstairs. Never mind that he didn’t feel like talking to anyone, he just knew that he shouldn’t be alone right now, as he shouldn’t have been all those weeks ago when he had gotten the puzzle in the first place. He needed the kind of focus that shut him off from the rest of the world, and if he stayed where everyone could see him, then they could keep him out of trouble.

Nabiki looked over at Ranma as he sat down across the table from her, in his usual spot. She was about to ask him what had occurred between him and Akane that had her little sister upset, when she noticed him dumping the contents of a leather pouch on the table before him. This sidetracked her somewhat, as she watched him start to fit pieces together absently.

"Hey, Ranma," she prodded, trying to get his attention.

"Hmm?" he responded absently, not really paying any kind of attention at all as he focused on his problems while tinkering with the pieces of the puzzle. He didn’t even notice as piece after piece was fitted in place in rapid succession.

"What’s that?" Nabiki asked, amazed in part from the ease in which he was putting it together, and in part because of what the puzzle appeared to be made of.

"A puzzle ball," Ranma responded, becoming further lost in thought. His responses were more automatic than thought driven, and he wasn’t even aware that he was having a conversation as people started coming into the room.

"I can see that," Nabiki said dryly. "I mean where did you get it?"

"A passing Kami gave it to me last month after saving my life," this response was so straight and serious that Nabiki facefaulted, along with her father, sisters, and Ranma’s parents.

"Nani?" was how Akane and Nabiki responded to this incredible statement.

"Oh my!" was Kasumi’s response. Soun and Genma said nothing, but looked worried.

"H…how..?" Nabiki was at a loss for words for once. Ranma answered her anyway; still unaware that he was saying anything.

"I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice a train," he explained quietly as he fitted more pieces in place. "The crossing gate wasn’t working, so I probably would’ve got hit if she hadn’t have stopped me." Nadoka thanked whichever Kami it was that had saved her son’s life in silent but heartfelt prayer. Genma just wondered if this meant that the puzzle ball really was made out of white jade, as it appeared to be.

"She?" asked Akane, not knowing what to make of this. Of course none of them did, but Nabiki noticed that he appeared to be responding as if in a trance.

"Reilynn, Daughter of Chaos," Ranma continued. "She gave me this puzzle ball to help me focus when my problems seemed to be getting out of hand."

"And what problems are those?" prompted Nabiki, who could guess, but this was a rare time when Akane could be present to hear a straight answer. Nadoka wanted to know as well, especially if these problems were so bad that the distraction that they caused had nearly killed her only child.

"That Akane and I seem to argue endlessly. That my stubborn pride won’t allow me to tell her how much I love her and how much it hurts me when I thoughtlessly hurt her," Ranma’s voice started taking on an angry tone as more pieces snapped into place in his hands. "That I don’t know how to break the other engagements without hurting Shampoo or Uchan," Ranma was rapidly running out of pieces as the puzzle ball was approaching its solution.

All the anger and frustration that Akane had been feeling drained right out of her in shock over what he was saying. Ranma loved her! He couldn’t admit it because of his stubborn pride, but he loved her! Not Shampoo, not Ukyo, but her! She didn’t know whether to be elated to know this, or angry over the fact that Ranma had to be in some sort of trance before he would admit it.

No one noticed Happosai’s arrival at this point, but he himself would come to regret it later.

"Why can’t I make myself understood?" Ranma asked rhetorically just before inserting the final piece of the puzzle. "I wish that I had someone who could understand me!" stated Ranma as the last piece snapped into place. The ball started to glow with soft light as it left Ranma’s hands and floated out above the middle of the table. Ranma became aware of his surroundings once again, and a feeling of dread washed over him, even though he had no idea that he had said anything aloud, let alone what it may have been. He was more worried that the ball seemed to be up to something.

"A worthy wish from a broken heart," the ball stated in a tiny, high-pitched voice. Ranma had no idea what his wish had been, and his mind raced as he tried to remember what he had just said. "One wish to a customer, free of malicious intent. My Mistress, Reilynn, has approved your wish for someone who understands you. Do not make another wish on this ball, Ranma Saotome, or the consequences will be dire!" With that, the ball flashed as a beam of energy shot out of it and through Ranma. He collapsed from the pain, and faded into unconsciousness before he found out what the beam did. Where the beam hit the wall a shape rapidly took form from the swirling mist that was also coming from Ranma, that of his female form. She was completely naked, not even having the braid that was Ranma’s preferred hairstyle, and she appeared to be tired.

"Hello, I’m Ranko Saotome," the girl said, stifling a yawn. "Sorry about this."

The puzzle ball fell to the table in pieces.

END CHAPTER ONE

OMAKI THEATER PRESENTS: Wish Gone Wrong

As Ranma put the final piece of the puzzle ball in place, he angrily stated, "I wish I didn’t have this stupid curse!" He was shocked out of his trance as the ball started glowing and raised out of his hands.

"An angry wish, poorly phrased," the ball stated in a tiny, high-pitched voice. "One wish to a customer, free of malicious intent. My Mistress, Reilynn, has interpreted your wish as she sees fit. Do not make another wish on this ball, Ranko Saotome, or the consequences will be dire!" With that, the ball flashed as a beam of light shot out of it and into Ranma. He felt himself changing into his girl-type as the energy washed over him then expanded in a wave from ‘her’ body. Then the puzzle ball fell to the table in pieces.

"So ‘Ranko’," Nabiki asked dryly, "how are you going to get out of this one?"

It would later turn out that no one who hadn’t been in the room at the time would even remember that Ranko Saotome had ever been a guy. Even Ranko’s medical and school records showed that she had always been a girl. While this handily solved the multiple fiancee problems, Ranko wasn’t pleased. For one thing, apparently she and Akane were both engaged to Kuno now. For another, Shampoo was trying to kill her again. Not to mention that she didn’t want to be a girl in the first place.

END