Story: LS Ranma

 

What's Ranma Saotome's biggest weakness? Cats? Yeah, that's a good answer. It's a really good answer - though it could very easily turn against you if not careful. Keep that cat around too long and you'd see that this pigtailed cutie has claws.

No, the answer is more obvious. More detrimental, easier to exploit than simply showing up with a cat. You see, Ranma Saotome - ignoring the existence of the male form for the purposes of this story - is pretty, charismatic, athletic and smarter than one might assume. Good reaction times, great speed, amazing strength. Picks up physical tricks like lassie. That's not even the assessment of the narrator, that's Akane's words from the translation - and it fits really well. Ranma does indeed pick up tricks really quickly.

So if it's not cats, then what is Ranma's biggest weakness? Hubris. Some might call that a coward's word, but no, it's quite a central point to Ranma's personality. Ranma knows full well that she is hot shit, and quite often acts the part. Likes showing off. If you rub her the wrong way, she'll go out of her way to do whatever it takes to one-up you. Even if it is something that would normally be seen as personally humiliating, Ranma will dive into it full throttle. Not even really putting much thought into it at all.

Don't have a cat to hand? Play on Ranma's ego. Play on Ranma's hubris. Ranma knows she’s exceptional. Ranma enjoys being exceptional. Ranma wants you to know she’s exceptional. Use that right and you can play her like a fiddle.

So that leads to another question: What is hubris? If we go to the classical definition? Violent overstepping of limits.

An act of arrogant transgression against natural, social, or divine order. It wasn’t just a personality trait. It was a crime of excess. In ancient Greek thought — especially in tragedy — hubris meant: Overestimating your power.  Acting as though you are above consequence. Treating others with humiliating contempt. Disrespecting boundaries (especially the gods’).

Ah yes, that last one is rather interesting right now, isn't it? After all, Ranma is currently possessed by a lesbian Goddess. One that has been enjoying no small amount of success, isn't that right? Well, since Ranma is currently being possessed by such a Goddess, it's obviously influencing her behaviour quite a bit.

But there's a maxim in science that should be taken into account. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Or we could put it another way: One cannot observe a phenomenon without affecting that phenomenon in some small way. Do you really think it's possible for the shard of a lesbian Goddess to influence Ranma, without Ranma in some way influencing her right back?

It probably is. But it certainly was not happening right now...

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Ranma was skipping happily through the Tendo family home feeling oddly content with herself. She'd made several new friends tonight. Kodachi was nice. Certainly a lot nicer than expected. Right now, Kodachi was sharing leg shaping tips with Akane, while Akane was helping Kodachi work on that caboose.

Mmph~ She really couldn't wait to see what resulted from their training~

Speaking of which, it was about time for Ranma to get some training done for herself. She made a beeline for the training hall - then, seemingly at random, whirled around and flashed out a peace sign right as a flash hit her.

"Oy, oy!" Ranma said, strolling casually forward to a bush in the Tendo family garden. Then she reached in, and pulled out a boy who was lurking there. A boy that was rake thin, with huge bags under his eyes. "You've been following me all day today. What's the big idea?"

"..." the boy replied. You could audibly hear it. For those that don't know, by the way, in Japanese media especially, that's just the sound of an awkward kinda verbal shuffling around. It would be more accurately written as "mmmkk." In a really small font to get across how quiet it is.

The boy was staring at her rather weirdly. Ranma, in turn, looked him over, while the lesbian shard inside her considered quite carefully what to do with this one. It decided that anything that could be done was not worth the time - even changing this boy into a girl, which it could easily do, wouldn't provide anything of value. Unhealthy body, mind, and soul.

"Eh, whatever!" Ranma shrugged. "You wanna take some pictures, huh? Alright, I'll give you something to take pictures of!"

Ranma then leaped up to the main building, and then returned promptly with a Tendo sister thrown over each of her shoulders. Neither of them were complaining or trying to get free, nothing like that. Actually, they seemed pretty okay to be picked up and carried off by Ranma.

"Alright, listen up!" Ranma chirped as she set the sisters down inside the training hall. "I know what a pervert like you wants, right?"

And then, Ranma whirled around Kasumi, dipped her, and slipped her some tongue while Nabiki and - Alright, let's not be cute about this, it's Gosunkugi - stared in shock. And why wouldn't they? Kasumi's the pretty, innocent housewife type. Seeing her suddenly getting dipped and having her face sucked by girl form Ranma is extremely fucking hot.

"Happy?" Ranma asked, with a shrug as she let Kasumi drop to the floor in a heap. "Or maybe this will make you -"

Without warning she smacked Nabiki on the butt, which drove the girl to her knees. In an instant she had her booty short clad butt up high in the air, as if begging for more.

"More please!" Nabiki said. Ah, never mind the 'as if' part. She wiggled her butt around quite a bit.

"This is what you wanted, right?" Ranma asked dismissively. "You wanted to perv out on the Tendo sisters? Go ahead. Take your pictures - but you'll never have more than pictures!"

Ranma pulled the two of them towards herself, grinning ear to ear. You could hear the hubris, the arrogance, the unrelenting pride drip, drip, drip from every pore of her attitude. That body language she was putting out there, right now? Pretty much the epitome of what a character drowning in hubris looks like.

And when Gosunkugi slunk off, his camera in hand, Ranma didn't think anything else of it. Got rid of a creep - and now it's time for training. Which these two delectable beauties would be absolutely perfect for~

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Hikaru Gosunkugi is a creep. Let's just get that out of the way now, okay? It's not that he's an introvert. It's not even that he sneaks after the girl he likes and her main suitor, taking secret (oh, pardon, 'secret') photographs of them. It's the whole damn package. It's his lack of common sense, it's his misreading of social cues, it's this absolutely delusional idea he's got that he stands any chance at all with Akane Tendo.

Listen, that girl might well be willing to smile, say hello, etc, but do you honestly expect that she's going to give him a second glance? Especially when his reaction to her saying hello to him is to count off their interactions as if each one was the second coming.

She stands near him in class, and it becomes “fate.” She exists in the same corridor, and he’s drafting wedding invitations in his head. That’s where the delusion creeps in — not in hoping, but in the aforementioned misreading. Because the core issue isn’t that he likes her. Lots of boys like Akane. The school practically riots over her attention at one point. The issue is that Gosunkugi fundamentally misunderstands social scale. A smile is politeness. He reads it as intimacy. A greeting is courtesy.

He reads it as progression in their relationship. A lack of outright rejection becomes, in his mind, tacit encouragement.

And that gap — between reality and interpretation — is where the discomfort lives. He doesn’t calibrate. He doesn’t check himself. There’s no internal voice going, “Maybe I’m projecting.” Instead, every neutral interaction gets inflated into emotional proof.

On top of that, there's his interests in the occult... Which, in this case, might make him an unlikely hero in the tale. He was the first to spot it, you see. That mysterious girl. Ranma Saotome. Ever since she arrived, the behaviour of other girls was simply... Off. Far too off to be real.

Ranma had been careless just now. She'd allowed Gosunkugi to grab a single stray hair. Too occupied with smooching Kasumi and spanking Nabiki to notice... and to be fair, that would distract most anyone. But not Gosunkugi!

For you see, Gosunkugi was now indulging in the occult. Reading up on the signs, and not liking what he was seeing. There were rumours, there was gossip, there were writings in the field that warned of this, and now...?

"The lesbian goddess... just as I feared!" Gosunkugi read aloud. And then read further, so that he could learn how a mere mortal could do battle with the divine. Itself an act of hubris - but one that might be necessary to save the world.