Chapter Eight: Trials and Transformations...
“So let me get this straight,” Nabiki spoke as she glanced over the page Happosai had given her. “You sent Ranma to some place called ‘The Everfree’ something or other, a mystical land where clothing is supposedly entirely optional, which may or may not be in another world, and he lost the instructions on how to return. Even though you sent him over there while he was sleeping, without bothering to tell either him or anyone else what you were doing.”
“Okay, okay,” the diminutive old man grumbled. “when you say it like that, I guess I can’t really blame Ranma too much for being irresponsible enough to lose the instructions.”
“That you so thoughtfully tucked loosely into his pocket without waking him up,” Nabiki commented as she neatly folded and refolded the paper until it was roughly the size of an index card.
“Exactly! He’s the irresponsible one for losing it in the first place!”
“The mind boggles…” Nabiki pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration as she used her other hand to discretely tuck the note down the front of her sleeveless blouse and into something she normally considered to be just a bit more secure than a pocket. “And now you want to send me after him. By myself. Unprotected.”
“How dangerous can the place be if they don’t wear clothes all that often?” Happosai countered.
“Oh, I don’t know. Ranma hasn’t returned, or even contacted us, after four days. Sounds plenty iffy to me.”
“Take your camera! I bet you’ll make tons of money from the pictures you’d be able to sell!”
“Well, there is that,” Nabiki admitted, pulling her camera out of her desk drawer and checking the film counter before setting it and a couple of extra rolls of film on top of her desk. “I still want a bodyguard or some way to defend myself before I agree to be sent over. I am out of practice after all.”
“Okay, fine,” Happosai grumbled as he reached into his shirt and pulled something out, tossing it to Nabiki.
The skeptical girl caught the object easily and started examining it. Whatever it was, it was made of stone, attached to a leather cord, and was mostly feline shaped. “It’s a cat. With boobs. And a sort of human face.” The eyes of which appeared to be made from some sort of green gems. Not that Nabiki said anything about those. “What’s this supposed to do?” Nabiki asked dubiously. “Trigger Kitty-Boy’s Nekoken?”
“Of course not!” Happosai huffed in irritation. “It’s an Amulet of the Guardian. Hold it tight whenever you’re in trouble and a sphinx is supposed to appear to guide you away from danger. I‘ve never been in enough danger to be able to trigger the darn thing myself of course,” he grumbled. “I’m just too damn good at defending myself to ever really need it. Ranma would also probably have some difficulty activating it, as skilled as he is. But it should be just the thing for someone like you.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so. How about you get out of my room and find another patsy?” Nabiki waved a hand towards the door in a shooing motion, not bothering to hand back the talisman. Happosai had probably stolen the thing, and there might be a reward for returning it. Or it could prove valuable in its own right. Just how valuable depended on whether or not it was fake or authentic, and if it actually was enchanted.
“Who said anything about your having any choice?” Happosai narrowed his eyes dangerously as he nudged the door shut. “Like it or not, you, Nabiki Tendo, are my best shot at either getting my heir back, or at least confirming what’s on the other side. So I’m sending you over now, before you cause any trouble!” The light in Nabiki’s room somehow got dimmer even though neither of them had touched the switch, and Nabiki could swear that she could just barely perceive a sort of negative aura seeming to boil off of the tiny old man.
“Wait, what? You can’t!” Nabiki made a dash for her door, only to end up being poked in a few seemingly random spots as she attempted to dodge past him. “What… did… you… do?” she gasped weakly as the old man casually redirected her momentum so that she fell limply across her own bed.
“Oh, nothing too serious,” Hopposai commented as he nonchalantly twirled the bra and panties he had just acquired for a moment, before tucking them into his shirt and pulling out a scroll. “Not even enough to trigger the talisman I gave you. Just a few pressure points to keep you complacent enough while I read the incantation. It’ll wear off shortly, but by that time, you’ll already be there.”
“You’ll… never… get… away… with… this…” Nabiki struggled to get her body to do more than twitch here and there as Happosai read words aloud that she could only hear and promptly forget. Just barely, her left hand managed to close completely around the tiny stone sphinx as her room began to fade out of view.
The last words she heard from Happosai before he and the world around him disappeared into formless mist was: “I already have, Nabiki. I already have…”
O O O
“Ugh…” Rarity groaned as she sat back upright. “I would like to apologize, Twilight, for any implication I may have given you just now that my previous offer of friendship may have been based on anything so shallow as social climbing. Please forgive me.”
“We already done covered that for ya, Sugarcube,” Applejack piped up. “We all know yer hearts in th’ raht place, even if’n y’ have aspirations.”
“Yeah, Rarity,” Spike assured her. “They were just telling Twilight and I how you’re helping Rainbow Dash with her upcoming court date in Canterlot.”
“Not to mention your offer of helping me start out as a model if I end up losing my job,” the chromatic pegasus added. “That’s all kinds of awesome right there!”
“Speaking of which,” Twilight interjected, “Would you mind if I contacted Princess Celestia and asked her for permission to loan you the use of my suite in Canterlot? If she says yes, then that should save you two a lot of bits. Especially since you’re planning on being there for a week or so before your court date.”
