At The Beach
A Ranma Nibunnoichi Fanfic
(with some reference to other works by Rumiko Takahashi)
by Chris "Chika" Johnson

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Disclaimer rap

Uh huh uh huh! Kick it!
The folk in the story were not created by me!
They were thought up by Rumiko Takahashi!
I never got permission and that's no lie,

er...

....i liek pie!

OK, so I'm useless at writing raps! ^_^
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Chapter One: The Way In

Summer holidays were always a problem for the Tendo family and their
long term lodgers, Ranma and Genma Saotome, and the heat of the dojo
in the mid-summer sun was incentive enough for them to do something
to get away, as long as it was cheap. Well, considering that both
Saotomes were more often than not broke, Soun got only what he made
from the dojo and that usually went to the upkeep of the residents,
this was not too surprising. Only Nabiki seemed to be flush, but
Soun couldn't afford to borrow at that sort of interest rate. OK,
he thought, I can get everyone down to the coast and back on cheap
rail fares and, if it turns out too expensive, we can always sleep
on the beach! It isn't as if we never did that before. As it turned
out, the family managed to pool enough money together for rooms
enough for them, at least for a few days, on top of the price of
tickets there and back.

This sort of thing was always a problem for Ranma. With his curse,
it meant that he would either sweat the days away or invoke his
curse. Even now, so long after his little "accident" at Jusenkyo, he
was still somewhat uneasy with the idea of changing into a girl when
he got wet, at least with cold water, but part of the point of this
journey was to cool down, and the best way was to get wet. For this
reason, his bags were packed primarily with female clothing, and he
just hoped that the locks were stout enough. It would be bad enough
if Happosai were to turn up and discover the contents, but a worse
fate would be to see the looks on onlookers' faces at what might
spill out. Honestly, they're not mine! Someone is playing a trick on
me! I don't know how this got in here! If he thought about it
logically, chances would be that nobody would ask that sort of
question, either because they already knew about him or, more
likely, because they didn't - but then Ranma sometimes had problems
about logic, especially where this curse of his was concerned.

And, of course, Happosai was always a distinct possibility.

Akane, on the other hand, was looking forward to a nice family
holiday, with plenty to do and no interruptions from assumed
fiancees and unrequited love candidates. Kuno had been getting
especially annoying of late, to the point where Akane had needed to
take actual time away from school just to avoid him. Then, when he
thought to go to the dojo to inquire after her health, she would
quickly sneak away and back to school. Work, therefore, had become
somewhat haphazard, and her grades were in serious trouble right
now, so one thought was to do a little catching up now before Miss
Hinako started asking awkward questions. Perhaps Akane could prevail
upon her tutor to try her little coin trick on Kuno. Akane started
plotting...

Nabiki was worried. She had three late debts in hand, and only two
of them were with her on this trip. She didn't like the idea of
letting the other get away from her, but she couldn't trust anyone
else to collect on her behalf. If you want anyone extorted right,
you have to extort them yourself. That was her motto in such
situations. At least there were some up sides to this journey; she
had picked up a number of swimsuits that could drop a boy at twenty
paces, nose bleeding profusely. With no real competition in her
family, it would be interesting to see how she could manipulate the
beach's male population this time.

Kasumi was napping. What with all the preparations for the journey
and such, she was already exhausted.

Trips to the beach always unnerved Genma. Just as his son was, he
was well aware of the reasons and consequences of a trip to a place
with that much cold water to hand or, in his case, to paw. Oh, he
wasn't so worried about being a panda when splashed with water. He
had come to terms with that a long time ago, and it even worked in
his favour whenever he was in trouble, which was pretty often. No,
right now his real concern was his son. He was even less reconciled
to his son becoming a daughter when splashed, and Nodoka and her
supposed revenge was not the only reason. Somehow, a half-boy, half-
girl was a blemish on his own manhood. Of course, if he had been
truthful, he would probably have added that it was Genma's own silly
fault that this had happened in the first place. But we all know
Genma, don't we?

"Will you lot cheer up?" Soun said, suddenly, noticing the looks of
intent concentration on all but one of the accompanying passengers.
"This is supposed to be a holiday for us! You are supposed to be
happy!"

No change there. Soun quietly brought out the travel Go board and
pieces, settled opposite Genma and said, with a resigned sigh; "You
go first."

