shellphones | [open]

Type: Video
Sender ID: hasapoint (Lashan)
To: Public
Subject: waterproofing charms
Warnings: none!

[FIRST: You get a very close shot of Lashan's eye as she squints at her shellphone. We have here that double-doozy of a medieval and an old person and while she's pretty sharp, these devices are not intuitive to her.]

'S it working? The bead's glowing.

[aka 'the light's on'. The video pulls back a bit but like, it's still pretty close and the angle is unflattering. This whole thing feels completely unnatural to her and the lines between her brows are deepened in a frown.]

I'm Sister Lashan. I'm a lay sister, not a nun. I've made some charms for waterproofing. They're not well-tested though. If you help me with that I'll give you one. Want to know their tolerances and if I have to tweak anything before I start selling them. I'm on Elrut.

[yeah this has made her feel ridiculous and stilted. She prods at the phone with a finger.]

...How do I- [she found out how to end message! this was Not guaranteed.]

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[... There's one thing you should never do: egg on a curse.

Ranma should remember to not let his mouth run, or put too much faith in a remedy that's too good to be true. Pride cometh before the fall, and with it, so too would Ranma's masculinity.

With her sensitivity to magic, Lashan'll be able to tell that the charm's magic, working fine the first time, quickly waned before straight up blipping out. Ranma could've been given a paltry charm that needed more tweaking done on it. Or maybe the magic placed over him that was fighting against Lashan's overpowered it.

Either way, in the concatenation it took for the charm's protection to wear off, the boy before her changed. Shrunk down, sharper features slimming and smoothening, raven hair brightening to a crimson hue down to the last strand.

Ranma, still standing in the fountain, still with that dumb smile on his-- her face, late to catch up to the realization. It's only when she sees the world around her being a lot bigger and the now present dampness in the legs of her pants and shoes does her shoulders slack and jovial smile falter.

Sigh.]

Why did I have t' say something...?

[Her and her big mouth.]

[The charm could have handled the 'pressure' from the outside for a good while, but after holding for a moment against the 'pressure' coming from within Ranma its effect collapses down to a much smaller area.

Lashan for her part has spent years working on her temper, learning to stop and think and take things in stride. She tries to take everything into account and always be the calm center who can take things in and act rather than react. Also with her Empathy she can tell that this isn't something Ranma is not used to and nothing huge and inimical is involved.

So she doesn't do what a teen Lashan would have to something this unexpected this close, which is throw a punch and whirl to face whatever might be behind her. Or what she would have done in her twenties, which is look about like a mad thing and back away hastily with her fists balled, or thirties, which is check everywhere and back away hastily while preparing a spell. Forty and fifty year old Lashan would also do variants of that, with different spells and less distance involved as she'd more quickly see that this isn't a demon's trick. In her sixties she would have jerked in place and had a furious psychic conversation with one of her Sisters. Oh, also there'd be swearing at any stage.

Seventy-year-old Lashan tenses up, her eyes wide, her hand finding the hilt of her sword. Then she makes herself realize that she can't hear screaming, that the sounds around her haven't changed at all, and forces herself to relax, even if it means gritting her teeth for a moment. Then she can say something.]

Twins' beautiful fucking tits, wind-blown child, that happens often? Fuck my sister's horse.

[okay there's still swearing and the literal translations of the profanity she learned as a child sound weird. Her accent gets heavier.]

[Woah.

That certainly was a new string of words Ranma's heard thrown out when people see her curse for the first time. Twins' beautiful fucking tits, is she shouting that as an exclamatory or-- Lashan's got... a unique vernacular, if vulgar but nothing Ranma wasn't used to already having lived around his old man for all his life.]

Uh, yeah. It does. [She's still a little nonplussed by Lashan's vituperation that it takes her a second to get a simple word out. Ranma stepped out of the water, picking up her ill-fitting soggy shoes to wring out. The hand on the hilt doesn't go unnoticed, though she didn't pay it any mind further.] You alright there?

