Due to various cosmic forces, in Japan, it is simply easier for males to wind up with a female body and almost impossible for them to regain their full masculinity. It is almost as if the world conspires to emasculate them. However, so long as the victim maintain their gender identity without giving in, there is always hope. Life remains unfair. Nevertheless, Karma can only be bent so much before snapping back in retaliation, not even the gods are immune.
'Soun, do you hear that?' signed Genma despite being in human form as he gestured violently upwards. He was confused, upset and angry at the Japanese government and the entire situation.
"Hear what, Genma?" asked Soun.
Pieces on the Go board were quickly rearranged even as Soun's gaze flitted briefly to the ceiling.
"Nothing. For the last couple weeks, there has been non-stop fighting. The boy's been angry at your girl for holding out on the cure. As much as I hate to say this, the boy's right, Akane should have known better, not even I, valiant man that I am, can resist the cure. For her to hold it above the boy's head and let everyone else know, it's as if she doesn't want him cured," Genma released a forlorn sigh. "Fortunately, no sound, the boy and Akane seem to be getting along again," Genma played it up, "In fact, they must be getting along so well that we can get them married!"
"If only your son stopped flirting with all those other girls, he would have been cured. But at least they get along now. Perhaps you're right, Saotome, our children are finally ready for the wedding. Oh, happy day. My little girl is all grown up! The Schools will be joined at last," rejoiced Soun, his eyes bright with blissful tears, "Why, we can have the wedding now and Ranma can get my little girl pregnant so that no one else does and—"
Soun's brain finally caught up with his mouth. He might not be a good father but he was a protective and possessive father. Realizing that his three daughters needed to be married and pregnant or they'll get impregnated by state policy was a bit too much. He froze.
Caught in the moment, Genma's mood built with Soun's declaration, "Indeed, my boy can even marry your other two daughters and Ukyo too and even that rich Kuno girl. Satisfy his honor and my retirement. Why don't we hold the wedding immediately and then honeymoon in Canada? " 'Because Canada lacks enforcement of deportation and their Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes equality, the SIS thing crossed a line, we can definitely claim refugee status over time.'
"Nooooo! I don't want my little girls to be pregnant." bawled Soun once the fact his girls were required to be pregnant by law sunk in. His screams of 'no' were incessant; his hands pulled frantically at his own hair until Genma stopped his arms with pressure point strikes. It wasn't enough. Go pieces were knocked about by the limp flailing arms of the man child. Soun's anxiety exceeded the limit for mere tears so he reverted to physical violence and unrestrained hysteria.
Across the table, Genma finally had enough. He was being pelted by little pieces of wood while struggling to suppress his own raging aura. His friend only exacerbated the gloom present within his mind and throughout the house.
Genma had searched desperately and failed to find comfort in routine. His teeth were grinding together even as he attempted deep breaths. If Genma gave in to his darker side, he would seek revenge. Someone would pay for this. In all of Japan, there were only a few shapeshifters and only one person cursed by the Jusenkyo girl spring. Recent politics were a symptom of the times but that clause dealing with shapeshifters was a direct attack against the Saotome family, possibly even himself.
Finally Soun's irksome wailing overcame his reticence. A single solid strike was made to Soun's head caused the man to collapse, while Genma stalked off to simmer. He absently noted the sound of a mallet strike, probably Soun's foolish daughter lashing out in confusion against his equally foolish son.
If the girl didn't have enormous ki, Genma would have switched the engagement to Kasumi, more gentle, more beautiful, more capable, but Genma wanted each generation to surpass the one before and that required both parents to have large active ki. Akane wasn't a bad person at heart. So long as Ranma raised the kid, his grandchild shouldn't pick up any of Akane's faults.
Without noticing, Genma left the Tendo dojo and headed towards the heart of Tokyo and the headquarters of a certain ninkyō dantai. He needed information.
He had wronged a number of people, Genma knew that. Both Genma and Saotomes family had Enemies, but there were supposed to be rules: Do not strike against a sole heir unless in retaliation to a strike against a heir. Thus, he needed to know the name of his enemy.
Ranma was Genma's heir and the Saotome heir. He had raised his son to be proficient in martial arts and nothing else so that Ranma would be easy to manipulate. In turn, he promised himself to defend Ranma from all other angles, especially his own dark past. Once the boy was married, he would teach him as little as necessary to avoid the dark side. The Senkens were assassin arts sealed for a good reason and he was thinking of unsealing them. He really needed to do something and keep his mind off that path. For now, information gathering would do.
Elsewhere, Ranma finally landed, or rather crashed down in the Nekohaten. Right through the roof but that wasn't enough to bruise. He had been careful to fully reinforce himself with ki, he couldn't afford medical expenses anymore.
