Accurate information on Succubae and Incubae is very rare. They are rarely observed directly, and not only can the effects of their actions be mistaken for normal human deviations, but human sexual problems are blamed on them when they aren't even around.Succubae are nature spirits, without solid form. Unless the succubus makes an effort, they are invisible to the naked eye. They can pass through solid matter without difficulty, only stopped by living beings, which makes holding one for examination problematical. It is also the likely reason that Merlin, the son of an incubus, was imprisoned within a living oak tree.
Succubae are excellent mimics, able to look and sound like whomever they want. It has been suggested that there aren't two separate genders, incubae and succubae, but one gender that can chose they wish to appear. Certainly it is possible for them to appear as the opposite gender, but no hard proof as to the number of genders has arisen.
They feed off of the sexual energy given off by others, and need it, not only to survive, but to grow in power. It is unclear what abilities are inherent in the most starved succubus, and what are the results of empowerment by feeding.
The feeding does not have to be injurious to the health of the victim, and can, apparently, be performed from a distance; although, whether for reasons of efficiency or personal preference, direct contact is preferred.
Succubae have an influence on dreams in their vicinity, although, once again, we do not know how much of it is under their conscious control. They can appear within dreams, and control them, introducing ideas and concepts that were unknown, and likely unimaginable, to the dreamer.
As nature spirits, they are, as a group, neither good nor evil, although individuals can be. To religious groups, who regard sex as sinful, they are, of course, regarded as unremittingly evil, hell-spawn, and requiring extermination. No affiliation with any outer-planar group has been recorded.
Nothing is known about how they reproduce.
Excerpt from "Every magical girl's guide to sexual predators"
Ranma surfaced from the pool. He had just been blindsided by a martial artist panda, which he suspected was really his father. "The idiot had changed into a panda, and decided to do the same to me."
The guide was going on about a spring of drowned spirit, but Ranma ignored that as irrelevant. It was obvious what pool he fell in, as for some reason, all of his clothes had come off when he hit the water.
He had breasts! And no male bits! He was a girl! He was going to kill his father. Uncaring about his nudity, he leaped out of the pool to deliver an unholy smack down.
Meanwhile, the stupid panda had just realized that he wasn't human, when his attempt to berate his son for leaving himself open, sounded like "Grawph!"
He leaped down next to the guide, who announced that his son had fallen into the spring of drowned spirit. Ranma hadn't surfaced yet, so it was obvious that Ranma must be planning something and holding his breath under water. After all, Genma had taught Ranma how to hold his breath a long time, and had been dunking his son into water-features for years.
So it was a surprise to him when he heard Ranma scream "Oyaji no aho!" from an empty spot of air in front of him. It was even more of a surprise when he started to get pummeled by his invisible son. He failed to make a break for it.
Ranma didn't notice that his leap from the pool didn't raise so much as a ripple. He ignored how everything around him seemed faint and transparent, except for his father, the guide, and the now faintly glowing pools. Ranma did notice that he was moving and floating without touching the ground, but only because that meant he was free to kick pop with both legs while punching him. Ranma was concentrating solely on Genma.
Unaware that he was invisible, Ranma completed his smack down, and turned on the guide. For the first time, Ranma consciously noted the changes in his surroundings. The guide appeared to be almost naked, with a barely visible transparent red-army uniform. The pools were clearly visible, and glowed, but the rock and earth surrounding them was nearly transparent, the bamboo poles were all but invisible, as was the guide's hut, but the trees and other flora in the distance was starkly visible. All of the living things appeared well lit, although only the pools actually gave off any radiance.
Ranma turned to the guide, and in a voice identical to his original body's, demanded "How do I change back!"
Unaware that Ranma now looked like a well endowed 5'3" redheaded girl, and not the black haired male that entered the pool, the guide said "Only know temporary cure. Hot water. I go get. Wait here."
The guide returned with the kettles. "Young customer. Where are you?"
"I'm right in front of you. Can't you see me?"
"You is invisible when cursed. You fell in spring where spirit drowned. It took a holy man to figure it out, but he didn't know what kind of spirit. May be just ghost." The guide managed to pour the hot water over Ranma due to Ranma jumping under the stream. This returned Ranma visible, male, and still nude. It also ended all of the weird effects of Ranma's vision. "Hot water make you normal, but cold water make you cursed again." The guide poured the remaining hot water over the black, blue, sanguine and white form of the pummeled and bloody panda.
"How do I cure this for good?" Ranma pulled out a second set of clothes from his pack, and quickly got dressed.
"There is no cure here. Curses mix, so Jhusenkyou spring of man don't cure you. As soon as older customer is awake, I take you to Amazon village. They may know more about curse."
While the guide used a long pole with a hook to retrieve Ranma's clothes from the pool, Ranma thought about his change. He turned into an invisible girl! After all the years of his father's misogynistic insults, this was just about the worst curse he could have. Why couldn't he have something neat, like a wolf!
