"Spring of Drowned Troublemaker"
May. 25th, 2012 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amelia_petkovaTitle: Spring of Drowned Troublemaker
Fandoms: Bloody Jack, Ranma 1/2
Summary: Jacky and Jaimy are reunited, but Jacky (as usual) has a surprise. Set following “The Mark of the Golden Dragon” and contains spoilers through that book.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Bloody Jack of Ranma 1/2.
Author’s Notes: I was giggling like a fiend while I wrote this. Poor Jaimy. But really, this can’t possibly be weirder than anything Rumiko Takahashi has done to her characters.
As much as he loves her, Jaimy has to admit that Jacky is not always good for his mental health and emotional well-being.
The beginning was difficult. According to Sidrah he spent much of the journey to Rangoon unconscious and he remembers little of the occasions that he was awake. The healers Charlie summoned after their arrival stated that Jaimy’s old head wound from the French prison likely complicated matters.
Sidrah and Charlie had a great deal of trouble convincing him that Jacky truly was alive. He still vividly remembered watching her swept over the side of the Lorelai Lee. Surely no mere human could have survived that.
“But you should know by now that Jacky is no ‘mere’ human,” Charlie said when Jaimy voiced this thought.
Jaimy had to agree. Yet even after that, he continued to confuse Jacky and Bess in his dreams. He saw Bess shot and dying time after time. More than once she turned into Jacky.
Gradually, each day became easier and better than the last. It helped that Rangoon was a place completely different from any he had visited before and was thus a useful distraction. Sidrah taught him some of her native Chinese and he also studied the local language. He also witnessed a great deal of Charlie’s daily “business”. Jaimy rapidly came to the realization that Charlie was a scoundrel in many ways yet he thought highly of Jacky and in the end, that’s what really mattered. Besides, after his time as the Highwayman, Jaimy doesn’t have much moral high ground to stand on.
Although Jaimy was anxious to see Jacky again as soon as he realized she was alive, he knew it would be a long time. Even if she had left England for Rangoon immediately, they had received word that British Intelligence sent her off to Portugal as a spy. Yet he did not despair of never seeing her again, as once he might: he knew that Jacky had become fully capable of bullying British Intelligence. Besides, if even half of what Charlie said was true, Mr. Peel now owed her a great debt.
Jaimy had been in Rangoon for several months when Charlie said at breakfast one morning, “I have received word from Jacky through my network. Her mission in Portugal is complete and she has been making her way here. If there are not too many delays, she and her crew hope to arrive sometime this week.” He smiled and puffed on his pipe.
At first the bottom of Jaimy’s stomach dropped out. Sidrah saw the look on his face and said, “Father, could you not have broken the news more gently. You know what the healers said about shocks.”
Charlie shrugged. “My apologies but the news came only this morning. It would seem that Jacky’s leaving of Portugal was rather sudden and she could not send news much ahead of her ship. Her message said that there was a brief detour in China but that she does not expect any more delays.”
It was hard for Jaimy to remain calm after receiving the news, although he tried. Knowing that Jacky lived was one thing; being able to see and touch her was another.
He was in the courtyard of Charlie and Sidrah’s home when a voice he had thought he would never hear again said, “Jaimy?”
For one moment, he thought that the dreams had returned. He had imagined seeing Jacky so many times. Yet there she stood: flesh and blood, smiling at him from the doorway. She was dressed in one of her boy’s sets of clothing again. That in itself didn’t surprise him: it had been proven to him more than once that it was practical and in any case, he thought half of Jacky’s enjoyment was shocking people when she revealed her femininity.
“Oh, thank God,” he finally managed. Then they were embracing and it was better than any dream.
Something was different, though. Jaimy frowned. Admittedly Jacky had always referred to herself as scrawny but he knew that she had developed a more…womanly shape over the past years. Now not only was she taller, but her chest felt flatter than any other time she had bound it and something else had changed, too…
“Now Jaimy, I can explain everything.” Was it just his imagination, or did her voice sound lower as well? “You see, there’s been just a little change.” And before he could say anything, she pulled open her shirt to reveal a bare, male chest.
