Tangled Up In Purple

by Crescent Pulsar

Chapter 6: Pink Bouncy Houses for You and Me

Unsurprisingly, Ranma found himself sitting in the darkness again, which slowly gave way to a familiar chariot ride.

Although he was glad that he could utilize magic to empower his body in some fashion, he was still determined to get access to those books, so he shelved away ideas involving his magic for the time being. Once the chariot was within the town limits, he levitated himself out of it and found a relatively dark alley to hide in, in case the flying horses or reptile gave chase.

Since he had encountered that pink horse every time he entered the town, even on a roof, he looked behind him to see if she was there. When she wasn't, he prepared himself mentally to see her where he had been looking a second ago and thus wasn't shocked when he found his nose pressing into hers. She stared unassumingly, as she usually did, and he stared back.

When he grew tired of her game, or whatever she was doing, he looked away, intent on walking around her, but she stayed directly in front of him. He glanced down at her feet, because it had seemed like she had moved with his eyes without her legs doing anything, and he was baffled when she remained in the same spot within his vision once more, which she accomplished by burrowing through the ground without resistance — again, seemingly without the expected physical activity.

"What the—"

She shot out of the ground and gasped, spraying dirt and clumps of grass everywhere in the process, then flew through the air and vanished from his sight despite expecting what would happen and where she would go. He stared after her for a bit, annoyed, before shaking his head, now more sure than ever that he was inside of a book: it was the only explanation for why he couldn't avoid that pink horse, and how she reacted every time he uttered anything, as if it were dictated by a plot.

Of course, since she was also the obstacle that prevented him from checking out the books, he began to make his way back to what he guessed was a library. Since he wanted to get there before her, he ran without thinking. When he realized what he was doing, he mentally shrugged and focused on keeping an eye out for the pink horse, chariot horses and the reptile while he ran, to avoid being derailed.

He reached the tree building without an issue and opened the door, expecting the pink horse to be inside and ready to throw him out, but there was no initial sign of her. It wasn't until he made it to the center of the room, after taking a look around and finding no one, that he allowed himself to relax. Using his magic to close the door from where he stood, he approached a nearby bookshelf and started his search for a book that taught English.

It didn't take him long to notice that the books were ordered alphabetically, which could be a problem. He had been hoping to find a spine that he could read, in order to glean the subject of the books around it and pinpoint where he needed to look: because, if a book's title didn't start with "English", then he'd have no other recourse but to check every title thoroughly for the word.

Unfortunately, after looking at all of the titles that started with "E", he didn't see one that began with "English." The only book of note had been a fancy one that stood out from the other, more ordinary and cheaper-looking books. Its presence had been strange enough for him to pull it out and take a glimpse of its contents, long enough to ascertain that it was a book about precious gems or something.

So, he grumbled about the organization of the books as he started his search from one side of the room, hoping that he would find a book that taught English closer to where he began than where he would end. It didn't take long for the task to bore him, making him reconsider what he was doing, but he stuck with it because he knew that he'd have to come back to it anyway, if no one managed to get him out of the book within a reasonable amount of time.

By the time he was close to reaching the "E" section again, he heard the door open and turned to see who was entering. Much to his consternation, it was the pink horse, who stared at him in confusion upon spotting him.

"What are you doing here?" She asked.

Ready for a confrontation, he turned to face her and adamantly stated, "Look, I was here first, so I'm not going anywhere."

The pink horse tilted her head for a few seconds before her whole body perked up with an idea. She proceeded to dig around in her mane with a hoof, with her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth, and eventually pulled out a booklet, which she slapped upon the underside of his hoof after raising it up and turning it over herself.

He looked down at it, nonplussed, until he read the cover, which was — to his pleasant surprise — partly in Japanese, and learned that it was a phrasebook. He didn't know what the "Common" on the cover meant, but he saw English phrases alongside Japanese inside, when he used his magic to hold the booklet up and flip through its pages, and that was all that mattered to him. It probably wouldn't have much of anything complex, since it likely catered to the needs of a tourist, but it was bound to have something better than what he could come up with on his own.

After spending a few moments to assess his options, he settled on telling the pink horse to leave him alone. With the aid of small kana to help him with his pronunciation, he deliberately read, "Do you want to go back to my place... Bouncy-bouncy?"

