A SPAMfic that got a little too big for itself. C&C greatly appreciated!
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Oh My Goddess "Skuld's Fix"
Crossover Story by Douglas MacDougall
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Originally posted 19 Jan 1999.
The latest revision of this story is available at:
http://www.crosswinds.net/boston/~dougmacd/works.html
Oh My Goddess! (c) Kosuke Fujishima. English translation
and lettering (c) Studio Proteus and Dark Horse Comics, Inc.
Ranma 1/2 (c) Rumiko Takahashi / Shogakukan * Kitty Film * Fuji TV.
Exclusively licensed throughout the United States and Canada by Viz
Communications, Inc. This fan fiction is for private home use only;
it may be freely redistributed, but not altered or used for profit.
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A Oneshot Fic
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Skuld didn't like headaches. She didn't get them very often, but in her
opinion even those few were completely undeserved. For some dumb reason the
Almighty had arbitrarily decided that eating ice cream too quickly would give
you a "brain freeze", when clearly there should be no limit on the speed or
quantity at which one ate the most perfect food on Earth.
Thus, she was even more irritated to discover she was developing a mild
headache despite the fact that she had abstained from ice cream for over six
hours! Wondering if it could be withdrawal symptoms, she popped open a
single-serve cup of strawberry swirl and snarfed it down.
No change.
Going back to the freezer she got a scoop of some praline pecan, mud pie,
mint, and death by chocolate. A quickly emptied bowl later, there was no
change in her headache, although she was feeling slightly powered-up.
Her headache was coupled with a vague sense of unease that distracted her
to the point where she was no longer able to work on the blueprints for her
Banpei Mk VIII. She started pacing the house. Urd was off pestering some
human named Masaki, and Belldandy was working with Keiichi at the Motor Club,
so there was nobody home.
She was bored.
Stepping outside, she inhaled the fresh air, hoping to shake the sense of
unease. It was early into fall, and the leaves were just changing color. A
gentle wind turned them over, making the trees look even more alive. While it
was darkly overcast above, the low sun behind her still provided bright light
to the treetops. The contrast of light and dark, gray and colors was
mesmerizing.
On the spur of the moment, Skuld decided to talk a short walk. Some
exercise should make her feel better, and it was a beautiful day out. She
could even go visit Belldandy. Or Urd. If she couldn't get rid of her own
headache, perhaps she could give one to her rude older sister.
With a giggle of delight, the small goddess walked out of the temple and
out onto the sidewalk, immediately bumping into a boy.
"Hey watch were you're going!" she yelled, landing on her butt. The boy
just stood there, staring dumbly at her. How rude!
He was younger then Keiichi, with black hair braided into a pigtail. He
wore his Chinese clothes with a complete air of self-confidence, and might
even be considered good looking if he wasn't a jerk.
Eventually he gave her a hand getting up, "Sorry, kid."
"I am NOT a kid!" She grabbed his hand and pulled herself up, brushing at
her skirt and rubbing her head. The headache she had been trying to forget
was becoming worse, as was her sense of unease. She felt like she was
standing on the cusp of something, that something was about to happen.
"Uh, sure thing." The boy locked his fingers behind his head and started
walking away. The breeze suddenly picked up, and Skuld could hear gentle
voices on the wind. After a moment, she realized it was the spirits telling
her that it was about to rain.
Forgetting the boy, she smiled widely. Even her headache seemed to
diminish. Big sister Belldandy had told her that as she got older and came
into her powers, she would be able to hear the voices of nature! She flipped
a switch on Mjolnir, and like a fan, her debugging hammer unfolded itself a
parasol configuration, opening just as the rain began.
She stood and watched the rain with a delight she normally didn't have.
This must be what it's like for Belldandy, she thought. Seeing beauty in
everything.
"'Scuse me!" The jerk that had knocked her down had turned around and was
running straight towards her. The pain behind her eyes mounted. Was this guy
the source of her headache?
Before she had completed the thought, and a fraction of a second before he
placed himself under Skuld's mech-umbrella, the boy turned into a well-rounded
redheaded girl. In the same instant, Skuld's headache and sense of unease
disappeared.
"Aw, man!"
