Chapter Text
Ranma didn't remember going to sleep last night. He didn't remember going to sleep at a desk, of all things. The little grey slab labelled 'GameBoy' his face was smooshed against, completely foreign to him. And the more he looked around, the more he noticed this wasn't any room he could have willingly fallen asleep in, completely unfamiliar.
Great. The fiancees were finally resorting to full on, middle of the night kidnapping. It was inevitable.
Except, it didn't line up with any of their tastes. First of all, Ukyo couldn't afford a whole extra room, let alone the stuff inside one. Shampoo would have insisted on sleeping beside Ranma if she was the culprit. Either Kuno could have done it, or maybe Chardin or Tsuruyasennen had returned for him, but this didn't feel like anything particularly high society, newly made.
The room, definitely a bedroom despite where Ranma woke, was lived in. The bed itself was large, covered with patterned blankets and with a few small plushies, an unmade mess closer to a nest than a bed spread. Posters of mythical monsters and locations hung proudly on the walls, though the fine details were hard to make out with just how dark the room was.
Whoever moved Ranma in here must've bumped him into something somewhere along the way, or have used sleep powder in his eyes, or did some kind of other thing to cause his right eye to feel a little itchy, at least a little weaker than usual. The medical eyepatch on the table at least implied his captor knew this, though it seemed to have just fallen off him before waking up.
Ranma naturally stretched as he stood up, ready to try and break out. It was a really decent feeling but less flexible stretch. Had he been out of practice for that long, asleep for potentially days? He didn't feel like it, though his energy level was lower than usual. Nothing was adding up, not even how the floor was slightly further away from him than usual despite clearly being in girl form.
… Where were his boobs?
They were still there, but definitely not all of them. At least two cups seemed to be gone from his amazing proportions, if he was being kind with his estimates. Sure, those things were a pain for his back, but he was proud of them, dammit! Here, beneath a baggy worn out shirt for some 70's rock band, he might as well have been a washboard by comparison!
"Even Ryoga's got bigger pecs than this…" Ranma intended to complain, but he didn't. Or, at least, his voice didn't. It was a feminine voice, but it wasn't his, a tiny bit deeper and instinctively quieter.
Something a little more than just kidnapping was going on. Turning on the light (a dimmer bulb than Ranma would've liked), he figured it best to put on the eyepatch if this body needed it. It definitely wasn't his body, neither of them, so he had to work with what this specific body had. Even if it meant no strength, no muscle memory, no martial arts and no perfect proportions.
Trying to stumble around with no depth perception and looking for the bathroom in this place would've been embarrassing, but Ranma did at least checked the door to find the bedroom was unlocked. Still, he had to find some kind of reflective surface, so he was lucky to find one on the inside of the wardrobe door.
Even with the eyepatch on, undone hair and pyjamas that he had never obviously never seen on this body, he could recognise himself as one of his peers.
Some blonde lady who clearly only just woke up herself, along with a few gruff men in suits right behind her, burst down the door once they heard the displaced teen scream. "Sayuri, is everything okay!? What's up!?"
Ranma looked at the lady, someone Sayuri would have recognised but he very much didn't, in shock. "I'm… Fine. Just, uh, eye pain. Yeah."
"… Okay, just your evil eye, cool, cool," The lady shooed away the men who followed her, then walked into the room fully, placing her hands on what should have been Sayuri's shoulders, "You didn't hurt anyone, Your Highness, I promise. Those visions don't mean anything about who you really are. Now come on, let's get you some evil breakfast before school."
"O-okay…?" Suddenly, while following a stranger downstairs, Ranma felt both a lot more guilt and a lot more frustrated at himself that he never really bothered getting to know Akane's friends too well.
○●○●
Yuka stared into the mirror for a little too long. She normally had scars, but the ones on this body seemed less precise and more accidental. She definitely was never this toned physically, and was only on track to feeling healthier in her own body. And while the hair she felt was fluffy and soft like Yuka liked, it was far too short a haircut, and far too blue.
Akane Tendou made eye contact with Yuka through the reflection.
She had been so close to sleeping in that she was certain this wasn't a dream. Yuka had been too surrounded by softness luring her back to bed that it was too good to be true. There was better blankets, a better mattress, better pillows, better pyjamas. Akane's possessions were too good for the girl somehow possessing her.
So how the fuck was Yuka in her friend's body? She hadn't touched anything remotely magical unless one counts the time Shampoo bounced on her head in cat form months ago! Apparently there was a Spring Of The Drowned Akane, however the fuck that mess worked, but it explained nothing about how she was right there, in Akane's house on a Tuesday morning!
Was this violating? Was this just gross? It wasn't Yuka's fault that she was puppeting her friend's body, but would it be better to just do nothing with it, to avoid messing with Akane's perfect social life and perfect body and perfect everything? Missing school would be bad for both, of them, though, and maybe Ranma would be able to-
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH" Ranma's masculine voice screamed out, followed by fast but stumbling footsteps downstairs, then water running in the bathroom, then the redhead bursting into Akane's room while hyperventilating and running for Akane's closet.
