Author Notes:
This is a Ranma ½ & Worm crossover fanfiction (Worm slowly folds in after first twenty pages).
Crossposted at AO3 w/newest chapters available at Lycelia dot com
Basic premise: **skip to next line break to avoid minor spoilers**
Instead of getting a full curse, Ranma just has a few drops hit him in a very crucial spot. It has cascading effects from there. It's a premise that I'm sort of surprised I haven't seen before in the Ranma fandom.
Besides the basic premise there's a few other points of AU. It occurs pre-Worm timeline. And as far as Ranma goes, I didn't go with the typical fanon interpretation that Ranma manages to pull off a full education during his occasional month or two of schooling thanks to his super-smarts. Instead this Ranma is thoroughly uneducated, spends a lot of time around monks that don't speak his language, and he's only marginally literate. But maybe he'll grow.
Chapter One
Ranma
"A panda?!" I leapt back, barely maintaining my balance on the poles thanks to my surprise. It was a job made all the more difficult when the panda went on the attack. Fending off powerful blows from the bear was nearly impossible when each strike shattered the pole under my feet. Not even my growing control over key could keep them intact against the bear's furious onslaught.
'Pops?' Suddenly the muddled warning from the guide's broken Japanese finally made sense. The springs really were cursed. Terribly, terribly cursed. And unfortunately Pops was too stupid to have noticed yet and stopped trying to toss me in one. It was a failing that others might have blamed on him suddenly having a panda brain but I knew him well enough to guess that he was just too focused on getting me back for winning the first bout. He was getting a bit sensitive with age now that I was starting to beat him more often.
His weight and bear blubber made up for what little he'd lost in agility and before I knew it I was flying — and not under my own power.
"I don't want to be a panda!" A cursed pool was coming up fast, even with my heightened reflexes. I tried to slow myself down but there was little that even I, greatest martial artist of my generation, could do against gravity. My ki could extend leaps but fighting gravity and the force of my pandafied father's blow combined was well beyond my capabilities.
Instinct told me to prepare myself for the landing but my instincts had never come up against cursed water before. Despite the spring's seeming purity I knew that at all costs I absolutely couldn't let myself touch the water.
I circulated all the ki through my body that I could manage and flung my arms and legs out wide. My hands and feet hit the sand around the pond a split-second later. My bones and tendons creaked from the awkward position of the impact but they held, just barely. My face was so close to the water that I could almost taste it, humid air tickling my throat as I breathed in in relief.
A panda paw gripped me and for a moment I thought my victory was about to turn into bitter defeat. But instead panda-Pops flipped me back upright onto solid ground. He babbled in bear-speak incoherently but I had a feeling I knew what he was saying. 'Yeah dummy, the springs are cursed. Way to figure it out before you cursed your only son.'
"Yeah dummy, way to figure it out. What gave it away, your fur?" My self-censoring might need work because he nearly swatted be back towards the spring before he caught himself.
The useless guide chose that moment to pipe up again. "Honored customer almost fell in Spring of Drowned Girl! Very tragic story!"
"Girl!?" "Growf?!"
What a fate that would have been. At least a panda could still fight. How would I ever become the greatest martial artist the world had ever seen if I'd become some weak girl. Truly a fate worse than death.
I followed in a daze as the guide lead us to the cabin. Apparently there was a cure so it wouldn't have been the end of the world but still, seriously eerie. What did being a girl feel like anyways, they hardly seemed like the same species. I hadn't ever really talked to one but according to Pops they weren't very smart on top of being weak and fragile. I might've ended up even dumber than pops if I hadn't caught myself. "Close one," I whispered.
'That's odd.' I coughed and massaged my throat. My voice wasn't normally so high. Was I picking up a cold from all time we'd spent in the mountains? Either that or it was that dreaded puberty thing I'd heard mentioned back during the month I spent at an all-boys middle school. I didn't know much about it, but one of the older kids had his voice go all wonky and all the other boys made fun of him. Hopefully I'd be over it before we hit civilization again.
When a pot of simple hot water transformed hot water transformed my dad back into a human I just had to speak up. I was careful to pitch my voice downward though, an effort that was mostly successful. "That's it? You cured him with hot water? Can you even call that a curse? Sounds more like a prank to me."
"Shut up boy."
I was caught off guard by his renewed human speed so his cuff caught me in the back of the head. I glared at him but said nothing. Prank curse or not, I didn't care to have another fight carry us in the direction of the springs again.
