Tangled Up In Purple

by Crescent Pulsar

Chapter 3: An All-Horse Town

Ranma tuned the reptile out, as it tried to get a response from him about something, and awkwardly raised his upper body so he could lean his... forelegs on top of the cart's side board. He looked around, taking in the world, wondering how he was going to get out of such an elaborate place by himself. Even a certain compact mirror, which his mirror clone had trapped them both inside of, had required outside assistance to get its occupants out, and it had been a rather simple device.

Although he preferred being more proactive, and overcoming a challenge without help, there might be a chance that he wasn't in a position to enact a solution. If that ended up being the case, all he could do was occupy himself while he waited for a rescue. If everything he could see was interactable, like the castle on the mountain behind them and the town ahead, it might be bearable — even more so if there was more to do beyond the horizon.

Conversely, if his only way out was to, say, learn English...

As the chariot began to descend toward the town, he paused his current thoughts to get a good look at where they were apparently going to land. At first, it looked like a rustic, European town; but, the more of it he saw, the more it seemed to lack a singular cultural identity, apart from having a strong — if dated — Western influence. The big tents might have been the only exception to that, mostly because he didn't associate a tent with permanent residences, and the only building that he could confidently call modern looked good enough to eat.

With his gaze on the cupcake-topped building, and no immediate solutions to his predicament coming to mind, he decided that it wouldn't hurt to check out the town while he waited for any potential help to arrive, or for an idea on how to escape the book himself — without learning English — to come to him. Sure, he did have school to attend, but he'd missed plenty of school days because of stuff like this, and he had no problem with missing more.

After the chariot landed and came to a complete stop, he hopped off of it and landed on his hind legs. He swayed before he acquired his balance, then took some practice steps to see how practical it would be to walk on two legs, ignoring the looks that he was getting and the question from the reptile. Once he concluded that standing on two legs would put too much strain on his body after a while, he resigned himself to walking on all fours.

With that out of the way, he focused his attention on his surroundings, and on the citizens of the town in particular. And... wow. Their eyes were certainly huge. That probably meant that his eyes were, as well. He also noticed that some horses had a horn, like him, wings, like the ones that had driven the chariot, or had neither of the stand-out features, which seemed to be the case for most of the horses that he could see. Another common feature were the pictures on the horses' flanks, save for one of the young ones, and a quick look revealed that he had one of his own, making him wonder about their significance. Finally, there didn't seem to be any restriction on what color their coat, hair or eyes could be.

Before he could start moving to a more populated and commercial area, he noticed a pink horse walking directly toward him, who he determined was a girl once she was close enough for him to see her visage and physique. For some reason she stopped in front of him, a few steps away, and stared at him, as if she were leisurely waiting for something.

"What?" He prompted.

The pink horse jumped into the air while gasping quite dramatically, then somehow managed to fly over his head despite being wingless. He looked behind himself, and saw that she was already out of sight.

He stood there for a few seconds, staring incredulously, before shrugging and beginning his trek toward the center of the town. Despite the different configuration of his legs, he had little trouble keeping his balance and finding his stride, which he attributed to certain aspects of his martial arts training.

Not long after he began, the reptile caught up with him and talked while pointing at a parchment that had various things written on it.

"Sorry, little guy," he eventually said, sparing the reptile a glance, "but I'm not interested."

He saw the reptile stop and regard him with confusion and worry before he returned his attention to the fore, hoping that he had dissuaded the creature from bothering him further by demonstrating the language barrier between them.

Eventually, mostly by entering the part of town that seemed most dense with buildings, he found himself at the town square. At the center was a tower-like building, with a wraparound veranda, which was accessible from multiple sets of stairs, and two wraparound balconies. There was a fountain across from the building's entrance, a couple of small tents nearby, as well as several polls around the area, where a pair of clefted streamers hung from dowels and whose tops flew pennants. A number of street vendors could be seen down one street, where he could see that dessert-themed building.

There were a lot of horses moving about and socializing at the square. He spared a moment to watch them, out of curiosity, but his attention soon locked onto one horse in particular. This one had a horn like he now did, but what caught his attention was the floating ice cream cone in front of their face, and how both it and their horn were surrounded in an aura of the exact same color. Considering what he'd seen the flying horses accomplish with such small wings so far, it wasn't a stretch to conclude that horns were more than a projection with stabbing potential.

Looking up at his horn, he wondered if he should try to get it to work. Honestly, he would have preferred having wings, but moving stuff with one's mind was only slightly worse than that. For all he knew, he might be able to effectively fly by moving himself.

Since he was killing some time anyway, in case he could only be released by someone from outside of the book, or someone was already working on releasing him, he decided to postpone the rest of his sightseeing to harness his horn's power. So, he looked around for something small to start with, but the ground was well-tread and clear of stones and litter. Eventually, after turning his sights higher, he chose a flower from a planter box hanging from a nearby window sill.

After staring at the flower for a few minutes while he focused on moving it, with no sign of success, he frowned. That horned horse had made it look so easy. He spent a couple more minutes watching other horses using their horns, saw that barely any thought seemed to be put into it, then returned his attention to the flower and tried to approach it casually.

Again, he failed to move the flower in any way. Thinking that there must be some sort of trick to it, he fell back on what he knew best: martial arts. There were a lot of techniques that he could do with little or no thought, but that had usually required some amount of training first. The most comparative ability that he could think of, ki manipulation, had required meditation to recognize the ki within himself before he could do anything with it consciously, so he wagered that it might be the same for whatever the horn used to levitate things.

Without any thought to where he was or who was watching, he set his head on the ground, with his forelegs crossed behind it, and raised his hind legs into the air before crossing them. Then, he closed his eyes and began to meditate, looking within himself for whatever powered his horn.

"Mommy," a young girl said from nearby, as she looked up at her mother, "what is that lady doing?"

The mother blocked her view of Ranma with a hoof and hurried her along. "Nothing that you need to concern yourself with, honey."

It took a while, but Ranma eventually discovered an unfamiliar energy inside of himself. It wasn't like ki, which he could draw tangible ideas from about its nature, like temperature and weight. Also, instead of being easygoing, and more difficult to motivate the more that he demanded from it, this energy was wild and untamed, ready and willing to run away if not reined in. Which made a sort of sense, since he was a horse.

Once he was back on all four feet and facing the flower again, he focused and tried to coax the energy toward his horn, ready to suppress it if necessary. However, when it shot out like a bolt of lightning and struck the house, turning it into a horse-shaped house, he was completely overwhelmed. He felt the energy rushing out wherever it could; it even flowed through his eyes, turning his vision white.

He felt helpless as he began to float off of the ground, unable to figure out how to get this strange energy under control. He not only sensed it course throughout his entire being and blaze around it, but as it shot out in more directions, turning more of the town's buildings into horse-shaped ones, save one because it was already that way, and its residents into pommel horses.

Mercifully, the energy wasn't infinite, and with its exhaustion his vision turned dark.

Comments

[Squishtopher]

Fate Neigh/Night: Unlimited Horse Works.

[Greenhorn]

Without any thought to where he was or who was watching, he set his head on the ground, with his forelegs crossed behind it, and raised his hind legs into the air before crossing them. Then, he closed his eyes and began to meditate, looking within himself for whatever powered his horn.

Zecora: Why is that pony know how to meditate like a zebra?