Ranma 1/2 By Rumiko Takahashi Oh My Goddess! By Kosuke Fujishima By Steve Pardue http://www.spardue.org/anime Scream! Chapter 2 -- Scream for Your Sanity! The dawning day found Ranma standing on the beach in front of the Tendo's rented seaside cottage, performing her morning katas. The surf crashed gently just beyond the redhead's bare feet, and she followed its motion closely, surging out towards the ocean and then back again as the waves rushed ashore. Finishing the kata, she held the final position, concentrating on the calmness permeating her body. It bothered her, how comfortable she had become with her girl's body. "My girl's body," Ranma murmured softly, and sighed. Even in her own thoughts she referred to herself as a girl, now. The worst thing, to her mind, was the fact that she didn't even really know when she had stopped being able to change back. She had told Akane it had been after dinner last night, but the truth was she hadn't even tried to change back the entire week. No point when you knew you'd get wet and change back in a few minutes anyway. The beach had too much water to expect otherwise. She was on vacation at the beach, with her family, and it had been perfect, up till now. She hadn't been bothered by any of the fianc‚es Pop had arranged for her, P-chan had disappeared off the train during the trip, the Kunos hadn't found out where they were, Nabiki hadn't been taking pictures of her (that she knew of), and best of all, she and Akane had actually been getting along. It had felt really good not to fight with the youngest Tendo daughter. They had spent the entire day Sunday on the beach together, just lying in the sun, not talking, fighting or sulking. It was amazing how comfortable the silence had been. Ranma was sure that Akane must have felt the same way. At dinner that night they hadn't said anything, but Ranma had felt Akane's eyes on her throughout the meal, and had forced herself not to stare back. On Monday they wandered around the town. Nabiki had distracted the two fathers while they slipped out, and for a small fee had made sure the two men stayed away from them for the rest of the day. Ranma lowered herself to the sand, adjusting her swimsuit. Her fingers traced the word stitched across her chest. She could remember her feelings from Monday afternoon, looking at Akane as they strolled along the boardwalk above the beach. Akane wore a pair of shorts with a multi-colored T-shirt tucked into the top. The sandals she wore slapped the cobblestones with each step. Ranma hadn't been able to pull her eyes away from her fianc‚e, from the way her short hair capered about her face or the way Akane's cheeks blushed when she met Ranma's self-conscious stare. She wanted to reach out and take Akane's hand then, like she had on the road back from Ryugenzawa, and had reached out with her hand. Akane walked on for several steps, unaware that she had stopped. As Akane passed her, Ranma had see her reflection in the store across the street. Cute girl, red hair pulled back into a pigtail, green one-piece swimsuit, baggy, white shorts and a white cotton windbreaker, unzipped. On the beach, Ranma frowned. 'Boy,' the word under her fingers read. Something she had been; and would be again, she told herself. How could she have dared taken Akane's hand when they were both girls? But, maybe... it would have been... maybe. Ranma reached down to the wet sand beside her and scooped up a handful, squeezing it between her fist and watching as it dribbled down between her legs to be washed away as water swirled up the beach and around her. The chill water of the ocean brushed around her and up the beach several feet before it withdrew. She could feel the sand she was sitting on pulled out from beneath her, sinking her a little deeper into the beach. Her feet were already covered halfway. She forced her toes from under the sand, concentrating on trying to keep them uncovered as the tide slowly buried her. To Ranma, cold water was an intensely feminine thing. Cold water softened her, weakened her. It rounded her hips and made her chest grow. It made her feel things that no man should ever experience -- things that were only to be discussed in whispered embarrassment or loud-mouthed bravado with other boys, in hidden places where no girl could overhear. They were secret, unknowable feelings. When she had first been cursed, she had hated the feelings it brought, but now, sometimes she sought them out, sought the understanding that seemed so far away as a boy but was so tantalizingly close as a girl. Ranma shook her head at her thoughts, and stood, struggling for a second to escape the grasp of the sand that she was sinking into. Brushing sand off the back of her legs she strode into the surf, closing her eyes as the first wave crashed against her and carried off the sand still clinging to her body. She dove headfirst into the next, and powerful strokes carried her past the breakers towards the open ocean. Rolling onto her back she closed her eyes against the rays of the sun just risen above the open ocean behind her and concentrated on the sounds of waves crashing against the cliffs down the shore. Rocked gently by the waves she remembered the end of the day Monday, after she and Akane had eaten at a sandwich stand on the wharf. Walking back to the cottage they had passed an empty playground. Attracted by the solitary sound of empty swings swaying in the breeze they entered and sat, staring out at the rapidly darkening ocean. The stiff evening breeze caught at their hair as they swung gently, and they sat in silence until Ranma grabbed the chains of her swing, placed one foot on the seat and pushed off with the other. Concentrating on staring at the rising moon now visible above them, she swung back and forth, each arc carrying her higher and higher, until she felt that she