Nice story. Very well told.
Like Krista, I have *S P O I L E R S* for the story below
"I'm afraid there's been no change."
"No... change," I repeated dumbly. The words are a tornado,
chilling, darkening, demolishing into rubble my walls of denial and
false hope.
Compelling. This last sentence sets the reader up to anticipate
something _bad_. (Of course, in the context of the ending, this
is going a bit far, but the reader doesn't know that yet...)
No change. Of course there's been no change. Why
would there be? Trouble rarely goes away when you sit and wait
for it to fix itself. Yet sometimes that's the only thing to try.
Fatalistic. Not really what Akane's been doing, we see later in
the story, but another good set-up.
The clinic is a maze of corridors and examination rooms with
tables of cold stainless steel. Racks of medicine and equipment
hang on the walls, like the torture implements of a medieval dungeon.
A bit overkill with the sterile imagery here, perhaps.
"Well, Mrs.--"
"Akane."
Heh. Go ahead, LEAVE the reader in suspense as to just who Akane
married...
hospital. Her kidneys were bad, they said; but they put her on a
dialysis machine and eventually transplanted another kidney into her
body, and she was able to come home. How I wish that were possible in
this case.
Raising the question in the reader's mind as to _why_ it _isn't_
possible in this case... (this is where I began to suspect the real
identity of the patient).
I don't know what he means, and then I do. I remember holding
him in my arms as we rode to the clinic, how he shivered and trembled
and stared straight ahead and how in his eyes held no recognition for
me, nothing but pain.
Good description, applicable to both a dying spouse and a dying pet.
Except.... "Doctor, I promised my husband I would wait until
he's back."
Still unnamed...
With nothing else to do, I sit back and wait, as I said, for my
husband, wondering a little angrily why he couldn't have stayed
with me through this. I thought they were friends. He was the one
who nearly throttled the doctor demanding a dialysis machine, until
the doctor explained why it wouldn't work. Then he read the letter
we'd gotten from Shampoo, and ran off to the location her map had
shown, not explaining why it couldn't wait just a few days.
Problem, sort of: "throttled the doctor demanding a dialysis machine"?
This doesn't happen, later. In fact, there's no time for it to happen.
"My husband" reads the letter at home and departs from there.
And why _wouldn't_ it work? You've got me curious, but never explain
it.
The early morning sky outside is blackened, as if the
sun were too ill to show up for work today. Rain pours down in a
never-ending rhythm, sloshing up against the window as a gust of wind
howls.
The heavens do weep for P-chan, we see.
I hate it.
Very abrupt attention-getter. Hating water? The necessity of life?
Also quite Akane-like to feel such an emotion about a substance
she'd doesn't have the luxury of doing without.
I hate it for what it used to do to Ranma, and what it won't do
to him anymore.
Uh-oh.
I hate it for ruining our chance at a normal life
together. Strange that I still think of Ranma as a he, even though in
strict biological terms that pronoun hasn't applied to him since high
school. But anything else feels like giving up on him.
AH-HA! Gary's take on "Ranma-stuck-as-a-girl!" (Actually, from
the title I was half-expecting your take on Ukyou or Konatsu dying.)
as handsome!" He knew full well what the name of Kodachi's new love
interest was, but refused to admit it to himself.
Hmmm... Gosunkugi, perhaps? Your last sentence suggests to me that
you had someone specific in mind. And it would be like Ranma to
object more than Alan had him doing in "Turning the Wheel".
"This is not good," Ranma said. "We better go ask the ghoul
about this."
That was quick of Ranma. A tad OOC, perhaps, but then, your plot
really requires somebody to move on this. Might work better
to switch it around? Ranma shrugs it off, Akane is alarmed?
"So that's the story," Ranma said. "Any idea what the deal is?"
<clip>
"Pack your belongings. We're leaving tomorrow morning."
Also a tad quick. Cologne can't think of any alternate possibility?
No tests? Granted, you don't want to spend a lot of time on this,
but it wouldn't take many words to have Cologne run a quick check
(trying cold, then boiling, herself? Takahashi might have Cologne
do that.)
"Back to China. Ranma is no longer a suitable husband for you."
"HEY! I am so!" Ranma looked at Shampoo, then at me. "I mean,
not that I will, but if I did, I would be! Got that, old ghoul?"
