Mercury's Song Part One written by Mike Koos -------------------- ...*Splash*... She opened her eyes. The water had completely enveloped her, though for some reason she couldn't discern, she could see and breathe without much problem at all. It was somehow coming naturally to her, as if she had become a mermaid, after some fashion. She dove with that same ease toward the shadowed bottom of the pool of water. Her element. Various skeletons from those animals and people who had not survived a fall into this pool throughout the numerous years rested here and there along the bottom. She shuddered, but more from an odd feeling than wondering why this pool hadn't claimed her life as it had all of these souls whom she might never know. Something or someplace else in the world was calling to her. She kicked her feet downward, letting momentum push her back toward the light... An instant later, she was treading water on the surface, once again breathing air. She swam to the edge of the small pool, where a portly man in an old, worn Chinese soldier's uniform offered her a hand to help her out of the water. Beside him stood a panda who looked as if it wasn't sure what to make of this moment. "Ah, we is afraid you drowned, young sir," the man said to her. Drowned? she wondered aloud. Why would they think that? Surely, she hadn't been underwater that long... "You is underwater for almost ten minutes." Ten minutes? Could a person stay under the surface that long without coming up for air? The Guide stared at his younger charge - the boy had given his name as 'Ranma' - oddly. As he'd expected, the curse of the Nyan-nii-chuan had turned the boy into a girl, but... never before had any of the victims of this particular cursed pool remained underwater as though they could not be drowned. Or resurfaced with her hair the rich blue of sapphires. Except one, now that he thought about it. "You... is girl," he breathed. Ranma took her first look at herself. She *was* a girl. Or at least it certainly looked and felt as though she had the body of a girl. But why hadn't she noticed? And why was there a sense of calm overriding part of her anger? Ranma forced that calm to the back of her thoughts, where she could deal with it later. She needed to have a talk with a certain someone who would think nothing of taking his son to a cursed training ground, one that turned the older man into a large panda and him into a girl. "Father," she spoke evenly. <'Father?'> "Why did you bring us to this place?" The panda shrugged. Ranma shook her head. "I should have known better than to ask you a question like that when you can't speak." "No, you not understand," the Guide interrupted. "You look like her!" Ranma blinked. "What?" "Here. Let me show." "In Nyan-nii-chuan, young girl drown about one thousand year ago," the Guide repeated for Ranma's benefit, while searching for the books that explained the legends of each pool's curse in greater detail. He had been set to give her the information once she surfaced from the cursed pool - though he hadn't counted on her remaining below the water's surface for the next ten minutes. "...now, anyone who fall in pool, cursed to become young girl." Ranma raised an eyebrow. "The same young girl?" she asked, visualizing many people wandering China with the exact same body and voice. "No. Every girl usually different. Look like boy." "Ah." She considered this. "You mean that everyone appears the way they would if they were born a girl." The Guide blinked, staring at her for a moment. "I... think that so." "You said, 'usually.' Is there something different about me?" The Guide directed her attention to a small mirror mounted on the wall above what apparently served as his wash-basin. Warily, she placed herself before the mirror, imagining what she would see even before she made up her mind to look at her reflection. A young woman with hair and eyes a deep blue met her gaze, seemingly almost radiating a sense of gentleness and peace. Their host had been right; she definitely did not look like a female version of the boy she had been. Did that boy no longer exist? "Here - you see?" The Guide's voice interrupted her thoughts. He had laid an open book upon the large wooden table in the center of his small hut and rested a single finger upon a picture that covered an entire page. "I use to think picture just draw in blue ink," he said. "But you..." The page was old and crumbling; she was afraid to touch it. Her eyes were drawn to the picture, an illustration done completely by hand in blue ink, as the Guide had mentioned. She guessed the picture had been created after the girl had drowned in the pool, even though the picture was of a living person... Who happened to look almost exactly like the girl she had just seen in her mirror-reflection. Her hair was longer, of course. Ranma had worn her... *his* hair down to his shoulders, in an offhand ponytail. Now, that glance at the mirror had told her her ponytail descended somewhere between her shoulderblades. The hairstyle worn by the girl in the picture was a simple, short-cropped style. Her clothes - considering that the picture was supposedly at least one thousand years old - resembled the 'sailor-style' girls' school uniforms used here and there throughout Japan, but with several odd touches. She wore stylized knee-high boots, what appeared to be elbow-length gloves from the creases along her forearms, a thin choker around her neck and a tiara around her forehead. There was no doubt in Ranma's mind that this girl would never have been allowed to add *those* touches to her school uniform in present-day Japan. Come to think of it, she did look Japanese, rather than Chinese. What would a Japanese girl have been doing in China a thousand years ago, dressed like a schoolgirl of the future? "See? You look like her." Ranma tried to sound unconvinced. "I don't know about that," she said, stepping back from the table. "Do you know who she was, or what she was doing here?" The Guide shook his head. "I not there, sir. All I know is what book say about her, and that only picture. No more." Ranma frowned. Before becoming a girl, he hadn't minded the Guide's broken Japanese. Now, however, it was beginning to grate on her for some reason. If only she could speak Chinese... could the girl who had originally drowned in the pool that was to become the Nyan-nii-chuan speak Chinese? She checked her mind... but could find no indication that she knew how to speak any other language. * * * * * A steady rain fell upon Tokyo, soaking a young sapphire-haired girl who walked in a seemingly unconcerned manner from street to street. The rain didn't seem to bother her as much as one would assume. In the month that had passed since their trip to Jhusenkyou, Ranma and his father had become used to the idea of changing into a girl and panda whenever they were hit with cold water - and changing back to normal when hit with hot water. That somehow, if there was any cold water within a mile radius of where they stood, they would find themselves splashed with it sooner or later. The curse seemed to draw cold water to them, though they weren't sure if it made hot water harder to find. As a result, they had become used to spending unexpectedly long periods of time in their 'alternate' forms. Her 'pet panda' had cost Ranma a lot of money in more than one way. She knew her father - *his* father, depending on which body Ranma was wearing - was annoyed by the fact that his son, the only heir to the Saotome class of martial-arts, was cursed to be a girl half of the time. The man had always told her how all girls and women could never be as strong or skilled as males in the martial arts... but now, Ranma defied that image. They had seen a village where only the girls and women were allowed to become warriors, after Ranma had spent the night in the Guide's hut near Jhusenkyou, researching cures for the curses. None of that stopped Saotome Genma from trying to goad Ranma into doing something by calling him a 'girl.' Somehow, however, Ranma had gained patience, sensibility and the ability to remain level-headed along with his curse. Among other things... But even this 'new and improved' Ranma could only take so much of her father's actions. she thought, subconsciously keeping a loose grip on the straps of her backpack. The large, thick backpack hadn't looked out of place on the male Ranma's back... but now, the pack seemed three sizes larger than the female Ranma could easily carry. She took several steps, feeling the water and pavement through her ill-fitting cloth shoes. Ranma pursed her lips, letting her mind wander slightly. More steps. Ranma sighed. She paused, studying what she could see of herself.