Enter...Ranmash 1/2!

[Dr. Otto]

The worlds of "Evil Dead" and Ranma 1/2" collide. A piece of crossover fanfic I wrote inspired by the spectacular art provided for me by Mr. DNA.

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Enter…Ranmash 1/2!

My name is Ash…and I’m a girl.

It wasn’t always like this. Okay, fine. You’ve heard me say that before when I was up shit-creek without a paddle in the year 1300 AD, but at least I still had my irresistible manly manliness back then. Yup, that’s right. I used to be a dude, just like you. (You ARE a dude, right? If not, you probably won’t get why I’m so damn whiney about this ‘being a girl’ business. What can I say, I like to pee standing up when I’m in those unsanitary public lavatories! Especially during halftime at the Superbowl.)

My whole life has been a nonstop rollercoaster ride through Satan’s butthole, so let’s just do the super-super-quick version of my backstory so we can hit the ground running, shall we?

Five college students go to cabin. College students find book. Summon asshole demons. Asshole demons possess everybody except yours truly. Yours truly gets thrown back in time. Becomes savior of humanity in medieval England. Gets back home, tries to resume life as store clerk, fails, hits the road. Savior of humanity summons asshole demons again. Hooks up with two groovy kids, Kelly and Pablo, to fight asshole demons.

You happy? You all caught up? No? Too bad, I ain’t a videotape you can just rewind. Or a DVD. Or whatever the hell you use for your fancy upper-upper-class home entertainment theater system. We’ve hit the ground running, boys and girls!

“Jefe,” Pablo said, being his usual uber-cautious self, “are you sure this is a good idea? I don’t think throwing the Necronomicon into another time vortex is really the answer we’re looking for.”

The three of us – myself, Kelly, and Pablo – were standing outside my trusty ol’ Airstream Trailer in the middle of the densest patch of woodland in Michigan. It was half an hour at midnight, and as our typically crap luck would have it, the moon was obscured by clouds, making our environment twice as creepy as normal. It was the kind of place where you’d hysterically run around with a camcorder while the Blair Witch chased your butt down to an early grave.

But I figured that if you’re gonna do something as dangerous and retarded as reciting spells from the Book of the Dead, you’d better do it in a remote area with as low a risk of collateral damage as possible. You get so much as one letter wrong with this S.O.B., and you’re demon-bait.

“Gotta go with Pablo on this one, Ash,” Kelly said, her arms folded with disdain. “That thing’s been the source of our troubles since day one. Using a spell from the book to get rid of it is like…trying to shoot Hitler with his own gun, or something. It just feels off.”

“First of all,” I said, flipping through the book’s pages, “that metaphor doesn’t work, because shooting Hitler with his own gun would still kill the bastard. Secondly, I know exactly what I’m doing! That’s the problem with you kids these days: You’re so damn cynical.”

“I’m cynical because this whole clusterfuck started with you reading from that piece of shit book in the first place!” Kelly snapped back. I always loved how her nostrils flared when she was angry. She’s got the most distinct nose I’ve ever seen on a human female. Forget about the boobies, it’s the quality of a woman’s schnoz that reels boys in by the truckloads.

“Uh…okay, granted,” I said. “But this time, I’ve got all the notes from that Hawkins guy to help me translate the passages correctly.”

“I dunno, Jefe,” Pablo’s reticence was starting to get on my nerves. “He wasn’t able to translate the whole book before he turned Deadite, and there’s all sorts of trippy spells in there that could blow up half the planet.”

I had to roll my eyes at that comment. “Come on, Pablo. Now you’re just being melodramatic.”

“Dude,” Kelly said, her voice colder than Arctic (or is that Antarctic?) ice. “It’s impossible to be melodramatic when it comes to that fucking book.”

All right, so Kelly was right about that one, too. But there was no way I was going to let her shut me down. “Look, this’ll work, guys. Just trust me on this one. I’ll dump the Necronomicon a billion light years away from the solar system where no living soul will ever get at it. At least, not until they invent hyperspace travel, or whatever they use in STAR WARS…”

Pablo and Kelly exchanged frowns. Thanks for the moral support, fellas. You’re the best sidekicks ever.

I cleared my throat, holding the Necronomicon in one hand, and the translated notes from Leonard Hawkins (or was that Larry Hawkins?) in the other.

“Roomiko…takahashe …meggumi…hayashibarok…”

The wind picked up. The clouds in the night sky started moving faster. If my hands were free, I probably woulda crossed myself. Y’know, just in case.

“Brooce…camperbella…sammus…raimimi…”

The wind escalated to tropical force. Kelly almost lost her footing. Pablo, ever the gentleman, caught her before she could hit the ground.