"Demon!" Skuld hopped back and remotely activated Banpei. Her hammer
reconfigured into its normal squashing mode, and she prepared to use it on the
flame-haired succubus. Some sort of danger-sense must have alerted her that
this creature was disguised and approaching. It was a good thing she had
stayed around the house while Belldandy and Urd were out, or it could have
caused no end of mischief!
"Uh, this isn't what it looks like." The demon waved it's hands and
almost imperceptibly shifted it's weight into a prepared stance. Skuld
immediately recognized it as an anti-mallet defensive position. This one
would be trouble!
"Return whence you came, succubus! Begone, or I'll... Do something bad to
you!" She waved Mjolnir around threateningly.
"I'm not a... suck-you... whatever you said!" she countered. Well,
judging from the rough tone to her speech, she wasn't a succubus, anyway.
They spoke pleasingly and seductively, nothing like this one. Unless they
started making tomboy succubi.
"You can't fool me! I'm a Goddess, second class!"
"Say what?!"
"And in the name of the Almighty, I will punish you!"
"You've been watching too many cartoons, kid, I--" the demon, or oni, or
whatever it was didn't have a chance to say anything else as the previously
summoned Air-Banpei II launched a net and captured the evil creature.
"Hey!"
Skuld turned a dial around the handle of her mighty Mjolnir, and the
hammer extended to half-again its normal length. Characters of an anti-evil
ward illuminated on the face of the hammer's head.
"Skuld Demon SMASH!" She brought the hammer down on the beast, clubbing
it to unconsciousness.
"Ow." Well, almost unconsciousness.
Skuld blinked. "I said, Skuld Smash!" She clubbed the demon again, but
it still failed to disappear. "Why won't you smash, demon?!" At the very
least it should have started smoking. Even an oni would have been dispelled
by the ward.
"I told you, I'm not a demon!"
"You shapeshifted right in front of me! Of course you're a demon!"
"I'm a guy! I just turn into a girl whenever I'm splashed with cold
water. It's a curse! Now let me go, you dumb kid!" The girl struggled
against her bonds.
* * * * * *
Skuld watched the girl, or rather boy, as he changed back with the extra
hot water from the kettle she had used for tea. "Hmm." Her danger-sense, or
whatever it was, was back.
"Yeah, well, thanks for letting me come inside. I'll leave just as soon
as this shower is over." Standing inside the open doorway, the boy leaned
against the door jam, folding his arms an crossing his legs in a sort of cocky
manner. He gazed outside into the gentle rain with a scowl on his face.
Skuld grabbed a diagnostic scanner, which started bipping and booping as
she passed it around the boy. He didn't move, but watched the device warily.
The Goddess fiddled with the dials, and watched the isomagic lines that
appeared on the small screen. Looking at the results, she scratched her
head.
At first glance, she had no idea how or why the boy turned into a girl.
Or why he gave him the weird sense of unease that was causing the headache
that had returned the moment he was restored to his male form. If it hadn't
been a danger-sense warning her of a demon, what was it?
At least the scanner upheld the boy's claim that he wasn't a demon, oni,
or other evil creature. He had good and evil in a normal balance for humans,
although there WAS an element of primal Chaos associated with him.
"I'll figure this out," she said, and sat down at her computer. Punching
a few buttons, she saved and stored her work on the new Banpei schematics, and
started punching in the data from the scanner.
At the edge of the room, still in the open doorway, the boy little-sweated.
* * * * * *
"I get it! It's so simple!"
"Uh?" After ten minutes waiting for the shower to stop, the boy had
finally decided to sit down. He turned around to look at Skuld.
"I know why I'm getting this weird sense off of you. And how the curse
works. Heck, I can even fix it!"
"Wh- What? Really?" Without standing up, the boy managed to skitter
hallway across the room, still in a kneeling position, in one second flat.
His eyes brimmed over with tears and he grabbed Skuld's shoulders, looking
deeply into her eyes. His approach and contact heightened her unease. "You
can cure me?"
"Well, I can't cure you. Because of Yggdrasil's crash, I don't have my
full powers." She neglected to mention that she had only had her powers a
short time, and had barely moved beyond writing magical text of people's
(or dark-skinned Goddesses') faces. "But I can make it so you'll immediately
change back after you're splashed with water..."
He had seemed crushed when she said she couldn't cure him, but now he was
full of happiness again. He actually threw her up into the air and caught
her! "That's great! Can you cure me now?"