“Hehbehbehbehbeh… Ow!” Rarity glared at Rainbow Dash, who had flicked her with a hoof to restart her cognitive functions. Then she turned her attention to Twilight with a grateful smile. “Why that would be delightful! Do let me know her response when it comes, would you?”
“I can ask right now,” Twilight replied cheerfully. “Spike-”
“You mean you can ask once we’re out of the sauna,” Spike interrupted Twilight with half-lidded eyes. “I can’t write anything in a room full of steam.”
“Oh, right, haha…” Twilight winced ruefully.
“Eh,” the little dragon shrugged. “The steams not really doing anything for me anyway. I may as well go out, dry off, and get a quill and scroll ready.”
“Thank you, Spike,” Twilight smiled as Spike headed for the sauna’s door.
Unfortunately, Lotus Blossom tripped over Spike as she came through the door in the other direction with a pitcher of water.
Wild Apple watched in horrified fascination as a once familiar scenario played out. Said scenario being a chain of barely plausible events involving big Mac stumbling as he caught Lotus Blossom, somehow causing the water that was already being heated by the hot rocks to launch into the air and onto her.
Twilight Sparkle gaped as the petite, red maned mare, swiftly expanded into a giant of a stallion with raven-black mane and tail. Almost absently, she noted that he was easily taller than Princess Celestia (horn included!) and that his sudden increase in mass had caused the bench to collapse under him (and the ponies on either side to slid into him).
“That was amazing! How did you do that!? Tell me! I want to know everything-OW! SPIKE!”
Spike just cocked a brow as he readied the wet towel he had snapped at Twilight for use once more if need be. “You could try giving him a moment to recover and gather his thoughts first before you bombard him with questions,” he suggested.
“Oh. Right,” Twilight winced sheepishly.
Um… Thanks?” Wild Apple was a bit confused about how well everypony had been taking his curse so far. Especially when only Uchan had any sort of positive response to discovering it during his previous life. The excessive size difference was going to get old fast though. Especially if he kept breaking things as a horse.
O O O
Hapossai shrugged as he turned and left Nabiki’s room. While it had sounded cool, last minute gloating just wasn’t as fun if you weren’t sure the other person even heard you gloating.
He idly wondered if Nabiki would manage to trigger the talisman to summon the cat-lady guardian spirit he had found out about shortly before deciding to… liberate… it into his possession all those years ago. As he had told the girl, he was just too damn good at defending himself to be able to trigger the darn thing himself under most circumstances, and the few times when it might have worked despite his being a martial arts grandmaster, he hadn’t had it with him.
He never did notice the folded up sheet of paper, about the size of an index card, that had fallen to the floor as he had stolen Nabiki’s undergarments.
In fact, it wouldn’t be until several hours later before the eldest Tendo sister, Kasumi, found it still laying there as she entered the room to put away Nabiki’s laundry.
“Oh? What’s this?” she wondered out loud as she picked it up and unfolded it. If it was one of Nabiki’s homework assignments, she’d tuck it into the appropriate book. If it was something she felt that Nabiki was better off not getting into, she’d simply dispose of it discretely. Seeing that the paper was covered in Happosai’s illegible chicken-scratch handwriting, her decision was easy. “Into the burn pile with you!”
Shortly thereafter, the paper met it’s fate in one of Soun Tendo’s ashtrays.
Nabiki herself wasn’t missed by anyone until she failed to show up for dinner that evening.
O O O
Wild Apple, with the aid of a pitcher and kettle of water supplied by the spa’s staff, explained the peculiarities of Jusenkyo and the effect that the Nyanniicuan had on him. He once again neglected to tell anypony that he (and she) used to be human, as there was still no apparent way to prove such a claim. Although it was looking more and more unlikely that it would really be an issue if it ever came out.
“Wow…” Twilight pondered over what she had been told. “So you’re original form was male, right?”
“Yes,” Wild replied, although she was once again female because nothing in the spa could support her weight as a stallion. She was somewhat bemused by how readily everypony accepted that she had originally been male and could now change back and forth with (relative) ease.
“I take it that your male form used to be much smaller than it currently is?”
“Yeah,” Wild admitted as she gave it some thought. “Probably just under Big Mac’s mass, as a rough estimate. And the size difference between both forms changed somehow, shortly before I turned to stone. Now I get even smaller for some reason.”
“Well, I could ask Princess Celestia to look into it if you want,” Twilight offered.
Wild was about to respond when Spike coughed up a scroll.
“Oh! This must be Princess Celestia’s response to the letter we sent earlier!” Twilight grabbed the scroll with her aura and unfurled it.
“Dear Twilight,
“I would be delighted to host Rainbow Dash and Rarity in a guest suite for the duration of their stay in Canterlot. It gladdens my heart to hear that you have already made several friends, even in so brief a time. I am especially looking forward to meeting Rainbow Dash and Wild Pony Apple, and would also like to meet the ponies that took them in and supported them in their difficulties. Enclosed, you will find a voucher reserving a round trip in such a car for private use on the Friendship Express. Please extend further invitations as appropriate, but do not exceed the capacity provided by a single passenger car.
