FIFTEEN: 2004
Coming to an Understanding
Tear-tracks were drying on Ranma’s cheeks as she sat in the waiting room of Tofu-sensei’s practice. Moments earlier, Ryoga had used his cell phone to call in sick to work. They’d fire him soon if this kept up, she thought idly, playing with a red curl hanging in her field of vision. For sure.
Ryoga was holding Sachiko, and Ranma knew why. He didn’t trust her to do it anymore. He also refused to look at her. He refused to meet her eyes.
Ranma’s wooden geta thumped against the tiled floor unexpectedly as she twitched from sheer nervousness, creating a hollow ‘clunk’ which, in the otherwise empty waiting room, sounded loud enough to wake the dead. The redhead cringed and hunched her shoulders.
“Ready.” A woman’s voice sounded from inside the office proper. Ranma rose and shuffled her way into the main examining room, wincing at each noise she made. Peering into the examination room caused her to start in surprise.
Tofu-sensei was not there. In his place was a young woman in her late twenties, with long brown hair and a serious manner. She wore a white lab coat that fell at mid-hip, a pair of thin reading glasses, and a gentle smile.
“Kasumi,” Ranma breathed, the air whooshing out of her lungs in her surprise. “A-are you the doc?”
Kasumi’s gentle smile widened. “I inherited the practice from my husband, you could say.”
“Inherited! Kasumi...”
“It’s a long story, Ranma. If you would like to hear it, I don’t mind.”
Ranma examined her feet. “Y-yeah...” she whispered. Anything to delay the inevitable.
“You must recall how Tofu-sensei disappeared back when you were sixteen...”
Ranma’s brows lowered. “Yeah. I always wondered about that.”
“Say ‘ah’,” Kasumi continued softly – in fact, in such a similar tone of voice that it took Ranma a moment to realize that this wasn’t part of her story.
“Oh! Er... aaahhhhhh...”
“In any case,” Kasumi went on as she peered inside Ranma’s mouth, moving her tongue out of the way with a depressor, “it wasn’t for nothing. Back when I was nineteen, I decided that I was going to force him to admit his love for me. I got him drunk enough not to waltz off with Betty when we conversed. Then I asked him how he felt.”
Ranma’s eyes widened. “R-really?”
Kasumi threw the tongue depressor into the trash and began to listen to Ranma’s heartbeat. “Yes. It worked. He told me he loved me, and we eloped that very same night.”
“WHAT!”
Kasumi reeled back from Ranma’s form, pulling the stethescope from her ears with a pained wince.
“Sorry,” the redhead whispered.
“Well, now you see why I didn’t breathe a word of it,” Kasumi intoned, pressing her index finger to her lips. “I was so terribly embarrassed that I’d forced his hand that way, and, well... it didn’t exactly work out, in any case.”
“Not work out?” Ranma queried, as Kasumi moved the stethescope to her back.
“No; we made love that night, and it was a beautiful thing...”
Ranma coughed suddenly.
“...but when he woke in the morning, our late-night liason hadn’t cured him. Since I neither wanted an idiot nor a drunkard for a husband, I broke it off.”
“Y-you d-did?”
Kasumi nodded. “Let’s go to the X-ray room, shall we?”
Ranma let Kasumi lead her two doors down. “Whoa. Is this new?”
The older woman nodded with a smile. “Had to borrow from the bank, but for a chiropractor, an X-ray machine is a useful thing to have.”
The redhead smiled her understanding and sat on the bench under the ray.
“Next thing I knew, he’d run off,” Kasumi added with a sigh. “Before we were legally divorced, he made his escape.” She shrugged. “That made the practice fall into my hands, so to speak.” She clucked privately to herself. “Though for years I was too embarrassed... no, too mortified – to claim it. Please put this around your chest? Thank you.”
Ranma lay back on the table as Kasumi moved over to the operating console, taking several X-Rays of her body at different angles.
When the eldest Tendo daughter returned to help her up, she again took up her narrative. “When I met my new husband, he convinced me to go for my doctorate. After all, it’s what I’ve always wanted. Though, again, until I met him I wasn’t certain what it was that I wanted.”