Jaimy reacted just like any well-bred British man would when confronted with such a shock: he fainted.
#
“Jah-kee, these shocks are not good for him!” Jaimy heard Sidrah cry out as he unwillingly returned to consciousness. He was still lying in the courtyard and so had apparently been unconscious long enough for Sidrah to come running after hearing the thump.
“I didn’t mean to! I just didn’t know how to say it in a letter and I thought it would be easier to show everybody.”
Jaimy cracked open his eyes. Jacky was leaning above him, still with her—his—shirt open. He contemplated fainting a second time.
“Oh, please sit up!” Jacky pleaded. “I really didn’t mean to startle you but I know I’m so very hard on my friends.”
One of the maids came running with a kettle of hot water. “Here you go, Miss.”
“Thank you.” Without further ado, Jacky poured the water over her head. As Jaimy and Sidrah watched, she became shorter and her chest grew. Jacky grinned that nervous grin he knew all too well. “Now Jaimy, I swear it wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is,” he murmured and felt the tiniest bit gleeful when she twitched. The many months during their separation had allowed Jaimy to almost forget that whenever he was with Jacky, he was torn between the urge to kiss her and tie her to a chair so that she could not get into more trouble.
“Before we get farther into this story Jah-kee, you may wish to close your shirt,” Sidrah said primly, as befitted a proper lady of her station. Jaimy noticed that she was trying not to smile, though.
Jacky turned bright red. “Oh, Lord.” She did up the buttons of her shirt faster than Jaimy would have thought possible. “Better?”
“Not until I find out what you did,” Jaimy said.
Jacky huffed. “It’s not my fault! We ended up farther in mainland China than we had planned. Higgins had found a map that showed a place called Jusenkyou and I thought the writing on it said something about treasure. Well, it turns out my Chinese still isn’t that great but that handwriting was lousy, as well. When we arrived, all we found was this place with springs everywhere with signs by each one that we couldn’t read. Well, all the water everywhere made the ground slippery and within five minutes I had fallen in.”
“And that made you change into a boy,” Jaimy said flatly.
“It turned out the sign by the water I fell into said, ‘Spring of Drowned Boy.’ We found a man there who said, ‘Oh, very bad,’ when he saw what happened but he wouldn’t say anything more that we could understand. We decided to leave before anything worse could happen. We also ran into Cheng Shih on the way from Jusenkyou to here. You should have been there when she found out,” Jacky said glumly. “I’ve never seen her laugh that hard.”
Now that he was over the initial shock, Jaimy was tempted to side with the Chinese pirate captain for the first time in his life.
“She said that she could have warned us about Jusenkyou if we had asked,” Jacky added. “According to it’s been cursed as far back as anybody can remember and lots of people know about it. Apparently the only ones who end up there are ‘fools who can’t read a civilized language’. She told us that each spring is cursed by a different creature that drowned in it and I fell in the Spring of Drowned Boy. Cold water makes you take the cursed shape and hot water returns you to normal.”
“Please forgive me for asking something so obvious,” Sidrah said delicately, “but surely there must be a Spring of Drowned Girl. Why did you simply not use that?”
“We didn’t know there was one until Cheng Shih told us! And we sure weren’t anxious to go jumping into any other pools at the time. What if there was a Spring of Drowned Snail or something? I wanted to see Jaimy before anything worse could happen.”
Jaimy felt like he was getting a headache. At least on the Dolphin, Jacky had only pretended to be a boy. Now she was just as male as he, whenever cold water came along. Jaimy shuddered. He cast about for a distraction and, fortunately for his sanity, found one. “You keep saying ‘we’. Who else was with you?”
“The usual crew: Higgins, Liam, Davy, and Tink. The rest of the crew stayed on the ship when we went ashore.”
Despite his better instincts, Jaimy couldn’t resist. “Did anybody else succumb to these cursed springs?” He noticed that Sidrah leaned forward in interest.