“Your Mentor,
“Princess Celestia.”
“Y’ reckon she means Granny Smith and Apple Bloom too?” Applejack asked.
Wild Apple merely checked ‘small trip inexplicably becoming larger’ off of her mental checklist and hoped that this one would turn out to be one of the better ones.
O O O
“It sure is nice of the Princess to offer us a place to stay for the weekend,” Rainbow Dash commented as she settled into the green cushioned passenger bench across from Rarity. The train car was somewhat crowded, as several ponies and Gilda had wanted to come along, but Twilight Sparkle had managed to keep the number of guests to within the requested limits by running the growing list of hopefuls past Applejack and Rarity (she had originally intended to use Ranbow Dash and Wild Apple for this, but neither one proved to be much of a filter, so they were both replaced).
“In deed it is,” Rarity agreed readily before sighing.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, I’ve always dreamed of visiting Canterlot and seeing the sights, perhaps rubbing shoulders with the high society and making a big impression, but the time was never right. Big orders would come up, my assets would be tied up, or Mother and Father would saddle me with foal-sitting Sweetie Bell again as they ran off to do whatever it is that they do on their trips. Much like thiy did this time, actually. I’m glad I could bring her along, and that she has some fillies her own age to play with on this trip.”
Sweetie Belle was currently sitting happily with Applebloom and Dinky Doo as Pinkie Pie entertained them.
“Yeah… I see where you’re coming from. I guess this isn’t exactly the way you thought your visit would happen, is it?”
“Certainly not. Don’t get me wrong, of course - I’m always glad to help out a dear friend.”
“You do realize that before Wild and I ended up in the hospital, we barely knew each other, right?”
“Yes, yes, of course. And that was mostly through Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. Still, I like to think that we hit it off.”
“I guess we did, didn’t we? Y’know what, we a week or so. After we get settled in, why don’t we see some of those sights and shoulder-check some of those high society types.”
“Oooh! Can we?” Rarity was practically beside herself before a thought occurred to her. “Wait… What do you mean by ‘shoulder-check’?”
“I wanna shoulder-check high society types too!” Wild Apple piped up as she leaned over the back of Rainbow Dash’s seat. “Sounds like fun!”
“Please don’t do that,” Twilight Sparkle, who was sitting with Spike across from Wild Apple, asked as she placed a hoof to her face.
O O O
Nabiki ran for all her worth, ignoring both the bitter cold of the deep snow and the effects of branches and thorns on her poor abused bare skin as she bobbed and weaved through the narrowest gaps she could find between the rocks and trees of this monstrous forest Happosai had sent her to.
She knew that she had been right in second-guessing his proposition. Just go through the portal with the instructions on how to return, fetch Ranma, and take as many pictures of the pretty pretty barely clad locals as she wanted, to either sell or blackmail Ranma with. It had seemed way too good to be true, and her gut feeling had been to try to back out of the deal, but the old pervert had sent her through anyway! He even stole her bra and panties in the process while he was at it.
The very first thing that had gone wrong upon arrival (other than the fact that she had effectively been banished into another world in the first place) was finding out that it was apparently in the middle of winter wherever she had ended up. And she was only wearing shorts and a sleeveless top. Checking for the note so she could send herself right back to her nice warm room proved to be fruitless, as it was missing. Not that it wouldn’t have taken Nabiki a good long while to read Happosai’s chicken-scratch handwriting anyway, but as far as she knew, it had been her only ticket home. And then some badly scarred lion-thing with bat wings and a scorpion tail had started chasing her.
Fortunately, its injuries were slowing it down enough to allow Nabiki to stay ahead of it, if only just barely.
Unfortunately, the threat was more than sufficient to trigger the amulet that Happosai had given her for her protection. This was bad because said protection took the form of turning her into a wingless sphinx, which really did a number on her remaining clothes. On the other hand, she was no longer freezing and she was much faster now.
A bit clumsy, perhaps, but definitely faster as she loped forward in an awkward series of four legged bounds. Annoyingly enough, on top of everything else, her now bare boobs jiggled and bounced painfully between her forelegs, brushing against the deep snow and the occasionally thorny underbrush that it lay hidden beneath its cold, powdery surface.
“Dammit!” Nabiki cursed as she burst out of the underbrush and into an open field overlooking rolling hills and no further cover to be seen, the sounds of the monster crashing through the same underbrush no where near far enough behind her. “Dammitdammitdammitdammit!”
She sprinted across the field and down the hill for all she was worth, hoping to gain a little distance between her and the beast before it broke out of the forest as well.
She ran…
She tripped…
She rolled over in a panic, expecting her very last sight to be the gaping jaws of the beast closing over her head.
Except that never happened.
Instead, the heavily scarred manticore paced back and forth at the edge of the tree line, pacing back and forth at it looked about, but refusing to come out of the forest. Every now and then it would look at her in confusion, but never for very long. Eventually, it apparently gave up and wandered back into the forest.
Nabiki was safe…
And she finally collapsed, physically and emotionally exhausted, her bare and tender bosom heaving in the frigid air…
O O O
END CHAPTER EIGHT…