"Do NOT throw Goddesses around!" she chided him. When he enthusiastically
placed her back on the tatami mat, she said, "Very well. If you want the fix,
first change back into a girl."
"Um, okay. Is this part of the cure?" The boy stepped outside into the
rain just long enough to change, and then stepped back into the house. As
Skuld suspected, her headache completely disappeared as the girl returned.
"No. You're just less of a jerk as a girl."
* * * * * *
Two hours later, and after much pestering from the redhead, Skuld had
finished calculating the runes and incantation that would be required for the
fix. Computerized simulations had proven her hypothesis, and she was sure
that she could perform the spell even with her limited powers.
Just for safety's sake, however, she ate a pint of rocky road to replenish
her powers before starting.
It took another forty-five minutes to finish drawing out the figures and
symbols on the floor that would focus and alter the magical energies she would
be weaving. Her subject kept on fidgeting and threatened to break the seal
she was drawing around her. It finally took the threat of physical violence
from Mjolnir to get her to sit still. Or at least sit down.
After all the preparatory work, the spell itself was almost nothing. A
minute of incanting and she saw the magical crux to the curse that maintained
the boy's gender. With the guidance of the seal, she carefully weaving the
spell around it, she shattered that element completely. Satisfied that the
magical integrity of the curse was still sound without the element, she slowly
withdrew her magical energies and took a moment to relax.
"How much longer?" asked the girl.
Skuld rolled her eyes. "I'm done."
"R- Really? Can I get out of this stupid thing now?" she pointed at the
runes drawn around her.
"Yes," sighed Skuld.
"AlRIGHT!" The girl leapt out of the circle in a way that made Skuld
twitch. The girl's movement caused her to bounce around almost as badly as
Urd. Not that she cared of course. Still, she looked unhappily at her own
chest.
The girl grabbed a kettle of hot water and poured it on herself. "Never
gonna be a girl again!" As the water spilled over her head, her shape
flickered...
She threw the kettle down and made a 'manly' pose. "Now I'm one hundred
per... cent... Woman? WHAT DID YOU DO!?! WHY DIDN'T I CHANGE BACK?!?"
Skuld winced and scratched her ear. She could be pretty loud, for a girl.
"You did change back. But just for a second."
"Wh- What?" The girl grabbed the kettle again and ran into the bathroom,
standing in front of the mirror. She poured the last bit of water on herself,
and watched as her hair became black, her neck thickened, shoulders broadened,
breasts flattened, waist widened, hips thinned, and legs grew muscled. Like a
wave, her bright hair, slender neck, large boson, wasp waist, "best hips in
Japan", and dainty legs reappeared right behind.
She had only turned into a guy where the hot water was actually touching
her. Running back into the main room she screeched, "You screwed it up!!!"
Skuld took on a lecturing voice, "I TOLD you that the fix would make it so
that you would 'immediately change back after you're splashed with water'."
"immediately... change... back...?" After a moment of shock, the normal
volume of her voice returned with a vengeance. "WELL WHY DIDN"T YOU TURN ME
BACK INTO A GUY *BEFORE* CASTING THE STUPID SPELL!?!"
Skuld's ire started to raise. "It's not like it would have made a
difference."
"What are you talking about?!? If I had been a guy, the change into a
GIRL wouldn't stick. Now, my change back into a GUY won't stick!!"
"No, you still would've turned into a girl."
"What?"
"After analyzing your curse, I discovered the mechanism by which it
works. Have you ever wondered why hot water changes you into a guy, and
cold water changes you into a girl?"
"Who CARES why the temperature makes a difference? I--"
Skuld cut off the girl, who she was only just realizing was almost as
annoying as in her boy-form. "Hot water has a greater amount of energy in it
than cold water. So logically, you would expect it to be the other way
around. Hot water should activate your curse, and cold water changes you
back."
"Then can you--"
"Then I realized that the cold water is merely a triggering mechanism.
When you are splashed with hot water, half of the energy is transferred into
your curse. The other half drives your transformation into a boy."
"DROVE the transformation! Thanks to you--"
"When you are 'uncursed', your magical energy state is actually greater
then when you are 'cursed'. The secret that it took me to discover is that
all that energy is in a POTENTIAL form!