Ranma nodded. “So you’re Doctor Tendo now?”
Kasumi giggled. “Sort of. I have a chiropractic license. Though people in the neighborhood use me as a family doctor, that’s not exactly what I am. I do good business.” She smiled. “Although certainly not this late at night - I’m not usually even open. But I make exceptions for family.”
“A-am I family?” Ranma inquired in a small voice.
“Of course! Even though it never worked out between you and Akane, I still consider you a sibling, Ranma – maybe even a little like a daughter.” She smiled gently. “Failed relationships still give you something, the way the hard ground in the winter gives birth to spring. My relationship with Tofu has, however indirectly, made me into a doctor. I want you to remember that, Ranma. Okay?”
Ranma blinked. “O-okay, Kasumi. But that’s not what I meant. Who am I?”
“You’re Ranma, dear. And don’t you forget that, either.” She placed a warm hand atop Ranma’s head and ruffled her hair. “Now let’s see that disappearing scar of yours.”
Moments later, the pair emerged from the examination rooms into the waiting room, where Ryoga was sitting, looking as lost as Ranma had ever seen him. When he realized they were there, he sprung to his feet, jostling Sachiko, who gave a small cry of protest. “Kasumi-sensei?”
Kasumi flushed. “Well... this is a bit hard to explain. And a bit harder to believe. Would you like to step into my office?”
Ranma slipped into her original examination room to change back to her normal clothes – normal! she thought contemptuously, staring at the shoes she’d arrived in. When did I put these on? Ranma’s puzzled expression smoothed, opened. Kasumi told me that story to calm me down. I must’ve been in a bad way when I got here.
Slipping on her geta ruefully, she clunked down the hallway and into Kasumi’s office. The office no longer looked like Tofu-sensei’s had – amicably cluttered with papers and esoteric texts. Kasumi-sensei’s office was painted sun yellow, and had a miniature plug-in fountain gurgling in one corner. Her desk was neat and tidy; two comfortable, leather-covered chairs faced her.
Ryoga was seated in one, holding Sachiko in his lap.
Gulping, Ranma clunked loudly until she plopped into the chair beside his. “Well, Kasumi... what’s the verdict?”
Kasumi smiled helplessly. “It really is very odd, Ranma. It seems that you’re exactly who you’ve said you were all along.”
“Well? What about the scar?” Ryoga wondered dully.
Ranma peered at him in concern. He hadn’t had Kasumi’s stories and smile to calm him; apparently he was still in shock.
“You misunderstand me, Ryoga-kun.” Kasumi’s sympathetic expression did not shift. “Ranma is Ranma. But she is... she is sixteen.”
“Wait. What?” The redhead frowned in polite incredulity, shaking her head, certain she had misheard the other woman.
Kasumi flinched almost imperceptibly. “It’s... I’m afraid it’s true. I have your medical history on file.” She turned to the computer at her desk and tapped a couple of keys. “Not that it makes any difference; I have very detailed medical histories up here.” She tapped her forehead, her smile turning apologetic. “Especially where family members are concerned.”
Consulting the file for accuracy, she continued: “Ranma’s last measured height was five-foot one and a quarter. However, her height at this point is five foot, even. Looking at the data I have here, it seems that she was approximately that height at sixteen years of age.”
Ranma slumped back into her chair in utter shock.
“Moreover, she had a tooth drilled back when she was nineteen, and her wisdom teeth pulled when she was twenty-one, since they were paining her. Looking into Ranma’s mouth today, I noticed that she has one breaking the surface on the right side of her mouth. And the filling is missing.”
Ryoga was staring, not at Kasumi, but at Ranma, pale and uncomprehending.
“I’m certain that the X-rays, when they come back, will show that Ranma has one more growth spurt left in her. Ranma is... Ranma is sixteen,” she repeated helplessly.
Ryoga was shaking his head. “That can’t be.”
Kasumi was tilting her head in sympathy. “I’m sorry, Ryoga-kun. Truly sorry.”
“But... but what does it mean?"
Ranma was still drowning in a sea of shock. “It means we’re not married. It means that’s not my little girl!”