The family arrived at the quaint beach-side station late in the day.
None of them had ever been to this beach before and, since they were
a little short of cash, they had opted for a less popular beach
where everything was a little cheaper than at the bigger tourist
traps. Ranma looked about him, noticing how small and underdeveloped
the little village was. With a sigh, Ranma picked up one of the
cases and quickly ducked into one of the station rest rooms.

A few moments later, the party and one or two passers-by were
shocked by an enormous scream followed by a hasty exit by a now
female Ranma, almost clothed in a rather cute sun dress, with an old
man attached to her chest. "Ranma, my darling!" Happosai had been
hiding in that case, obviously, and had bided his time until Ranma
was ready for glomping.

"So why change into a girl here?" Akane yelled over Ranma's protests.

"Just getting it over with," Ranma replied, ripping the old pervert
from her chest and booting him into orbit. "With a village this
size, it will be difficult to hide changes and such, so if I pretend
to be an ordinary girl from the start, then the gossip will be less."

"You think you are up to it?" Akane teased. She knew well that there
was quite a bit more to being a girl than external appearances, even
if Ranma did not. Ranma, however, just gave out another resigned
sigh, picked up her cases and followed the family to the guest house.

It was probably kinder to call this place a guest house, even though
the sign on the front proudly proclaimed "Hotel". There were bigger
hotels in the village, but this one probably predated them all, and
it wasn't that big. In fact, it was probably no bigger than the
smaller ikkukan back home. The rooms were certainly clean, but one
could imagine some great shogun kneeling at one end, directing his
subordinate samurai on some great crusade against his neighbouring
enemy. They looked that old. The initial problem, however, was that
the rooms were three doubles, and the manager did insist on housing
the two men together. Soun and Genma, on reflection, didn't mind too
much as it meant that, perhaps, their wish of family unity would
finally be achieved.

The doors to Soun and Genma's room closed, and Nabiki and Kasumi
started to take up residence in the second room. Akane felt a deep
dread as she first started through the third door, then looked at
Ranma, who was blushing furiously, seemingly equally shocked. She
does look feminine like that, Akane thought, timidly walking into
the small room. Perhaps, if she stays a girl right through the
holiday, I won't have any problems.

If Akane was adapting herself to an awkward situation, Ranma
certainly was not. She refused to even look at Akane, and stood
there in the corridor, blushing. Perhaps, if I put water on my face,
it would heat up enough to change me back!

"Ranma," Akane stuttered.

"No way!"

"You have to sleep somewhere," Akane reasoned. "If you stay as a
girl, then nobody is likely to ask any questions."

"Yeah, but you know the truth. No, I'll get another room."

"You haven't got enough money for that." And with that, Akane pulled
the still blushing Ranma through the door and firmly shut it.

That night was probably the most uncomfortable one that Ranma had
spent in many days. She just couldn't get to sleep. It was bad
enough that she was in this room with Akane, the ultra-conservative,
mallet wielding, boy hating prude, but when Akane had stripped the
sun dress off her and even helped her to dress for bed, Ranma's
brain had decided that this was beyond reasonable joking and had
shut down. She had sat on the futon, giggling like a ninny, until
the light went off. The icing on that particular cake was that Akane
had a pleasant nights' sleep.

The following day, after breakfast, and with Ranma recovered from
her night of purgatory with Akane - well more or less - Ranma and
Akane decided to take a look around the village while Kasumi did
some shopping, Nabiki settled down for a little early sun worship
and the two elders started yet another game.

The village backed right onto the beach, though some sea walling was
in evidence. Apart from their own guest house, there were two other,
and somewhat more recent, hotels, though even these had a look of
neglect about them. They certainly looked better appointed, at least
from external inspection. A number of houses dotted the land around
them, along with a couple of shops and somewhere which might be the
Japanese equivalent to the American place called "Eats". Each of the
shops had a beach shop attached, though again these seemed
neglected, with out of date signs and cheap stock. Behind the
village were the usual mountainous rises of this part of the
country, which the railway valiantly struggled along at one end
before diving to beach level at the station just behind the wall.

"Well, that didn't take long," Akane observed as the pair finished
their walk, approaching one of the shops, the one that might be
called "Eats".

