Chapter Text
For most people, having to fight someone from another country over your fiancé would come as a shock. For Akane Tendo, it was practically part of a typical weekend.
She’d been doing her usual training in the dojo when it was interrupted by someone bursting through one of the walls. As she turned to the latest hole in the dojo, she saw a familiar purple-haired Amazon with a small pouch in her hands.
“Oh, Akane! I have a gift for you!” Shampoo called out as she tossed the pouch in her direction.
Knowing better than to trust any “gift” Shampoo tried giving her, she’d quickly moved out of its way. When it landed behind her, she quickly picked it back up before the Amazon would attempt a second throw.
Thus began yet another battle between the two. In between attacks, Shampoo attempted to grab back the pouch, while Akane did everything she could to keep it out of her grasp.
Unfortunately, while Akane could hold her own in a fair fight, Shampoo had never been above fighting dirty. Soon, she had her cornered, with her pouch almost back in her hands.
Just then, Ranma walked in, having decided to investigate whatever chaos was going on now. With Shampoo briefly distracted by her beloved’s arrival, Akane decided to seize the opportunity.
“Ranma, catch!” she yelled out, tossing the pouch over to him.
Ranma, however, had only just taken notice of the situation and failed to react in time before it hit right in the face. As it made contact, the pouch burst, sending its contents exploding over him.
“Ranma, you…idiot?”
Akane’s attempt to reprimand her fiancé was interrupted by the smoke clearing, revealing an unexpected sight. Instead of the martial artist that was standing there moments ago, or even his female form, she saw…herself?
As Ranma finished coughing on whatever was in the pouch, he looked up to see Akane and Shampoo both looking at him with shocked expressions on their faces.
“What are you guys‒”, he started to ask before the voice coming out of his mouth made him stop out of shock. It wasn’t either of his form’s voices, but it was definitely one he had grown familiar with hearing.
Turning to the voice’s usual source, he asked the question he knew, but still dreaded, the answer too. “Am I‒?”
“Me? Yes, you are,” Akane answered.
Both Akanes turned to Shampoo, who had a look of both shock and worry on her face. “What was in that pouch?”, the original asked.
“Cloning Powder,” she answered. “When thrown at someone, they will be turned into a copy of whoever threw it. The plan was to turn Akane into me so Airen wouldn’t have to go long without seeing my beauty, but then she just had to go and mess things up.”
Sounded on par for a typical Shampoo scheme, but there was still an important question Ranma had to ask.
“How long is it supposed to last?”
“Given the dosage in the pouch, about a week. I wanted to be sure Airen could have a good, long look at me.”
Ranma sighed. It was nice to know this wasn’t something he’d have to go out of his way to fix, but it didn’t mean this was going to suck any less.
“Well, seeing as this was a failure, I shall return to Great-Grandmother to think of another plan. See you soon, Airen!” Shampoo said as she exited through the hole she left in the wall, leaving the two to contemplate what to do next.
Not that they would have much time to do so, since soon after she left, the actual door to the dojo opened.
“Hey sis, Dad wanted me to tell you that‒”, Nabiki started, before her train of thought was quickly derailed at the sight of two of her sister in front of her, one of which was wearing her fiancé’s clothes.
“What the hell happened here?”
As the two Akanes finished recounting the events and results of Shampoo’s latest scheme, their fathers and the original’s sisters sat in silence, thinking over the latest magical mishap the two had found themselves in.
“This is certainly an interesting predicament for you to find yourself in,” Soun finally spoke.
Ranma nodded in agreement. Just then, she felt a splash of hot water hit her, which a quick turn towards the source revealed to have been from Nabiki. “What the heck was that for?” he angrily asked.
“Just double-checking that you’re actually stuck like this, and you can’t change to your normal self. Or a boy version of Akane for the matter, I won’t pretend I know anything about how these curses work.”
“Either way,” Kasumi added, “it’s a good thing you only have to deal with this for a week.”
“That’s true,” Soun agreed. “Unlike some of the other magical issues we’ve seen, we’ll be able to wait this one out.”
“Hey, think about it this way, boy,” Genma smugly added. “This is the perfect way for you to get closer to your future wife!”
