Bleu, also known to other people as Deis, was residing within her little desert cave, her upper torso comfortably resting on top of her green coils. All around her, her spirit guardians were floating, doing the domestic chores.
The snake woman sighed as she looked into the crystal ball that was attached to her magical rod. In it, she could see a young girl in the garments of a fighter, with much sorrow written on her furry face.
"And for all those years I have been hoping that she might forget her previous life..." She sighed. "Guess I was wrong..."
She turned around her head when one of her spirit servants came floating up to her. "Lady Bleu, we just finished with the weekly cleaning of your dwelling. Do you have some other wish?"
The sorceress absent-mindedly waved her hand. "No, you can leave... I'll call you if I need you again."
The ghost nodded. "As you wish, mistress!"
The five or so spirits then simply vanished into the cavern's floor. Bleu really liked to have them around, servants like that could come in handy sometimes...
But today, she preferred to be by herself for a while... She had to think about what her actions had caused.
Especially for a certain, red-haired Woren girl now commonly known as Katt.
"Did I do a mistake?" she muttered to herself. "Should I have left you alone when I heard your mental cries of anguish? You did find good friends in this world, after all..."
Suddenly, her thoughts were being interrupted by a blue flash, coming from a certain mirror that was hanging in one corner of her cave.
"Bleu, where are you? I know you can hear me, so answer me, dammit!"
With a sigh, the serpentine sorceress unsnarled her coils and slithered over to the mirror. She recognized that voice very well...
"Well, look who finally called," she said as she was in front of the mirror. "Long time no see, Cologne-chan!"
"Spare me that nonsense!" the wrinkled, Chinese matriarch that was visible in the mirror snapped back. "I've just learned that a certain young man from my homeworld got in contact with your mirror - yes, the same mirror I am just looking into - and I would like to know what happened to him. Admit it - this is one of your stupid little ploys, is it?"
"Why, Cologne, I'm hurt! Please, let's not jump to conclusions here, okay? What makes you believe I know anything of a boy that vanished in your world? Do you even know for sure that it was my mirror who made him vanish?"
"Don't play any games with me, Bleu, I'm not in the mood for this! Admit it already, you saw him, right? The mirror has never left your possession, and I know that none of my other artifacts would have made him disappear into thin air like that. I also have the testimony of a very believable witness who saw that the boy touched your mirror... so where is he?"
Bleu sighed. She knew Cologne wouldn't stop pestering her until she either told her the truth or she buried her mirror fifty feet below the desert's sand.
As she treasured her magical mirror, she decided to confess.
"Alright, I admit it, it was I who pulled him into our world. Satisfied?"
"How... how could you do this, Bleu? You have never acted this irrational before. Have you ever thought about what his family would think? Or his friends? What about the girl he loves?"
"Love? LOVE? I'll tell you what I think about that! I looked into Ranma's mind, and what I found within his memories shocked me. SHOCKED, with a capital S! That poor boy never could feel the true 'joie de vivre', as the French put it. His parents wanted to turn him into the perfect Martial Artist and never considered if there might be something else he's interested in. His mother always pestered him to be 'manly' and even made him sign a Seppuku contract! His father is a greedy fool that sells his son's hand for food, brings him to a cursed place and uses more than questionable training practices. I don't have to remind you about the Neko-ken, do I?"
"Well... true, but from what I know, he still loves them, does he? And what about his fiancee and friends?"
"His fiancee? Don't make me laugh! The only thing that girl cares about is to satisfy her own delusions. 'All boys are perverts!' 'Ranma no baka!' Sound familiar? And I don't want to get started about all the other people in his life. They have all been after him, either to marry him against his own will, to kill him, or both! And you and your dim-witted tribe of barbarians just added to the Chaos!" The sorceress shook her head. "No, Cologne! He might miss his home, but he has it much better in this new world! He has TRUE friends now, and he knows what it means to be accepted... even though I should maybe say 'she' instead of 'he'."
"Aren't you a bit overreacting?" Cologne sweatdropped. "And what do you mean, 'she'?"
Bleu shrugged. "I decided to help him a bit further to come to terms with what he - now she - is. I altered the curse, removing his male side completely. Now she will never have to worry about being splashed with cold water anymore."
"WHAT?! But why did you remove his MALE side, Bleu? He was born a male, you know?"
"Might be," the snake woman said. "But he also had massive difficulties to accept a female as what she is... You know, all that anti-female-propaganda his father had drilled into his head? Now she had no choice but to come to terms with her femininity, and look at how happy she is! And while I was at it, I also did something about that horrible phobia of his."
"Don't tell me... you managed to cure his fear of cats?"
"Well, kinda... she cured herself, I would say. I just turned her into a Woren... you remember, the cat-people from my world?"
"BLEU!!" the Amazon matriarch screeched. "How is THAT supposed to help with his fear? You could have given the poor boy... well, girl... a serious trauma!"
"Well, I used some mental magic to make sure that she would not suffer any permanent damage from it... and in the end, she did what she did with her 'girl problem'... she overcame her fear and accepted what she was. And besides, the number of Worens in my world has dropped at an alarming rate over the past years... so I took care of that problem at the same time."
"I don't believe you..." Cologne shook her head. "You are seriously telling me that being separated from his family, being robbed of his manhood and being turned into a cat-person hasn't made a mental wreck out of him?"
Bleu shrugged. "Well, I helped her find a new job, at a coliseum... and of course I never told her that it was I who brought her here. I just said it was a magical accident... and that the path who brought her here would only go one way."
"And therefore you destroyed her final hope of ever returning home," Cologne seethed.
"Well, it only helped her, see? Now that she believes there will never be a way back to that hellhole of a life she had, she won't make her life even more miserable to try and find a way back."
"Bleu, her life wasn't nearly as miserable as you describe it. And who does she know in your world? No one!"
"That's where you are wrong, Cologne-chan!" the snake woman smirked knowingly. "Just two months after working in the coliseum, she met a young warrior who was on his own journey to save a friend... and together with various other companions, they went on a dangerous quest to stop an evil force from conquering this world."
She spread her arms. "All of these brave heroes, including sweet little moi, are better friends to her than those lunatics from your 'Nerima' will ever be."
Cologne sighed and stayed silent for a short while.
"You know I won't stay silent with this, right?" she then spoke up again. "As it was my own great-granddaughter who brought Ranma - indirectly - in contact with your mirror, I see it as my duty to tell his family where he has vanished to. And I will also tell them that there is a way to get him back... And believe me, Bleu, when I meet Ranma ever again..."
"Katt!" Bleu interrupted. "Her new name is Katt!"
"Whatever! If I ever meet her again, I swear, I will tell her the truth about what you did! And then you'll see that she will prefer her REAL home over that false life in your world."
Cologne's wrinkled face vanished from the mirror, and shortly after, the blue shimmering of its surface went out.
Bleu groaned as she collapsed on top of her coils. "Well, nuts!" she grumbled. "Now what am I supposed to do?"
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(Posted Fri, 04 May 2007 21:47)
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