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"Skuld's Fix"                            An Oh! My Goddess/Ranma Spamfic
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  Oh My Goddess! (c) Kosuke Fujishima.  English translation 
  and lettering (c) Studio Proteus and Dark Horse Comics, Inc.
  Ranma 1/2 (c) Rumiko Takahashi / Shogakukan * Kitty Film * Fuji TV.  
  Exclusively licensed throughout the United States and Canada by Viz 
  Communications, Inc. This fan fiction is for private home use only; 
  it may be freely redistributed, but not altered or used for profit.

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Story by Douglas MacDougall            http://www.dougmacd.net/fanworks/
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    Skuld didn't like headaches.  She didn't get them very often, but in
her opinion even those few were completely undeserved.  For some dumb
reason the Almighty had arbitrarily decided that eating ice cream too
quickly would give you a "brain freeze", when clearly there should be no
limit on the speed or quantity at which one ate the most perfect food on
Earth.

    Thus, she was even more irritated to discover she was developing a
mild headache despite the fact that she had abstained from ice cream for
over six hours!  Wondering if it could be withdrawal symptoms, she
popped open a single-serve cup of strawberry swirl and snarfed it down.

    No change.

    Going back to the freezer she got a scoop of some praline pecan, mud
pie, mint, and death by chocolate.  A quickly emptied bowl later, there
was no change in her headache, although she was feeling slightly
powered-up.

    Her headache was coupled with a vague sense of unease that
distracted her to the point where she was no longer able to work on the
blueprints for her Banpei Mk VIII.  She started pacing the house.  Urd
was off pestering some human named Masaki, and Belldandy was working
with Keiichi at the Motor Club, so there was nobody home.

    She was bored.

    Stepping outside, she inhaled the fresh air, hoping to shake the
sense of unease.  It was early into fall, and the leaves were just
changing color.  A gentle wind turned them over, making the trees look
even more alive.  While it was darkly overcast above, the low sun behind
her still provided bright light to the treetops.  The contrast of light
and dark, gray and colors was mesmerizing.

    On the spur of the moment, Skuld decided to talk a short walk.  Some
exercise should make her feel better, and it was a beautiful day out.
She could even go visit Belldandy.  Or Urd.  If she couldn't get rid of
her own headache, perhaps she could give one to her rude older sister.

    With a giggle of delight, the small Goddess walked out of the temple
and out onto the sidewalk, immediately bumping into a boy.

    "Hey watch were you're going!" she yelled, landing on her butt.  The
boy just stood there, staring dumbly at her.  How rude!

    He was younger then Keiichi, with black hair braided into a pigtail.
 He wore his Chinese clothes with a complete air of self-confidence, and
might even be considered good looking if he wasn't a jerk.

    Eventually he gave her a hand getting up, "Sorry, kid."

    "I am NOT a kid!"  She grabbed his hand and pulled herself up,
brushing at her skirt and rubbing her head.  The headache she had been
trying to forget was becoming worse, as was her sense of unease.  She
felt like she was standing on the cusp of something, that something was
about to happen.

    "Uh, sure thing."  The boy locked his fingers behind his head and
started walking away.  The breeze suddenly picked up, and Skuld could
hear gentle voices on the wind.  After a moment, she realized it was the
spirits telling her that it was about to rain.

    Forgetting the boy, she smiled widely.  Even her headache seemed to
diminish.  Big sister Belldandy had told her that as she got older and
came into her powers, she would be able to hear the voices of nature!  
She flipped a switch on Mjolnir, and like a fan, her debugging hammer
unfolded itself a parasol configuration, opening just as the rain began.

    She stood and watched the rain with a delight she normally didn't
have. This must be what it's like for Belldandy, she thought.  Seeing
beauty in everything.

    "'Scuse me!"  The jerk that had knocked her down had turned around
and was running straight towards her.  The pain behind her eyes mounted.
 Was this guy the source of her headache?

    Before she had completed the thought, and a fraction of a second
before he placed himself under Skuld's mech-umbrella, the boy turned
into a well-rounded redheaded girl.  In the same instant, Skuld's
headache and sense of unease disappeared.

    "Aw, man!"

    "Demon!"  Skuld hopped back and remotely activated Banpei.  Her
hammer reconfigured into its normal squashing mode, and she prepared to
use it on the flame-haired succubus.  Some sort of danger-sense must
have alerted her that this creature was disguised and approaching.  It
was a good thing she had stayed around the house while Belldandy and Urd
were out, or it could have caused no end of mischief!