Inside, they both bought cool drinks and started to ask about the
village. It had once been a promising sea resort, but another,
bigger resort had opened down the coast. It was much bigger, with
more amenities and was easier to get to, so most of the custom had
drifted away. The village nowadays only got overspill and folk that
couldn't afford to go down the coast. Akane and Ranma blushed at
this; it was a little embarrassing to be reminded of their financial
affliction, though the shop owner never made any connection.

It was while they were drinking that Akane noticed a shiny cloth
behind the counter. It was a fascinating thing as, although it was
green overall, it had a metallic sheen to it and seemed to pick up
other colours as the sun glinted off it. Indeed, it didn't seem to
be woven at all, the ragged edges giving it the appearance of some
sort of hide. Ranma gave it a passing glance, seeing that Akane was
interested in it, but showed no real interest of her own, still
concentrating hard on being as much a girl as possible. Sucking the
last of her drink from the bottom of her glass, Akane wandered over
to take a closer look.

"You like our mermaid's skin?"

Akane looked at the shopkeeper with some puzzlement in her face.
"Mermaid's skin?"

"It comes from one of the previous owners of this place, and then
from many years before that. The last owner told me the legend;
apparently the skin was taken from the tail of a mermaid that a
fisherman caught in this bay many years ago. With her dying breath,
the mermaid uttered a curse on the thing. The fisherman would later
lose both his wife and two daughters, but never said why beyond
saying that the curse had taken them."

"But what was the curse?" Akane queried.

"I don't know," the shopkeeper responded. "The fisherman's son set
this place up, but after he also lost his wife to the curse, he sold
up and went inland, and left only this skin behind. Personally, I
don't believe in curses, and I've been meaning to get rid of this
thing for ages." He reached up and pulled the skin down. It seemed
to come away easily from the wall, and leave no trace of the time it
had been there behind. "Want it?"

"I couldn't," Akane demurred. "It looks valuable."

"Not to me it isn't," and the shopkeeper handed it to Akane. "There
you go. Give it a good home."

Akane thanked the shopkeeper profusely and, with Ranma in tow, left
the shop. Ranma's ears had pricked up at the sound of the word
"curse", and was now feeling many misgivings about this sudden gift
and the shopkeepers' ignorance. Curses that were known to someone
were one thing, but curses that nobody knew about were another, and
suddenly Ranma didn't trust this shopkeeper or his gift to Akane.
She said nothing to Akane at that point, but inwardly decided to
have a good long look at this skin when they got back to the guest
house.

On inspection, however, neither Ranma nor Akane could make out
anything that might be construed as dangerous or cursed about the
skin, which certainly seemed like a hide of some sort. They reasoned
that it might be a crude facsimile, used as a gimmick in earlier
times to draw the punters' interest. Like most of the resort, it was
now a little shabby in places, but Akane thought it could possibly
be turned into something of use if they could cut away the damaged
areas. Since both Akane and Ranma were hopeless at crafts of that
sort, however, they resolved to consult Kasumi about it.

That night was more peaceful for Ranma. She was just beginning to
get used to the idea of sleeping in her girl form with Akane in the
same room, though the proximity still made her a little nervous. She
had seen what Akane was capable of when she was asleep, and often
wondered how Ryoga put up with it. Several times Ranma was woken
with a punch or a kick as Akane restlessly turned through the night,
though Ranma never tried to wake her, much as she might have liked
to. Who knows what she might do if she wakes up in the night and
sees me here?

However, Ranma did manage some sleep and woke the next morning to
find a rested Akane looking back at her. "Ohayo, Ran-chan," she
chirped as though "Ran-chan" had been a lifelong friend. Ranma was a
little confused, and since sleep still fuddled her wits, all "Ran-
chan" could do was to respond in kind. Being called "Akane-chan" by
Ranma seemed to please Akane greatly, which only added to Ranma's
confusion.

