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!).

As for ‘Mirrors Multiplied’, it is actually an extreme case of what could go wrong when you wish that something had gone differently. Parts of it are hilariously funny; others tense, or even tragic. It’s all loony (even the tragic bits), and my friend, Lord Talon, gave up on trying to follow all the various plot twists. And the plot can get quite twisted, even without the jumping back and forth between past, future, and other realities. Since all of those things do happen in ‘Mirrors Multiplied’, he may have a point. I read on anyway, being Tangent, and have enjoyed Jared Ornsteads’s story greatly (or I wouldn’t be endorsing it here).

There, now that I have given a plug for another fanfict author I don’t even know yet, let’s move on to the story you presumably opened this file to read…

Ranma and Akane wondered just what in Nerima was going on this time as they witnessed Shampoo, Mousse, Ukyo, and Ryoga chasing each other around, ambushing each other, and generally snatching some strange bauble from one another. Somehow, the initial events that usually preceded these scenes of chaotic mayhem had bypassed Ranma completely this time, and he was just as lost as Akane was. What was so important about that trinket anyway?

"Ranma," Akane started. "What’s going on?"

"How the heck should I know?" Ranma wanted to know. "I was with you, remember."

"Well, this stuff usually happens around you," Akane pointed out. "You must have some idea what it’s all about."

"Geeze, Akane, whatever gave you that stupid idea?" Ranma demanded.

"Hey!" Akane snapped back, slapping Ranma upside the head.

"What’ ya do that for!" Ranma yelled.

"You’re being a jerk!" Akane yelled back, with equal fervor.

"Uncute Tomboy!"

"What did you call me!?"

"An uncute, unsexy, tomboy!"

"Ite…" Ranma-chan started to pick herself up off of the ground as Akane stormed off, when the four-way chase started running back and forth over her. "Hey!" she yelled angrily as she tried to get up again. "I’m not a doormat, y’know!" Unfortunately, the redhead was pretty much ignored for once as she was bowled over again and again by the four combatants. After a few moments of this, Ranma-chan decided that she had had enough, and entered the fray herself.

WHAP! Mousse was straight-armed in the gut, driving his breath out of him and taking him temporarily out of the fight. WHAM! Shampoo was slammed to the ground (away from the puddle – Ranma-chan may have been pissed off, but she wasn’t stupid). VRRRRRT! Ryoga was knocked back by an amaguriken, lightly stunned. "Gi’me that!" Ranma-chan snatched the contested object out of Ukyo’s hand, glaring at the okonomiyaki chef.

"Aheh-heh," Ukyo laughed nervously. While she had seen Ranma’s temper flare before, it had rarely been directed at her. "S-sorry, Ran-chan!"

"Y’know," Ranma-chan scolded, waving the bauble in Ukyo’s face. "Just once, I wish I could see what would’ve happened if I’d led a normal life!"

Everyone watched in horror as Ranma-chan disappeared in a puff of smoke and the trinket fell to the ground and broke.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO RANMA!" Akane screamed, having turned around when she heard Ranma join the fight…

SCENE CHANGE: So close, yet worlds away…

Ranma-chan, dizzy and disoriented from the experience that she just had, looked up to see everyone gone. She knew, just knew, that she had just done something stupid that screwed up her life yet again. When she noticed a male-type Ranma, wearing ordinary casual clothes, walking down the street, arm in arm with Nabiki, she knew that she was right, and fainted on the spot.

"Hey, Doctor Tofu!" Ranma called out as he entered the clinic carrying the strange redheaded girl that he and Nabiki had seen collapse. "I’ve got a patient for you!"

Doctor Tofu entered the reception area, knowing that it must be pretty serious if Ranma was shouting like that. He was usually more polite. "What is it, Ranma?" he asked, then stopped as he saw the girl in the young martial artist’s arms. "What happened?" was his next question as he motioned Ranma and Nabiki to follow him.

"I don’t know," Ranma confessed. "Nabiki and I were heading out on a date when we saw her collapse. She looks like she was worked over pretty good…"

"I’ll check her out," Dr. Tofu said. "Nabiki?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Would you call the police?"

"Hai!" Nabiki quickly headed for one of the clinic’s phones.

"I’ll watch the front," Ranma said. "If the jerks who did this to her are close by, they may have seen us bring her here."

"Good idea, Ranma," Dr. Tofu agreed.

Ranma-chan stirred, slowly coming to in what she recognized as one of the rooms in Dr. Tofu’s clinic. For a moment, she thought that it had all been a really weird dream, but then she heard the voices coming from the next room. Getting up quietly, she sneaked over to the door, which had been left ajar. When she saw the police officers (she recognized them as being from the local precinct, but she didn’t know their names yet), interviewing Dr. Tofu, Nabiki, and a male-type Ranma, she knew that it was all too real.

"You say that she didn’t have any purse or wallet when you found her?" Ranma-chan heard one officer ask Nabiki and the other Ranma.

"Nothing, Officer," Nabiki said.

"She just collapsed in front of us, and we brought her straight here, Officer," Ranma (the other Ranma) confirmed.