Jacky grinned. “Funny you should ask…”
Fandoms: Bloody Jack, Ranma 1/2
Summary: Jacky and Jaimy are reunited, but Jacky (as usual) has a surprise. Set following “The Mark of the Golden Dragon” and contains spoilers through that book.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Bloody Jack of Ranma 1/2.
Author’s Notes: I was giggling like a fiend while I wrote this. Poor Jaimy. But really, this can’t possibly be weirder than anything Rumiko Takahashi has done to her characters.
As much as he loves her, Jaimy has to admit that Jacky is not always good for his mental health and emotional well-being.
The beginning was difficult. According to Sidrah he spent much of the journey to Rangoon unconscious and he remembers little of the occasions that he was awake. The healers Charlie summoned after their arrival stated that Jaimy’s old head wound from the French prison likely complicated matters.
Sidrah and Charlie had a great deal of trouble convincing him that Jacky truly was alive. He still vividly remembered watching her swept over the side of the Lorelai Lee. Surely no mere human could have survived that.
“But you should know by now that Jacky is no ‘mere’ human,” Charlie said when Jaimy voiced this thought.
Jaimy had to agree. Yet even after that, he continued to confuse Jacky and Bess in his dreams. He saw Bess shot and dying time after time. More than once she turned into Jacky.
Gradually, each day became easier and better than the last. It helped that Rangoon was a place completely different from any he had visited before and was thus a useful distraction. Sidrah taught him some of her native Chinese and he also studied the local language. He also witnessed a great deal of Charlie’s daily “business”. Jaimy rapidly came to the realization that Charlie was a scoundrel in many ways yet he thought highly of Jacky and in the end, that’s what really mattered. Besides, after his time as the Highwayman, Jaimy doesn’t have much moral high ground to stand on.
Although Jaimy was anxious to see Jacky again as soon as he realized she was alive, he knew it would be a long time. Even if she had left England for Rangoon immediately, they had received word that British Intelligence sent her off to Portugal as a spy. Yet he did not despair of never seeing her again, as once he might: he knew that Jacky had become fully capable of bullying British Intelligence. Besides, if even half of what Charlie said was true, Mr. Peel now owed her a great debt.
Jaimy had been in Rangoon for several months when Charlie said at breakfast one morning, “I have received word from Jacky through my network. Her mission in Portugal is complete and she has been making her way here. If there are not too many delays, she and her crew hope to arrive sometime this week.” He smiled and puffed on his pipe.
At first the bottom of Jaimy’s stomach dropped out. Sidrah saw the look on his face and said, “Father, could you not have broken the news more gently. You know what the healers said about shocks.”
Charlie shrugged. “My apologies but the news came only this morning. It would seem that Jacky’s leaving of Portugal was rather sudden and she could not send news much ahead of her ship. Her message said that there was a brief detour in China but that she does not expect any more delays.”
It was hard for Jaimy to remain calm after receiving the news, although he tried. Knowing that Jacky lived was one thing; being able to see and touch her was another.
He was in the courtyard of Charlie and Sidrah’s home when a voice he had thought he would never hear again said, “Jaimy?”
For one moment, he thought that the dreams had returned. He had imagined seeing Jacky so many times. Yet there she stood: flesh and blood, smiling at him from the doorway. She was dressed in one of her boy’s sets of clothing again. That in itself didn’t surprise him: it had been proven to him more than once that it was practical and in any case, he thought half of Jacky’s enjoyment was shocking people when she revealed her femininity.
“Oh, thank God,” he finally managed. Then they were embracing and it was better than any dream.
Something was different, though. Jaimy frowned. Admittedly Jacky had always referred to herself as scrawny but he knew that she had developed a more…womanly shape over the past years. Now not only was she taller, but her chest felt flatter than any other time she had bound it and something else had changed, too…
“Now Jaimy, I can explain everything.” Was it just his imagination, or did her voice sound lower as well? “You see, there’s been just a little change.” And before he could say anything, she pulled open her shirt to reveal a bare, male chest.
