The wish granted to the mortal Ranma Saotome had been a strange one, especially since no less than five wish-granting agencies had been involved, some with different priorities and granting styles.
The genie, for example, was a typical, if only mid-powered wish granter, who did her best to try and get the result her master was going for, though the limits of human language sometimes fuddled things up. She could make things appear out of nothing merely by folding her arms and nodding her head once.
The Wishbringer sword was a relatively low-power powered wish-granter. It could create small objects out of nothing, but tended towards subtle manipulations of probability to make what its master wanted come to him by seeming coincidence. It was severely limited to the mind-set of its master. It tried to create what its master wanted, whether that master had all his marbles or not. Case in point: Tatewaki Kunou wished for the sword to grant the Pig-tailed-girl's desire... and got a statue reflecting what he thought she desired, which more no resemblance to her true intentions.
The monkey's paw was another relatively low-to-mid power wish-granter. It could raise the dead (if not always all the way; sort of a zombie effect) though it typically preferred to manipulate probabilities where possible. It was also a cursed object, in no way benevolent. It did its best to make its master's wishes come true in as terrible and disastrous a way as possible. If you wished for money, you got it in the form of life insurance when someone you loved died in a horrible accident. If you wished to have that loved one brought back to life... it did that, and only that. It didn't stitch back terrible wounds or repair injuries, it just put life back in them so they could experience the agony of what killed them, now unendingly.
Shen-Long the Dragon was in the upper end of the power scale. He could influence the entire planet to grant a wish, though his powers did not extend beyond it. As far as accuracy of granting went, he was pretty good, all told, though he was more indifferent to the master's true desires than genuinely caring whether they enjoyed what they got. He just gave them what they wanted so he could go back to sleep. If they'd wished to rule the world and ran it into the ground in less than six months, he couldn't honestly claim to care.
The Goddess Belldandy, in her official post as agent to the GRO, topped the power scale of this odd grouping. All the force of Heaven was behind her, if not held by her personally. She was also the most benevolent, actually wanting the recipient of the wish ('Master' was not a term an honest-to-Kami-sama Goddess used lightly) to be happy with what they wished for, since they were selected by her office because they deserved to get it. While she had never to date needed to or even heard of granting a wish that affected anything beyond the planet, it was within Heaven's power to grant.
Collating a plan of action between these five powers with their different motivations was not easily done. Just facilitating communication had required Belldandy to temporarily grant slightly higher intelligence to Wishbringer, as well as sentience and powers of speech to the Monkey's Paw. She also arranged a gathering for all of their conciousnesses in a sort of non-physical non-place in non-time so that they might discuss it in not-exactly-words (and if that hurts your head, don't worry about it; you're only mortal. Just understand that the non-time part meant that the discussion, which figuratively went on for hours, actually happened instantaneously in the space between what Ranma said and all of them saying "wish granted").
The first problem was of course in interpretation: All had heard what Ranma said, but they disagreed on what he meant. Human language was so in-precise and contextual. The second problem was varied intents on their part. Some wanted to just give Ranma literally what he asked for and be done with it; some wanted to give him what he truly wanted, no matter how badly he'd bungled the wording; some... actually just the Paw, wanted to twist the words he'd blurted around and make something truly awful happen to him. The third difficulty was that none of the agencies the gathered wish-granters represented would be satisfied with them not granting the mortal's wish; they couldn't just hand the job over to the highest powered among them (that being Belldandy) and let her handle it. Whether by their laws, duty, desire, malice, or operational function, they all needed to grant the wish, or at least part of it. None of them could just sit back and watch the others do the granting.
Sorting all this out had, naturally taken a great deal of discussion, arguments, negotiation and compromise, though thankfully, less than a millisecond of real-world time, thanks to Belldandy's thoughtful work. The mortals were left completely unaware of how much trouble had gone into making Ranma's wish happened... which was how such things were supposed to work anyway.