Much as they had done the day before, at least after their mornings'
village rummaging, the family spent their time on the beach, Genma
now in panda form splashing about and getting on everyone elses'
nerves, at least until Ranma kicked him over the horizon. Akane
watched this from the safety of a beach umbrella, regretting for the
several-millionth time that she had never been able to swim. Ranma
looked so good splashing around in the shallows in that black one
piece with blue piping (Ranma had never had the courage to add a
bikini to her wardrobe though, for that matter, neither had Akane).
Akane even found herself preferring Ranma to the shameless display
that her sister, Nabiki, was putting up on a neighbouring
sunlounger. Why, even Kasumi looked better than that, though Kasumi
was always modest with her attire, even on the beach. Though, Akane
added to her chain of thought, I might be the only one that is
thinking that way right now. The queue of expectant boys was forming
around the sunlounger, and Nabiki had yen in her eyes again. Typical
Nabiki, Akane thought in disgust.

It was at this point that they saw it. Why Akane and Ranma both
looked toward the same point at that time, neither knew, but they
did. Out beyond the southerly arm of the bay, they saw a familiar
glint of green gleaming against the blue ocean colour. Only briefly,
but they saw it. Akane stood up and ran down the beach towards Ranma
but, by the time her feet hit water, it was gone. Both girls looked
again, then turned to each other.

"You saw it?"

Ranma nodded, furiously shaking her hair which, for the first time
in many a moon, was unplaited. "What was it?" she asked in return.

Akane was no wiser on the subject, and none of the other resident
beach folk could shed any light on the subject. In fact, apart from
Akane and Ranma, nobody seemed in the slightest bit interested.

"Come on, Ran-chan," Akane said, pulling Ranma by the hand back in
the direction of the guest house. "I want another look at that skin."

"OK, Akane-chan," Ranma replied, to be favoured by another of those
unbelievably cute Akane smiles.

"I'm beginning to think that you spending the whole time here as a
girl was a good idea."

"Me too..." Ranma said, shyly. For some reason, Ranma was feeling
less like a cursed boy and more like a girl with each passing
moment, and though Akane had effectively reminded her that she was a
"he" normally, as far as she was concerned, in this village,
especially on this beach, she was a "she" and nothing else.

Reaching the guest house, Akane led Ranma to their shared room, and
dug out the bag into which they had put the skin the previous day.
No, on further inspection, nothing had changed about it. Perhaps the
curse was just a fake, a phoney, something to keep the visitors
intrigued and happy. Something to lure folk back to the beach in
future years so that the village did not entirely crumble into dust.

"Of course, we don't even know how the curse would work, if it
existed," Ranma reasoned, suddenly breaking the silence. "Obviously
touching it is not a problem, unless you have to touch it at a
particular time, or in a place, or something like that."

"Ran-chan," Akane said, a little shyly, "do you really want to know?
I mean, do you really want yet another curse on you?"

Ranma looked blankly at Akane and noticed that the uncute tomboy had
a trace of tears in her eyes, mouth turned somewhat as if to show
concern. "Do you really care about it that much?"

Akane did not respond to this, but Ranma could see the answer in her
eyes.

"OK then, let's put it away and forget about it." Ranma carefully
folded the skin back into its bag, then put it back into one of the
cupboards. Akane rose, then Ranma slipped an arm around her waist.
Both girls, still dressed for swimming, were suddenly very
melancholy and while this gesture of Ranma's would be unusual at
other times and might have solicited a violent malletting, right now
all Akane wanted to do was to...

She kissed Ranma.

Ranma looked Akane in the eye again. "Even though I'm a girl?"

"Ranma, especially because you are a girl. And a boy. And a martial
artist. I know I'm not that good at expressive myself around you..."

"Well I don't exactly help, ya know!" This sounded a little more
like the Ranma that Akane knew and...

"But I do really love you."

"Yeah, and I love you too, even if you are an uncute tomboy
sometimes!"

That jolted Akane out of her melancholic mood. "Ranma..." she
growled. Then, reflecting exactly what Ranma had said, she relented.
Sometimes her sense of humour took a while to kick in! "Perhaps I do
get the best of both worlds in you. I get a meathead for a boyfriend
that can always beat anyone up... eventually..."

Ranma withdrew her arm, then started to prepare for the onslaught of
mallet on head, but it never came.

"...and then I get a girlfriend who has easily bigger breasts than
me, looks great in a swimsuit and is a really good friend! Well,
sometimes, anyway!" It was Akane's turn to slip a comforting arm
around Ranma's waist, effectively ending Ranma's thought of flight.
"So perhaps we should make the most of the sun left to us?"

