Reincarnation
" " are speaking
' ' are quotes
< > are toughts
[ ] are panda sign
* * are sounds
^_^ is me ... oups ?
---
Prologue - part 1
---

Everybody is seated in the sitting room. M.Tendo has his three daughters on
his right and two men on his left, each facing the others.

"I present you once more... my best friend..." starts Soun Tendo.

"Genma Saotome." says the man dressed in a dirty white gi. He waves to the
young boy sitting beside him. "This is my son..."

"...Ranma." finishes the boy, dressed in a pale blue sleeveless chinese
shirt, with matching black trousers and red bracers.

He and Akane look at each other, one with a questionning look and the other
more of suspicion.

"It's a joke, right?" interjects Nabiki.

"You are... the girl from back then?" asks Kasumi, completly lost.

"Hum. How to start?" Genma asks himself. "I know! Hyah!!" He throws his son
into the koi pond, located in the middle of the Tendo garden.

"Hey!!" Ranma shouts while airborne. "A...Argh!.... Aaaaargh!!" he screams
just before reaching the water with a loud *SPLASH*

For a while, bubbles are noisily showing on the water. He then breaks the
surface of the water, holding his head with both hands in obvious pain.

"Huh... Nyaah!... Ahh... Ahh... AAARGH!!" His pained screams start again.

For a second that seems to never end, he bends himself. His head seems to
rip in two, then all the wooden studs of his chinese shirt burst at once. A
naked mass of flesh, or perhaps a body, is ejected from his torso and then
vanishes into the pond.

"Ahh... Ahh... Pff..." He gets his breath back, taking support on his knees,
his head dangling. "It's stopped. That much pain..." He raises his head and
glares a questionning look at his father and the Tendos.

"What happened?" the only response he gets is a stupefied look. He finaly
registers the informations his body is sending to him and he looks down his
bare torso... definitly male. "I... I don't change into a girl? I... I'm
cured?" he asks when suddendly...

*BLOOSH* A young girl with fiery hair emerges a few feet from him.

"Ouch..." she groans. "It hurts!" She looks quickly around her. "Where...
Where am I?" she takes a step back... then another... and she bumps into
Ranma.

She gently turns toward him and he gets the confirmation he feared : it is
his female self. The shock keeps him from making any sensible thought, like
it maight be the case for his father and the Tendos, none of them having
told a word yet.

She slowly points a trembling finger at Ranma while cautiously backing
away. "You... you are... imposs... I..." Like all others present, all
rationnal thinking seems to have left her. Nonetheless, the fact that she
can identify Ranma is unmistakable.

"Who... are you?" Ranma manages to ask intelligibly.

"Who I am?" she asks.

She is answered by the shocked silence of her observers.

"I ... I ..." she stammers, as surprise dawns upon her face, then changes to
a look of reflection.

Her observers do not bear her any ill will, but their shocked silence is
cruel.

"I ... I ..." she stammers again as her face begins to show panic.

Seeing her emotional state, Ranma attempts the question that is consuming
him : "Are you me?"

"WHAT?" if the result attained is not the one looked for, the question as
the benefits to have apparently calmed her. "If I'm you? You are just before
me, how can I be you?" she answers him like as though he asked a stupid
question.

Her declaration, in addition to relaxing Ranma a little, restarts the
thinking machine that is Nabiki's brain.

"You're not Ranma?" Nabiki asks while nearing the pond.

"Ranma? Ranma... RANMA! YES! It's your name!" she shouts, pointing her
finger toward him again. "I know you! Ranma Saotome, heir to the Saotome
school of Anything Goes martial arts!"

"Y...yeah. That's me"

"If you are not him, then who are you?" ask Nabiki a second time.

The redhead turns toward Nabiki and stares at her silently. "I... I don't
know!" she conceeds. "I see things, memories, but they are so foreign to
me... the more I seek, the more I find events linked to the life of... of
Ranma... but I cannot remember my name... my house... my familly..."

Slowly, her posture changes, as she falls into depression.

"I don't know why... but I know that all these memories are Ranma's and not
mine.

"Ranma..." Nabiki says, cutting into the girl's monologue, "give her your
shirt."
"Hu? oh..." he removes it and give it to his female self.

"Thanks..." she aswers him while putting the shirt on, suddendly aware of
her nudity.

"So, if I assume, you don't know who you are, but you are sure of not being
Ranma, even if you have the same memory as him?" Nabiki analyzes while
speaking, her hands on her hips.

The girl nods, her morale starting to sink even further.

"Hmm... We may not be able to resolve this tonight." Nabiki looks at the
two, still waist deep in the water. "Say, you can exit the pond now. You'll
catch a cold if you don't."

They suddenly realize that, yup, they had been standing in the water all the
while they were chatting.

"Hum, if you're not Ranma, and you don't remember your name, you'll have to
choose a new one until you get your own memories back. Any ideas?" Nabiki
asks.