The complexity of the final plan was immense. It would require a complete reconstruction of the world as it was, though all the original elements would remain, if not quite unchanged. 99% of the work was retroactive, changing what had been for ages into what would be. There were a million little details worked out in the grand plan, but here are some of the highlights, most of which were changes made in the ancient past:
Shen-long the Dragon shifted the planet's axis to 0 degrees perpendicular to the planet's orbit, thereby eliminating all but the most subtle changes of season. The tropics would always be hot, the more northern climes always cold, every day of the year. The six-month day-night cycle of the Arctic and Antarctic circles was gone; they wouldn't get much light there, but they'd get it every day, just like everywhere else. Shen-long spent the rest of his time rearranging elements of the climate, flora and fauna to allow the planet to still support life in these conditions. Some of it was as subtle as altering the flow of oceanic currents, in other areas more directly fortifying plants and animals to survive in their new, more severe climates. Some plants needed to survive having less light and heat, others had to withstand intense tropical sun all 12 months of the year without wilting. Just reorganizing their life-cycle so that they could still live, die and procreate with the absence of spring or fall was quite complex.
Belldandy worked on some other large-scale changes, since she could work with the entire planet as well as beyond it. The first thing she did was graduate the ozone layer, making it slightly thicker near the equator, growing gradually thinner as it neared the poles. Not only did this take some of the heat off the now baking tropics, it allowed for a much larger band of hospitable climate stretching to the North and South. Otherwise, too much of life would be restricted to two temperate bands halfway between each pole and the equator, the rest of the planet being either too hot or too cold to support much in the way of life, in particular, unadorned human beings. It would still be hotter at the equator than farther north or south, but the degree was now much more acceptable. About 4-5ths of the planet were now inhabitable by most species of plant or animal, with some being better acclimated to the more extreme regions. Another major change was the planet's orbit. It had been elliptical, but to further assist in maintaining consistent average global temperatures, she made it more circular, with the sun just a little less off the center point, as well as bringing the orbit in just enough to make a large portion of the planet (with the moderating effect of her new graduated ozone layer) about the same temperature as what humans would have considered a comfortably warm day before. The planet would now have only the most minute of seasonal temperature changes, due to the offset position of the sun in its orbit. "Summer" in a temperate zone would be about 25 degrees; "winter" 15. When she was done all that, she began assisting Shen-Long working with flora and fauna adaptations.
The Genie got the job of tweaking humanity. Even a 15 degree "winter" would be uncomfortable to a naked person for an extended period, with a small chance of them becoming sick (normally not a dangerous temperature to humans, but then normally, one wears clothes and). She tweaked evolution and physiological development to give humans a bit more resistance to varied temperatures, allowing them to deal better with even these relatively slight changes of temperature without clothing, as well as making them more resistant to sunstroke or sunburn. Since she was at it (and being a rather sensual personality with a strong appreciation for the power inherent in female attractiveness) she tweaked female physiology to add a sub-layer of muscle tissue to the female breast. It was semi-autonomous, like the diaphragm, eyelids, or anal sphincter; meaning women had some limited control over it, but almost all the time it functioned without their awareness or deliberate intention. These muscles --found approximately an inch below the skin surface on most adult woman of sufficient "substance", thus leaving a sizable layer of soft fat tissue above so that the breasts were not too hard to the touch-- flexed when a woman stood up, providing the internal support for their shape that they wouldn't be getting from a Wonderbra anymore, and relaxed when a woman was lying down or prone (and also when the woman was aroused and/or being fondled, touched, supported, or suckled by infants). The end result was that women would look and feel pretty much the same as they had before clothing had been eradicated from their cultures and histories, they just wouldn't be drooping until well into their golden years. The genie had needed a bit of help with the technical aspects of her plan, and had gone to Belldandy for advice, who had in turn pointed the young genie to her older sister Urd, a goddess much more familiar with human sensuality and biology. Urd helped the genie work out all the fine details (the two turned out to be kindred spirits, had hit it off fantastically, and made plans to go clubbing together once the new world was up and running).