_Very_ nicely IC for Ranma.
"But," she continued, paying him no heed, "a virus can mutate.
Adapt. New strains can evolve that are resistant to medicines that
worked against them before."
"Ranma's curse has... evolved?" I said, wondering what more
there was that she hadn't told us yet.
"Correct, child. It happens with some curse victims; with
others, it never does. Ethnicity seems to be a factor. It
seems to be a near certainty for Europeans,
What? You mean Jusenkyou-cursed American S.I.'s will find the
curse PERMANENT? (Heh.)
against foreigners. As a Japanese, I had expected you to be
safe, but it appears that I was mistaken."
Hmm... Ranma has some Ainu ancestry, perhaps?
"No trick. Very soon, even boiling water will change you into a
woman, Ranma; and no sort of water will change you back."
Awkward: had to read this sentence a couple of times. I keep
expecting a missing "not" before the even. Exchange the clauses,
maybe? (I unconsciously expect the "cure" clause first.)
"A very special underground spring is rumored to exist
somewhere. The name I've heard for it is zuihouniquan. According to
legends, it's capable of changing any creature into a human, and
removing any other curses regardless of which stages they're in."
Partial nit: okay, here's _one_ possible cure; but what about
others? What about the original Nannichuan? Perhaps a sentence
explaining that it was destroyed for good at the end of Vol 38?
Then there's still the possibility of additional Japanese
nannichuans, wish-granting swords, etc., etc. As Krista said,
this is the Ranmaverse. A possible cure is ALWAYS around
somewhere. The nit at the moment is in Cologne's defeatist
attitude.
Cologne sighed. "I've no idea. It could be anywhere in the
world. Or nowhere. Rumors aren't always true.
Unlike her to bring _this_ one up, then. But your plot _does_
require it. Hmm... not sure how to fix this. Additional words?
She's never heard of a European being cured after the curse
mutates?
And if it does exist, there's no guarantee that there's enough
water in it to effect a cure."
Nice foreshadow.
"Ranma, there's an old Amazon saying that you might wish to bear
in mind." Cologne hopped down from the chair to the floor. "A true
warrior only fights when fighting is to her advantage."
Turning, he looked her directly in the eyes. "His."
Hmm... An interesting interpretation of Cologne: that Ranma is
better off as a woman warrior.
An hour later, we had dragged several large cardboard boxes full
of books and scrolls from Happosai's room into mine. We sat on the
floor, searching for anything related to what Cologne had
talked about.
EXCELLENT start! Why don't any other permanently-cursed Ranmas
do this? (Well, to be fair, we're often just told, not shown, about
this stage.)
"An issue of 'Shaved Nuns in Bondage Quarterly.' He must've put
it away in the wrong box."
Heh.
"Really?" I read it. *For some victims, the curses of Jusenkyo
may eventually require hotter and hotter water to undo, soon
leaving the victim fixed in cursed form. In such cases,*
The page ended there. Ranma turned to the next one. I began to
feel hopeful.
I continued reading. *...there is no known way to remove the
curse. For this reason, Jusenkyo should be avoided at all costs.*
Odd narrative here. What does the '*' signify? At first I didn't
even notice it, and thought you were making some point about Ranma
not being able to read (so Akane was reading to him). I guess you
mean Akane is reading silently, while Ranma does the same. You
might want to think about this, but I have no suggestions.
"Y'know, Akane, I remember a story my pop told me once. This guy
was being chased by wild animals, and they cornered him. There wasn't
any chance for him to escape. No matter what he did, he was gonna get
eaten. Then he noticed a cherry nearby, on a vine or something. So
instead of doing anything else, the guy ate it, and enjoyed
how good it tasted before the animals ripped his guts out."
Heh. So this is how Ranma tells that Zen koan...
"Thinkin' about that story, and this thing with the curse...
I've figured out something that I didn't really know before."
"What's that, Ranma?"
"My pop is a complete idiot."
From above a sharp bang sounded, like the bursting of an
over-full balloon. The room went black.
Frankly, "Akane facefaulted" just works better for me.
And this _is_ a bit dim, even for Ranma (who calls Genma an
idiot constantly).