But since he was invisible, did people have to know he was a girl? Ranma never had had much physical contact with other people, that wasn't violently inclined. No one ever hugged him, or patted him on the back, so why not let people think he was an invisible boy? Still, his father's normal and incessant whining about Ranma's masculinity, or lack thereof would become all the harder to bear.
But how could Ranma get the dumb panda to shut up about how weak women are? An idea started to form. His father was still unconscious. The pools mixed. "Is there a spring of drowned girl?"
"Yes. It is very important spring for the tribes in the area."
"Pop dragged me here against my will, and dunked me after he learned the pools were cursed. Would you be willing to pretend nothing has happened if I get a little revenge on him? I want to play a prank. Let him think he fell in spring of drowned female panda."
"Here. Use this hook and bucket. It's that spring over there. Be very careful no water gets on us."
Half an hour later the female panda awoke. 'His' gender would remain a mystery until his bladder, emptied involuntarily during the brutal smack down, would once again demanded attention.
Anxious to avoid being ridiculed by Ranma, Genma endeavored to keep secret the fact that his cursed form was female, unaware that it was due to Ranma in the first place. Meanwhile Ranma endeavored to keep secret that his cursed form was also female.
It was during a sudden rain shower on their way to the Amazon village that Ranma learned that his cursed form was not merely invisible. When the change hit, Ranma's clothes and pack fell through his body to land with a splat on the ground. Ranma was unable to pick them up, having become intangible to them. However Ranma was not intangible to the grass and trees around them, nor was he unable to give his father a punch when the panda made quite clear her disgust at having to carry her son's stuff.
Ranma had incorrectly assumed that his clothes had fallen off in the spring due to his becoming smaller, and the violence of his water landing. But now he was swiping his foot through the ground as he tried to walk. Luckily he was able to move, somehow, by thought. It took Ranma a bit to switch from internally bemoaning being unable to even walk in this form, to rejoicing when he realized he was flying.
But being able to fly invisibly while a nude girl was going to get boring quickly if he wasn't able to interact with the real world. However he had been able to beat up his father before. To test out his abilities, he used his father's incessant grumbling as an excuse. "Quit your bellyaching. You gave me this curse making it impossible to carry that stuff. So suck it up, and deal with it!" Ranma slapped Genma on the back of his head, proving he wasn't immaterial to his father, at least.
Not having anything to carry, Ranma flitted about, exploring his new world. Flying was effortless, although his top speed was way below what he could achieve by running and jumping normally. Obviously all of the aerial maneuvers of his school would have to be reworked, before they could be used optimally.
Ranma refrained from flying high in order to behave like he was walking along the road with the guide and his father. At some point he would have to fight his father again in this form. If Genma knew he was unable to bounce around off of objects like a superball, and could only fly relatively slowly, Genma would take advantage; if Genma didn't know his son's capabilities, Genma couldn't do anything sneaky.
Besides, flying could come later. Ranma was having fun taunting the panda. Not by saying anything the panda could take offense over. Just by keeping a running commentary about how nice it was to be on a hike without having to carry anything. Just by running around and examining the flora.
Genma was carrying more than twice what he normally did. Ranma's pack was far heavier than his own. Genma had a whole host of reasons, or rationalizations, for this state of affairs. "It's good muscle training for my student." and "You should be willing to do it for your father." and "I need my hands free since I'm leading us." and "Because I said so." and the surprisingly effective "That's just the way it turned out when I was packing while you scrubbed the breakfast dishes. Now put the pots in your pack, and we'll leave."
Genma was also laboring without proper feeding, and a fur coat only added to his displeasure. Plus his subconscious was asking him why male pandas, like himself, had a pouch for carrying a baby panda. Meanwhile his good for nothing son was behaving like a seven year old on jolt cola.
Ranma was looking over the flora for more reasons than just pissing off his father. He could see it clearly, and touch it normally. Ranma could see through the dirt as if he were looking down through the water of a slightly muddy lake, or one where algae grew as an all-pervading slime. He could see the root structures, and even the creatures, like the earthworms wriggling through the soil. Whatever happened to him in the future, Ranma could make a decent living eradicating mole colonies.
Ranma reached under a plant, and tried to pick it up from below. The whole plant came out of the ground, the root structure held in place by caked soil. Trying the same trick with an earthworm resulted with a squished subterranean earthworm.
Plucking a leaf was interesting, as after a while away from the plant it faded to transparency, and fell, quite literally, through his fingers.
Everything was nearly transparent and intangible, except plants, and animals. Thinking back to Jhusenkyou, Ranma added water to the list. The hot water that the guide poured on him wasn't intangible. And while he thought the water in the pool was unaffected by his leaping out of it, it also was the only water that glowed. He'd have to experiment with water when he made camp and had a pot of hot water handy.
