Romancing the (Martial) Artist

Chapter 50

It was late at night and my insomnia was acting up again. It had become more and more common as of late. Terrible vistas of emptiness gnawing at my mind as it refused to shut up due to my circumstances had a hand in that. Something I had recently found that helped was taking ice cold showers when I woke up from restless dreams.

I say helped, but I was still regularly waking up several times a night, to the point I had completely stopped bothering using hot water to swap back to my male form and had just accepted if I wanted even the scant scraps of sleep I got it would have to involve me being comfortable sleeping in my girl form.

If there was one thing I complain about this curse is that several things that someone learns in adolescence during puberty as their body develops, I never had the chance to learn. Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that I had no way or reason to learn them. I imagine if my female form were less ‘gifted’ as it were, at least a few of these things wouldn’t have been so much of an issue.

The biggest one being that I had yet to master the art of not tossing and turning like a thrice damned spin cycle in my sleep. As a guy, this was barely an issue outside of any potential morning wood. As a well endowed girl, rolling like that sometimes caused a painful and/or arousing amount of friction, as well as the sometimes awkward pains when my sleeping self tried to roll onto my stomach but was denied.

I’m like, 90% sure someone had come up with a way around these problems and if I just asked Fluttershy or Rarity I could be sleeping much more comfortably in my girl form but…I was intensely embarrassed at even the thought of bringing up the topic. Why my brain decided the embarrassment from asking about feminine sleep hygiene outweighed the relief of a good night’s sleep will forever be an enigma, but that was that.

All this rambling is to say, I was awake at an ungodly hour fresh out of a freezing shower getting ready to try and go back to sleep when Luna burst into my room like a lightning bolt.

“RANMA!” Came the full force blast of the Royal Canterlot Voice.

“Luna, are you trying to burst out my ears?!” I shouted, covering my poor abused ear drums. She didn’t acknowledge my whining as she grabbed me.

“I found out who stole your name and who bought it on the black market!” Luna said, her voice colored with both excitement and fear.

“What?! Who?!” I asked. A part of my mind warned I would probably regret knowing, but the awfulness of the ignorance I had been stewing in far surpassed that worried part of me.

“Nyarlathotep was the one who stole your name and sent you here. D’endrrah is the one who bought it,” Luna said. I blinked. Of all the cosmic horrors that could have been involved, those were probably two of the least bad options but the fact my name was possessed by what amounted to a succubus was just so on-brand for the sort of nonsense the real Ranma got into that I almost laughed.

“Do you know where we are or how we can get my name back?” I asked. Luna shook her head.

“Unfortunately not, but I thought you might find some small comfort in knowing you’re less likely to be used in something truly awful or eaten or something like that,” Luna said.

“It does take a large weight off my mind, yes,” I hugged her, “Thank you Lulu.”

Luna hugged back. At the time it didn’t cross my mind to ask how she had gotten this information or how much trouble it might bring us in the future…

Author's Note

My health has been failing for over a year now but over the past couple of months it's taken a sudden nosedive and I've been in the emergency room twice in two months. My doctors are still trying to pin down what's wrong, but haven't been able to find a diagnosis yet. The usual tests and treatments have come up blank, so now we're moving on to the unusual.

Writing like this is hard, but it also helps keep me a little grounded, even if what tiny bit I am able to write is abject garbage which won't see the light of day. I'm surprised this chapter came out as well as it did considering how much I've been struggling to put anything worthwhile down.

Updates will be infrequent until I get my health sorted out, but I'll try.