“Mizter…deennaa…doktur…ottos…”

With a thunderous roar, the vortex split wide open like a whale from hell taking a gigantic yawn. Hey, it was working! Hooray for me!

“Venuz...terzozo…brigitta…daudau…”

“Ash!” Kelly screamed over the howling wind. “Cease! Desist! Abort! You’re going to get us all killed!!”

But I couldn’t stop. Not now, not when I was so close to getting rid of the book that’s been turning my life into a gigantic mound of monkey turds since I first laid eyes on it. Not after it took Linda away from me. And Cheryl. And my own damn hand. No, I was going to get rid of this vile tome of horrors once and for all by ditching it on the other side of the friggin’ universe, and then get back to living as the world’s most handsome lothario!

“Ellena…sandweixess…atsukio…nakajimak…”

The vortex’s spiral motion accelerated, causing the wind to pick up a few dozen notches. I had just enough time to rip off my mechanical hand and strap on my awesomely phallic chainsaw before the weather upgraded from a brisk breeze to a full-on cat. 5 hurricane. Kelly held onto a thick tree branch for dear life, while Pablo used the door to the airstream trailer to keep himself from flying off into oblivion. It didn’t seem to be doing him much good; his feet were lifted right off the ground.

“Jefe! Shut it down!” Pablo screamed to be heard. “It’s not working!”

“It’s working, damn it!!” I yelled back, even as I felt myself being blown backwards. I fought against the howling gusts, trying to get close enough to throw the Necronomicon into the vortex. But then, in the blink of an eye, the vortex flipped into reverse, switching from blowing to sucking.

Could I have gotten the spell wrong? Again? No! I read the translations! I knew exactly what I was casting, syllable for syllable!

Then a piece of paper slapped into my face. I tore it off, and glanced at the words Hawkins had scribbled down in a hurry:

Incantation B-61: Must not be recited at night!

“Ooooooh shiiiiiiiiiit!!” I screamed loud enough to wake the dead. And bust their rotting eardrums while I was at it.

I lost my footing and went flying like the world’s most retarded bird straight into the vortex. I could only pray it’d drop me somewhere that at least had oxygen.



* * *


In that one moment, my already less-than-perfect life went from 'crappy and scary' to 'crappy, scary and weird.'

I was in the vortex for less than three seconds before it spat me out again. I was falling through the air, too fast for me to get a look at my new environment. The last time this happened to me, I dropped on hard, mattress-free dirt. I still have no idea why my bones didn’t shatter like my mom’s favorite vase while playing the Lone Ranger a little too enthusiastically in the living room. Maybe time travel gives you temporary invincibility, like Mario and his super stars?

I managed to catch a quick glimpse of where I was about to land. I saw a blur of green bamboo sticks jutting out from at least a hundred different pools of water. Knowing my luck, I’d probably get impaled on one of them.

But, nope! Somebody was looking out for the Ash-Man that day! As I watched the pools rush up to greet me, I fell past all the bamboo stems, and splashed down into water…sweet, refreshing, harmless water.

Or so I thought.

As I kicked around under the surface, I suddenly noticed two odd details. First, the pool was a lot deeper than it looked. Like…a lot deeper. Deep enough for Norman Bates to dump Marion Crane’s car without having to worry about anyone ever finding it. Second, my whole body felt a lot lighter, and my chainsaw a lot heavier. Even with my ears muffled by water, I heard two extremely loud and distinct noises that sounded like bwom! bwom!

Simultaneously, I felt the freakiest bulging type of sensation on my chest, like two basketballs had been inflated under my skin in record time. Now I could feel two somethings on my chest that were almost as heavy as my chainsaw.

But that wasn’t all. I felt my hair tingling, and then being pulled back and fiddled with, as if there was a goddamn barber in the water with me.

“Blubglubblubglubblub?!” I gargled.

My clothes began to feel awfully big for me, and my blood ran cold upon realizing they were starting to drift off my body. Oh hell no! The Jefe was not going to run around in a completely unknown locale in his birthday suit! There’s a time and a place for everything! I used my free hand to hold on to my shirt and pants, using all the power in my suspiciously slim legs to kick back to the surface. The weight of my chainsaw almost drowned me. Now you’re probably asking why I didn’t just detach it from my wrist. Simple. I didn’t think of doing that.


Shut up.


I burst out from the water, taking a deep gulp of air. So, one potential risk was crossed off the list: I had materialized somewhere on Earth, instead of the Horsehead Nebula. Sweet, sweet oxygen, baby!