From the beginning, Belldandy had known the Monkey's Paw was going to be a problem. It was a cursed object after all, designed with the intention of causing human misery. It could not (and didn't want to) use its power for anything that might be beneficial to any human, much less its present master. Nonetheless, it had been invoked and had to be used to grant at least part of Ranma's strange wish, so Belldandy put it's malicious tendencies to use. She sent it's consciousness back to the beginnings of human evolution, with a task that furthered the ends of fulfilling Ranma's wish, even if it wasn't in a very nice way. The Paw got the job of preventing humans from ever inventing clothing. The basic need of protection from the elements was now gone, but at each and every point where the invention of some form of non-decorative garment would have been helpful or beneficial to human survival (suits of armor, for example) the Paw was there to fuck it up somehow. Early humans learned to use animal hides to make primitive tents and dwellings, or to lash together sticks and rocks to form their basic tools and weapons, but if ever one got the notion to use it to make something more than a headband or bracelet, it was time for a misplaced foot into a nest of rattlesnakes, or something similar. Metallurgy was developed before woven cloth in this history, and the latter was only ever used to make bed sheets, curtains or similar--never something that would cover or hide the human body in anyway beyond some basic form of decoration. Even in the modern era, a wedding "dress" consisted of white silk armbands, anklets, or (in some of the stranger or more misogynistic cultures) a white silk blindfold and hand bindings to symbolize the new bride's role as slave and property of her husband. Tthe Paw was particularly proud of that little tradition, even though it eventually fell apart into mostly harmless symbolism somewhere in the early-to-mid 1900s (Belldandy had been keeping an eye on it, and proved she had a more subtle touch than just major planetary alterations. The cursed object never did figure out what had happened there).
The Wishbringer, another aspect which favoured fate manipulation over raw reality alteration, got the more personal and localised job of arranging its master's life to turn out more or less the same as it had been, save for the obvious differences that would result from the changes. Ranma still left on a training journey with his father while still a babe in arms. He still developed his exceptional fighting talents well beyond what most would think possible at his young age. He still fell into Nyanniichuan, and became cursed to turn into a girl when wet. He still arrived at the Tendou dojo one rainy afternoon, carried kicking and screaming on the shoulder of a panda bear.
Of course, not everything went the same as before. There were some rather significant divergences from what had gone on before Ranma made his wish.
Soun had not mistaken Ranma for a boy when "she" first arrived at the Tendou doorstep. It would have been kind of hard to do so, unless Soun had been blind from birth.
Kasumi wore more cloth than almost anyone Ranma had ever met: an apron that covered most of her front. Granted, she only wore it when she was involved in cooking, or had just come from cooking (to protect from splatters of hot oil and grease) leaving it in the kitchen on a hook most of the time, but that was still more than anyone else.
The bathroom scene had gone a little differently. With nothing remotely resembling a nudity taboo in this world, Akane had no reason to be upset about that. She was more than a little irritated to find some strange boy she never met in her bathroom trying to figure out how you attached these little gauze tubes with the stings out one end he'd found in a little box marked 'Akane'. From the used ones he saw in the wastebasket, it was obviously some kind of bandage, but he was having some trouble figuring how to attach it to the little cut he'd picked up on the arch of his foot trying to kick his father earlier in the day, missing and hitting the corner of a concrete wall. (Shoes hadn't been invented either, but millennia of going barefoot had toughened up the sole of the human foot a fair bit, and there were protective wear for feet construction workers and vulcanists used only for their jobs, but nothing commercially available. Having everyone going barefoot with their tough feet didn't change much, though it did triple the fines for not picking up after your dog).
Happosai was not obsessed with panties and bras; such things had never been invented. Peeping at women in baths was likewise rather pointless. Still, he was a pervert, so he needed a new type of socially unacceptable behavior to indulge in. He was now a taste-fetishist. He was forever licking women without their permission. He still liked to jump onto women's chests for a grope and to rub his cheeks against the softness, but now he left behind nipples slimy with saliva, which tended to leave the girls in question feeling, if not violated, at least extremely grossed out. While he had no skirts to peek up, he had instead developed a technique he called the Taste of Heaven Rebound Attack, which involved leaping from a distance to a point roughly between a standing girl's feet, and bouncing straight up, like a tongue-first guided missile, between her thighs. With this technique, his long, tubular tongue (which he'd developed for exactly this purpose by training extensively with the Chardain school of Anything-Goes Dining) was thrust straight up the vaginal canal, allowing him a brief taste of about the only parts of a woman's body that were still hidden... before the screeching girl pulled him out and attempted to beat him to death, of course. He'd had a few unpleasant accidents with tampons, but as he'd taught Genma, the way of a true perverted martial artist is fraught with peril.