“Oh, god,” Ryoga breathed.
“It means... it means...” Ranma felt the world spin. I kissed him! I slept in his bed! We were five minutes from making love! “Kami-sama...”
“There, now,” Kasumi soothed. “Ryoga, Ranma is still your wife – or, if you like, your fiancee. And Ranma – the same is true for you. Ryoga is your future husband.” She frowned. “And even if you were not, shall we say, ‘promised’ to one another... you behaved as you did because you believed you were...”
Ranma had doubled over and was hugging her knees. No... not true... I... I thought I loved him because I loved him... Her eyes stole to him, only to find that he was staring at her in return.
She imagined that his haunted gaze looked a lot like hers.
Sachiko, who had only been background noise up until this point, grabbed her attention with a small bounce. A bewildered expression adorned her own small features. Apparently, the little girl didn’t know what to make of all this silence and staring.
“She’s not mine,” Ranma whispered guiltily, her eyes flashing away and to her ridiculously traditional shoes. “She’s not mine.”
Kasumi rose to cross around the desk that separated her from the smaller girl. She dropped to her knees in front of the redhead and placed a calming hand on her thigh. “Of course she is, Ranma. That’s your daughter.”
“But I never gave birth to her... I never carried her in here...” Ranma had both hands pressed to her stomach. “How can she be mine?”
Kasumi offered up her gentle smile. “Nonetheless, she’s your daughter. Isn’t that Ranma’s daughter, Ryoga?”
Ryoga’s eyes were full of tears. “Y-yes. T-that’s Ranma’s daughter.”
Ranma felt her own eyes tearing as well. “Man. I just don’t understand this – not at all! I’m sixteen, but I’m here... how did that happen? Did I transform back into my old body... my old memories?”
Kasumi straightened, seeming to take on the mantle of Ranma’s physician rather than her old den-mother. “There are a couple of possibilities, Ranma. One I’m concerned with is your curse.”
“Ranma’s curse?” Ryoga straightened. “How can this have anything to do with Ranma’s curse?”
Kasumi began again, gentler than before, if that was possible. “Ranma... you fell into the Spring of Drowned Girl... did you not?”
“Y-yes...”
“It may be that the curse specifies GIRL... rather than woman.”
“Well, that is what I turn into,” Ranma said rapidly. Then, her mind cast back and she heard Ukyo’s voice: “First of all, Ranchan, the term is ‘man’. At least, there aren’t so many twenty-two year old males who still consider themselves boys... Second of all, you’re neither a boy nor a man. You’re a woman. As evinced by the baby you’re holding on your lap.”
“As evinced by the baby...” Ranma’s eyes stole to Sachiko. “You think that my having a baby triggered this?”
Kasumi nodded. “Perhaps, according to the terms of the curse, it qualified your cursed form as a woman rather than a girl. And switched you back.”
Ranma felt chill. “Shampoo once told me that she would be considered a child in her tribe until she’d had her first kid. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but maybe that’s the definition of a woman around there.”
“If the curse did do this,” Kasumi continued, “it’s far more powerful than we ever imagined.”
“So I can’t have another kid,” Ranma countered. “That isn’t the end of the world. I love Sachiko – I don’t mind not having a boy, if that’s what you think.”
“I’m worried that Sachiko wasn’t the catalyst, however,” Kasumi said with a sorrowful shake of her head. “What if it was some other, invisible criterion for womanhood that you met? There’s no way of knowing. There’s no way to know that the exact same thing won’t happen again six years from now.”
Ranma blanched. “So... so curing my curse would stop it?”
“Most likely. But... Ranma...”
Ranma knew what Kasumi would say. She knew what Ryoga was thinking. Despite knowing intellectually that he was married to another guy, Ryoga probably didn’t see it quite that way.
Ranma knew that her cursed form had been the only thing between she and a deep abyss since she’d arrived. What would happen if that were ripped away?
“There are other possibilities, I’m certain,” Kasumi was saying. “It may not be the curse at all, rather...”