could reach out and touch the pale body which hung just out of reach above her. Then she saw the hand reach out from beside her and she turned and saw Akane standing on her swing, at the top of her arc, hand reaching out for the moon. Time froze and in that instant of perfect clarity Ranma could see the pale glow of moonlight on Akane's cheeks and the sparkle of stars in her eyes as the first of the distant specks of light appeared in the pitch black sky. Akane turned her head and smiled at Ranma, her secret smile that left Ranma weak in the knees, and then the earth claimed her with its gentle pull and time melted, flowing faster, pulling Akane up and away from her as she fell off her swing and plummeted to the ground below. The fall from the swing had not hurt anything but her pride, and that had been soothed by the soft laugh and wide smile Akane gave her as she helped her to her feet. Now, Ranma remembered the depth of what she had felt for Akane as she hung in the moonlight, the halo of her hair framing her face. Ranma was reluctant to say it was love. She knew she loved Akane, even if she couldn't express those feelings. What she had felt that evening was not love, not what she normally thought of as love when she was in her other form. Then she could look at Akane and know that she wanted her, wanted to be with her, to kiss her with abandon in front of their families and all of their friends and enemies. To prove finally, to Akane and herself and everyone, that, after the long years of tumultuous engagement, Akane Tendo was the woman Ranma Saotome loved. Ranma opened her eyes and glanced at the shore, gauging her drift and taking a few strokes to stay in front of the cottage. But what if Akane didn't want to marry her? What if she hated her curse, the soft curves that Ranma seemed to wear more and more often? That thought always held her back before. She knew she couldn't stand to look into Akane's eyes and see that in them. That night on the swings, she had stared into Akane's eyes and through those star speckled orbs into her soul. It had frightened her, what she saw there, because it wasn't embarrassment, hatred, or, worst of all, friendship. It wasn't love, either, although she was confident in its existence, now. Instead she had glimpsed the thread of fate that bound them together, placed, it seemed, by the gods themselves, binding the two of them to one another for all eternity. A chill ran down Ranma's spine and she squirmed, then turned and dived under the water. The bottom was about twenty feet deep and she swam to it, popping her ears once, then stroked along the bottom, eyes lost in the dappled shadows cast by the twisting waves above. The curse of her body now seemed doubly cruel. Just when she had finally realized the true depth of her ties to Akane she found herself trapped as a girl, unable to act on her feelings. What if the only reason she could think these thoughts now, the only reason she could peer into Akane's eyes and see the passion lying hidden there, was that her female body was capable of these insights where her other wasn't? Maybe she couldn't change back because she had accepted her cursed form -- embraced it even. This last week had been so easy, so happy. All those feelings, which normally crashed against her like waves slowly wearing against an indifferent cliff, had suddenly reached up and engulfed her. All of the eddies and currents of her relationship with Akane were laid bare, to be freely navigated and explored. Was it all just because she wore a girl's body? Gasping for air she broke the surface and treaded water, a frown on her face. She remembered jogging with Akane along the beach in the morning and the afternoon she had tried to teach the girl to swim. Shopping for groceries with Kasumi at the open-air market in the rain, the evening when Nabiki had taken them to the party at that hotel's pool, and the afternoon she had spent eating ice cream with a new friend . She had been a girl each time, for one good reason or another. Not good reasons to be a girl, but good reasons not to be a boy. What if she had fulfilled some dark unspoken condition of the curse, that acceptance meant becoming? Did that mean... she would be this way forever? She choked back the bile that rose at the back of her throat, forced it down into the pit of her stomach. It couldn't be that. She wouldn't let it be that! She swam to shore, waded through the surf and up the beach to the chair where she had left a large beach towel. In her other form, it would have been large, but as a girl the towel swallowed her whole. Chilled by both her thoughts and the seawater evaporating off her skin, she wrapped herself in the towel and collapsed onto the chair, her body completely hidden. She pulled the towel up over her head and down her face, until it was hidden in shadows. It reminded her of how she had slept when she was little, curled into her bedroll like a snail in its shell. Her childhood was an intimate thing, closely connected to the present, as if it was still, somehow, incomplete. She could remember the comfort she had found as a child, hiding away in her bedroll at night, pretending she was still at home in her bed, that Mom had just tucked her in, turned out the lights and shut the door. The first year had been like that, until finally Pop had forced her to stop. Sometimes, when she felt the world was too scary, she would still go and wrap herself up and pretend she was a child tucked lovingly into bed at home. She'd curl up and pull the sheets tighter, trying to imagine that the comforting pressure of the sheets wrapped firmly about her body were instead the arms of her mother. Ranma settled lower into the chair and gripped the edges of the towel to keep it from flying open in the stiff breeze. Right now, the world was a very scary, very uncertain place.