Ranma-chan stop immediatly where she stand, than look back to Ranma-kun.
"Ranma... Ra...n...ma... it's strange! I get the impression that... that..."
the tries to remember something. "Is there not a girl name starting like
Ranma?"

"Let me see... Ranma? Ran... Ran... There : Ranko... it's the female for
Ranma." declare Nabiki.

"Ranko? I seem to have heard it before somehere..." say 'Ranko'.

"It don't ring a bell for me..." Ranma says, cutting the girl off.

"Yes? Maybe your memories are already coming back..." Nabiki pause a little
then "I think that maybe this name can help you to quicken the precess, even
maybe get some indications..."

"Ranko... yes, after all, it's just a name. Any name will do the trick."

"I will have to do some research... hey, it'll be a real challenge..."
Nabiki song-song while returning to the house, followed by the other two.
"How do you know that your are not Ranma, by the way? If you have the same
memories as him, even if it seems strange, you should have believed that you
were him, no?"

"Well, the memories I have might be mine, but there is this feeling that
tells me they aren't. I dunno ... but then my memories are so clear, so well
ordered ... it ain't normal! Nobody can recall stuff that way. It's almost
like they was implanted or somethin'. I remember all this stuff too well.
That's why I think these ain't my memories." asnwers back Ranko

The three come back on the house and Nabiki sits back at her place,
thinking. When Ranko were going to sit too, Ranma put a hand on her
shoulder.

"Ran...ko? Can you come with me, I want to try something."

"Hu... ok!" She follows him and they exit the room.

"What... the... hell... happened?" Akane asks her sister.

"I don't know for sure. But I think our guests have just started to surprise
us."  declare Nabiki, half-anxious for the problems to come, half-delighted
for the spice that the Saotome family would bring into her life.

---

Ranma takes Ranko to the room where he and his father had put their
belongings. He gets his bag and leads the way through the Tendo household.

"Here we are!" he says, entering in a room.

"This is the bathroom? What do you want to do here?" she asks.

"First, I wanna try the curse to see if I'm cured for good or not. Then try
to see if you are cured too. Lastly, just dry myself and change my wet
clothes."

"Okay..." She walks toward the furo, still full of hot water. "You changed
back with hot water, and we stayed on the pond's cold water long enough to
know that it doesn't change us. My case will be quickly resolved." She got
in the furo et immerge herself in the hot water, warming her body from the
pond water's coldness. "I think that's clear. Your two forms seem to be
really separated from one other." She exits the water, takes a towel and
starts to dry her hair.

"That's... that's... THAT'S GREAT! I get rid of this curse... hu..." He
stops his euphoria to look at his female double. "If I don't change into a
girl..."

"I don't change into a boy... where is the problem?"

"The problem? your are locked in my cursed body without memories... so how
can you know if your are a guy or a girl?"
"Oh! That... That's right... I didn't think of it." she says as she stops
drying herself. She thinks for a moment, then starts back to drying her
hair. "I can't remember. That's not important."

"How's that 'that's not important'? If you are a girl in a girl body, okay,
but if you're a guy?"

"If I'm a guy, then I'll know easily. I'll just have to look what's the more
attractive to me : guys or girls. For now, there is a more pressing problem
than that."

"Say what?" he asks with a challenging tone.
"Well, look at this, I don't have anything more than this body, and it was
yours less that an hour ago..." She drops the now wet towel and takes the
shirt off. "I can't see myself taking a walk like this..." she tells him,
showing off her nudity.

"Hu..." He turns backward to stop looking at her. "Yeah..." He goes his back
and takes out some cloths. "There sould be... yes..." he gets his clothes
ready, and continues to search on the bag. "I think that... hehehe, your
problem is ended..." he says, giving her a second pair of pants and a shirt
similar to his, if not for the shirt which is red. "I like the blues one
better, they bring my eyes out more." He adds with a mischievious smile.

"You are lending them to me? thanks..." She quickly finish to dry up and put
her new clothes on, copying Ranma. "Say, you wouldn't have a small ribbon or
a string for my hair? I want to fasten them."

"You're gonna make a pigtail too?"

"Nah, I was thinking of your old ponytail, before Jusenkyo..."

"Let me look... Yes, I still got the one I used back then. Here." He gives
her a little black ribbon.

"Perfect!" She fastens her hair. "You already looked at your reflection in a
 mirror? While a girl I mean." she says as she look at theirs images on the
great mirror on the bathroom wall. "Look at us... One might think that we
are twins... TWINS?! excellent!!"

"Hu? What?'

"Look, I haven't anywhere to live, so before my memories come back, I might
as well live here... as your twin sister, no?"

"EEHH? My sister? But..."

"The only life I know, it's yours. If we were really twins, then your father
would have to take me on the training trip too. That will explain why I'm a
tomboy if I'm really a guy too...

"Yeah... that can work but..."

"I can't lose anything by trying because, precisely, I have nothing!"

"That's true."

"now that we are refreshed, let's get back there, I have a request to make.

---

End of Prologue - part 1


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