    "Uh, this isn't what it looks like."  The demon waved it's hands and
almost imperceptibly shifted it's weight into a prepared stance.  Skuld
immediately recognized it as an anti-mallet defensive position.  This
one would be trouble!

    "Return whence you came, succubus!  Begone, or I'll... Do something
bad to you!"  She waved Mjolnir around threateningly.

    "I'm not a... suck-you... whatever you said!"  she countered.  Well,
judging from the rough tone to her speech, she wasn't a succubus,
anyway. They spoke pleasingly and seductively, nothing like this one. 
Unless they started making tomboy succubi.

    "You can't fool me!  I'm a Goddess, second class!"

    "Say what?!"

    "And in the name of the Almighty, I will punish you!"

    "You've been watching too many cartoons, kid, I--"  the demon, or
oni, or whatever it was didn't have a chance to say anything else as the
previously summoned Air-Banpei II launched a net and captured the evil
creature.

    "Hey!"

    Skuld turned a dial around the handle of her mighty Mjolnir, and the
hammer extended to half-again its normal length.  Characters of an
anti-evil ward illuminated on the face of the hammer's head.

    "Skuld Demon SMASH!"  She brought the hammer down on the beast,
clubbing it to unconsciousness.

    "Ow."  Well, almost unconsciousness.

    Skuld blinked.  "I said, Skuld Smash!"  She clubbed the demon again,
but it still failed to disappear.  "Why won't you smash, demon?!"  At
the very least it should have started smoking.  Even an oni would have
been dispelled by the ward.

    "I told you, I'm not a demon!"

    "You shapeshifted right in front of me!  Of course you're a demon!"

    "I'm a guy!  I just turn into a girl whenever I'm splashed with cold
water.  It's a curse!  Now let me go, you dumb kid!"  The girl struggled
under the netting.

           *           *           *           *           *

    Skuld watched the girl, or rather boy, as he changed back with some
extra hot water from the kettle she had used for tea.  "Hmm."  Her
danger-sense, or whatever it was, was back.

    "Yeah, well, thanks for letting me come inside.  I'll leave just as
soon as this shower is over."  Standing inside the open doorway, the boy
leaned against the door jam, folding his arms an crossing his legs in a
sort of cocky manner.  He gazed outside into the gentle rain with a
scowl on his face.

    Skuld grabbed a diagnostic scanner, which started bipping and
booping as she passed it around the boy.  He didn't move, but watched
the device warily. The Goddess fiddled with the dials, and watched the
isomagic lines that appeared on the small screen.  Looking at the
results, she scratched her head.

    At first glance, she had no idea how or why the boy turned into a
girl. Or why he gave him the weird sense of unease that was causing the
headache that had returned the moment he was restored to his male form. 
If it hadn't been a danger-sense warning her of a demon, what was it?

    At least the scanner upheld the boy's claim that he wasn't a demon,
oni, or other evil creature.  He had good and evil in a normal balance
for humans, although there WAS an element of primal Chaos associated
with him.

    "I'll figure this out,"  she said, and sat down at her computer. 
Punching a few buttons, she saved and stored her work on the new Banpei
schematics, and started punching in the data from the scanner.

    At the edge of the room, still in the open doorway, the boy
little-sweated.

           *           *           *           *           *

    "I get it!  It's so simple!"

    "Uh?"  After ten minutes waiting for the shower to stop, the boy had
finally decided to sit down.  He turned around to look at Skuld.

    "I know why I'm getting this weird sense off of you.  And how the
curse works.  Heck, I can even fix it!"

    "Wh- What?  Really?"  Without standing up, the boy managed to
skitter hallway across the room, still in a kneeling position, in one
second flat. His eyes brimmed over with tears and he grabbed Skuld's
shoulders, looking deeply into her eyes.  His approach and contact
heightened her unease.  "You can cure me?"

    "Well, I can't cure you.  Because of Yggdrasil's crash, I don't have
my full powers."  She neglected to mention that she had only had her
powers a short time, and had barely moved beyond writing magical text of
people's (or dark-skinned Goddesses') faces.  "But I can make it so
you'll immediately change back after you're splashed with water..."

    He had seemed crushed when she said she couldn't cure him, but now
he was full of happiness again.  He actually threw her up into the air
and caught her!  "That's great!  Can you cure me now?"

