Ranma looked around the room the ghoul had led him to before it had continued on down the corridor showing his compainions where their rooms were, it had also thanked him for the help in re-attaching its arm that had fallen off when it had unlocked the door the strength of the lock being tougher then the little flesh of his arm. The room itself was big, rather dusty and would not look out of place in a Hammer Horror film, it even had large and ornate bay windows with heavy drapes, which looked as if they might fall apart if you sneezed within six feet of them. The three poster bed, the fourth post having given up its fight with woodworm a year or so ago, was placed against the far wall from the window and was near a fireplace complete with blazing fire, the ghoul had explained that the fire was the reason the door was locked as some of the young zombies had a tendence to forget they were now rather flamable and might have decided to sit round it, the resulting rather wet explosions were always a trouble to clean up.
Looking at the room Ranma came to the conclusion that Rook was obviously trying to make a good impression on them, either to make them more amenable to his plan or to cover up for the less than grand image that he had been made when they had arrived. He had certainly been caught with his trouser down. Ranma's head made a crack in the wall as he beat that image out of it and vowed never to think of that *ever* again.
To clear his mind he looked behind the two small doors in one wall and found one to be closet, it had a skelington in it which grinned (as if it really had a choice in the matter) at him in a manner which seemed to be sheepish but was a little hard to tell. Ranma threw it out the window not even bothering to listen to the stuttered explaination or consider how it talked in the first place as it lacked all the nessesary parts that would normally be required for it to do so. He felt he had enough skelingtons in his closet without another deciding to take up residence. The other door led into a what appeared to be a cross between a toilet and a changing room, with the toilet (i.e. a rather woodwormy board with a hole in it other a long drop) behind a curtain on one side and a semi circle of mostly cracked mirrors on the other. From the thick dust covering everything this particular room hadn't seen the light of day in a long time which, Ranma reasoned, considering who occupied the castle was not all that odd at all; after all one was rather unnessesary now and the other would certainly lack an appeal unless you had a particular interest in the advancement of decompostion.
However it did have an interest for Ranma as he had not really been able to really see himself since this whole thing began and he was rather curious as to what he looked like, reflections in windows, still pools and shiny breastplates weren't the clearest of images. Cleaning the dust off the mirrors with the rather flimsy toilet curtain took but a few seconds, getting the dust he had kicked uo off of himself took a bit longer but then he could really see himself for the first time in he didn't know how long.
He still looked mostly the same, perhaps a little thinner in the face and his eyes lacked something but he couldn't really say what it was that made them look different, of course the pointed ears which struck up through his hair were quite a change and he rather missed his little pigtail but he guessed it had been almost a year since his last hair cut and when he had plaited it in human from it had turned into a french braid when he turned but into his hybrid one. Not wanting to look silly he had returned it to his old ponytail, the one he had before the Dragons Whisker Porrage made a pigtail a nessesity. The Ponytail now reached down to between his shoulder blades however and if he was to transform it would grow to the small of his back but was his hair became slight stiffer when he changed and so it stayed out of the way. The body on the other hand had changed quite a bit, stripping off his currently oversized clothes, liberated from various large death squad members, he could really see the changes. He was muscles were bigger and more defined than they had been and he knew that he was several inches taller due to general comparisons he had made early on. Now able to see himself when compared to the door he could guesstimate that he was an inch or two over six feet which made the growth of his muscles even more impressive, he flexed a few times to see if there was anything different there but all the muscles seemed to be working fine. He grinned and thus noticed one more change, moving closer to the mirror and pulling up his top lip confirmed it. Ranma sighed.
"Great. Fangs. I should have expected it really."
Ignoring the fangs for now and the annoying thought about looking like Ryoga he transformed to his hybrid state watching as he first started growing then sprouted hair and finally claws and the sabre like teeth which gave the cat it's name. Apart from growing to about ten and a half feet tall and adding fur and fangs he didn't look all that different. Of course the fur made it so you couldn't recognise him unless you knew what to look for plus the eyestripes and the fangs that reached down to below his jaw were rather distracting and also caused him to have a slightly bigger muzzel than any other werecreature he had seen but the eyes remained the same. Looking himself over in the mirror the young martial artist noticed that his muscles had again expanded making him look even bigger than his already large size, he twisted from side to side to look himself over all the way and ended up noticing that patch of golden fur that ran up his back. He had noticed it when he had first transformed and ripped through his clothes but now had really forgotten about it what with it being covered by clothes and hair most of the time.
Looking at it he wondered if it was possable to make it go away as it rather spoilt the otherwise all black fur look he was sporting in much the same way as a white flag spoils the hiding abilities of a ninja. Suddenly it began to shrink as if he had willed it to do so, it took until he looked in the mirror to notice what had happened and it gave him quite a shock. He had changed again, bulking up in size and muscle mass, though that was mostly in the upper body and arms, his hair which he had throw over his shoulder to look at the gold fur better had grown down to his knees and the fangs had, somehow, managed to grow even longer. Looking in shock at his reflection Ranma could only stare dumbfounded, but had to admit that right now he looked damned scary. He moved around a bit and realised that he felt even stronger and tougher than he had before though he also noticed that he was not moving as quickly as he did normally in his hybrid state. Now that was interesting.
Experimentally he thought about turning back to how he was a found that he quickly lost the extra muscles, hair and foot of height without any problems while regaining that lost speed and his golden back. Smirking at this himself over this new ability imagining the look on the next death squads face when he did that he was struck with a sudden thought and being who he was immediatly acted upon it. The gold spread more and the colour bleeched out of the fur on his chest and some of his face leaving it white, while the eye stripes did the opposite and turned black. As this was happening he shrunk to what he guessed to be eight foot, losing muscle, more from his upperbody than his legs he noticed, finally his teeth shrank to a more reasonable size and he grew a long tail which came as the biggest surprize.
After checking this new form out in the mirror he began a quick kata to see how this body worked, it took several seconds to realise that he was only a blur. This form was fast! Very fast if the fact he had doing the chestnut fist without realising it was any indication but it lacked the strength. It apparently appeared his normal state was a happy medium of these two forms but now he knew he could switch between all three almost instantly and with only a thought at that the possabilities in a fight were enormous. Depending on who he was fighting he could be superfast, strong and fast, or super strong; of course with his martial art abilities he was strong and fast normally but with these bonuses all those against him would be in for the shock of their lives.
As with many of Ranma's thoughts that were not fighting related it took him a moment for it to register in his mind the fact that he had not seen this type of werecat anywhere either.
"Knowing my luck this form is probably more hated than my Saber-toothed one!" A quick glance out the window conformed the late hour but Ranma needed to talk with someone about this, sure it was a great advantage but what the hell was going on here! There was only one thing to do and that was make a choice now before it got too late and everyone was asleep and as he saw it he had two choices. Choice one was to possable suffer female wrath and go and ask one of them right now, and choice two was to sleep on it and ask them in the morning less chance of retribution but he was dubious of being able to wait that long.
Pulling on the troll sized trousers Ranma made his choice.
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(Posted Wed, 21 Jan 2004 21:35)
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