[She really hopes she didn't give the old lady enough of a bad fright to give her a heart attack.]

[Lashan did maybe get a bit of chest pain going. It's the kind of thing she ignores, perhaps unwisely, because it's always ebbed back quickly enough. Give her a second, she's worked her way down to a caustic mutter.]

Place is a crazy demon-pit of a motherless fucking vagrant camp.

[Lashan's outburst has drawn stares and aside glances. This is a quiet place, normally!

But she's calming down, so she's not gonna get kicked out for causing a disturbance just yet. Lashan takes her hand away from the hilt of her sword and scrubs it down her craggy face, blowing out a long exhale.]

Right.

...Why'd your hair change?

[yes this is her question]

[Now that the befuddlement of the older woman's outburst died down, Ranma was now putting in all the effort to not break into a giggling fit. Best not to do anything stupid that'll get a fight broken out here and now. The unwanted peanut gallery that had their eyes on the pairing from Lashan's shouting was disbanding, and between you and her, she doesn't want to make a mess of a beautiful park.

Ask more about those swears... and see if she can teach them to me later, she filed away in the mental cabinet.

Huh. Wouldn't have been the first question she'd expect anyone to ask seeing a guy change sex right in front of them. Ranma holds back the budding deadpan and shrugs.]

Same reason why the rest of me changed: magical curse. [The martial artist answerx plainly, slipping back on her shoes.] Why red specifically, your guess's good as mine. I guess [Tentative guess at that. Magic's wack.] I would've been a redhead if I was born a girl?

[She never really wondered why that happens or give it much more than a passing thought. It seemed trivial to worry about in comparison to growing boobs.]

[look, Lashan's not anime and brightly colored hair is weird to her.]

That's some curse. Damn. I might be jealous.

[Only a touch. Lashan's comfortable with her body and even if every time someone assumes she's a man it rankles, she fully puts it on them being uncultured barbarians. Ranma still feels to her extra senses like the same person.]

So, what, this curse makes you into... [Lashan pauses, knowing other people don't have all the same idea of gender that hers do, what's a fast way to say it -] A man-like woman? A... man's spirit? But only some of the time?

[that's not exactly correct to the term binalaki, but it can take a while to get this stuff across.]

[Welcome to anime, where 50% of the motley casts have bright, luminous hair that could make psychedelic tees look dull and lifeless.

Ranma's vain enough to take the might in front of the jealousy and aggrandize it. Hey, she knows she looks good, and hearing another women say something of that caliber only validates her pride. Lashan's sixth senses is getting it right on the money. Biologically she might've changed, but in the end, Ranma's still Ranma.

The redhead's face drops slightly hearing all the descriptors Lashan was trying to make heads of to call her. It's better than Ranma's time. Late-1980s Japan don't really have the best understanding of gender, and a lot of the time the norms and standards can be iffy.]

Pretty much? I'm a guy who turns to a chick half of the time whenever I touch water, but I'm still-- [Tapping the side of her temple.] a guy up here.

Hm. Hence the interest in my charms, I see.

[Lashan cups her elbow in the palm of one hand and rests her chin on the other, pensively. ...Yeah, she should probably say it. It's not that she's ashamed or anything it just gets annoying sometimes to explain. Lashan doesn't fit very neatly into her peoples' gender quadranary but they're more equipped to understand than most others]

When I was born my parents thought I was a boy. I was more like a girl, actually. Fortunately, where I'm from there's nothing remarkable about that. I'm a bayot like one of my parents, "one with a woman's spirit". There wasn't any problem about it until I left home.

[and then that had been only one of a myriad of problems, honestly.]

Fortunately once I was far enough out many of them were perfectly ready to assume Plainswomen all look like me. Being a 'barbarian' has advantages, sometimes.

[open]

Rolled a 2 for Ranma (2/2)

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drags self back in after a thousand years

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