Getting bored with the environment, and his "Mr. Wizard" nature experiments, he proceeded to enjoy doing stationary kata while flying forward at a uniform pace. While they did help him adjust to the differences in his new body, they also pointed out that his ground based kata were even more in need of revisal than his aerial attacks. Implicit in most of his ground based attacks was traction with the ground.
He would have to learn to fight in freefall. His most useful attacks for his new form were based on fighting on slippery substances, and the softer arts of T'ai chi. On the other hand, attacking from underground aught to win him a few fights until he restored his ability to where it should be.
As the day progressed, he realized that he wasn't any hungrier than when he changed, while Genma's grumbling had progressed from griping about being the pack mule to being hungry. Ranma should have been as ravenous as the panda.
What with being able to fly, unable to carry packs, able to do Kata while traveling, and unable to get hungry, Ranma was beginning to regard his curse as less of a disaster. It had its good points as well as its bad ones. In fact, the biggest bad point right now seemed to be that he was getting used to spending time as a nude female redhead.
Finally they reached the Amazon village. Without Ranma appearing to be the owner of the trained panda, people regarded Genma differently. When people saw a panda carrying a pack, they first look for its tamer. If they had seen Ranma, they would have understood it as Ranma and his trained panda, and then only the intelligent observant few would realize that if they were with the Jhusenkyou guide, they might not be what they seem.
Instead, when the Amazons looked for the panda's trainer, they saw the Jhusenkyou guide, and realized that if the guide had a trained animal companion, it must be human.
A 'starving' Genma noticed as he made inroads on the buffet that the same ability that made Ranma unable to carry his pack, made it impossible for Ranma to eat. Genma proceeded to snigger, and raspberry Ranma while he stuffed himself.
Ranma didn't really notice, being somewhat overwhelmed.
For the last day, he had gotten used to the female body he wore, although he hadn't examined it too closely due to embarrassment. He was used to seeing his naked breasts floating on his chest. He had also gotten used to the invisibility of the guide's clothes.
He wasn't prepared for a town made of transparent houses. A town filled with attractive females wearing nearly invisible clothes; effectively nude females sparring, and doing kata. Ranma's stunned silence was taken as sulking over Ranma's inability to eat.
It had been several months since Ranma left the all-boy's school in Japan. Months without talking, even in passing, to a girl, in a life practically devoid of women, and here were dozens of gorgeous women putting on a display, unaware and therefore unashamed, beyond what Ranma could have conceived. It was like hitting Ranma's libido with a plank.
Fortunately, Ranma had no idea what he would do with one naked girl, much less dozens; especially as the body he was in was the wrong gender. Ranma lacked both the cultural conditioning, and the practical knowledge which might have led him into doing something wrong. Ranma was stunned silent, as he just stared openmouthed at the beautiful sight before him.
When the bonbori smashed Genma's seat, guards formed a circle around Genma, and hot water was called for. Genma was unable to answer back as the guide translated Shampoos accusations. "She say you eat her prize for winning contest. She say you insult her and everyone who fought today!"
Eventually hot water was poured over the stupid panda. Had Genma gone into his pleading and begging routine, he would have been allowed to work off his debt as an unfortunate, boneheaded move by a stupid foreigner. But Genma's pride lead him to declare "Well then, if my son defeats you, there is no problem, is there?"
Unfortunately for Genma, Ranma had wandered off to look at what that couple were doing behind that invisible house while everyone else was distracted. While the couple would have received no more than a reprimand if they'd acted that way in public back in Japan, their public display of affection riveted Ranma's attention. By itself, it might have interested Ranma as a glimpse of how people interrelate. A glimpse of a life Genma did his best to hide. But with the couple's apparently invisible clothes, and their apparent love and lust for each other, restrained by social convention, and allowed slight release through necking in private, Ranma was oblivious to the boring excitement surrounding Genma.
When Genma failed to produce a son to battle Shampoo, everyone came to the correct conclusion based on incorrect information. "She say you a lying thief who try to get out of paying. She say she challenge you."
Shampoo was expecting an easy win from the fat fool. In spite of his wearing his filthy gi, and her exhaustion from the contest, she was sure she'd whup his hide "Real Good!"
Genma defeated her quickly, before she could accurately gauge his skill, and proceeded to preen and gloat. He ran the gamut of emotions of surprise, through shock, to abject fear and flight for his life when Shampoo's reluctant kiss was followed by a volley of bladed weapons, spears, and bladed chains.
Genma saw Mousse's cry of "He must die!" as the first attack of the village, and fled before they could surround him. He grabbed both packs, shouted "Ranma!" with a pitiful desperation, ignored the guide, and made his best time in an eastern direction.
China had proved too much for Genma. It was time to head back to Japan.
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(Posted Sun, 06 Mar 2005 08:00)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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