The pool’s edge was only a few feet away. I swam over and crawled out, clutching onto my wet, sagging clothes like my life depended on it. Or at least my dignity. I saw Kelly and Pablo less than a dozen steps from the pool, picking themselves off the ground, looking as though they’d just come out of a trash compactor operated by Ernest P. Worrell. Ha! I might’ve gotten drenched, but they hit the ground like a pair of anvils! Joke’s on them!

I was so, so, soooooooooooooooooooo wrong.

“Hey, you guys all right?” I called out. My hand leapt to my throat. The voice that came out of my mouth was a lot higher than the deep, manly baritone I was used to. In fact, this voice sounded downright annoying in a ‘Japanese schoolgirl’ kind of way. Really perky and way-too-cute, know what I mean? Something else I noticed: My suavely masculine stubble was gone. My skin felt smoother than a baby’s butt.

Pablo and Kelly turned to look at me. I saw Pablo was keeping the Necronomicon tucked under his arm. Smart kid must have grabbed it when he got sucked into the vortex. His jaw dropped, while Kelly ogled me like I was Elvis Presley. Her eyeballs bulged big enough to pop out of their sockets.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

“Huh?” I blurted, still not knowing what to make of my freaky voice. Maybe there was some helium in the air leaked from a passing air balloon. “Kelly, it’s me. Ashley Joanna Williams. The Promised One. Savior of All Mankind.”

“Kelly, look!” Pablo pointed. “She’s got the Jefe’s chainsaw!”

What the Willy Wonka? She? Did Pablo just say she?

I looked down…and saw cleavage. Not your garden-variety cleavage, either. This was epic cleavage. The kind you’d see in those old Hammer horror movies that could’ve exploded out of their super-tight bodices like the alien exploding out of John Hurt’s torso. Both young and buxom. Neither old, nor fake. This was cleavage to die for. My poor, unsuspecting brain, refusing to draw the only possible conclusion, thought I was seconds away from meeting a divinely hot eighteen-year-old babe who hit puberty like a fuckin’ rocket launcher.

But then I observed its movement. I breathed in, cleavage went up. I breathed out, cleavage went down. In, up, out, down. And so forth.

I was about to put all the pieces together inside my head and have a full-on Lovecraft-scale meltdown.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no. I can cope with decapitating my girlfriend. I can cope with my own hand turning against me. I can cope with an evil version of me growing out of my shoulder. I can cope with having my face stretched longer than a horse’s. I can cope with a Little Lori doll trying to kill me. But I can’t and won’t cope with this. The Necronomicon’s finally crossed the line. It’s gone for the low blow. It's taken away my manhood.

From now on…I was going to give MYSELF sugar.


“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!”


My expletive was louder than a Beatles concert. If there were any glass nearby, it was officially annihilated. Pablo slapped hands over his ears, eyes rolled up to show nothing but white. Poor guy looked like he was about to pass out.

I ran back to the pool, causing my newly grown assets to bounce up and down in an extremely awesome way that almost dulled my panic. Almost. I took a long, steamy gawk at my reflection in the water.

“…whoa,” I muttered, doing my best Keanu Reeves.

The girl looking back at me had an unnaturally bright-red mane of hair inexplicably tied back into a ponytail. She was young, as I had previously anticipated; no older than eighteen or nineteen at most. Her eyes were a brighter shade of blue than the pool water, and huge…I mean H-U-G-E. For a second, I thought I was staring at something Walt Disney drew, or…whatever the hell those Japanese cartoons are called.

I stuck my tongue out. The chick in the water did the same. I shoved a finger up my nose. She mimicked me like a pro. I was starting to have Vietnam flashbacks to my evil twin experience. I tried something else.

“I wanna squeeze your boobs till they pop like balloons!!” I shouted at my reflection. With most women, I would’ve had the stuffing slapped out of me after making a comment like that. But the girl in the water looked totally chill about it.

“What’s she doing?” I heard Pablo whisper behind me to Kelly.

“Talking to her fucking reflection, that’s what she’s doing,” Kelly hissed back. “She’s a nutcase, Pablo. Get ready to rush her on three.”

I hopped back on my feet. Deliberately. Feeling my chest go bouncey-bouncey again was just too much for a guy-turned-girl to resist. “Friends! Pals! Comrades-in-arms! It’s really me! I swear on my dad’s freshly-dug grave!”

Pablo and Kelly froze. They looked at each other, then back at me.

“Maybe it really is him, Kel,” Pablo said. “I mean, how would she know about what happened to Ash’s padre?”

“Doesn’t prove anything,” Kelly retorted. “The Necronomicon knows how to mess with your head. Either she’s a Deadite, or Ruby in disguise.”