I sat up in bed. I knew that if I did go to his room, Ranma
would be a jerk about it. *Can't help havin' the hots for a big stud
like me, eh, Akane?* How dare he assume just because I was
worried about him that I was there for... that!
Not sure how I feel about this. Seems like it should be matched
with Akane regretting, later, that she didn't do it anyway, if it
was her last chance to get pregnant. Does her fertility cross
her mind this night, one way or the other? Maybe it should.
Or maybe she _should_ go to Ranma, only to find him asleep. Or
awake, but they _don't_ do anything.
Anyway, Akane seems slightly OOC to me here. She doesn't often
believe the worst about Ranma _ahead_ of time; usually it's just
after he opens his mouth.
The scene isn't bad as written, but I can't help thinking that
a different scene in its place might not be a lot more compelling.
"Check this out." He handed me a piece of paper. The picture on
it showed a man in full scuba gear, complete with cyclopean mask and
duck-like flippers.
Heh: Ranma's "brilliant plan". I agree with Krista, though: _THIS_
is the reaction of Takahashi's Ranma to the news.
every day from now on. That wasn't so bad, was it? There were
people who had to take medication every day or they'd go into
convulsions or risk a heart attack or even become suicidal. But
as long as they kept taking their medicine, they could lead
perfectly ordinary lives.
Ahh... perspective. How unusual for a Ranma character.
to buy weights. It wasn't very far away; just a couple of blocks past
Furinkan. Ranma could take Ushiro street and be back in under a half
hour.
The street on which the ladle lady lies in wait is _past_ Furinkan?
Then why does Ranma keep walking past her?
"Damn it, Akane... I could've won." Ranma collapsed into my
arms, crying like a woman. No, like a human being. "I could've won."
Why is Ranma so sure that was it? That he doesn't have a few more
changes left? (I know, I know, you want to advance the plot.)
she told him. Well then, he said, it needed to be more boiling.
Heh. But isn't this actually possible? You can have sub-freezing
water under special conditions; I'd have thought you could keep
water fluid above boiling by applying pressure or something.
(Not that this is what Ranma is thinking of.)
decision. I called Mrs. Saotome on the telephone.
So she's obviously moved back to her repaired house (although Genma
didn't).
"It is the gods' will, evidently, that Ranma, at least for the
present, is to be a woman. So, he should learn how to be a woman."
"How do you mean?" I asked, not liking where this was going.
"Buy him some women's clothes. Take him on 'girls' nights out.'
Go to a cooking class together."
"Thank you, Mrs. Saotome," I said. "I'll give your idea all the
consideration it deserves." I hung up.
Heh. Your Nodoka and Kenjiko's think alike, I see. Well, she should
take some appropriately loopy tack here, and this fits.
Okay, so I didn't have the wisdom that comes with age. But I
did, at least some of the time, know a dangerously stupid idea when I
hear one. All his life, Ranma had been told that being manly was good,
that he was worthless unless he acted like a macho jerk all
of the time.
As much as I might like to cure him of that, I couldn't just pretend
that it wasn't so anymore.
_VERY_ sensitive of Akane.
clear what that would take. If I were planning to fight Pantyhose,
Saffron, and Ashura single-handed, I wouldn't have been more afraid.
No Herb on her list? Of course, Akane didn't see as much of him.
He sighed. "Dammit, that's a pretty big 'but.' You want
everybody to run around sayin' that you like girls instead of guys?"
"I don't care," I lied. Actually, it was a half-truth. I did
care; just not enough for it to matter.
It's certainly clear from the manga that Akane does care what
"everybody" says: her first reaction is always "People are watching!"
And this is always the _only_ reaction of hers we're shown.
I like it that it never occurs to Ranma that Akane might have a
real (as opposed to P/R) problem here. He knows Akane very well
indeed, zeroing in on what, to Akane, is the real issue, and neither
of them notice the omission.
"Oh yeah, suuuure you don't. Forget it, Akane. Normal girls just
don't marry other girls. We can do it i-- when I get cured so
I can turn back into a guy again.
A tad OOC for Ranma to slip on "if" even this much, this early in
the game. Granted, you don't want to insert a six-week pause here.
What did we care what normal people did?
Akane _is_ growing up here, but in such a way that she doesn't
notice it. She, unlike Ranma, _does_ care in canon.