    "Do NOT throw Goddesses around!" she chided him.  When he
enthusiastically placed her back on the tatami mat, she said, "Very
well.  If you want the fix, first change back into a girl."

    "Um, okay.  Is this part of the cure?"  The boy stepped outside into
the rain just long enough to change, and then stepped back into the
house.  As Skuld suspected, her headache completely disappeared as the
girl returned.

    "No.  You're just less of a jerk as a girl."

           *           *           *           *           *

    Two hours later, and after much pestering from the redhead, Skuld
had finished calculating the runes and incantation that would be
required for the fix.  Computerized simulations had proven her
hypothesis, and she was sure that she could perform the spell even with
her limited powers.

    Just for safety's sake, however, she ate a pint of rocky road to
replenish her powers before starting.

    It took another forty-five minutes to finish drawing out the figures
and symbols on the floor that would focus and alter the magical energies
she would be weaving.  Her subject kept on fidgeting and threatened to
break the seal she was drawing around her.  It finally took the threat
of physical violence from Mjolnir to get her to sit still.  Or at least
sit down.

    After all the preparatory work, the spell itself was almost nothing.
A minute of incanting and she saw the magical crux to the curse that
maintained the boy's gender.  With the guidance of the seal, she
carefully weaving the spell around it, she shattered that element
completely.  Satisfied that the magical integrity of the curse was still
sound without the element, she slowly withdrew her magical energies and
took a moment to relax.

    "How much longer?" asked the girl.

    Skuld rolled her eyes.  "I'm done."

    "R- Really?  Can I get out of this stupid thing now?" she pointed at
the runes drawn around her.

    "Yes," sighed Skuld.

    "AlRIGHT!"  The girl leapt out of the circle in a way that made
Skuld twitch.  The girl's movement caused her to bounce around almost as
badly as Urd.  Not that she cared of course.  Still, she looked
unhappily at her own chest.

    The girl grabbed a kettle of hot water and poured it on herself. 
"Never gonna be a girl again!"  As the water spilled over her head, her
shape flickered...

    She threw the kettle down and made a 'manly' pose.  "Now I'm one
hundred per... cent...  Woman?  WHAT DID YOU DO!?!  WHY DIDN'T I CHANGE
BACK?!?"

    Skuld winced and scratched her ear.  She could be pretty loud, for a
girl. "You did change back.  But just for a second."

    "Wh- What?"  The girl grabbed the kettle again and ran into the
bathroom, standing in front of the mirror.  She poured the last bit of
water on herself, and watched as her hair became black, her neck
thickened, shoulders broadened, breasts flattened, waist widened, hips
thinned, and legs grew muscled.  Like a wave, her bright hair, slender
neck, large boson, wasp waist, "best hips in Japan", and dainty legs
reappeared right behind.

    She had only turned into a guy where the hot water was actually
touching her.  Running back into the main room she screeched, "You
screwed it up!!!"

    Skuld took on a lecturing voice, "I TOLD you that the fix would make
it so that you would 'immediately change back after you're splashed with
water'."

    "immediately... change... back...?"  After a moment of shock, the
normal volume of her voice returned with a vengeance.  "WELL WHY DIDN"T
YOU TURN ME BACK INTO A GUY *BEFORE* CASTING THE STUPID SPELL!?!"

    Skuld's ire started to raise.  "It's not like it would have made a
difference."

    "What are you talking about?!?  If I had been a guy, the change into
a GIRL wouldn't stick.  Now, my change back into a GUY won't stick!!"

    "No, you still would've turned into a girl."

    "What?"

    "After analyzing your curse, I discovered the mechanism by which it
works.  Have you ever wondered why hot water changes you into a guy, and
cold water changes you into a girl?"

    "Who CARES why the temperature makes a difference?  I--"

    Skuld cut off the girl, who she was only just realizing was almost
as annoying as in her boy-form.  "Hot water has a greater amount of
energy in it than cold water.  So logically, you would expect it to be
the other way around.  Hot water should activate your curse, and cold
water changes you back."

    "Then can you--"

    "Then I realized that the cold water is merely a triggering
mechanism. When you are splashed with hot water, half of the energy is
transferred into your curse.  The other half drives your transformation
into a boy."

    "DROVE the transformation!  Thanks to you--"

    "When you are 'uncursed', your magical energy state is actually
greater then when you are 'cursed'.  The secret that it took me to
discover is that all that energy is in a POTENTIAL form!

