Tangled Up In Purple

by Crescent Pulsar

Chapter 1: This Sucks

In the guest bedroom of the Tendo residence, a female Saotome Ranma lay on the floor, on his side, with an arm propping up his head. He wore a bored expression on his face as he stared down at his mostly-unfinished English homework, which he hadn't touched in several minutes. Instead, he had his pencil trapped between his nose and upper lip while his mind wandered, mostly exploring other things that he would rather be doing with his time.

Like getting some ice cream. He was in the right body for it, so he wouldn't have to worry about being embarrassed if anyone witnessed him eating it. Plus, it was summer, and the contrast in temperatures made it a touch more enjoyable despite not being bothered by the heat. When was the last time he had some, anyway? It must have been the other day, but it felt like a long time ago.

He smiled as he recalled himself using his feminine wiles to get an ice cream cone at half the price, and getting an extra scoop at no additional cost.

His pencil fell, and he was returned to the present when it hit the tatami floor.

He sighed.

Unfortunately, English class was mandatory and he was failing it, so he couldn't afford to put his homework off and hope he got back to it. Why couldn't it have been Chinese? At least that language would come in handy, considering how often he encountered it, and the native people who spoke it. When would he ever need to know English? Probably never.

Suddenly, there was a strange sound that he'd never heard before, and it was accompanied by a flash of blue light that briefly lit up the room. A split second later he rolled away from the disturbance and prepared for a fight as soon as he got to his feet and faced it. However, instead of an opponent, or any obvious sign that one was about to arrive, he saw a book right at the moment before it landed on the floor and settled upon one of its covers.

After looking about the room and extending his senses to detect the presence of anyone he couldn't see, and discovering nothing and no one, he cautiously approached the book. Squatting before it, he picked it up and turned it over, where he saw a title written in English. He recognized "the" and "of", and he could probably sound out the three remaining words, but that wouldn't tell him anything about the book. There was also a tag hanging from a cord, which was tied around the book, and its contents suggested that the book was mail. As far as he could tell, neither address were familiar to him.

He considered what to do with the book, and it didn't take long for his curiosity to get the best of him. While it was wrong to tamper with someone else's mail, he was pretty sure that the postal service didn't magic mail directly into someone's house. That's not to say that it wasn't possible to transfer something with magic, though. Had he been the intended recipient? Probably not. However, knowing his luck, he'd probably still end up being dragged into something, so he figured that he might as well try to get a better idea of what to expect.

With that decided, he slipped the cord off of the book and opened it. Unsurprisingly, as he flipped through the pages, he saw English wherever he found words. There were a couple of inked illustrations in the back of the book, which he could identify, but their significance escaped him. Disappointed and discontent with his findings thus far, he went back to the front of the book, since he had skipped it in favor of getting a look at its contents first.

What he found there was what he had expected, until he reached a page that had a fancy border, which reminded him of windows that had many differently-shaped panes. There was a big arrow at the top of the page, with fancy text inside of it, pointing toward the center, where he saw much smaller text. Despite his limited vocabulary, he was able to read all but the penultimate word of the fancy text, which said: "LOOK HERE TO ENTER CHAPTER ONE."

With his brow furrowed, and wondering if he misunderstood something because of the meaning he thought the sentence had, he brought his face closer to the center of the page, to see if he could read what was there and maybe figure out what the purpose of the page was.

"Have... fun...?" He slowly enunciated.

An instant later, the book went from drawing his interest to literally trying to draw him in with a surprising amount of suction. His first instinct was to yelp and push the book away, and keep it at arm's length until a better idea occurred to him, but he made the mistake of not raising its height, resulting in his knees being close enough for the suction to seize them. Surprised, he cried out in alarm as his legs were swiftly pulled into the book knees-first, forcing his upper body down as it followed behind them, which made him lose his grip on the back of the book because his efforts had primarily been on the side facing him. Desperately, he tried to adjust his position so he could grasp the book again and pull himself out, but between his body becoming distorted to fit through the shape of the book, and how strange his body felt on the other side, he could do little more than reach out with one hand before being completely consumed.

The book, already in free-fall, stopped its suction before it hit the floor and closed. A portal appeared in the air a few seconds later, and the unicorn who had accidentally sent it there stuck his head through it. Simply relieved to have found the book meant for the princess, he didn't bother to pay attention to its location, or question how the cord could have been separated from it, as he collected both with his magic and left.

Just after the portal disappeared, the shoji door was shoved open by a mildly concerned Akane. When she didn't see anything amiss, she frowned before closing the door and going back to her room, deciding that she must have imagined what she had heard.

Comments

[xbox432]

Yeah, that seems about right for Ranma's luck. Now to see just what point in time you will be dropping the hapless protagonist... Then there's the fact that this won't be entirely real. I'm curious about how you're going to handle that.

[Greenhorn]

So Ranma didn't know English? This would be interesting. I reckon he would ace the subject by the time he came back.