"Welcome to Ucchan's." Her voice was so frigid, I expected to
see icicles dripping from her tongue. "Your server will be
with you in a moment."
Not sure where this "frigidity" comes from.
"Oh? Is this the 'let's all be friends' speech? Ran-chan's made
his choice, and the rest of us should just smile and say 'oh well, the
better girl won?' Sorry, honey, but that's not me."
This Akane-Ukyou relationship isn't what it was at the close of the
manga, and you provide no clue to how it got to this point. Not sure
why; the hostile Ukyou doesn't seem to be important to the plot. Just
being anti-"Saint Ukyou"?
that he'd be susceptible as well. I hoped he'd be all right.
Nice touch: even after everything, Akane can still wish Genma well.
I stood back to take in the whole picture. It was a man who
stood in front of me; slimmer and shorter than the old Ranma,
but anyone looking would definitely know that he was a man.
I have a hard time picturing this. Female Ranma has the most
pronounced measurements of any woman in the series, for her
height. What about the lack of Adam's apple? The eyelashes?
He examined himself in the mirror. "I suppose I could pass for
myself if the person really didn't know me that well. At
least the curse doesn't change my hair color or something stupid
like that."
Yeah, yeah, rub it in gratuitously...
And the bindings wouldn't fool people indefinitely, any more
than they had when Ukyo wore them.
They didn't? When would Furinkan have learned, then, if
Genma hadn't blabbed or Ranma grabbed?
The ceremony went off without a hitch; after everything we'd
been through, it was quite anticlimactic.
What, no kidnappings of Akane?
After the wedding, Nabiki went off to begin university studies
in Osaka.
Trying to get away? Seems a bit off, somehow: aren't most of
the top business-directed Universities in Tokyo? (The ones
Nabiki'd respect, anyhow?)
Especially for me. My every instinct told me that this was
wrong, that I should be disgusted at the thought of touching another
woman in that way.
Now, what's _this_ about? Author pre-empting protests? Though
perhaps defensible, this is hardly mandated by canon, and not required
by your plot. I think I'd like it better if, like the way you
seemed to handle it above, sex were a non-issue.
And, while I've not done any surveys personally, I'm not sure I buy
"disgust" for non-Western women. (In many non-Western cultures,
not even men would experience the same "disgust" characteristic of
American men in this situation.) "Lack of interest", perhaps.
Or (the way I handled it myself) Akane might experience warm
fuzzies but not the intense thrill she'd feel the other way.
Having inherited the family dojo, Ranma and I looked over the
family finances and found that they were an absolute mess. There were
debts that should have been paid and tax returns that should have been
filed ten years ago, and bonds that should have been cashed in. There
were shoeboxes full of savings account statements that hadn't been
opened. We spent a lot of time organizing it all, figuring out what
needed to be paid and where we could squeeze the money from.
Geez: pricking the "Nabiki runs the household finances efficiently
balloon" also, in the same story. This doesn't even sound like
the way Kasumi (the most probable candidate) would handle it, though.
And with every disappointment, every dried-up lead, Ranma
seemed to lose a bit more of his spirit. More and more, he would go
through the motions of a day's work with less and less real
enthusiasm for anything he was doing.
The TOP/Iris syndrome setting in... Again, it's almost like
you're pre-empting reader protests rather than thinking it through
yourself, from scratch. Kept busy, mightn't Ranma start to not
notice his gender, over time, instead?
But then, your plot requires that Ranma NOT be resigned...
television speaker; some observer from the UN claimed that seismic
reports indicated that the Japanese government was carrying
out illegal nuclear tests. Just another day.
What was _this_ about?
I wondered what kind of meeting she was talking about. Kasumi
always went out on Thursday nights, and never told anyone
where she was.
Hmmm... last time I read this line, it was weekly dinners with Tofu-
sensei. Deliberate echo?
"So this is your secret, Kasumi?" I asked as she stepped over.
"You do this on Thursday nights?"
"Some weeks, yes." She smiled, and said no more.
Oh, so she _does_ make dinner for Tofu-sensei on _other_ Thursdays...
"We're a support group for persons with disabilities, Akane,"
Koji said. "We get together to campaign for greater access to public
buildings, education, and such, and to help each other out...