"… Ranma?" Speaking with the wrong voice just made this all the more unsettling, but clearly it was a bad day all around, so Yuka wasn't just going to act like she didn't care. Or like Akane didn't care. This was getting convoluted to think about.
"Gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross…" Seeing Ranma butt naked for a moment was a shock, but not as much as how quickly he was trying to put on the biggest black hoodie Akane owned, "So, so gross… Evil.. Blegh…"
"Is, um, everything okay?" It obviously wasn't, especially with Yuka there, but she didn't know how to help with these kinds of things unless it was with Sayuri.
"… Um… Akane, I… I don't know if I can explain," Ranma covered his right eye with one hand, pulling down the hoodie to cover himself with the other as he slid into sitting on the floor, "But… I'm n-not Ranma, and… I… I…"
… Yuka knew how to comfort Sayuri, and herself. Even if she was the taller one like this, she could still put on a big comfy sweater, though her favourite was still at her own house. She could still sit herself next to Sayuri, despite the wrong bodies, and lean into a hug. Only getting embraced did Yuka realise just how much stress was building in her brain, washing away a little.
"… Yuka?" Asked 'Ranma', wearing an expression much more like Sayuri, "Is that you?"
"Hey, my dear Dark Lord," Yuka couldn't help but smirk a little, even in these circumstances, "You're way too easy to recognise."
That confirmation caused Sayuri to squeeze tighter with martial artist muscles, something withstandable only due to Akane's built in strength. "My dear plushie… My plushie… Mine mine mine mine…"
Waking up in such a different body was bad enough for Yuka, who felt like she was violating Akane's privacy on tip of a probably more standard disconnect. But by the sound of it, Sayuri woke in Ranma's birth form, layered on top of her usual issues. Her 'evil eye' was gonna follow her brain, no matter the body, it seemed.
"I didn't make this h-happen," Sayuri immediately went to defend herself, even when grounded a little more by the shared hug, "I don't have my powers back, this w-was never part of my powers, I don't know-"
"I believe you, don't worry," Yuka very intentionally whispered, the mutual agreement having always been to never raise their voices at each other, "I think it might have happened to Ranma and Akane, like most magicky stuff, and we got caught in it this time instead of Ukyo or something."
"Right… Right…" Gently, Sayuri leaned down to press her forehead against Yuka's, only to stop close enough to be disappointing, "… Is trying to be intimate in other people's bodies an invasion of privacy?"
"I really don't want to think about it." The panic attack about such things had already been avoided once.
The thing about avoiding obviously unavoidable topics in the Tendou household, though, was that the whole family, and probably the building itself, had a cruel sense of comedic timing. Which is why Yuka only saw Nabiki Tendou holding a camera and a couple of flashes when the door opened, and didn't hear any of the words that came with the second, or any sounds that came after.
It took a good few moments of getting gently hugged, something to firmly ground her in the present, to drag her out of the past, just as Sayuri used the hugs to be dragged to where she was instead of somewhere far away. The fact they were lucky enough to wake up in the same house as each other in this whole ordeal was a blessing.
"… We're going to have to go to school to find Ranma and Akane, aren't we?" Yuka asked.
"Unfortunately." Sighed Sayuri.
"I don't think I can handle pretending to be Akane that long," The thought made Yuka shudder, "She's nice, but… She's too cool and too…"
"Actually normal." The girlfriends said in unison, laughing at their shared opinion. The only reason they never experienced the chaos they should have at school was that both of them were actually pretty decent at masking in the right circumstances.
"Wait… Does this mean I get to be unrestrained?" There was a glimmer in the closet chuuni's borrowed eyes, "No one would blame Ranma for acting strange, right? It's simply par for the course if he does."
"It also often comes with more trouble," Yuka was fortunately observant enough in day to day life to notice that, "And you don't know how to fight like he can."
"Damn…" Sayuri grumbled a little, though Ranma's feminine voice was a little too high to make it sound menacing at all, like a grumpy chipmunk, "I'm not turning into a boy again, though. That's the real curse."
"I'm, like, 75 percent sure Ranma would agree with you," Especially if Yuka remembered Asami's conspiracy boards right, "Boys are gross, anyway."
"Good impression of Akane," Giggled the redheaded Dark Lord, "My silly plushie. Good thing you're a girl's toy, hm?"
"Hmm…" Blushing more than her own body probably could, Yuka was really too content to stay in comfy cuddles to calm down more, even without the right bodies. Her girlfriend was too kind to her.
But, she also wanted her body back. Even if it wasn't perfect, it was Yuka's, something she was making an effort to reclaim as her own. And she wanted to actually see her dear Dark Lord when looking at her, not Ranma. It did make Yuka regret not paying more attention to exactly how Ranma and Akane handled supernatural messes in the past, though.