    "Yes, splashing you with hot water is like... pushing a boulder up a
hill. Some of the energy goes into the boulder, but the rest goes into
overcoming gravity, moving the boulder higher up.

    "At the top, you can put a wedge under the boulder to keep it from
falling.  Splashing you with cold water is like removing the wedge.  It
requires very little energy to remove, but by doing so, the boulder will
roll back down the hill, thereby converting its potential energy from
height into the kinetic energy of motion.

    "It's the same with your curse.  Half of the energy in the hot water
turned you into a boy, and the rest was stored as potential energy to be
able to turn you back into a girl later.  What my cure did was remove
the 'wedge'. Hot water will still push the boulder up the hill, but it
will immediately roll back down.  In your case, any potential magical
energy will immediately turn back into actual magical energy.  So you
stay a girl!"

    After a few moments of silence, the girl determined that Skuld had
finished her narration, and would now be able to say more then ten words
without being interrupted.  "I don't want to be a girl, I want to stay a
GUY!"

    "Oh, I don't have the power to do that."

    The girl started fuming.  "Then change me back to the way I was."

    "No."

    "You can't?"

    "I won't."

    "..."  The girl blinked.  "Excuse me?"

    "You're less of a jerk this way."  Although not by much.

    "I"M A GUY, DAMMIT!!"

    "Not unless you're swimming in hot water, you aren't."

    "Change.  Me.   Back.  Now."  Skuld noticed the girl's hands flexing
into fists and karate-chop-like configurations.  In her pocket, she held
onto the Banpei panic button.

    "To a Goddess, your curse is like... Like...  Like those boulders in
Colorado."

    "What?"

    "Those boulders, sitting on top of those spires.  They're just
sitting up there, balancing, waiting to fall.  It's just so...
precarious.  Instead of using their potential energy, they sit there,
and who knows when they could fall?"

    "So...?"

    "So, when you're a boy, sensing all that magical potential energy
waiting to come out...  It's like standing under that boulder.  Perched
up high like that, teetering over the edge, it looks like it could fall
at any minute.  It makes me uneasy.  You give anyone with any sort of
magical sensitivity a splitting migraine."

    "So you turned me into a girl because my boy-side was giving you a
headache?!"

    "Well, yeah.  Plus you have a serious imbalance of Yang--"

    "I'LL KILL YOU!!!"

    The girl might not be a demon, but Skuld had very little doubt that
there was SOME oni blood somewhere in the girl's ancestry, what with her
shocking red hair and terrible temper.  She probably ate like a
gluttonous beast, too.

    As the girl's hands were about to wrap themselves around Skuld's
neck, and Skuld was about to press her panic-button, a shapely leg came
out of the television set.  Soon the matching leg, hips, midriff, and
all the other good parts followed.

    "Urd."

    "So, little sis, what've you been doing with your big sister's out?"

	The pig-tailed girl blinked at the new arrival, frozen in
mid-strangle.

    "Found a new friend?"  The dark skinned Goddess flipped some flowing
silver tresses over her shoulder.

    Finally the violent girl found her voice, "YOU!!"

    "Moi?"  Urd raised her eyebrows and tilted her head.

    "You're the one who...  GET AWAY FROM ME!!!"  The girl suddenly
turned and ran, flying out the door and off the temple grounds.

    Skuld blinked.  "What was that about?"

    Urd shrugged, "Never met the girl before."

    "Boy, actually."

    "Oh really?  That sounds interesting..."  Urd's lips curved into a
naughty smile.  "A Jusenkyo victim, perhaps?"

    Skuld started cleaning up her magic circle.  "Who knows?  At least
he's not giving me a headache anymore..."

    "She reminds me of a young man I met about a year ago.  Um... Renma
something.  Poor boy didn't know anything about girls, so I decided to
help him out.  Told his old man about a village full of beautiful
fighting girls just on the other side of the Springs.  With his martial
arts abilities, I'm sure the boy was able to find a girl to make him
very happy.

    "Come to think of it, I'll go check up on him.  Maybe he could use a
little advice from the Goddess of Love!"  She laughed and dashed out of
the house, no doubt to find the boy from her past.

	Skuld gave a little prayer for the Renma boy, wherever he was.  Urd's
personal attention was perhaps the worst curse Skuld could imagine.
Still, she couldn't bring herself to care too much.  Her headache was
gone and she just had the greatest idea for the latest upgrade to her
Banpei... 

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Originally posted 19 Jan 1999.              Last Modified  12 June 1999.
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