“Eeerrrggghhh,” I groaned. I grabbed at my head, trying to think of another approach. What would Captain Kirk do? The one played by William ‘Badass’ Shatner, not Chris ‘I’m-a-Little-Punk-Bitch’ Pine?

“Okay, how about this?” I started over. “I met you for the first time at the cash register in ValueStop. I tried to make a compliment about your mom, but then you dropped a bomb on me by saying your mom got wiped out in a car accident five months ago…”

“Six.”

“…six months ago, and when I made a pass on you, you made a pass at my arm! Just for the record, that was legitimate battery and assault!”

Kelly glared at me. “Which arm did I pin down?”

I lifted my chainsaw arm a few inches. All the damn weight made it a lot harder than usual.

Kelly and I stared into each other’s eyes for what felt like days. Then, her muscles relaxed, and she took a step back.

“OK. It’s you,” she confirmed.

“What happened to you, Jefe?!” Pablo was utterly baffled. “Uh…jefa?!”

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “I fell into one of those pools and came out like this. That’s pretty much it.”

“You just lost your pants, jefa,” Pablo said, pointing downwards.

I looked at my legs. I saw to my horror that my pants had indeed fallen down, leaving only my feet protected with soggy gray socks. My shoes had clearly slipped off while I was busy pulling a metamorphosis underwater. My blue shirt was the only article of clothing left to grant me any modesty.

“Ah, shitballs!!” I shouted, doing my best to yank my brown trousers back up and failing.

Kelly squinted, noticing my hair. “Why the hell did it give you a ponytail?”

Between my loose pants and the really distracting sensations of my freshly swollen chest, I was starting to feel just a teensy bit harassed. “I dunno! You wanna go and ask it?!”

A very unfamiliar voice suddenly interrupted our little tete-a-tete.

“Oh no!” A voice called out, the words coated with a heavy Korean accent. I’m pretty sure it was Korean. Look, as far as I’m concerned, any language that isn’t English ain’t worth studying, okay? “Another foreigner fall into Spring of Drowned Girl! What are odds?!”

We all turned around to see an Asian guy dressed in a brown uniform and dark-green hat stumbling down the mountainside toward us. He kind of looked like a Commie to me, if I’m being honest. It was the yellow star on his hat. It just screamed ‘I hate people who believe in God and eat homemade apple pie,’ y’know?

With me still being the de facto leader, girl or not, I whipped my boomstick out from the holster behind my back (at least it wasn’t nearly as heavy as my chainsaw), and aimed it right at the goon’s noggin.

“Hold it right there, Stalin,” I said, doing my best to sound authoritative with a not-so-authoritative voice. “Before you get any closer, you’re gonna explain why I’m suddenly small, hot, and red-headed, capeesh?”

The man skidded to a stop but looked more confused than a California blonde.

“Who is Stalin?” he asked.

“Oh, for crying out loud…” Kelly stepped between me and Joseph, brushing aside my boomstick, a move I didn’t appreciate. She addressed the man coolly and calmly. “Look: We need to know where we are, and what happened to our friend. Can you please help us?”

The man’s broke out into a grin, and he nodded like a lunatic. “Yes, yes! That I can do, pretty foreign lady! You are at Mount Quanjing, in Qinghai Province!”

“Korea, right?” I asked, certain of the answer.

“What?” The man looked at me as if I was a raging retard. “No, China. I am guide. Full-time job. What you see behind me…” he took a step sideways, granting us a view of the entire landscape. “…are legendary cursed Jusenkyo Springs. Each spring has tragic story.”

“Tragic in what way?” Pablo was getting interested.

The guide looked up toward the sky, a melancholic sparkle in his eyes. “Something or someone drown in every single pool you see here, sir. That over there…” he pointed at one of the pools. “…is Spring of Drowned Flea. This over here…” he pointed at another pool. “…is Spring of Drowned Panda. Actually, another foreigner fall into that one, too…but getting off-track now. Point is, any person who falls into spring becomes what drowned in spring.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said, massaging my forehead. This guy was starting to give me a headache. “So you’re saying that, if something drowns in one of those pools, any kind of lifeform at all, the next sap who falls in ends up turning into said lifeform?”

The guide nodded emphatically. “Correct! You fall into Spring of Drowned Girl. There is tragic legend, very tragic, of young girl who…”

“Yeah yeah, I get the idea, Mao Zedong.”

“Ash,” Kelly hissed beneath her breath. “Not the time to be a racist jackass.”

“Hey, I’m the one who lost his balls! How about some sympathy here?” I turned my attention back to Captain Communist. “What I’d like to know is…why do I have red hair?”

The guide shrugged.

“No, seriously: Why do I have red hair? Are red-haired girls endemic to China or what?”