Her voice faded away to a buzz in the back of Ranma’s mind as she attempted to absorb this, attempted to reconcile these new factors into what had become her life. Not my husband, not my husband! Not my child! And although she’d been subconsciously hoping – no, praying was a more appropriate term – for those words to be the truth only a short while ago, they now sat at the bottom of her stomach like lead weights.
I knew it. I knew it was a trap, a trick all along. But I let him. We kissed. It was okay. We were married. Now... I’m just Ranma, I’m the Ranma he always hated. And Sachiko... Sachiko doesn’t even exist to me... The very warm, very real baby in Ryoga’s arms somehow did little to convince her.
The walk home was even more subdued than before; neither adult said a word, and Sachiko seemed to respect that silence, babbling only lightly and in a decidedly grave tone of voice, sensing the tension. If Ranma had been awake enough to realize it, there was a subtle difference in Ryoga’s silence. The lost desperation was no longer in those his eyes: instead, they were filled with thought and purpose.
When they reached the house, Ranma opened the door ahead of Ryoga, and closed it behind he and Sachiko. She still felt dizzy and a little numb, as though the very earth she stood on had been shifted, the world she lived in altered irrevocably. It had, she supposed.
“So,” Ryoga said almost too casually, stepping inside the doorjamb, “can you think of any way to cure that curse of yours?”
Ranma’s expression didn’t alter, her brain still in a muzzy cloud. “Huh?”
“If that’s the only way...” Ryoga closed his eyes and he gulped before opening them again. “If that’s the only way I can have you... or nothing at all... I’ll...” Then he halted, choking slightly on the last word, unable to continue.
Ryoga wandered off to the couch and slumped there, bouncing Sachiko absently. “I’m going to call Nabiki again. Maybe Akane. It isn’t good for the baby to be around us right now.” Even Ranma noted how she’d snapped to attention once he fell apart. Is that what it means to be like this, to be married? One of us has to be sane at all times, but never both at once?
“Y-you’re right. She knows something’s wrong, doesn’t she?” Ryoga stared at his daughter, wiping his tears away carefully. “Aw, honey, it’s okay. Everything’s going to be just fine, you’ll see.”
Ranma offered the smaller redhead a tentative smile.
Sachiko smiled back, but the baby-grin was hesitant and uncertain. I haven’t been fooled, her look seemed to say, but if you’re willing to be calm about it, then so am I.
Ranma laughed at her, a genuine laugh. “Gosh, she’s the darndest thing.”
Ryoga shared the smile with her, and then all of a sudden they were pressed to one another; his arms stole around her and the baby both, and squeezed.
Ranma shut her eyes tightly, like she could banish the entire world if she consciously forced it away, and leaned into his shoulder, breathed in that now-familiar scent. She felt the baby squirm in her arms, obviously wondering what was going on. “You’d really do that?” she finally whispered, when he showed no signs of letting her go. “You’d really cure me? You wouldn’t mind?”
“’Course I’d mind. But I’d mind it worse if, every six years you looked at me like you did... that day. Like I was your worst nightmare come true. I’d mind it more if I grew old and you stayed young... wouldn’t that happen, if you kept reverting? Younger than our daughter, one day.”
Ranma’s mind reeled away from that. “Damn it... that could happen.”
“There are families that have... have two daddies. Right?”
“You and she both,” Ranma said, “are the damnest thing.”
Ten minutes later, Nabiki arrived. “I canceled an important meeting for this,” she said coldly. “It had better be good.”
“More like bad,” Ranma admitted, explaining her story.
“Oh, Ranma.” Nabiki paled, reaching out to squeeze the redhead’s shoulder. “So what’s the deal? What can I do?”
Ranma flushed slightly. “Uh... well, it’s the curse. Kasumi-sensei seems to think that it’s responsible... because it specified Spring of Drowned GIRL, not woman. I met the qualifications for womanhood and got kicked back to girlhood!”
“We need to remove the curse,” Ryoga said stubbornly. “At least, that’s what we want to do.”
For a moment, Nabiki was struck speechless – something Ranma had never actually seen before. “Really?” she whispered.