"Yes, splashing you with hot water is like... pushing a boulder up a hill.
Some of the energy goes into the boulder, but the rest goes into overcoming
gravity, moving the boulder higher up.
"At the top, you can put a wedge under the boulder to keep it from
falling. Splashing you with cold water is like removing the wedge. It
requires very little energy to remove, but by doing so, the boulder will roll
back down the hill, thereby converting its potential energy from height into
the kinetic energy of motion.
"It's the same with your curse. Half of the energy in the hot water
turned you into a boy, and the rest was stored as potential energy to be able
to turn you back into a girl later. What my cure did was remove the 'wedge'.
Hot water will still push the boulder up the hill, but it will immediately
roll back down. In your case, any potential magical energy will immediately
turn back into actual magical energy. So you stay a girl!"
After a few moments of silence, the girl determined that Skuld had
finished her narration, and would now be able to say more then ten words
without being interrupted. "I don't want to be a girl, I want to stay a GUY!"
"Oh, I don't have the power to do that."
The girl started fuming. "Then change me back to the way I was."
"No."
"You can't?"
"I won't."
"..." The girl blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You're less of a jerk this way." Although not by much.
"I"M A GUY, DAMMIT!!"
"Not unless you're swimming in hot water, you aren't."
"Change. Me. Back. Now." Skuld noticed the girl's hands flexing into
fists and karate-chop-like configurations. In her pocket, she held onto the
Banpei panic button.
"To a Goddess, your curse is like... Like... Like those boulders in
Colorado."
"What?"
"Those boulders, sitting on top of those spires. They're just sitting
up there, balancing, waiting to fall. It's just so... precarious. Instead
of using their potential energy, they sit there, and who knows when they
could fall?"
"So...?"
"So, when you're a boy, sensing all that magical potential energy waiting
to come out... It's like standing under that boulder. Perched up high like
that, teetering over the edge, it looks like it could fall at any minute. It
makes me uneasy. You give anyone with any sort of magical sensitivity a
splitting migraine."
"So you turned me into a girl because my boy-side was giving you a
headache?!"
"Well, yeah. Plus you have a serious imbalance of Yang--"
"I'LL KILL YOU!!!"
The girl might not be a demon, but Skuld had very little doubt that there
was SOME oni blood somewhere in the girl's ancestry, what with her shocking
red hair and terrible temper. She probably ate like a gluttonous beast, too.
As the girl's hands were about to wrap themselves around Skuld's neck, and
Skuld was about to press her panic-button, a shapely leg came out of the
television set. Soon the matching leg, hips, midriff, and all the other good
parts followed.
"Urd."
"So, little sis, what've you been doing with your big sister's out?"
The pig-tailed girl blinked at the new arrival, frozen in mid-choke.
"Found a new friend?" The dark skinned Goddess flipped some flowing
silver tresses over her shoulder.
Finally the violent girl found her voice, "YOU!!"
"Moi?" Urd raised her eyebrows and tilted her head.
"You're the one who... GET AWAY FROM ME!!!" The girl suddenly turned and
ran, flying out the door and off the temple grounds.
Skuld blinked. "What was that about?"
Urd shrugged, "Never met the girl before."
"Boy, actually."
"Oh really? That sounds interesting..." Urd's lips curved into a naughty
smile. "A Jusenkyo victim, perhaps?"
Skuld started cleaning up her magic circle. "Who knows? At least he's
not giving me a headache anymore..."
"She reminds of a young man I met about a year ago. Um... Renma
something. Poor boy didn't know anything about girls, so I decided to help
him out. Told his old man about a village full of beautiful fighting girls
just on the other side of the Springs. With his martial arts abilities, I'm
sure the boy was able to find a girl to make him very happy.
"Come to think of it, I'll go check up on him. Maybe he could use a
little advice from the Goddess of Love!" She laughed and dashed out of the
house, no doubt to find the boy from her past.
Skuld gave a little prayer for the boy, wherever he was. Urd's personal
attention was perhaps the worst curse Skuld could imagine. Still, she
couldn't bring herself to care too much. Her headache was gone and she just
had the greatest idea for the latest upgrade to her Banpei...
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End
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Douglas MacDougall My small collection of fanfics and fanart is at:
dougmacd@thecia.net http://www.crosswinds.net/boston/~dougmacd/works.html