Wufei 1/2
A Gundam Wing / Ranma 1/2 crossover
Part One
By Raye Johnsen
"Kidou Senki Gundam Wing" is copyright Bandai, Sunrise, Viz Communications, Mixx Entertainment and other associated parties. "Ranma 1/2" is copyright Takahashi Rumiko, Shogakukan and Viz Communications. In other words, they're not mine.
[holds composure]
[holds composure]
[loses composure]
IT ISN'T FAAAAIIIIIRRRR!!!!!Please remember: this is an Alternate Universe, so the events with which you are familiar may or may not occur; and secondly, this fic's only reason for existing is to make you smile. If it succeeds, cool. If it doesn't, well, I'm sorry. Either way, do not take it seriously.
Part the First: "I'm a WHAT?!"
I hate irony. Karma is not fun. And I only hope my situation is providing humour to the Buddha, because it definitely is not funny from this end.
I was in China when it happened. It was an area deep in the heart of the country, pristine and almost untouched by technology or war.
I had just parted from Sally Po and her group of guerrilla fighters. They had restored my sense of purpose after the disaster at New Edwards, and I had left them only as it became clear that I could do much more for my cause with my Gundam as a free agent.
So I bade them farewell and left for more chaotic places. With one small detour on the way, that turned out to be a lot more important than I thought it would be.
There was no real reason why I should visit the area of Jhyousenkyou. It was merely curiosity. Some few of Nataku's ancestors whom she had admired had come from a small village situated nearby, and she had spoken of the area in passing. If ever she came to Earth, she had averred, she would go to Jhyousenkyou and train, as her ancestors had done before her. As her husband and widower, therefore, it now fell to me to do so in her place.
Of course, I did not have to do so - I was her husband, after all - but I felt the need for training, and this small gesture of respect would cost me nothing.
Or so I thought.
The training ground looked like nothing so much as a cheesy martial-arts movie set. Tall bamboo poles, pale with age, poked out of crystal pools, between green velvet paths. I looked at it in puzzlement until I noticed some of the poles had tiny blocks set on top of them, where a foot might rest. Obviously, one leapt from pole to pole, attempting to balance on the fragile supports. Such an exercise would teach balance and agility to a young warrior, and the pools beneath obviously were there to break the falls the trainee would undoubtedly suffer and prevent an unnecessary death.
I set my pack down on one of the grassy paths between the pools and leapt up to the lowest pole near me. It was no more than a metre and a half tall, but some poles were fully six metres tall, and I knew that I could not possibly jump up that far. Swaying on it, I carefully leapt to one that was three metres tall, and almost fell off.
"Sir! Sir! What are you doing?"
A woman had come running out of the low house built on the lip of the low cliff that overlooked the training ground. I saw her race down to where I had left my bag, and then had to quickly jump to a new pole as it swayed and I did not follow the movement in time.
"I am attempting to train, woman," I gritted from my new and more than a little awkward perch. "I trust -" I leapt to a new pole - "that this is -" another jump - "satisfactory?"
"No, NO, sir!" She wrung her hands, a gesture I've always felt to be singularly useless. "This training ground has been closed for over three hundred years! It's far too dangerous!"
"Dangerous?" I demanded, landing on a new pole. "How is it dangerous?"
I received my answer as the pole I landed on splintered under me. I fell into the pool that lay beneath me, with an impact that knocked all the breath from my lungs.
The water was odd - somehow smoky and sharp. I instinctively tried to draw a breath of it in and nearly choked. Fortunately I touched the bottom then, and was able to push myself up to the surface. Coughing roughly, I scrubbed at my eyes as I began to tread water. "'The Spring of the Drowned Woman'," I read from the sign neatly painted and staked beside the pond I floated in.
"Oh no, sir - er, miss! I'm sorry!"
I frowned at her. Couldn't she see I was a man? I glanced down at myself, and nearly drowned as I stopped, stock still, staring.
I had breasts. And - an experimental touch later - all the other parts of a woman. Without any of the parts of a man.
The woman knelt at the edge of the pool, stretching out a pole for me to take. I couldn't criticize.
Later, I sat in front of her small heater and wrung out my shirt, touching my male-again chest.
The woman - who had introduced herself as Peach Blossom - had explained Jhyousenkyou.
"You are now cursed, young sir," she told me seriously. "From now on, whenever you are splashed with cold water, you will become a girl. Fortunately, you'll become a man again when you pour hot water on yourself - but only until the next time you get hit by cold water."
I'd have to start carrying a thermos. I also made a mental note to check Nataku's heating elements and temperature controls to see if they could be modified to also service a small hot water urn.
"Can I end this curse?" I asked, hoping that it could be removed. Although all the old stories all said that curses were permanent until they reached their natural end, and this one didn't seem to have any such closure....