Ukyou and Tsubasa Kurenai often had the feeling they should be doing something different with their lives, and wondered what it was. Crossdressing, after all, wasn't a lifestyle that could be done very effectively in a world where no one dressed, period... at least not without the aid of some very expensive surgery available in Eastern Europe, but who has that kind of money? Ranma had never mistaken Ukyou for a boy (even if she did talk and act a lot like one, having only her gruff father to raise her). All the same, as an overly naive child, he'd never clued into the fact that little Ucchan was angling for them to be more than friends at some point. They never played house; neither of them knew how, lacking as they both did female role models for one of them to emulate.
Shampoo was a natural purple, and everyone knew it on their first meeting. Other than that, not much about her situation had changed.
Kodachi didn't have a black rose emblem stitched into her non-school leotards... or have leotards at all, actually. She did have a rather talented artist on retainer use body paint to decorate her abdomen with one for tournaments or other special fights.
Nabiki's trade of risqué photos wasn't quite the same, though she still made some money off of it. Kunou had topless (and bottomless, naturally) photos of both his loves now, though they were both series of them during their workouts (and sparing matches, if Ranma was in the right body to appeal to Kunou). His favourite shots were those that involved high kicking... his Pig-tailed-goddess was so flexible... and eager to show him where he might plunge his noble weapon and deposit his seed that she might bear his noble heirs. Nabiki had hinted that she held a secret photograph of her sister indulging in forbidden pleasures by herself in the supposed privacy of her bedroom, though the price for seeing Akane's sensual side would be very high indeed. (Nabiki did not, in fact, have such a picture, though she was working on it, even had the hidden cameras in place if the opportunity finally presented itself. She knew Akane did it on rare occasions, but she also tended to turn out the lights and hide under her bed sheets for an even greater feeling of privacy. Little priss! Too bad Nabiki couldn't afford to invest in special night-vision lenses for those hidden cameras, so she was stuck waiting for Akane to leave the lights on and stay on top of the sheets. She doubted the girl would start being that careless unless she suddenly started being less self-conscious about it, or was so worked up that she couldn't wait to get started. Since she denied even having what Nabiki considered normal sexual desires and needs, probably the only way Nabiki was going to get her golden picture was to spike Akane's food with some very potent aphrodisiacs, and that was going a bit far, even for her.) In the old world, Nabiki would never have considered violating Akane's privacy to such a degree as capturing her rare masturbation sessions, but in this world, there was nothing more of a person's body to see in private than was already seen every day in public, so Nabiki's photo trade (not to mention the more established pornography industry as a whole) mainly dealt with activities not normally seen in public. Kunou was about the only one who got his rocks off that much from simple exercise pics, though attractive and fit girls working their bodies did generate enough interest that Nabiki sold quite a few of those pictures (at a reduced, almost reasonable price) to guys who had a crush on Akane (and later Ranma-chan, before "her" identity became widely known) to put up in their lockers. They were no more offensive in this nude society than a glamour shot, but there was a demand, so Nabiki met it.
There was a reason Tofu-sensei always grabbed the skeleton when Kasumi happened by. He needed something to hold in front of his waist so that his attraction to the lovely girl wouldn't be quite so blatantly obvious. He wasn't so young anymore he could claim there was no reason for him to have an erection. Given how much this society was "on display", the fact that unmotivated "equipment tests" only happened to boys during puberty was common knowledge (though of course, given all the rampaging hormones of that age group, particularly after they'd been getting erections for a few years, it was also common knowledge that they were "motivated" a great many more times throughout a normal day as well). Mothers laughed and taught their daughters that it was just part of being a boy, that the part would grow hard at times, and sometimes, if you were lucky, it even meant that they liked you. Doctor Tofu was an adult, and a respected member of the community. He couldn't use a teenager's excuse to laugh away an erection so easily. Quite honestly, if he hadn't been so shy about it, Kasumi wouldn't have thought ill about him for it. Her mother had told her about boys, and men, and that it was a sincere compliment if it was anything at all. This was not to say that this society allowed men to do whatever they liked with their penis when it erected, but just the fact that it was getting erect was taken with a knowing smile or as acceptable flattery, whether intended or not. It was seen as about the same as a man fidgeting, fumbling his words, and blushing when he talked to you. There was no reason to be offended, even if you had no interest in the man at all. Granted, Akane was touchier than most about boys being aroused by looking at her, but she was an oddity in this world, not the standard.
