Ranma woke to the sensation of something nuzzling his neck and nibbling his ear. Just in case you get the wrong idea, it was a fuzzy something — with dry, flesh rasping tongue and sharp, flesh piercing teeth.
With an understandable, “yeowch!” did Ranma fall out of bed.
Hypre let out a displeased hiss, then claimed possession of the vacated pillow with a satisfied murr.
Ranma grumbled as he pulled himself off the floor. First things first, he checked his body out. Unfortunately it was still very much in need of a growth spurt; a few years of hard training wouldn’t go astray either. However, it was all male and, although bandaged and patched up, more-or-less in one piece.
The next thing to check out was the room. It was his room – intimately familiar to him from his childhood memories as Ash Ketchum. Walls covered in posters of world famous magic users and their spirit animals. Books on the subject, fiction and non-fiction, lined the shelf. There were kit-models and manga cluttering free space. All of it showing his boyhood interest in magic and not a trace of martial arts or even sports.
Shaking his head clear of identity crisis, Ranma then crossed immediately to the closet drawers and pulled on clothes. Trousers, boots, tee-shirt, jacket, and cap, so totally unlike his old self.
That done, he considered the familiar clawing his pillow into submission. Somewhat larger than a mere house kitten, the cheetah-cub shaped spirit animal was just as cute. Also, apparently, she was every bit as regally independent as a real cat.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to manifest unless I summoned you,” Ranma remarked while scratching his unkempt hair.
Hypre gave him a snooty “whatever gave you that idea?” look, sniffed haughtily, then curled herself up into a ball and dozed off.
“You’re supposed to rest in spirit form, too,” Ranma protested mildly, but just gave the little beast a friendly ear-scratch before sitting down at his desk. Ranma then pulled a well leafed text out from the stack and flipped through it; re-familiarising himself with things he’d learned early in this lifetime.
‘So, speed magic,’ he mused silently, recalling the last thing he remembered. ‘Ouch. I’ll have to train to handle it, but it could come in handy getting my martial arts up to speed. Heh!’ The only problem was the side effect, but it wasn’t as if he’d never dealt with that before; just not in this lifetime.
‘Okay, then, let’s see. I have my spirit animal, so what’s next?”
His mother, Delia Ketchum, answered the unspoken question by popping her head around the door frame and observing, “oh. good! You are up at last, Ashy Dear. How are you feeling, Hon?”
“Hi, Mom,” Ranma answered immediately, “I’m okay.”
“That’s my little trooper!” she exclaimed, going into the room to give him a much unneeded and embarrassing hug.
“Awe, Mom,” Ranma complained in a whiney little voice. Mentally, he added voice-breaking to his list of things to do.
“Well, then!” she exclaimed, releasing him and suddenly changing the subject. “You need to be more careful handling your spirit animal. But since you’re up and about, I guess it’s okay for you to go now. You’d better hurry though, you don’t want to be late. It’s a very important date.”
“Uhm, go where?” Ranma asked nervously; most nervously.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sat, 16 Jun 2007 19:11)
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.