Nice touch, both for you and for Kasumi, exposing Ranma to this.
"No, no, it's all right," I said. "I'm sure Ranma would be happy
to show you a few moves, wouldn't you, dear?"
I was half-expecting some shirt- and bandage- opening disaster
here. If you don't want the suspense, you might consider an
earlier comment that the bandage holds up to a lot of stress.
And now here was Ranma Saotome. Ranma, who had a body most
anyone would envy. A body with which there was absolutely
nothing wrong except that it happened to be a different gender
from the one to which he was accustomed. And what did *you*
have to complain about, Ranma Saotome?
More perspective. Most un-Takahashi-like. ;)
"Kasumi..." A smile crept onto Ranma's face. "Thanks."
With eyes wide, she looked back at him. "Oh my. For what?"
No sly smile? A real coincidence? Well, _that_ would be
Takahashi-like.
"Look, I'm not having her throwing away her whole life because
of me. She deserves better than that. Just tell her that I had to go
away. Tell her that nothing is her fault, that she's a
wonderful person
and all that but I just can't marry her or even see her anymore. It's
just how things are, and there's nothing either of us can do about it,
and she shouldn't wait for me because I'm not coming back."
This is really horrible of Ryouga to handle Akari this way (assuming
their relationship has in fact advanced beyond that at the end of
the manga). There's irony in that, if Ryouga saw Ranma treating
Akane like this, he'd be justly furious. In fact, I'm not sure
Ranma's being furious enough, if his voice can't be heard.
other guy for her. Someone who can beat that pig of hers so that her
father will approve."
Nit: isn't it "grandfather"?
walked in. My sandals klacked on the wooden floor, the sound echoing
through the empty room. I never heard Ryoga's voice again.
How sad. An appropriately short sentence, very effective.
"Sorry!" I loosened my grip to took a look at P-chan. His limbs
were much scrawnier than they'd been, and his once-plump belly had
thinned. "Oh, Ranma, look at him!"
"He probably ain't been eatin' very well. Food's gotta be hard
to find when you're a little pig. Especially when you're tryin' not to
be dinner for someone else."
<clip>
contentedly. "Oh, I didn't see you for so long! I thought you
were lost forever!"
"Nope," Ranma said. "He was. But he's home now."
Touching.
"Ranma, he's a *pig!*" It was so ridiculous that it took all my
self-control to keep from laughing. "A pig, *not* a person! Pigs just
don't live as long as people do."
Ranma blinked several times. "Pigs... pigs don't...." I could
almost see the wheels spinning in his head. "Oh goddamn...."
Also effective. Sad, in spite of Akane.
He grabbed me by the shoulders. "Cure?"
<clip>
"Oh goddamn.... I gotta go!" He rushed to the door, then back to
me, then back to the door. "I gotta go!" he said to P-chan. "You gotta
hang on 'til I get back. Just 'til I get back!"
No dialysis machine here...
The whole thing seemed ludicrous. What on Earth was Ranma
thinking? But the look in his eyes said that this was the
most important thing in the whole world. I didn't understand it,
but I had to trust him.
It's almost sad that it doesn't occur to Ranma here to wonder
how his father's doing...
"Akane, I found it!" he says, ignoring the man staring at his
revealed cleavage. A sealed Freezerware container rests in his left
hand. "I don't know if it's enough, though. Where is he?"
<clip>
For a moment, flesh color coexists with the black of piglet
skin, two images superimposed onto the same photograph. Then I rub my
tired eyes, and the spell is broken and just as before it's
P-chan lying on the table, stretched stiffly out like some
porcine zombie.
<clip>
friend. Perhaps I'll never understand what was really between them, a
friendship so strong that Ranma was willing to give up his
one chance at
a cure to save his friend's life by making him a human.
<clip>
that was my memory. Goodbye, P-chan.
Again, Ranma's efforts are effective. However, I had to
read the ending three times to figure out that Akane STILL
hasn't realized the truth: that she thinks Ranma was trying
to make a real pig human to extend its life. No wonder she's
still puzzled.
If you don't want the ambiguity (I don't think I would), you
might put in a reminder that this water turns _anything_
into a man; it's not just a Jusenkyo cure.