Chapter Text
“Damn it, Pops, you’re scaring them! I told ya to get an umbrella!”
The girl saying this would be completely correct in the normal course of events. When an oversized panda walks into your home on its hind legs, it’s only natural to be scared of it. In this case, though, she had overlooked one crucial point: no matter how cute, an angry young woman even bigger than the panda is terrifying all on its own.
With a sigh, the giant girl pushed herself past the panda, fiddling with a vibrantly pink pigtail. Although she still towered above all the Tendous, the meek body language and surprisingly dainty proportions stripped out a surprising amount of the intimidation.
“I’m Ranma Saotome. Sorry ‘bout this.”
The middle child took one look over the just-introduced Ranma. Chinese silks, no doubt the largest she could find, that still strained against the dual threats of Ranma’s sheer height and rather gifted figure. There was absolutely no doubt.
“Wasn’t Ranma supposed to be a boy?”
Watching over the excessively disappointed Soun was an incredibly dull way to spend the afternoon and the youngest two teens soon removed themselves to the dojo instead. To anyone who might choose to look in, the spar between the two girls was obviously going to be a contest between overwhelming power and strength, and raw agility. After all, one of the two was an ordinary Japanese girl in size, while the other was impossibly massive for her apparent proportions.
It was a completely correct assumption about the nature of the fight while still being wrong in every possible detail.
For Akane’s part, it was unbearably frustrating: the other girl not only refused to take a proper stance, she was dodging everything while barely moving. How could someone so large be such a slippery target!? On the other hand, Ranma was facing a problem of his own: Akane’s aggressive advance was increasingly pushing her to the dojo wall.
Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem for the pinkette; he could just make a little flip over and it would be fine. But his current size and strength lead to a particular problem that he needed more practice to overcome…
Namely, how to do such a manoeuvre without colliding with the dojo’s ceiling. Sure, it was spacious but this wouldn’t be the first time he had underestimated his own jumps recently. Instead, with a reluctant little pout, the giant girl caught Akane’s final punch with one arm, giving her a gentle tap to the forehead in retaliation.
A punch that could shatter sturdy timber, obliterate concrete, or fell even the sturdiest of Nerima’s perverts had been stopped dead with all the effort Akane would spare for a child. Her fist was trapped only for a moment but for the first time in years, the dojo heiress felt an unfamiliar and altogether too unpleasant feeling: helplessness.
But seeing the sheepish smile Ranma gave her as her arm was released, Akane laughed it off with the fateful words: “At least you’re a girl.”
Of course, that cut to the heart of Ranma’s secret. He was, despite all current appearances, a boy. This feminine appearance and the uncanny size attached to it was nothing more than a magical curse picked up in China. Perhaps, if it was just a matter of physically turning from boy to girl, he would have said nothing and allowed Akane’s misconception to carry on a bit longer.
“Umm…”
“After all, I don’t ever want to be beaten by a boy.”
But this Ranma had spent the past few weeks of his trek from China having to deal with unintentionally intimidating almost everyone that he had met. It was a horrible sensation, trying to be friendly – even in his usual brash way – and being met with only fear instead.
It had only been an instant but he had seen that same fear in Akane’s eyes. If – when – she learned about the curse later, if she thought he was intentionally lying about being a girl, a man using all his magically unearned size to terrify and overpower her…
For some reason he couldn’t name, that was so much worse.
“‘Kane… I am a guy.”
This statement was met with a blank, uncomprehending stare. The black-haired girl’s head tilted ever so slightly up to better look at Ranma’s chest, then up further to the doll-like face above it all and the unmistakable hints of makeup around those ruby eyes. There was only one conclusion Akane could come to.
“You look like a girl to me.”
An impossibly big girl. Truly impossible; you didn’t become an expert martial artist without some small grasp of biology, and a girl of Ranma’s size simply shouldn’t have the sort of proportions she did. It was almost like a girl shorter than Akane had simply been scaled up.
Enough to put a little seed of doubt in her mind. If the other girl’s entire physique didn’t seem possible, then…
“It’s a curse! Cold water turns me into this, but hot water can change me back–”
“Stay here.”
With utter calm born entirely of disbelief, Akane made her way out of the dojo and over to the kitchen, soon staring at the kettle as if the pressure of her gaze was enough to convince it to boil faster. Then back the other way, back to the fidgeting giant, who made no attempt to dodge the scalding water.
“It doesn’t have to be that hot!”
It was a boy. An ordinary boy now swamped in too-big clothes, but who could turn back into that giant of a girl at any moment, who wasn’t just faster than her but also vastly stronger. Who had kept this knowledge to himself until after their spar.
“Rematch, now!”
Ranma had only seconds to get his clothes into some sort of order before the enraged girl started the sudden rematch. As for the result? Well, if anyone ever asked, he was going to pin it on spending half his time trying to not trip over his own pants.
Later that evening, the entire Tendou family once again gathered around a sturdy table, this time seated opposite a bald man none of them had seen enter, and Ranma – doing his absolute best to be as unobtrusive as possible and dodge Akane’s glare, despite once again being in his girl form.
“Name’s Saotome Genma. And despite appearances, this is my son,” the bald man said, repeating the introduction.
“I’m still Ranma.”
To two of the Tendous, this didn’t come as a surprise. The father had received a full explanation earlier that afternoon and Akane had seen quite the demonstration – along with the boy transforming back into a girl when the day’s earlier sudden downpour made a brief return. But for the other two?