A moment later, she caught herself; her features smoothed to a gentle, blank mask. “Hmm. So you’re looking for leads on a cure again, eh, Ranma?” She adjusted her position on the couch, re-crossing her stockinged legs.
Ranma nodded stolidly, subtlely comforted by Ryoga’s stout strength by her. He hadn’t let go of her hand, either; a fact she noted with gratitude.
“The search is back on,” Nabiki said softly, almost to herself.
“What about the Amazons? If anyone knows a cure, it’s the old ghoul,” Ranma offered.
Both Nabiki and Ryoga’s expressions darkened.
“I... I mean, after she left, she couldn’t possibly still be thinking of adding me to the tribe...”
“It’s not that,” Nabiki said, her tone tight and full of frustration. “It’s that, a long time ago, she told us that there was no cure... as she knew it.”
Ranma’s eyes widened. “A trick. It’s... it’s gotta be.”
“I beg to differ,” Nabiki replied. “At least, she said so as she was leaving – and I don’t think it was as a form of revenge. I think she meant to give you some measure of peace after searching so long.” The older girl hung her head, shaking it in negation. “No, I think she was telling us the truth.”
Ranma nodded again, resolutely, in tandem with her husband. “We were hoping there might be something that cures any curse... or something that steals magical power, something that could sap the energy the curse feeds on.”
Nabiki nodded in return, thoughtfully. “Those are good starts. Although...” She paused, many expressions crossing her face one after the other.
Ranma waited respectfully. Nabiki was the smartest person she knew; if anyone could see her way through this tangle, it was the businesswoman before her.
“Well, it’s really odd, don’t you see?” she said almost explosively. “As much as I respect my sister’s medical expertise, I’ll give myself the credit of being slightly beyond her in terms of logic. Why in heaven’s name have you met the requirement for womanhood all of a sudden?”
Ranma’s lips quirked. “According to Kasumi, because I had Sachiko. That’s the requirement for womanhood in the book of Amazon law: having a child. Shampoo told me herself.”
Nabiki shook her head. “No. Then you would have switched the moment you conceived – or, more likely, the moment you gave birth. Why eight months later?”
Ryoga spoke up. “Kasumi said she wasn’t certain what requirement Ranma had met – it could be something far less visible.”
Nabiki nodded. “I suppose. But still... something about the whole business bugs me.”
“Me too,” Ranma said dryly, bouncing Sachiko on her knee. “Not that I’m complaining... but one moment I’m sparring with the guy, the next we’re married with a kid...”
“You know that’s not what I mean, Ranma,” Nabiki chided. “I’m telling you that my elder sister’s explanation of what’s happened to you doesn’t fit.”
Ryoga sighed deeply, his breath leaving him in frustration. “You’re going leaps and bounds beyond me. The thing that drives me insane is that I can’t figure out what happened to all of my wife’s memories... her older body... the way she moved and talked and was. It’s so hard for me to grasp that all of that has just... just... disappeared.”
Ranma nodded morosely, then froze. “Aw, maaannnn,” she moaned, putting her head in her hands.
“What is it, Ranma?”
“What if it don’t have anything to do with the curse...? I mean, the simplest answer is that she didn’t disappear!”
“What, Ranma?” Ryoga murmured.
“We just switched places!”
For a long moment, there was a silent tableau as Nabiki and Ryoga processed this.
Then they were both speaking at once.
“What do you mean? Are you saying when you leapt forward, she went back!” Ryoga exclaimed.
“She’s stuck back at sixteen... or everyone thinking she is, maybe...” That from Ranma.
“She’s stuck in the nineties,” Nabiki pondered laconically. “Ah, a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone... Though it makes far more sense. Brava, Ranma.”
Ranma gulped. “But then how did it happen?”
“Who knows?” Nabiki sighed theatrically. “A rip in the space-time continuum, some new attack of Ryoga’s...”
Ryoga shook his head. “No. That’s impossible. I can only move myself around...”
Nabiki’s eyes widened. “Wait. Think about it, Ryoga.” Nabiki was animated, now, her short hair swinging in her agitation. “Your curse?”
Ryoga’s eyes widened briefly. “But... no, wait. I can control my curse, now. There’s no way I would have sent my wife anyplace.”