Ranma looked out of the window at the day, now late into the
afternoon, and agreed. "Let's go, Akane-chan." Ranma got another
kiss for that, and she decided that she liked it. After a further
couple of hours on the beach, dinner and some light conversation,
bed and sleep was very much easier for both girls, and the fact that
they awoke the next day in each others' arms was kept secret from
everyone except the housekeeper who found them like it when she came
up to change the towels, and she wasn't about to say anything either.

                                ---

Akane and Ranma had been exploring the mountains behind the village
that morning. When they returned, they found the guest house in an
uproar. Soun was turning the place inside out, weeping all the time
for his "little Kasumi", that person being nowhere in sight. It
seemed that she had been doing some cleaning in the rooms, a service
she provided for a small fee to the guest house which was providing
extra time and provisions for the family. "A shocking waste," Nabiki
commented when this arrangement was first announced by her elder
sister, but then nobody could ever accuse Kasumi of the same vices
that Nabiki often fell foul of. It seemed that Kasumi had been
working in the younger girls' room when she suddenly disappeared in
a hurry, those that saw her noting that she was heading beachwards.
The only clue they had was that the skin was out of its cupboard and
bag.

"So why aren't you looking on the beach?" Ranma asked when she heard
all this. Soun, however, was too far gone in his desperate grief to
make much sense to himself or anyone else. Ranma turned on her heel
and headed out to the beach, stopping only to pick up the skin in
one hand and Akane in the other.

"Why are you bringing that?" Akane asked.

"I think it might be connected with this," Ranma replied, a pensive
frown wrinkling her brow. "I'm not sure how, but if Kasumi was
cleaning, found this and somehow has activated the curse..."

Akane swallowed hard. The thought of something happening to her
eldest sister was scary to her, though right now Akane had no idea
exactly what that something might be. Well, here they were. The
beach was empty right now, though there were some peculiar marks as
though something had been dragged out of the sea at one point. Not
that unusual, since beyond the shallows the ocean dropped away
sharply and fishermen often fished from the beach itself, though not
at this time of the day.

"Notice anything?" Ranma interrupted Akane's chain of thought.

"Only that drag mark," Akane responded. "Probably someone caught
something big."

"I doubt that a mark made by fishermen would have survived this long
with the tide and all. Besides, look at the marks as it disappears
into the softer sand."

Ranma was right. The drag marks stalled halfway up the wetter
section of the beach, where it changed to what could have passed for
footprints. Still nothing conclusive, but Ranma was now looking
again at the skin. Was it her imagination, or did it just move in
her hands?

They had no chance. The skin suddenly writhed from her hands and
wrapped itself firmly around Akane's legs. Akane screamed, falling
prone on the beach, trying to remove it. Ranma suddenly found a firm
hold on the skin and wrenched it free, but the damage had already
been done. Ranma replaced the skin into its bag, then found a heavy
rock to put on it, then went to see if Akane was hurt.

Akane got shakily to her feet, only to find that her feet weren't
working properly anymore. They had come free of the pumps she had
been wearing and were now bare. Her ankles seemed uncooperative,
straightening and growing stiffer until her pointed feet dug into
the sand in their effort to keep her upright.

"Ran-chan!" she cried, scared to her very soul and as vulnerable as
she had been when her mother had passed on all those years ago. She
felt, in addition to the physical changes she seemed to be
undergoing, that she was losing something else, and though she
wasn't able to determine what it was, it hurt her to lose it.
Suddenly she found her legs would not separate and, with a gasp, she
lost her balance and fell back onto the beach. This gave her some
idea of what was actually happening. Having fallen backwards, she
could now see, as she propped herself up on her elbows, below the
hem of the short denim skirt that she was wearing, her legs were no
longer legs, but were reforming into one appendage, with her toes
getting thinner and longer, with webbing between them. Ranma was
just as shocked, but in an effort to calm and support Akane, she
slipped an arm around her friends' shoulders, and Akane buried her
head in Ranma's bosom, sobbing. Now both knew exactly what the curse
was, and where Kasumi had gone, probably getting to the shoreline
just in time before she had lost the use of her legs. That was
Kasumi alright! Always kept her head on straight! thought Akane,
miserably lifting her head and looking to see the finished result.

The merest mental whisper echoed in Akane's head.

I'm a mermaid.

- End of chapter one -