"And she had no ID on her, Doctor?" The other officer asked.

"None at all, Officer Togiwa," the doctor confirmed.

Ranma-chan backed away from the door, having heard enough. Nabiki, she could see doing something like this, and it wasn’t as if no one had ever tried to impersonate her before, but if Doctor Tofu didn’t recognize her… Ranma-chan knew that the wish she had inadvertently made had come true in one of the worst ways possible. She was in another world. One whose Ranma had led a ‘normal’ life, and therefore wasn’t cursed. One where none of the people she knew would know her. One whose Akane was a complete stranger.

Ranma-chan slumped to her knees, shaking, feeling hollow and empty as despair washed over her. "What have I done?" she asked herself quietly. "Oh, Akane! What have I done?" she implored the air around her. Her shuddering intensified as the magnitude of her situation became clear in her mind, and she began to weep openly as a wave of utter hopelessness, loneliness, and despair flowed though her body with all the emotional force of a hurricane.

Ranma-chan barely noticed as the officers and Dr. Tofu came in to see what was wrong. Nor did she notice when the female officer gathered her up into a gentle hug and began to slowly rock her back and forth…

A little later, after Ranma-chan had recovered from her initial shock, she found herself at the police station. She was feeling more than a little numb now, in the emotional sense, but she had to tell herself that somewhere, in some world, her Akane was still alive. It was the only thing she could do… the only comfort she could have. She would find a way back somehow, someday… she just had to!

Seeing Ranma-chan collecting herself, the police began to gently pry her for answers, chief of which being who she was and who attacked her. She was hesitant at first, which they put down to the trauma of being attacked, but had more to do with the fact that she didn’t know what to tell them. The truth would probably get her a trip to the funny farm or get innocent people in trouble, depending on how the police took it. Not knowing what name to give, she gave none, not wanting to spoil things for this world’s Ranma.

Hours later, a little frustrated, the police decided to ask Ranma Saotome and Nabiki Tendo to talk to the girl, hoping that she would open up to her rescuers. Each brought their families along for the moral support or additional help that they may provide. Officer Magumi Tenshiro, who was the precinct’s psychologist and tended to get handed the more traumatized victims, and was still trying to coax answers out of the mysterious redhead, looked up gratefully when she was informed that the Saotomes and the Tendos had arrived at the station.

"These are the two young people who took you into the clinic," Officer Tenshiro informed her young charge. She was awarded with what seemed to be a flash of recognition. There had been much debate already about whether or not the girl needed to be examined for memory loss. More debate occurred over just who would be the one to broach the subject to the girl, who had responded to their earlier inquiries about whether or not she had been sexually assaulted with open hostility. She had eventually consented to be examined for that with ill grace, once it became clear to her that her denials where being taken as confirmation instead. The whole process had humiliated her, and she still flashed angry glares at some of the officers who had doubted her.

"Hello," Ranma bowed, unaware of the by play that had happened at the station before the Saotomes and Tendos had arrived. "I’m Ranma Saotome, and this is my fiancée, Nabiki Tendo."

"Hello," Nabiki greeted the redhead who was staring at everyone, especially the engaged couple (and Akane, who still had long hair in this world).

"I…I’m…um…Ranko…" ‘Ranko’ mentally kicked herself for using that particular alias. At least she hadn’t added the ‘Tendo’ that would have implied that she was related to any of them.

Officer Magumi Tenshiro sighed as she heard the name that the redhead had given. While she supposed that it was possible that it was her correct name, the girl had probably taken it out of some sense of hero worship. She certainly hadn’t given a family name, which could mean any number of things…

SCENE SHIFT: Later, still at the police station…

Officers Magumi Tenshiro and Hien Togiwa perused what little information they had managed to gather on Ranko. All of it turned out to be from the girl herself, who had proved to be a sparse source, but they felt that they had made some small breakthroughs. They knew, for example, that Ranko had supposedly gone on a ten year training trip with her father (as yet unnamed), and considered herself a martial artist of no small skill. She had little or no respect for her father, referring to him as ‘Baka Oyaji’ or ‘Octopus-face’ when she referred to him at all. She admitted to not knowing her mother (also as yet unnamed) very well, but had said that she had some pretty weird ideas about what was ‘proper’. While there was some obvious longing for her mother, Magumi was pretty sure that there were also some painful memories there as well.

Young Ranko might not have been assaulted by muggers after all, and may have run away from an abusive family situation instead. That would certainly explain her reluctance to hand out personal information. She also seemed desperate to latch onto the Saotomes or the Tendos as kind of surrogate families. Fortunately, both families seemed amenable to this, and the Tendos had taken her in, being used to daughters, even those with interests in martial arts. Besides, it seemed that Ranma, who had been a guest of the Tendos for a couple of years in order to get to know his fiancée, had recently moved back into the Saotome home because his fiancée was attending college. Nabiki was usually only home on days when she didn’t have classes scheduled (or at least not very many). The remaining Tendos missed having the two around, and gladly accepted another guest.