“No... but back then, back when we were all sixteen, you couldn’t control it?” Ranma hazarded, following Nabiki’s logic with growing excitement. “What if sixteen-year-old you sent me here? And I somehow... I dunno...”
“Your presence bumped the current Ranma back. An exchange of some kind,” Nabiki filled in. She turned to Ryoga, a sudden, speculative light in her eyes. “Well?”
Ryoga stood, finally loosing his grip on the redhead. When he spoke, each word dropped off of him like a stone, so heavy and full of despair that their forming was an ordeal in and of itself. “I did it... I brought her here; I sent my wife away.” He swallowed, turning to gaze at Ranma, his eyes full of guilt and misery. “I remember, now. I did this to you. Not on purpose, but now I see that... I see that it must’ve been me. I’m sorry, Ranma,” Ryoga said, and he did look sorry – sorry and desolate. “Let me explain... It’s an offshoot of my directional problems. Or, I guess you could say that it’s what happens when I exert control over them.”
Nabiki sighed. “Back in the late nineties, you and Cologne worked with Ryoga to overcome his directional curse. Over time, you found that every time he got seriously lost, there was a high flash of aura, an expenditure of chi.”
“The first time I became aware of that was during a battle with you,” Ryoga continued softly. “I was angry... really, really angry... but then I saw you falling back and I saw how you were headed, towards the rocks in the koi pond.” His eyes were wide as they flickered unconsciously in the direction of the pond, then back down to the surface of the table. He swallowed. “There was a sudden panic in me. I really thought you would die. Maybe part of the control I gained was in there, somewhere. I think I got it for the first time, what ‘dead’ really means, and... and I didn’t want that. I wanted you to live so much that I felt a physical pain in my chest. I suddenly just couldn’t let it happen...
“Just as suddenly, I had the impression I could catch you. Don’t know where it came from. You were obviously so far away. There was no way I could manage to save you, now that I think about it. But I was certain at the time. I reached out to pull. I felt sure my hand caught on something. I thought I’d caught your hands in mine. I thought for sure you’d laugh at me and ask what I was doing trying to save you.”
His eyes lifted and he examined the redhead, an apology in his eyes. “The experience was really very powerful, or I wouldn’t have recalled it at all. Something pulled out and away... but not Ranma. She fell, and smacked her head on the rocks. I ran out into the water up to my knees and pulled her out.” He shook his head. “I remember Akane screaming, but that was really it. I just couldn’t understand it. I’d felt your hands in mine... I was so sure.” He flexed his right hand, recalling the feeling.
Ranma swallowed. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that it was maybe you I pulled. Forward, like I meant to, but not the right way.”
“There’s no evidence of that,” Ranma said weakly.
Nabiki bit her lower lip. “I think that there is. If you were transported here, and she was bumped back then in response, around when would she appear?”
Ranma cast her mind back. “Uh, I guess, all things being equal, she arrived right after Ryoga punched her into the koi pond.” She frowned. “And... and then she woke up... and s-saw Ryoga...”
“And assumed that he was her husband,” Ryoga cut in with sudden understanding.
“And kissed him!” Nabiki, Ranma and Ryoga finished.
Nabiki shook her head in amazement. “That explains a lot of Ranma’s odd behaviour at that point in time. When the older Ranma saw me in the doorway, she must have known where she was. I mean, I look different. And when she left the room, she must’ve noticed how different Akane looked–”
“The same things I noticed, in reverse... the kitchen, my old room...” Ranma ticked off. “She... she went into shock.” A practically audible click sounded in her mind. “Remember? Something made me upset, really upset! I... did stupid crap, like... punch a hole in the deck, and disappear for days... Do you remember that, Ryoga?”
“Is that possible?” Ryoga wasn’t looking at Nabiki; his eyes were trained onto Ranma, as if her next words would settle the matter completely in his mind.
