Ranma looked over at the noise, spotting a somewhat portly Chinese man in a Maoist uniform running full tilt towards them, waving his arms in the air like the man that cried fire. Deciding to find out exactly what this was all about, he stopped walking, and waited for the guide to reach them.
“Oh, very good you stop, sir!” the Jusenkyo Guide said, trying to catch his breath. “I now have time to warn you about dangerous, dangerous pools, and the many tragedies that happen here!”
“Who cares about other people’s training accidents?” Genma snorted.
Frowning at his father, Ranma then looked to the guide.
“Are you… Musk?” the Guide asked him reluctantly.
{Tell me,} Ranma said in Chinese, {What dangers can be found here? Why are you so desperate to drive us away?}
{Oh!} the Guide exclaimed. {You speak Chinese! This will make things much, much easier! Ahem… The valley of the Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo, otherwise known as the Pools of Sorrow, has a most powerful shape-changing curse attributed to it. With over one hundred springs, each with muddy and slippery slopes, it is very easy to fall into one of these pools and drown… and thus is the nature of this curse.
{You see, whenever somebody or something drowns in one of the pools, that pool takes on a type of ‘template’. Borrowing the form and, sometimes, the personality of the being that last drowned in the pool, it then places it as a curse on any individual splashed with its waters.
{If a frog drowns in a pool, and somebody gets splashed with it’s waters, then that person will forever more turn into a frog when splashed with cold water. It takes a splash of hot water to change back into one’s original form, but one will change back just as easily with the next bit of cold that finds you.
{As you can see, very cursed.}
Nodding to himself, Ranma then asked a few choice questions about what kinds of pools there were, and what effects they had pure and mixed together. As the guide told him more and more about the pools—and his father got more and more impatient—an idea began to form in the back of his head.
“Come on, boy!” Genma snarled. “We’re wasting time with this… man…”
“Very well, ‘pops’,” Ranma said with a smirk, eying a few pools. “Let’s get ‘training’ then, shall we?”
Leaping up to the top of one of the bamboo poles sticking up out of the water, Ranma easily balanced on his fragile perch. A true Cheshire grin was all Genma needed to leap up and join his son, already on the immediate attack.
Slowly winding their way through the valley, Ranma either dodged or parried all of his father’s attacks, having surpassed the man in pure physical skill some few months ago. By now, the only thing that kept Ranma on his toes around his old man were the techniques that he hadn’t taught him yet, and the occasional dirty trick that still got through.
Smirking to himself, Ranma allowed himself to get hit by a ‘lucky blow’, falling with a yell into the chilling waters of one of the numerous pools. The pool in question was the Spring of Drowned Twins, and had the immediate effect of making two Ranmas where there before there was just one.
Smirking at each other beneath the water, the new Ranma faded from view to keep up the charade for the time being. They leaps simultaneously out of the water, the angle judged such that his father would only see the swell and arrival of his son, ignoring the secondary explosion just behind him of the other Ranma exiting the waters.
Genma raised his arms to block a blow to his face, only realizing his mistake a moment too late as several heavy blows landed on his gut, blocked from view by his crossed arms. Grunting in pain, he flipped back onto another pole, making sure to tighten his defense.
Smirking at his father, Ranma once again leapt to the attack, legs bunched up beneath himself in mid-leap as he reared his arm back in an exaggerated punch. Moments before he reached his father, he seemed to fade away into nothingness, giving him a few seconds of surprise before his father could adjust.
It was in this one-second window when a heavy kick landed on the underside of Genma’s jaw, the strength and angle of the blow calculated to launch him towards a single chosen spring right at the edge of the pools.
Ranma made a one-point landing on safe ground, about fifteen feet from the pool, a Cheshire grin glowing on his face. Off on the far side of the valley, he could sense the elation of his second body as it succeeded in it’s own mission, soon to return.
“Oh, very bad you fall in spring!” the Jusenkyo Guide exclaimed in shock.
{But why didn’t you change?} the Guide then asked Ranma in Mandarin. {I saw you fall into one of the springs in the distance, but I see you now unchanged but for the water on you.}
{Oh, I did change,} Ranma assured. {In fact, my change should be arriving shortly. Be patient.}
{Very well…}
At that moment Genma erupted from the pool, feet standing firm on the muddy bottom of a pool that had seemed much deeper when he had fallen into it a moment ago. But the Genma that stood up in the pool was not the portly, balding man we have grown to know and hate… he was now a changed…
Woman…
Ranma chuckled as his new ‘mother’ realized this fact, grabbing a hold of her new chest through the gaping opening in her now-baggy gi. Apparently if Genma had been born a girl, he would have been much shorter and skinner, and have a much larger set of… talents.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Genma-chan screamed in terror before looking up at her son.
Ranma grinned down at her, and a large tom cat suddenly faded into view on his shoulder with matching grin. The Cheshire now had two bodies to have fun with and, best of best, one of them was his old Cheshire Cat body!
From what Ranma understood, a splash of warm water would now negate his feline accessory, while a splash of cold water would summon it. With some time, effort, and practice… he might someday even be able to control the effect.
If possible, the twin grins grew, as the Jusenkyo guide had to fish Genma-chan out of the pool before she drowned.
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(Posted Thu, 04 Nov 2004 17:04)
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