He hadn't been at the Nekohaten since he noticed it had closed down and he hadn't planned to visit again. There were some decent memories here but the mere name of this place was a good enough deterrent for him. C-c-c-cats! Why name a Cafe after those horrible things.
Ranma brushed off the wood splinters and dust as he looked around to check his surroundings carefully. He was apparently in the basement. Broken furniture was scattered all around, a bomb must have gone off here. His eyes and ki senses carefully scanned the room indicated nothing alive but plenty of traps.
Taking extra care to always pay attention to his surrounding was a habit he was trying to develop, he couldn't keep himself reinforced with ki all the time, and he really didn't want to get injured.
Usually he wasn't the one who got injured, his toughness was lower than Ryouga's, but even so, a normal 9mm bullet wouldn't penetrate his flesh, even yamasenken only inflicted light gashes, and a speeding truck wouldn't even fracture his bones unless he forgot to reinforce with ki. In fact, Akane got injured more often than he did. He only really needed medical attention if he broke a bone or got sick. Actually, most of his medical expenses came from strong challengers, like Ryouga or Saffron. And Akane's cooking. That was definitely the strongest challenger of all. He needed his stomach pumped at least once a week. If he avoided those, he was probably the healthiest male in Japan.
Not counting his mental scarring. And the enormous rage he was feeling.
He knew the law affected a lot of people, all women, but he didn't care at the moment. As an enormous crimson flame burned around him, he only cared how the stupid law affected him. With a huff, he decided he needed to think. Almost casually he went around disabling various traps left behind by the Amazons, while searching for something anything not destroyed or taken on looters. Being in motion was his type of meditation and allowed surprising mental clarity. If he were allowed to do kata in class, he would likely end up with the highest marks in the school, if not the district.
Ranma was first and foremost, above all else, a martial artist. And after that, he was a man and a winner. Being a pregnant was not conductive to being any of the three.
Nabiki actually pointed it out to him. A pregnant girl wouldn't be able to practice martial arts because she needed to protect the baby and eventually the big belly makes moving bad. Being pregnant once wasn't so bad assuming the curse didn't lock.
But the baby had to come out of... down there... if not, a C-section was bad for health, thus martial arts. For a martial artist of his level and age, not practicing at a high level for the duration of a pregnancy would result in considerable loss in potential and even shaking off the aftermath of pregnancy takes some time. Not only that, the law required a pregnancy every 5 years, it was almost designed to ruin his career as a martial artist. Alternatively, if he popped out 5 babies in a row, his physical condition would decline significantly but he would be able to work on martial arts there after, but the end result is equally bad.
Popping out babies in the first place was traumatic for his strong male gender self identity and it also meant losing. It would be the death of Ranma Saotome, best of the best. Some would call it growing up but boys grow up into men, not pregnant women. In other words, accepting the law lying down was losing, therefore not an option. Even P-chan had it better than him.
Ranma bit his lips in consternation, as he sat on the last chair that remained intact. Even then it was a half melted lump of metal sunk solidly into the ground. Incidentally, his weight set off a somehow still intact water trap and he was suddenly wet and in the form he detested.
If... if he were younger when he was cursed, or maybe when he first came to Nerima, he might have considered his femininity . But after Saffron and the wedding and Akane hiding his cure from him, he felt he'd suffered enough misfortune, enough straws on the camel's back, that fate and the world owed him. Or at least he had the right to rebel.
Really, that stupid law seemed to have been written especially to attack him. He was male, not female, and not suitable for bearing babies. If those stupid lawmen really wanted babies badly enough to start labelling males as female, they should curse themselves with Jusenkyo girl water and get pregnant. It was easy, the girl spring was one of those that recovered, in fact, they could even use animals to make girls like the Musk instead of going after men.
The idea was being forced into pregnancy crossed an invisible line, 'loss of citizenship and honor', Ranma was starting to wonder what good honor did him if he allowed others to dictate his honor. Maybe the Japanese Government was made up of people like pops? That thought sent chills up and down Ranma's spine.
Suddenly he noticed it. It hadn't been there when he had been male. Or at least he hadn't noticed it. Even now, as a female, his eyes kept sliding off it. In front of him was some sort of ki construct that hid something, probably a door with an effect resembling umisenken. She knew something had to be there but her eyes couldn't focus on it.
Ranma stood and tried to walk towards it and touch whatever it was but a moment later she found himself on the other side of the room. She couldn't remember changing course and wondered if this was how Ryouga felt.