“If... if she woke up and found out that she didn’t have a husband anymore... just an enemy... if... Kami-sama, if Sachiko was gone... I don’t know what she’d do.” The redhead’s eyes widened in sudden surmise. “Unlike me, everything she’d see would be familiar... recognizable. She could even be thinking that her life with Ryoga and Sachiko wasn’t real... was just some kind of whacked-out dream about being a wife and a mother after getting knocked on the head!”
Nabiki met Ranma’s panicked eyes with her own. “And because of what happened the first time she knocked her head.1 Or, rather, Akane knocked it for her.”
Ranma laughed, but it emerged sounding half-panicked.
“Damn it. So that’s why you went so quiet.” Nabiki’s eyes met Ryoga’s. “We have to get her out of there.”
Ranma blinked. “But what’ll happen to me?”
“All things being equal, as you said,” Nabiki replied, “you should go right back where you came from.”
Ranma paled, staring down at Sachiko; she fell silent for a long moment, her lips parting as though she wanted to speak, but wasn’t certain what to say. She licked dry lips and finally sound emerged. “Do you know what you’re asking me?” she stammered quietly. “Christ, Nabiki... what will I say? What will I do?”
Ryoga and Nabiki met her pleading eyes with pity, but no answers. Ranma’s heart felt like it was caving in within her chest. Each breath was painful. “Damn it... but I can’t leave her there, either, can I?”
“For more reasons than one,” Nabiki replied softly. “Ever heard of a causality loop? She’ll be stuck repeating those same six years over and over again until she dies, unless you return.”
Ryoga blanched, staring down at his hand clasped in Ranma’s.
Ranma closed her eyes. “Maybe there is – at least some. There was a light, right before I passed out! His chi... it did reach out to me. But I felt like I was falling away, very, very far away.” She swallowed heavily. “Kami-sama... you took me here by accident... but maybe, now, you can put me back, on purpose?”
Ryoga closed his eyes tightly. “Maybe. But I might just as easily hurt you, or send you someplace inhospitible, or ten thousand years into the past.”
“Who knows?” Ranma replied cheerfully. “Maybe I land in the spring of drowned girl... and drown!”
“Don’t joke, Ranma,” Nabiki commanded tautly. “Ryoga, it’s obviously Ranma’s only hope. You’d better do your best to figure out what you did that day – and how to reverse it.”
Author’s Notes:
Yaaayy! They finally got it! Were you placing bets on how long it would take?
I think it’s easy for us to see, since we get the full picture – that is, we see both timelines and we get enough evidence to convince us about just how these things happened. Unfortunately, each Ranma is only getting about half of said evidence, so it’s a bit harder for either of them to arrive at the right conclusion.
I guess I could have had them cure Ranma’s curse and never find out their error – they’d live thinking they’d fixed it for all time! – but that’s a bit more diabolical than I’m willing to be.
I anticipate getting some mail about how it’s lame that Ryoga couldn’t tell the difference between a sixteen-year-old Ranma and a twenty-two-year-old Ranma. In answer to that, I’d love to show ya’ll a picture of myself at sixteen and twenty-two. There is no difference. (I am now twenty-four, and yet people routinely ask me what colleges I’m considering.) It’s actually pretty common in girls to be mostly done growing and developing by sixteen years old. And Ranma doesn’t seem to be the type interested in stuff like hairstyles, so she’d probably keep the same one so long as it was working for her. If there are any other objections, I beg for a suspension of disbelief.
On a final note, it’s rather important that you understand Nabiki’s particular and mostly correct assumptions about what has happened to Ranma, and why Ranma suddenly seemed to be depressed around 1998. If you aren’t certain about what she’s getting at, please let me know; or read the second half of this chapter one more time. I beg forgiveness for not being clearer; a better author would not have to add this addendum. I am exhausted with this storyline, however, especially since it was supposed to be a ‘relaxing’ Ranma 1/2 fic, so that I could edge a bit away from TSAG and JSF.
See you next time! (Don’t worry, it’s not over yet.)
1 Here Nabiki is referring to the “Am I... Pretty?” episode of much fanfiction fame. Ranma bumps her head on a rock in the koi pond and no longer recalls being a boy. Being Ranma, this girl has a very stereotypical impression of what it means to be feminine, and flounces about for the remainder of the episode.
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