Tangled Up In Purple

by Crescent Pulsar

Chapter 2: Take a Look, You're in a Book

After the book closed, Ranma found himself surrounded by darkness and silence. He didn't fully register it, however, because his mind was dwelling on the image of his arm transforming into an inhuman, purple-colored limb while it was outstretched toward the retreating window that led back into his family's room. He also strongly suspected, based on the sensations that his nervous system was relaying to his brain, that the rest of his body had also been significantly altered.

What did get his attention, was when the weightless feeling that came from falling ceased and he felt himself settle upon an invisible surface, largely because of how strange his hindquarters felt. Then, he began to feel a blustery wind hitting him from the direction he faced, which not only highlighted the many changes to his body, but that he was no longer clothed. His new ears, which seemed to be higher up on his head because of where he felt them being blown back, picked up the sound of flapping wings in addition to the wind rushing by.

Despite being bombarded by so much information from his body, it was hard not to notice the white and stylized English words that appeared before him, and remained centered in his line of sight when he moved his gaze: Enchanted Book Publishing.

He squinted his eyes at the words, wishing he knew what they meant. The shortest word looked familiar, but its meaning escaped him.

After a few seconds, those words faded away and were replaced by one: Presents.

Since that didn't change anything, he waited to see if anything else would happen, since he couldn't seem to do anything but sit there and watch. When the word vanished, a new set of words replaced it, although they were much larger this time: The Epic of Twilight Sparkle. Again, he got the feeling that he was familiar with what he was looking at, but this time he was pretty sure that it had been on the cover of the book.

At the same time that those words appeared, the darkness began to slowly ebb away, revealing the world around him. By the time the words were gone, he discerned that he was in some kind of simple vehicle that was in motion, which explained all of the wind. He also noticed a strange shape nearby, which he thought might be a passenger. Just as he began to lean forward and peer at them, to try and figure out what he was looking at, they turned their head to look at him when the darkness withdrew enough for him to see a reptilian-looking creature that he had never seen before.

Between being in such a strange situation and body, which was saying something, and not knowing what to expect from them or the creature, he erred on the side of caution and tried to jump away, to put some distance between them until he could determine if he was safe. That's when he discovered that his ride, a chariot being pulled by winged horses, was in the air instead of the ground, among the scattered clouds.

Being that he'd fallen from greater heights before without lasting injury, he was unperturbed as he began to tumble to the ground. He tried to stabilize himself so he could land in a less painful manner, but the new dimensions of his body required a different technique to accomplish it, so he continued to tumble until the chariot that he had jumped out of passed underneath him, just in time for him to land head-first into the cart.

"Ow..."

He heard someone speaking while the rest of his body toppled onto the floor, but he disregarded them because he couldn't understand what was being said, although he did note that they sounded young. Once his limbs were under him again, he was surprised when he was met with resistance upon trying to raise his head from the floor. With a frown, he tried to do it several times more, unsuccessfully, before taking a break and looking up to see what was attached to his head, glad that the darkness was completely gone now. It was hard to see with his new hair in the way, but it appeared that something purple was projecting from his forehead and through the floor, instead of something on the floor sticking to his forehead.

Undeterred by such a simple problem, he braced himself before pushing against the floor with one, swift motion. He freed himself with enough force to send himself stumbling backwards on unfamiliar legs, until he fell out the back of the chariot. Seeing that he was in this situation once again, he released an exasperated sigh and crossed his arms, and simply tried to catch sight of what the chariot was doing while his world went spinning once more.

Said chariot was able to catch him a second before he would have hit the ground. Then, before he could try to sit up, the flying horses made a sharp turn to avoid the oncoming forest, which made the cart swerve and push both him and the purple-colored reptile into the side board. Despite the horses' efforts, the cart struck a tree and sent both of them flying through the air. He heard the creature screaming nearby before he slammed into a tree and lost consciousness.

In what felt like an instant later, he found himself sitting in the darkness again. While the series of words began to appear once more, he thought about what he had experienced, and how he had returned to where he was shortly after entering the book. It made him wonder if he was in a fictional world, instead of actually being transformed and transported to a real place. Either way, it didn't seem like he had to fear that reptilian creature or the flying horses.

So, as the darkness slowly began to fade, he decided to get a better idea of what had happened to his body. All that he knew, for sure, was that he was purple, no longer human, and still sounded like a female.

When he could see well enough, he raised his arms up for inspection, checking their range of motion and what had become of his hands. It turned out that, despite having very similar capabilities as human arms, the hooves that had replaced his hands suggested that it might be more accurate to call them legs.

He looked down next, where he saw that his legs were now the hind legs of a quadruped, but a couple of tests confirmed that they had more range than expected. Rotating his head to look behind him, not only did he discover that he could turn it further than usual, but what must have been a horse's tail, considering everything that he knew about his new body.

He frowned, wondering if it was some kind of joke to turn him into a strange horse-thing. He knew that there was a specific kind of horse that had a horn, from his time looking for possible cures to his curse, but the name of it escaped him.

Just as he began to wonder who would make him look like his namesake, that reptile began to speak, seemingly reading from a parchment. Now that he really looked at it, it did appear childish, not just sound it. Its eyes were pretty big, too, maybe even bigger than he'd ever seen in animation. When he factored all of that with the language it spoke, his current form, and their colors, one name jumped to the top of his suspect list: his English teacher, Ninomiya Hinako.

Being that her default physical age was just short of pubescent, and she had the mental maturity and interests to match, which bled into her behavior when she was an adult, he couldn't help thinking that this was some scheme to get him to improve his English. Which would be a really strange thing to do, and certainly going overboard, but that was pretty much par for the course when it came to how he was treated by others.

Well, if it could be helped, he wasn't going to allow her to get her way.

Comments

[bdoubleowo]

Ranma, no... Spike is not Ninomiya Hinako.

Or is (s)he?

DUN DUN DUN

[Squishtopher]

Huh... I watched the first five or so seasons of Ranma 1/2 on early Youtube way back in the day, but I don't remember someone described like Ninomiya. What, did she fall in the Pond of Drowned Adult?

[Joe Toon]

11235868
No, she's from the manga (which the anime never reached her arc). She's a child whom Old Man Haposai taught how to absorb Ki/Chi to turn her into an adult.

[Greenhorn]

he couldn't help thinking that this was some scheme to get him to improve his English. Which would be a really strange thing to do, and certainly going overboard, but that was pretty much par for the course when it came to how he was treated by others.

Discord: I need to get my tub of popcorn.

[The Sixth Child]

11235979 11235868
She's not child with an adult form, she's an adult with a child form.

Her wiki page:

Age

Mid to late 20's

History

She was very sickly. Happosai was raiding the nurses' panties at the hospital where she stayed at, and he "helped" her by manipulating her pressure points, changing her metabolism so she could absorb the auras of other people to increase her health. However, his only motive for doing this was so she could absorb the battle auras of the enraged nurses whose panties he stole, allowing him to make a clean getaway. This altered metabolism made her default form age very slowly, making her true age that of her adult form.

Plot

She is a teacher hired by Principal Kuno for the purpose of disciplining Furinkan's many delinquent students, particularly Ranma Saotome, she has a reputation for being quite the successful reformer. This status causes a bit of a surprise when she shows up as a young girl. Her reputation, however, is justified when she uses her ability to absorb a person's battle aura, rendering them incapable of fighting back. After absorbing it, she instantly grows into a voluptuous young woman and is then capable of firing it back at opponents as a large ball of energy. She reverts to her child form upon doing so.