"Ahh!" I screamed ear-piercingly high as with a splash of water a panda popped back up in front of me. Panda-pops winced from the sound before trying (and this time narrowly failing) to cuff me again.
"Cold water change back," explained the guide.
'Woah. Not a prank curse.' I stayed silent as Pops tried to get a real cure from the guide, muddling through his rough Japanese. Unfortunately none seemed forthcoming. Turning my dad into a panda for a day was sort of hilarious but this was actually sort of serious. I supposed it would give me more variety for sparring though so it wasn't all bad. It wasn't like we stayed long enough in most places for people to figure out his curse anyways.
By the time the guide started mentioning some nonsense about Chinese Amazons Pops had had enough. "Come on boy, we're going back to Japan."
"Really? Finally." We'd been travelling through China for a year now, and India for a year before that. It was neat to learn from so many masters of various martial arts disciplines but it would be nice to finally be able to speak to other people without relying on hand gestures. I'd learned a few words here and there but half of them always turned out to be useless when we traveled a mere hundred miles and stumbled into a new dialect of the very language I thought I was learning.
"Man up boy, you sound like a girl."
"I don't sound like a girl," I grumbled. 'Wait…' Did I actually sound like a girl? I was still pitching my voice down to correct for whatever was going on with my throat but it didn't sound quite right. I wasn't going to say that it sounded like a girl's, especially not the chirpy high voice that so many Japanese girls seemed to favor, but it didn't sound exactly like a boy's either.
I hardly wanted to consider it, but was it possible I'd been cursed too? There was only one way to be sure.
For the most part I disapproved of my father's stealing ways, but I did make a personal exception for food. And so with skill long honed by martial arts nd hunger I snatched a large spoonful of soup from the guide's pot without his notice.
'Needs more salt.' But the flavor wasn't what was truly important. While racing after my departing father I whispered, "Testing, testing."
'I sound normal again…' Under other circumstances that would be a good thing, but sadly this meant my suspicion was correct. I'd been cursed with a girl's voice of all things, seriously complicating my quest to become a man amongst men. I was sullen as we plodded along a high mountain pass away from the springs but gradually I approached a sort of acceptance. It could've been worse after all. And if I drank hot tea more often then I wouldn't have to worry about sounding like a weak girl. No one would ever need to know, my father least of all.
Sadly it wasn't too long before I had to give in and take a sip of water from my water bottle. A little tickle in my throat was the only sign of the change but a few cautious mumbles revealed quite clearly that my voice had gone up an octave or two. I was well and truly cursed, and no amount of massaging of my throat was able to change it. It seemed like I wouldn't be doing much talking until we got back to Japan where hot tea was more readily available.
Normally when on the move we kept walking well after sunset but a sudden rainfall had us stopping early as panda-Pops desperately started boiling water to transform back. Meanwhile I set off into the bushes to answer the call of nature.
Only my practice in not speaking all afternoon kept me from letting out another girly shriek as I discovered something truly terrible. 'It's gone!'
I'd had it all my life that I could remember but now, inexplicably, it was gone. I didn't know what to do or how to fix it, but before anything else I actually really needed to pee. Without seemingly anything for it to come out of I wasn't exactly sure how though. After a few jittery moments I squatted and hoped for the best.
'Well that, err… mostly worked.' It seemed undignified though.
I was able to think a little more clearly now that I was relieved of the pressure. The natural answer came swiftly enough. 'My throat wasn't the only thing that got cursed.' Had my desperate suspension over the spring of drowned girl left me low enough that my thing had touched it?
'No. It can't be.' There was no way that this was what girls looked like under their skirts. It just looked too weird to be human. Too useless too. Dad always said girls were useless but this was just too much. I must have gotten splashed with some other spring when I was fighting Pops. Maybe a male dolphin. They were ocean animals so they had no need to point when they peed. That made sense.
I made doubly certain to ensure my gi pants were on tight before heading back towards the fire. I absolutely couldn't afford any slips while I was like this. My dad was the last person I wanted figuring out I was cursed in such an embarrassing way. The quicker I could get some hot water and change back the better.
I barely kept myself from shouting as panda-Pops poured the whole pot of water on himself right as I came into view. Turning back was going to be harder than I thought. I couldn't let him know how badly I wanted hot water or he might figure out that I was cursed as well. Traveling the world with my dad was starting to be a serious drag.
'I can't wait until we get back to Japan.'