Ranma looked up at the redheaded scientist with a mixture of extreme worry and hopeless resignation. Over a month ago an insane experiment had been sucked Ranma from his home dimension into this one. The scientist to blame was a deceptively young looking woman by the name of Washu Wakubi. Since then Ranma had been poked, prodded, doused repeatedly with water, and otherwise experimented on like a human guinea pig.
The worst part about Washu's attentions was that she swore constantly that she had his best interests at heart, and seemed to mean it. Even worse than Ranma's inability to escape the woman's mechanical restraints, every time Ranma complained about not trusting her Washu would pull the crying bit on him.
So finding himself laid out on Washu's operating table yet again was a fairly good reason for Ranma nervous about the woman’s intentions. "So, um, Wash-chan, what exactly are you going to do to- I mean, for me this time?" Ranma asked, choosing his words as carefully as he knew how.
The seeming twelve-year-old's smile dropped into a frown briefly at the near slip. However it returned with an eerie swiftness that bothered Ranma more than he dared admit. "Well . . . while I haven't exactly isolated every single coordinate of your point of origin. I think I've gotten enough of them to get you relatively close. So . . . I thought I'd try sending you back home today!" the childlike woman declared in an overly cheerful voice.
Normally it was a good idea to nod in understanding when Washu made a comment like that. Unfortunately, Ranma was lucky enough to be able to talk, nodding his head was a luxury that he didn’t have right now. "That's great. I mean everybody's probably worried sick about me by now!" Ranma replied, honestly excited about the good news.
Yet, even as excited as he was about the good news, something still bothered Ranma about his current situation. "Just one thing though, if you are sending me home today, why am I strapped down again?" he asked, attempting not to sound worried.
Washu responded with a big, reassuring smile that was anything but reassuring right now "Oh, that? Nothing major, it's just to make sure that you don't move too much during the startup phase. You do remember how painful getting here was, after all," she told him with a cute smile.
Ranma tried not to groan, but failed, miserably. The martial artist's arrival here had not been pleasant, in fact he'd materialized here nearly dead and with only half of his body mass. Where the other half had gone no one knew, including Washu. "I'd be lucky to forget," he replied, a little harsher than he'd meant to.
Then Ranma's eyes shot open in panic as her statement fully registered. Excruciating pain was worth the trip back home, at least at this point it was. But considering the shape he'd arrived in, with only half of himself making the trip, while the rest of him died who-knew-where. Ranma just couldn’t help wondering how the heck Washu expected him to survive the return trip home using the same method did that to him in the first place. "Um, Washu-chan. Not that I don't still want to go back home or anything. But um, if you send me back the same way I got here, am I even going survive past getting there. I mean, I don't think anybody back home knows how to fix me up if I lose that much mass again," Ranma asked with visible worry, and with good reason.
Washu's smile merely grew bigger at hearing Ranma's worried question. "No problem, Ranma. Why do you think I ran all those extra experiments on you?" replied the self-proclaimed genius. She paused just long enough for Ranma to open his mouth, but not to say anything before continuing. "It was so that you could survive the trip. True you’re not fully human anymore, but the changes are an improvement, trust me. Basically I altered your DNA and molecular composition so that you'll only be weakened by the loss of mass, not killed by it. So all you'll have to do when you get there, Ranma, is eat until you've gotten the mass back. I used the same basic enhancements I built into my daughter as a basis, and then improved on it a little. Just don't tell her I did that, I don't want it to hurt her feelings, besides, you'll probably need every scrap of it to make it through from this end intact. If you'd made the journey from this end last time, without the enhancements I gave you, you'd be lucky to survive being dematerialized at all," Washu told him in a blurred jumble.
Ranma knew that he augth to have understood the explanation after being around Washu for a month, but Ranma didn't dare admit that he hadn't. Then again Ranma didn't have to admit it, not with his poker face. "I had to make you stronger. It'll still hurt a whole lot, but you'll survive. Just be sure to eat a lot when you get there," Washu dead panned when Ranma failed to respond correctly.
"Okay, I think I can manage that," Ranma replied this time, causing Washu to smile again. Ranma didn't know about the stronger part, he'd only been outside Washu's lab for meals. He'd needed to be careful not to break anything, like his chopsticks for example. But then Ranma had almost always needed to be careful not to break things of that nature, after all he could crack reinforced cement if he wanted to.
Ranma didn't really know much about Washu's family either. Ranma had only been allowed at the table long enough to eat before finding himself back in Washu's lab again without any memories of leaving the table. So it was somewhat understandable if Ranma wasn't certain if it was the cyan haired woman or the violate haired woman that was supposed to be Washu's daughter. In fact the two looked more like Washu's older sisters, if anything, than her children. The only other things Ranma knew about the rest of the household was that both of them were after a guy Ranma's age and that guy's gramps thought it was funny. That and that the little girl who did the cooking reminded Ranma of a younger Kasumi.
"Okay! Time to send you home, Ranma! Ready to begin de-materialization!" Washu declared suddenly, breaking Ranma out of his contemplation of the woman's family. Ranma screamed in agony as arches of emerald and crimson energy arched across his body. The same restraints that had held him involuntarily immobile for most of a month nearly shattered under the strain of Ranma's agonized convulsions. But Ranma was completely unaware of this as his body started to dematerialize and fade from view, presumably into another dimension.
Within seconds it was over, though, Ranma's body had been dematerialized and Washu activated the process that would hopefully send Ranma back home. The next time Ranma opened his eyes he was:
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(Posted Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:44)
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