"No, sir. This curse runs for the course of your life. Nothing will remove it. Many have tried and failed, and their lives have been poisoned by the bitterness of their failure."
"Even if I jumped into the 'Spring of the Drowned Man'?" I asked desperately.
"Especially if you do that, sir. You would become an hermaphrodite when splashed with cold water, then."
"I see," I said gloomily. I thanked the woman for the information, and left Jhyousenkyou, hiking back to where I'd hidden Nataku.
We met up again, the five of us, as we moved to strike at various targets, and it only made sense to fight together. Which meant that it also made sense to share safehouses.
I did manage to ensure I was in the various washrooms in our safehouses at times when the other four were not likely to be there. Of course, they noticed my excessive body-modesty. Yui and Barton forbore to comment. They, at least, respected my choice, and I have reason to believe Barton shared it.
Winner did ask me if I was ashamed of myself - I believe he was trying to see if I were suffering from anorexia or some other body-image problem. I was male at the time, so I was able to assure him that there was no such problem. He was smiling as he left my room, so I am fairly certain I succeeded in reassuring him.
Maxwell didn't bother asking. He seemed to take it upon himself to 'cure' me of my 'shyness' - by forcing me to share intimate quarters with him. If there was a limited number of bedrooms, he would volunteer to share with me. He would appear to brush his teeth when I was brushing mine. It became absolutely frustrating.
I had, you see, become something of a water- and trouble-magnet. When it started to rain, the first drop always hit me. If a random volley of shots was fired off into the darkness, the gun would just happen to be pointing at me when it was fired. If the water-pressure was unpredictable, it would make the tap explode in my face. And if we were covering a pattern when the OZ forces could take a choice of which Gundam to attack, they always chose Nataku.
The idea of telling the others about my curse never crossed my mind. I simply did my best to conceal the fact that about half the time I was female. It helped that I did not physically change very much when I became a girl. I lost perhaps five centimetres in height, and my shoes were suddenly two sizes too big. My bone structure shifted and became slighter. My hair and eyes remained the same colour. Luckily, my breasts were not large, although I did buy some female underwear. It made it much less painful to continue functioning when I became a girl just before or during a mission. Also, I sometimes bound my chest if I knew I wouldn't be able to get to hot water for a while.
So it was that I was female, stripped down to my bindings and boxers, and about to take a shower, when Maxwell bounced into our shared washroom.
"Heya, Wufei! Whatcha - ooh...." His eyes slid over my chest bindings, which showed a hint of cleavage, and down over my boxers, which lay against my skin, revealing that the crotch beneath them was flat.
I leapt into the shower cubicle and pulled the waterproff curtain shut. "Get out, Maxwell!" I shouted.
"I'm going, I'm sorry..." and the door shut.
It looked like the question of whether to tell the others had just become moot.
When I left the bathroom, Maxwell was waiting for me outside. "I'm sorry," he said, piteously.
"I accept your apology," I replied. "Please do not do it again!"
"I won't," he promised, suddenly grinning again.
We walked to the safehouse's kitchenette, where Yui had set up his laptop and received our mission data. Please do not ask me why he chose the kitchenette. When Yui shares his reasons with others, it is only because he is forced to do so. It eventually becomes easier to simply accept that there are reasons, and to move on.
Yui was at the laptop, typing, when we entered the room. He looked up, saw us, and produced a piece of paper, which he handed to me. "A mission for you," he said, in probably the same tone as he would have said, "Congratulations, you've won the lottery."
Then again, perhaps the two were not so far apart.
"Oh goodie, another OZ base to make go boom," Maxwell said, reading over my shoulder. "I'll go prep DeathScythe."
"Maxwell," I said patiently, "this is my mission."
"Oh, come on, 'Fei," he replied cheerfully, "you know we shouldn't go in without backup!"
"That's never stopped you before," I said, frowning.
"It's different for me," he said. "You..." and he looked up, staring me straight in the eyes. I swallowed hard, not recognising what those deep blue eyes were trying to say. "I'm going to go prep DeathScythe," he reiterated, and fled the kitchenette.
Yui shut the laptop with a soft snick. "Tea?" he asked.
"Please," I replied. "I think I need it."
If I didn't know better, I'd say Maxwell thought I was a girl, was trying to hide it, and had now set himself up as my protector. And if I was right... well, I definitely needed another cup of tea.
Author's Notes:
1. I know Wufei's wife's name was Meiran. However, she asked Wufei to call her Nataku instead, which he did. As this is from Wufei's point of view, that's what he calls her.
2. An hermaphrodite, for those who do not know, is a person who has the physical attributes of both sexes. Hermaphrodites do not fit well into any society with gender roles, which unfortunately includes every society currently in existence, but are especially uncomfortable in societies with rigid gender roles, such as Chinese society.