The guide shrugged.

“You’re going to wish you were the one who lost his testicles if you do that again, buddy.”

Kelly gave me a little punch in the ribs. “Ash, your hair doesn’t matter. What matters is getting you back to normal. We can’t do that if you’re threatening the only guy who can tell us how.”

“Oh, there is no back to normal, miss,” the guide replied, sadly shaking his head. “To this day, no one know how to cure Jusenkyo curse.”

I didn’t like what I was hearing. “Are you for real? You’re telling us that not one human male ever drowned in the hundreds of pools around here?”

The guide stroked his chin as he browsed through the database inside his head.

“Yes, there is Spring of Drowned Man somewhere. But no Spring of Drowned American White Man.”

“How did you know I was a white man?”

“You talk like one. Loud and stupid.”

I started advancing on the S.O.B.

“Jefa!” Pablo grabbed my shoulder.

“Hands off, Pablo,” I snarled, my temper turning just as red as my hair. “I’m going to push this smug a-hole into Spring of Drowned Brain-Eating Amoeba.”

“No, Jefa! Your pants!”

I looked down and saw I’d walked right out of my brown breeches, leaving them behind in a pile behind me.

“Motherfucker!!” I bolted for them, but then tripped on my shirt and fell ass over tea kettle. I landed with a thud, my shirt pooled around me but not concealing me, allowing everyone an R-rated view of my goodies. The guide pointed at me and laughed like a hyena.

“You funny foreigner!” he cackled. “You funniest foreigner who ever come to springs! You make guide’s day!”

Instead of leveling my boomstick at the jagoff’s head and pulling the trigger, I sat and sulked just like a teenage girl. I don’t think I’ve ever been so utterly humiliated before in my entire life. I wanted to crawl into my airstream trailer and hide from the eyes of Man. The only thing that could improve my mood now was a drive in the Delta, but I’d left it behind in Michigan when I teleported my sorry ass to China.

Kelly knelt beside me, while Pablo began arguing with the guide. She pulled off her jacket and laid it over my bare shoulders.

“Here,” she said softly. “Keep this on until we find you some dry clothes. It’s okay, Ash. This isn’t the worst situation you’ve ever been in. It’s not like you’ve been turned into a Deadite.”

She had a point. I needed to find the silver lining in my dark cloud.

“Well,” I grumbled, “I guess it’s not all bad. I’m young again…”

“Yup.”

“…I’m not overweight anymore…”

“Check.”

“…and I’ve got a bitchin’ set of hooters.”

“Uh…sure.”

Pablo suddenly ran over to us. He looked excited about something.

“Ash!” he announced with a big grin. “You can be a jefe again! The guide told me all you’ve gotta do is splash yourself with hot water!”

My depression was instantly lifted. “What? For reals?”

“For reals!”

“I’ll stay a manly man for good?”

Pablo’s grin faltered. “Ah…not for good, no. If you get splashed with cold water, you’ll turn back into a girl.”

I stared at Pablo. A part of me suddenly wanted to smack him. “Hot water? Cold water? What am I, a fucking thermostat?”

“Hey, a half-cure is better than no cure at all,” Kelly chimed in.

“Yeah!” Pablo nodded, his grin restoring itself to full power. “You’ll be ½ Ash, and ½…uh, girl-Ash! I mean, you already have a unisex name, so it’s not like you’ll have to change it when you’re a he or a she.”

I had to mull this over. Splash me with hot water, and I’m a middle-aged Casanova with a predilection for Coors and pizza. Splash me with cold water, and I’m an extremely buxom eighteen-year-old with red hair and freakishly big eyes. My life was about to become twice as bizarre than it already was, and I had to adapt, fast. I had no clue how I was going to fight Deadites while being shorter than Yoda.

First, I’d have to upgrade my chainsaw to a smaller model that I can switch at a moment’s notice if it happens to be raining. Then I’ll probably need to get a boomstick that won’t knock me off my girly feet when I fire it. And if I need to go to the bathroom in girl-form and there’s only a public lavatory available, I’d have to sit down on the seat…gross. Add the fact it takes twice as much time to squeeze the lemon than drain the lizard, which means the Deadites will slaughter twice as many innocent people while I’m taking a piss.

Oy vey. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“Well,” I said, rising to my feet (and keeping Kelly’s jacket safely clutched to my body), “let’s get me into some warm girl-sized clothes. Then let’s figure out how we’re going to fly all the way back to Michigan with no money and no passports.”

“Why don’t we just use the Necronom – ” Kelly shut him down with a look that’d make Leatherface run home and suck his thumb while hiding under the bed.

“Never mind.”