Ranma tried again this time with a running start, only to crash into adjacent wall instead. A jump kick ended with his leg embedded in the ceiling and slow crawling approach somehow ended in a dirt filled corner amongst the worms.
Ranma, frustrated and dirty, almost considered giving up but in her current mood, she didn't feel like losing. Settling back into the metal seat facing the ki construct, she considered the problem from another angle.
It was a type of repelling effect resembling umisenken, but she could still feel it with her ki senses, at least she could when she was female, so it was probably something important left behind by the Amazons. They hadn't had time to pack when they were forcibly deported after all. Suddenly, Ranma brought her hands together in front of her. First, she built a Mōko Takabisha, slightly weaker than normal due to the circumstances. Then closing her eyes and only using her ki senses, Ranma fired the blast towards the hidden place.
Peeking at the results, she found the entire room intact. Her ki blast had apparently been neutralized before it blew up but it had achieved what she wanted. Ranma stared at a rather normal door with a large wooden shield hanging on it. She could tell the shield was special at a glance. It was some type of ki battery that wasn't alive but was able to sustain life energy indefinitely in a preset patterns.
Her ki blast had supercharged the thing and disrupted it temporarily, but already it seemed to be recovering. The door flickered in and out of view. Without thought, Ranma charged the door, finding it wasn't even locked. Actually, the door was nearly impossible to find or reach unless one was female and a ki adept, so a mere lock would be redundant, easily broken by most martial artists.
Behind the door was a tiny room filled with books, scrolls, and the like. Reaching forth, Ranma picked a random book off the nearest shelf and snorted in annoyance. It was in Chinese. But flipping through, she was pretty certain it was an instruction manual for martial arts calligraphy. On another shelf, she recognized the moxibustion chart. And on furthest shelf, the Nekohaten's various ramen recipes were on display.
On the wall were the four most detailed diagrams of male and female pressure points she had ever seen. She blushed and looked away from the female rendition, it heavily resembled a nude Shampoo with her hair down, with all her parts depicted in excruciating detail.
Too bad it was labelled in Chinese. Pressure points were extremely useful and difficult to defend against without extensive knowledge in that field. Ranma wouldn't want to fight Dr. Tofu even on a good day. In a moment of surprising introspection, Ranma realized to be the best, he really needed to learn Chinese considering the sheer amount of martial arts knowledge likely available only in Chinese. In fact, Cologne probably learned Japanese and many other languages for the same reason.
After a moment of consideration, a rather brief moment, Ranma stored away all the contents of the room. She wasn't very skilled at hidden weapons technique but books were well within her ability. Accurate retrieval was going to be a problem though. Even Mousse sometimes took out the wrong weapon, hidden weapons technique was difficult like that.
Eventually Ranma finished with everything except the two female pressure point tapestries. With great difficulty and a flushed face, Ranma managed to unhook them, roll them up, and jam them up her sleeve with great prejudice.
Looking around, there were only empty shelves and blank walls. Her task complete, Ranma checked her work. She brought the sleeve of her Maoist uniform to her face and peered inside to make sure everything was properly stored in ki pockets.
The unexpected and very unpleasant stench of ancient books hit her nose like Ryouga's punch.
Rather shocked, Ranma jerked back to avoid catching another whiff. She had somewhat expected to hit her head but Ranma was rather surprised when she found herself falling through a fake wall where the female pressure point tapestries had hung. Apparently it was hidden in a mundane manner in case a random ki adept made it into the secret room.
Unable to prevent her fall, Ranma tensed and reinforcing her body with ki. And she kept on falling because the Chinese Amazons had apparently dug a shaft. With a light palm strike to the side, Ranma righted herself and a couple kicks along the shaft slowed her momentum enough so that she landed on her feet.
She had found the Chinese Amazon's treasure room. In the corner, she saw the dragon headed flame throwing staff. Several crates stacked high seemed to be full of instant Jusenkyo powder. On the shelf was the fan of divine wind. Various mystical artifacts and high quality weapons were on display. There was even memory altering shampoo and water proof soap. But most importantly, what immediately caught Ranma's attention, were the many casks stacked in the corner. Each was labelled in Chinese and stamped with the Jusenkyo symbol. She recognized one of them as Nyannīchuan, that was probably Shampoo's cure, but there were several others. She had to find out what they were and she had to find out now before the Nerima nutcases show up.
Almost anything was better than drowned girl right now. Ranma had ask Cologne after the wedding; he figured the Amazons would know since they give out curses as punishment. Changing or curing a curse required full immersion and a certain amount, so each cask only had enough magic for one person. Cursing a person or mixing the curses only required a cup of the stuff. Jusenkyo curses were nasty like that.
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(Posted Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:34)
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