Jaimy reacted just like any well-bred British man would when confronted with such a shock: he fainted.
“Jah-kee, these shocks are not good for him!” Jaimy heard Sidrah cry out as he unwillingly returned to consciousness. He was still lying in the courtyard and so had apparently been unconscious long enough for Sidrah to come running after hearing the thump.
“I didn’t mean to! I just didn’t know how to say it in a letter and I thought it would be easier to show everybody.”
Jaimy cracked open his eyes. Jacky was leaning above him, still with her—his—shirt open. He contemplated fainting a second time.
“Oh, please sit up!” Jacky pleaded. “I really didn’t mean to startle you but I know I’m so very hard on my friends.”
One of the maids came running with a kettle of hot water. “Here you go, Miss.”
“Thank you.” Without further ado, Jacky poured the water over her head. As Jaimy and Sidrah watched, she became shorter and her chest grew. Jacky grinned that nervous grin he knew all too well. “Now Jaimy, I swear it wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is,” he murmured and felt the tiniest bit gleeful when she twitched. The many months during their separation had allowed Jaimy to almost forget that whenever he was with Jacky, he was torn between the urge to kiss her and tie her to a chair so that she could not get into more trouble.
“Before we get farther into this story Jah-kee, you may wish to close your shirt,” Sidrah said primly, as befitted a proper lady of her station. Jaimy noticed that she was trying not to smile, though.
Jacky turned bright red. “Oh, Lord.” She did up the buttons of her shirt faster than Jaimy would have thought possible. “Better?”
“Not until I find out what you did,” Jaimy said.
Jacky huffed. “It’s not my fault! We ended up farther in mainland China than we had planned. Higgins had found a map that showed a place called Jusenkyou and I thought the writing on it said something about treasure. Well, it turns out my Chinese still isn’t that great but that handwriting was lousy, as well. When we arrived, all we found was this place with springs everywhere with signs by each one that we couldn’t read. Well, all the water everywhere made the ground slippery and within five minutes I had fallen in.”
“And that made you change into a boy,” Jaimy said flatly.
“It turned out the sign by the water I fell into said, ‘Spring of Drowned Boy.’ We found a man there who said, ‘Oh, very bad,’ when he saw what happened but he wouldn’t say anything more that we could understand. We decided to leave before anything worse could happen. We also ran into Cheng Shih on the way from Jusenkyou to here. You should have been there when she found out,” Jacky said glumly. “I’ve never seen her laugh that hard.”
Now that he was over the initial shock, Jaimy was tempted to side with the Chinese pirate captain for the first time in his life.
“She said that she could have warned us about Jusenkyou if we had asked,” Jacky added. “According to it’s been cursed as far back as anybody can remember and lots of people know about it. Apparently the only ones who end up there are ‘fools who can’t read a civilized language’. She told us that each spring is cursed by a different creature that drowned in it and I fell in the Spring of Drowned Boy. Cold water makes you take the cursed shape and hot water returns you to normal.”
“Please forgive me for asking something so obvious,” Sidrah said delicately, “but surely there must be a Spring of Drowned Girl. Why did you simply not use that?”
“We didn’t know there was one until Cheng Shih told us! And we sure weren’t anxious to go jumping into any other pools at the time. What if there was a Spring of Drowned Snail or something? I wanted to see Jaimy before anything worse could happen.”
Jaimy felt like he was getting a headache. At least on the Dolphin, Jacky had only pretended to be a boy. Now she was just as male as he, whenever cold water came along. Jaimy shuddered. He cast about for a distraction and, fortunately for his sanity, found one. “You keep saying ‘we’. Who else was with you?”
“The usual crew: Higgins, Liam, Davy, and Tink. The rest of the crew stayed on the ship when we went ashore.”
Despite his better instincts, Jaimy couldn’t resist. “Did anybody else succumb to these cursed springs?” He noticed that Sidrah leaned forward in interest.
Jacky grinned. “Funny you should ask…”