One odd bit of information that had cropped up, and may have continued to go unnoticed had not a rookie been loading Ranko’s fingerprints into the computer and spotted the ‘match found’ message, was that Ranko’s prints were a near perfect match for Ranma’s, differing only in size. Tenshiro and Togiwa had tried to follow up this bizarre detail as best they could, but all records indicated that Ranma Saotome was an only child (and was most definitely male, while Ranko was undeniably female). It was clear that none of the Saotomes or the Tendos had ever seen her before, even if they seemed to be familiar (at least in appearance) to Ranko. She might be a cousin that they didn’t know about…

SCENE CHANGE: That night, at the Tendos…

The Tendo sisters were helping Ranko settle in, showing her the room that was going to be hers while she stayed with them. It had a modest bed, a desk with a chair, and a bureau, far more than Ranko was used to being in the room in question.

"Are you all right?" Akane asked, noticing that Ranko seemed disoriented once again.

"Yeah…" Ranko said after a moment. "This is just more than I’m used to having."

The sisters thought about this, and realized that not everyone had their own desk and chair in their rooms. Also, Ranko had said that she had spent ten years on a training journey with her father (which neatly explained her very evident tomboy nature), so probably wasn’t too used to beds even after having been home for a while (or so they assumed).

"I’ve never had a real bed before," Ranko continued to explain. "Just a futon at most, and sometimes not even that." This was blowing some of their assumptions clear out of the water. "Since my Baka Oyaji or his friend would kick me out of the house from time to time, he tended to hog the bureau. I pretty much lived out of my pack most of the time, even when I did have a roof over my head." Thanks to this bit of hyperbole, more assumptions blew, to be replaced with more terrible conclusions about Ranko’s home life. Had she been aware of any of these assumptions, Ranko would probably have tried to correct some of them. After all, there was no need to insult the Tendos hospitality, or her mother… they could think as much ill about her father as they wanted though, even though she didn’t want them to mistake her Genma Saotome for theirs. Besides, some of it was an exaggeration, if not of events, then of frequency instead. The bad times just tended to stick out in her mind, especially in contrast to these alternate versions of the people she knew.

"Well, you are our guest now," Kasumi said. "These things are yours to use while you are staying with us."

"They’re perfectly all right," Nabiki commented. "My fiancé used to stay in this room while he was living with us."

"Is that so?" Ranko asked, even though she had already figured that out. It was the same room she had been staying in for the past two years back in her own world.

"Yes," Akane confirmed. "Say, you said that you studied martial arts, right?"

"Um, yes," Ranko confirmed hesitantly. She recognized this setup immediately!

"Well, do you want to have a little match then?" Akane asked. "Tomorrow, after school I mean."

"Ah, okay…" Ranko answered, wondering just what she was getting herself into this time.

"Great!" Akane exclaimed happily. "It’s a match then!"

"I’ll have to miss this one, Akane" Nabiki said. "I have evening classes scheduled for tomorrow. I will see you both off to school though, before I leave."

"That’s too bad," Kasumi stated. "Well, I’ll just draw a bath then, and then everyone can settle in for the night."

"Um, Kasumi? Nabiki? Akane?" Ranko asked, embarrassed already.

"Yes?" they responded collectively.

"Um… I’m kind of uncomfortable bathing with other people, so… ah… could I take my turn separately?" Ranko was sure that she sounded pretty pathetic about then, and was very embarrassed about having to put it this way, but she didn’t want any of them to know about her curse. That would cause trouble for not only herself, but probably for the other Ranma as well.

"Of course," Kasumi said gently, settling the matter. If Ranko was uncomfortable bathing with other people, then she would have her privacy.

Ranko-kun soaked in the furo, very relieved to find out that he wasn’t locked in his cursed form in this world. He felt awful, living a lie again, but he didn’t see any reasonable way around it. Any exposure of his curse might get the other Ranma in trouble, so he was honor bound to try to keep his secret this time. And to stay as a girl when other people could see him. He didn’t particularly like that part of the whole deal, but that was the way it had to be.

He would be effectively starting over at Furinkan High School again, a fresh start, without many of the hassles that had plagued him before (and hopefully without Kuno, assuming he had graduated). Unfortunately, he had to go as a girl, which meant wearing the girls’ uniform, and probably at least panties. If he showed up in gym as a girl wearing boy’s underwear, Akane and the other girls would look at her funny. He briefly toyed with the idea of not wearing any underwear, but quickly abandoned that notion when he realized that it would mean the end of fence walking. He might not have much of a sense of feminine modesty, but he wasn’t completely lacking in just plain ordinary modesty.

Ranko-kun got out of the furo and stretched, savoring a few more precious moments of being his proper gender before using the showerhead to change back into a girl. If she was going to hide her curse, she realized that she would have to be a girl most of the time. Especially around the Tendos and her own family.

As Ranko put the showerhead back in it’s slot, she realized that she would have to take cold showers after gym class, or risk changing back into a guy if she misjudged an attempt at a luke-warm setting. Just one more thing to hate about her situation, really, and another reason to try to get back to her own world as soon as possible…

END CHAPTER ONE