“You don’t look anything like a guy,” Nabiki was the first to break the awkward silence.
“Where do I begin…” Genma cast around for anything of use before seizing the tea placed before him, dumping it over the giant girl – to immediate effect.
Of course, that immediate effect was that there was now a very male, moderately damp Ranma Saotome seated at the table, swamped in massively oversized clothes.
“She turned into a boy,” Kasumi sounded only slightly surprised.
“Yes, hot water can restore my son to his true form! But–”
“Cold water changes him back into a girl,” Akane said, the older martial artist visibly deflating at the interruption.
“Yes, I see he must have demonstrated it for you. Now, I’m sure you must be wondering how such an unnatural thing occurred, and it’s quite a long story. Several weeks ago, when we were in China…”
And so, Genma wove the tale of their not-actually-so distant training trip, and his and Ranma’s ill-fated expedition to the legendary training ground of Jusenkyo. How he and Ranma had boldly leapt onto the raised bamboo poles, only for the master to secure the first strike and knock his son down into the spring below–
“Then Ranma came out as a giant?” Soun asked, looking thoughtful.
“He came out as a normal sized girl. Maybe even short.”
“Didn’t stop me from kickin’ your butt next.”
Of course, while Ranma had noticed the change in his balance and how his clothes fit, at first he had put it down entirely to being soaking wet – until a panda leapt from the spring his father had fallen into, catching the suddenly-female Ranma entirely by surprise and knocking him surprisingly far across the valley. As fate would have it, he fell into another pool and revealed the true horror of Jusenkyo’s curses:
“The curses of the springs don’t replace one another, they mix!”
“Yeah, I fell into the Spring of Drowned Giant, and now–” Ranma threw the remainder of his now-cooled tea over his head, reactivating the curse, “– I’m stuck like this all the time.”
Their audience took the time to digest this.
“You don’t seem stuck to me,” Soun pointed out, “Why, a little hot water and you’re as good as new.”
“Yeah, ‘til it rains, or someone spills a drink, or there’s a bad puddle,” Ranma started ticking off all the incidental cold water he could think of, “Or someone finds out and deliberately splashes me. One giant girl who don’t fit in any of my guy clothes at all.”
Understanding and blushes dawned around the table.
“Truly a horrible curse…” the moustachioed man gave a sage nod.
“An’ go on, guess why my old man dragged us there, huh?”
“You have to let it go, boy! A martial artist must be prepared to give up their life for the Art!”
“My life is one thing, but being seen as a giant freak everywhere I go,” Ranma grabbed his father by the gi, “Or givin’ every pervert in the area a free show…”
With an effortless flick, he tossed the older man out the open shoji and into the pond, “Is another thing entirely!”
While the panda climbed back into the building, Ranma turned back to the Tendous, visibly deflating as he saw how the famiy had drawn back from the sudden expression of violence on the part of one angry giant. Still, he slapped down a cheerful looking pamphlet: Nationwide Catalogue of Training Grounds in China.
“This is why.”
The girls leaned forward to look at it. It was well-printed, clearly laid out, and the ink hadn’t even run despite the owner’s repeated exposure to water. However, it was written entirely in Chinese, which meant…
“Your father can’t read Chinese, can he?” Kasumi asked.
“Got it in one.”
Soun chose this moment to return with a freshly-boiled kettle – pouring it over Genma to the just-panda’s insistence it didn’t need to be that hot, and forcing Ranma to dodge with a panicked “I just said I have to stay like this!”
“But you are legally a man and can turn back if you need to?”
Ranma nodded.
“Well, this isn’t a problem at all, then!” Soun threw an arm around the seated giantess, gesturing at his daughters and introducing them one by one, “Pick your favourite and she will be your fiancėe.”
If Ranma had only fallen into one spring, perhaps he would have vehemently objected to the idea of picking one at all. After all, surely a cure would be just a trip to China away? But with the idea that curses mixed firmly in mind, he wanted nothing more than to avoid the place as much as possible – already a stand-out freak, who knew how much worse things would be after a third fall into the springs?
No, while he wanted to avoid the marriage, there were plenty of other ways to do that, not least being that surely nobody would conduct a marriage between two apparent women and followed by the simple fact that Ranma was still several years too young for it. There was time for him and his fiancée to find a way out of it.
Instead, he had one thing in mind: don’t piss Akane off any more. She was already mad at him – unfairly so, in his opinion, but he was still sore over the second fight – and if they were going to live together…
“Not Akane!” “Not me!”
Their eyes met. A mutual acknowledgement that while they were of like mind on this, it didn’t wipe away their earlier antagonism yet and they were far from proper friends or rivals.
“But it’s a perfect match–”
“He’s a girl all the time,” Akane climbed to her feet, meeting Nabiki’s gaze with a glare of her own.
“If that was a choice–”
The two sisters descended into angry hushed whispering, with the occasional less angry but equally quiet interjection from the eldest. Ranma felt like he was missing something; surely his cursed form should be a disqualifying factor for anyone? It was just to keep their parents satisfied anyway.
The pair soon broke apart. The younger sported a victorious smile; the older a frown.
“Okay, Saotome – I’ll be your fiancée,” Nabiki stated, “But we’re going to establish some rules, got it?”
He had a bad feeling about this.