Ranma grumbled. Leave it to Pops to make her getting turned into someone else about the engagement he’d forced her into.
“Regardless,” Soun concluded, “it’s getting late, and the two of you still have to go to school tomorrow. We can discuss what to do about this situation in the morning.”
As the light of the morning sun came through the guest room window, Ranma groggily woke up for her first day as Akane.
Judging by the lack of loud snoring, Pops had probably already gotten up. That did make the weird lump she was feeling against her even more confusing.
While she initially chalked it up to not being used to sleeping in a different body, finally fully opening her eyes revealed the actual culprit. Cuddled up next to her was a pig she recognized all too well.
“What are you doing here, you pork-brained idiot?” she cried out as she shoved away the pig, who now looked equally shocked and confused at what it woke up to.
“Ranma, what are you yelling about?” Akane yelled out as she opened the door. Seeing the pig, who was now even more confused by what it was seeing, she excitedly called it over.
“There you are, P-Chan. Sorry about all that, Ranma got turned into me. It’s a long story, but things should be back to normal next week.”
As the pig went on its way, Akane turned to Ranma. “Why did seeing P-Chan get you so shocked?”
If there was ever a time Ranma genuinely considered exposing P-Chan’s real identity, this was it. Unfortunately, or fortunately for Ryoga, given Akane was currently dealing with someone becoming a duplicate of her, it was probably a bad time for her to learn the pet she let sleep next to her was secretly a person.
“You try keeping your cool after finding an animal you didn’t expect in your bed.”
“Well, regardless, we need to start getting ready for school,” Akane replied, seeming satisfied by that answer.
As Ranma got ready, she went over the cover story they’d come up with in her head. They’d settled on this: Ranma was out of town doing some special training, explaining the absence of her normal form. Meanwhile, Akane’s cousin, Onaji, was visiting for the week, and would be joining her at school so she wouldn’t fall far behind in her studies.
This just left the issue of clothing. Since none of Ranma’s currently fit, Akane begrudgingly agreed to lend her some of hers for the time being. A red headband was also thrown in, just so it was easier to tell her apart from the original Akane.
As she finished getting dressed and turned to the mirror, seeing her reflection elicited a strange, yet pleasant feeling. While she did find Akane cute (not that she’d say that to her face), she could tell it wasn’t just admiration for someone else’s looks.
Before she could dive deeper into that, however, an “Ahem” from an annoyed Akane drew her attention away.
“So, are you done ogling my body?”
“As if I’d do something like that, much less to a body like yours, tomboy!”
Akane grimaced. “That sounds so weird coming from my own voice.”
“Well, it’s weird hearing your voice coming out of my mouth, so I guess we’re even.”
“Regardless, if you’re ready, we should head out and deal with whatever problems this causes,” Akane sighed.
Akane had certainly been right about their current situation causing problems. They hadn’t even gotten through the entrance before one by the name of Kuno appeared.
“My my, dear Akane, you never mentioned having a twin.”
“This is my cousin, Onaji. She’s visiting for the week.”
“Well, I see beauty runs in the Tendo family,” Kuno replied, reaching for Ranma’s hand as he kneeled down. “‘Tis a shame our paths will meet for such a short time, dear Onaji.”
Not wanting to deal with the swordsman’s nonsense, Akane didn’t hesitate to slam him into the pavement.
Things hadn’t gotten much better once they got inside. With how popular Akane already was at Furinkan, being someone who looked like her and was allegedly still available made Ranma the target of much of her male classmates. By lunch time, she was already wondering how Akane had been able to deal with this for so long.
There’d also been a few close calls during the day. When she’d passed Ukyo at one point, she’d accidentally called her by name, leading to a confused look from the okonomiyaki chef. Thinking quickly, she claimed Akane had mentioned her name while the two were getting ready, which she seemed to accept.
Another had happened when Ranma instinctively knocked out a particularly handsy student who’d gotten too close, shocking their classmates. Akane had covered for her that time, saying that Onaji had watched her training the night before and must have picked some moves up.
Suffice to say, when they got back home, Ranma wasted no time heading to the furo for a warm bath to destress. While not changing at any point of doing so was certainly different than they'd been used to, any thoughts about that were overshadowed by one currently dominating all others.
This was going to be a long week.