In the old world, accessories were part of fashion. In this world, accessories were the only fashion (unless one counted things such as make-up and hairstyling). Necklaces, bracelets, anklets and rings were all quite common means of expressing one's individuality. No girl or woman would intentionally cover up any of the more identifying parts of her body however, as that was a large portion of the overall attractive picture she presented to others, be they prospects for a relationship, or even friends, business associates and social acquaintances. A girl would no more wear a shirt or skirt (if she had known what those were) than she would cover her face with a mask. Belts and waist jewelry were common though, being very handy for attaching things one needed to carry around with them, like mobile phones or a wallet. Women, who tended to have a lot more to carry around with them, still used purses for wallet, make-up, their phone, and whatever else they lugged around, which usually freed up their waist to be adorned with a gold or silver chain, sometimes set with jewels, depending on their affluence (or the appearance of affluence they wanted to give) which was much less practical than a sturdy leather belt as men often wore, but far better at accenting one's looks.
Tattoos were also an aspect of fashion common in this new world, but as they were permanent, they were far less popular than body paints or other means of directly decorating one's flesh. Piercing in places other than the ear were also common, though like tattoos, avoided by most young girls or women who weren't certain they had decided what their style was enough to permanently mark or poke holes in themselves. Overall, tattooing and body piercing were more common and less associated with subculture groups than in the old world, though more acceptable on men than women, and more on people of an adult's age than on teenagers. None of the Tendou girls had tattoos, or body piercing, though Kasumi did have those three lovely silver rings in the top of her right ear, along side one gold one, which when Akane had asked her, said signified the three people she most loved in her life, as well as the one who was no longer with them. Akane had been deeply moved, and considered getting a set of her own to match, but wasn't sure she could pull it off without looking at least a little punkish. Somehow, Kasumi pulled that off and made those rings look elegant... but then that was Kasumi for you.
In the old world, there were quite a few people who would have rather gouged out their own eyes with a dull plastic children's spork than see what people like Genma Saotome, Sasuke Sarugakure, or Happosai looked like naked. Frankly, even in the new world, no one really wanted to look at that either, but since nudity was the natural, normal state of things here, they were mostly inured to such sights. Not everyone looked good naked, but when everyone around from your grandmother to a professional sumo wrestler goes naked all their lives, you sort of get used to it. Men like these three and others generated about the same level of "bleeh" as someone looking at their less-than-attractive faces in the old world. It was just more of them not to enjoy looking at, that was all. The reverse was true too. Beautiful people whom you might enjoy seeing headshots of, now showed you the whole picture every day, and it was just more of them to be attracted to.
There were odd, unforeseen side effects too. For one thing, there were no more "white" people. While the climate had been altered to leave most of the planet comfortably warm, including much of Europe and North America, no places cold enough to allow a Caucasian skin tone to evolve could be settled by people with no clothing to keep them warm. In addition, with no winter season, people living in temperate zones were exposed to year-round sunshine at about the degree of late spring at its coldest. Thousands of years of that sort of consistent, almost season-less climate had not allowed such pale, pasty-looking skin to develop, even in areas that had, in the old world, been predominately pale-skinned. Oh they were the same people, with the same heritage and long chain of bloodlines, but everyone who had been Caucasian in skin tone was now of a decidedly browner hue. It was a relative thing. Oriental people still looked Oriental, but those of a paler cast were pale no longer. Those native to the equatorial regions were still very dark skinned, and history hadn't changed much more than what resulted from a total absence of clothing, and a greater abundance of land area of suitable temperature for farming to be found in the world. Still, for some readers, I'm sure it would be more than a little strange to visit the United States of America and occasionally spot some big oaf with a shaven head and a swastika tattooed on one shoulder, and "Brown Power!" on the other. (That would be a very ironic revenge. Are you reading this God?)
This then, was the nude... uh... new world Ranma had carelessly made. A world of year-round comfortable weather, the polar extremes of which had never been explored as no one could figured out a way to survive the low temperatures. Satelite pictures showed there wasn't much up there and down there beyond snow and ice anyway. Barring protective equipment for certain jobs, nothing resembling clothing was in evidence anywhere.
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Ron Hino
(Posted Mon, 21 Aug 2006 03:36)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.