He looked up at the pink horse, his brow furrowed, knowing enough English to notice that something wasn't right with what he had read, and that was confirmed when her eyes lit up and she slowly drew in an excited breath. Then, before he knew it, she had grabbed one of his forelegs and hauled him away so fast that the booklet remained plastered to his muzzle while the world became a blur of colors and his body flew through the air. Naturally, he tried to scream, but the booklet slipped into his mouth and gagged him when he opened it.

A few seconds later, although it felt a lot longer, he came to a sudden stop, somehow without his foreleg being torn off, and was unceremoniously deposited upon the ground. He proceeded to spit out the booklet and hurriedly stand up, wondering what kind of situation he had gotten himself into, and prepared to fight or flee. He had just enough time to establish that he was alone, in what appeared to be a park, when the pink horse returned at a ridiculous speed and managed to stop on a dime.

She had a large, plastic-looking, mostly-pink mass on her back, which she placed on the ground in front of her. Then, without pause, she found the mass' nozzle, took a breath so deep that her torso swelled to several times its normal size, then blew into it, instantly inflating a bouncy house that had pink siding and brown shingles depicted on it.

While he was staring in disbelief, wondering if any horse could do what the pink horse had been doing, or if it was restricted to horses without a horn or wings, said horse had zipped over to a nearby tree, procured a tennis ball from within the hollow, then hurried back over to him and impaled it on his horn.

Before he could respond to that in any way, she was behind him and pushing him through the doorless entrance of the bouncy house. Since he wasn't given the choice to adjust to the floor's surface at his own pace, which consisted of springy half-cylinders, he quickly lost his footing with his new hooves and fell upon his chest, then bounced enough to flip onto his back before settling into a valley.

The pink horse followed him inside and began to bounce in place nearby, who looked down at him expectantly and excitedly shouted, "Come on! Show me whatcha got!"

He stared at her for a few seconds, then looked around, not fully understanding how he'd gotten into his current situation but having an idea of what was going on. While he was still irritated with the pink horse for her past actions, he decided to humor her for a multitude of reasons: one, she was a fictional character who couldn't help her actions, who otherwise seemed friendly; two, he now knew that he had time to look at the books before she arrived at the library; three, he still didn't need to do anything in particular while he gave the others some time to get him out of the book; four, he figured he might as well try to become more adept at moving his horse body, since he might end up having it for a while; five, he was curious if she would perform another unreal feat, so he could try to do it himself.

Once he was standing, he bobbed with all four legs a few times, to get a feel for how bouncy the floor was, before making his first jump. Embarrassingly, it didn't take long for him to bounce off at an angle and land on his side, where he bounced again before he came to a stop.

The pink horse sprung over to him with ease and pulled him back onto his hooves. She then proceeded to help him improve his skill, via demonstration and correction, which he grudgingly accepted. He could only hope that no one in the real world would find out about this, or anything else that he could be mocked for. He was a quick learner, fortunately, so it didn't take him long to bounce around without assistance.

That's when the pink horse began to perform simple aerial tricks, and the expression on her face compelled him to take that as a challenge to imitate what she was doing with equal or greater skill. Her tricks progressively became more difficult, but he remained confident in his ability to keep up because aerial techniques were one of the specialties of his martial art's school, and he was quickly becoming more accustomed to his alien body.

However, when she somehow slowed down to a snail's pace as she fell, then bounced back up into the air as if she hadn't, he was flummoxed and became frustrated trying to replicate it without his horn. After dozens of attempts, he fell back on doing things his own way, by using his horn and seeing how the pink horse would react when he slowed his descent with levitation before throwing himself down as hard as he could at the last second.

She responded with a giggle and met him at the apex of his next bounce, where she grabbed him and led with a trick that required two but little input from one. He didn't know how to feel about this development, but went with it and tried to not mess up and look bad. However, after she demonstrated that she didn't care when he didn't do something right, and guided him on how to do it properly without judgement, he stopped worrying about it and did his best to keep up.

Much to his surprise, after some time he found himself having fun rather than only being self-satisfied by his accomplishments. He eventually stopped thinking about what he was doing and just enjoyed the experience, not noticing when he synchronized his actions with the pink horse, even when she was doing something new, or when he performed feats that he normally would have questioned if it was possible.

It wasn't until after they ricocheted off opposite walls, collided into full-bodied hugs in mid-air, then defied gravity and drifted down like a feather, that he was shaken out of that mindset, on account of the feat and doing something both embarrassing and uncomfortable. When that happened, he frantically disentangled himself and fell to the floor, where he quickly discovered that he couldn't control how he bounced because of how exhausted he was. Once he was laying still, on his back, he remained that way, panting and feeling sore all over.

His gaze followed the pink horse as she altered course and nonchalantly landed next to him, in a seated position. She proceeded to pull out a little, plastic siren whistle from her mane, followed by a dish filled with soapy water, then dipped the end of the siren whistle into the soapy water before blowing into it for several seconds, sending out a stream of bubbles alongside the cartoon-y sound. When she finished, she lowered the siren whistle and released a contented sigh.

Looking at her strangely, wondering what that was all about, he could only watch as she twisted away from him, to rummage around for something that he couldn't see, even though nothing should be there, then turned toward him and placed a wrapped gift box between his forelegs. Before he could consider where it could have possibly come from, or what was inside, his eyes widened, and his face went flush, when she leaned over and nuzzled her cheek against his.

"I had a great time," she spoke softly into his ear, before she stood up and began to prance out of the bouncy house. "Let's do it again, sometime!"

She was long gone by the time he recovered, struggling to believe that he had somehow managed to garner the affection of a horse. The fact that they were also the same sex only came as a surprise because interest typically came after the girl learned about his curse.

With a shake of his head, he forced his attention onto the gift that she had left him. Using his magic to pick it up and turn it over, so he could see — out of habit — the bow at the top, he noticed a folded card tucked between the box and ribbon. Curious, he pulled the card out and opened it, pleasantly surprised that the writing was in Japanese.

"Whoopsie! I gave you a gag phrasebook by mistake. Although, maybe it was fated to happen? Dun-dun-dunnnn!" He was startled when the musical sting actually played. He continued reading after he recovered and decided that it would be best to not think about how it had happened. "Anyway, here's the book you were looking for. I can't wait for you to learn Common, so we can have even more fun!"

He moved on to the closing.

"Your special somepony, Pinkie Pie."

He stared at the card for a while, as he mulled over everything that he had just learned from it. Apart from her name and getting further confirmation that she liked him, he now understood that they were ponies and that his English was their Common. That didn't exactly contradict the idea that his teacher had trapped him inside of a book, to force him to improve his English. It did, however, suggest that his situation might be more complicated than he thought, and that it might be worth mentally preparing himself for the prospect that either someone else had sent the book to him for another reason, or that he hadn't been the intended recipient.

Either way, there was still a good chance that learning Common would end up being helpful, so he untied the ribbon, pulled away the wrapping, then removed the lid of the box. As he levitated the book out of it, he began to wonder how Pinkie Pie could have known what he had been looking for, but that thought was interrupted when he heard a chime and saw a notification slide into view.

It read: "A new book has been added to your library: Common for the Commonpony."

Comments

[GlitchyFox]

So Ranma has been sucked into a magic book and will have to live twilights life before he can get out? Menwhile nobody knows he is in there and the book has likely been sent to twilight. Why does it feel like when Ranma does get out of the book he will come out with a clone of twilights body and stuff will happen?

[bdoubleowo]

Aww. This is cute! Oh Pinkie, never change. <3

[Voltaje]

Interesting Ranma crossover, so far i didnt like mucho other Ranma crossovers, this one has potential, so lets see where this is going.

I wonder if he could change into a stallion once he gets wam water, it would be better for Pinky, or other potential temporary Lovers XD, Liked and faved :D.

[Greenhorn]

It read: "A new book has been added to your library: Common for the Commonpony ."

I think the first book he should seek is 'English for Dummies' instead.

[BoJack Horseman]

11235979
She was the focus of one of the OVAs and in at least the 2008 one as a cameo

[GlitchyFox]

i wonder if by the time anyone for the actual equestria checks the book ramma will have already caused this other version to change. After all at the end of the day the world ramma is in is a simulation but the adding of something not anticipated could change things. Would it be possible for the whole of the book world to become more than intended through ramma making thier own path.
Imagine when twilight evnetualy actualy goes in and finds a world that has diverged greatly and someone else as her

[SoulOfAsh]

That is an interesting idea, I like it so far. Especially the interactions of Dash and Pinkie(who probably is only a fictional copy inside a book, but who knows with Pinkie?) with Ranma’s thought processes ;p
I mean, the Pinkie part was pure gold, in my opinion - but Ranma seemingly encountering positive reinforcement for the first time ever, and Pinkie going for a “smoke” after their fun-time were especially amusing, I think.

[The Sixth Child]

After spending a few moments to assess his options, he settled on telling the pink horse to leave him alone. With the aid of small kana to help him with his pronunciation, he deliberately read, "Do you want to go back to my place... Bouncy-bouncy?"

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