They were quite clearly ghosts - and something more.
They were the champions who had most embodied their School, and all thirteen were in evidence. Most bore the marks of fatal wounds upon them, the injuries which had killed them displayed for all to see.
The Spider Style Of Shadow Arts looked angrily towards him. Clearly not happy with his continued existence. This school embodied the Arts of striking while unseen, surprise and misdirection, the arts of ambush and illusion. They had been frozen long ago when they'd overstepped their bounds and the other Schools had turned against them.
The Dragon's Storm Style Of Fierce Battle Arts resembled the current Heir, except that she was older and bore a jagged flesh wound on her chest. Storm Style was fast and powerful, one of the styles which emphasized flashy power moves to overwhelm an opponent's defenses and go for a quick win. Strength was a hallmark of the style and chi-forged lightning one of the marks of the bloodline.
Ranma's eyes flicked to the next.
As ice could find a weakness in rock and shatter it, so too the Glacier School Of Martial Arts taught patience and the skills to find and exploit a weakness in the opponent. This ghost vaguely resembled one of the little girls that Ranma had met during his convalescence, or her mother for that matter.
The skills of the Sacred Flame School were faith based. Those practicing the style were priests and priestesses of their faith. Flame purifies and faith nurtures. Fire was tenacious and hard to put down, and so the Sacred Flame's main strength was the spirit of its practitioners. Strong emotion, which fueled chi attacks, was something all practitioners manifested.
The moon changed its face frequently, and yet remained the same. The light from it waxed or waned, but its presence remained and marked the passage of time. The Eternal Moon Style was similar to the Sacred Flame in that the spirit of its users was a main factor in its training. Yet where the Sacred Flame taught mind and body to become one with spirit, the Eternal Moon sought internal tranquility and purity of heart.
The Steadfast Earth Style was very defense oriented. Toughness, being able to take massive amounts of damage, and then lashing back out with a single attack. While there was considerable disappointment in the current Heir to the style being so thin and lacking great physical strength - he nonetheless burned with the necessary chi.
The inner circle of schools was filled out with Mountain Dancer Style. The practitioners of the style learned elegant dances that incorporated combat moves. Avoid your opponents blows, time everything perfectly, then strike precisely.
Glacier, Mountain, Moon, Earth, Fire, Storm - the Inner Schools collectively. Each had their current Heir to the innermost secrets of the style, though they were as yet too young to learn them. Ami, Minako, Usagi, Endymion, Rei, Makoto.
Outer included Shadow, the frozen school, as well as the schools of Sky, Waters, Destruction, and Speed.
As one might expect, the Azure Sky style specialized in midair combat. Speed in particular, but gymnastic heavy in any event. It was also a weapon style, utilizing first spears and then scimitars after their introduction to the valley some six hundred years previously.
More odd perhaps, for a mountain valley in the Himalayas, was the Still Waters School. A style of fading in and out of perception, the spirit though to a less degree than the Sacred Fire, and of concealment. Once a student of Still Waters had left Shangri-la with the first secret and founded the school of Hidden Weapons elsewhere. One who had mastered Still Waters could conceal more.
The school of Speed was actually the Soul's Speed style. Training to greater and greater speeds, or to be able to produce a state of suspended animation - the control of oneself and the pace at one interacted with the world around oneself - that was the main focus of the school.
Then there was the Destruction style. The longer name, though hardly anyone used it, was Destruction Point style. The Art was the most potentially powerful, combining the healer's arts with those of the assassin with the soldier. When the last Heir had been focussed, she had been unstoppable. Chinese tanks and troops numbering in the thousands had sought Shangri-la to subdue it and bring treasures back to Beijing in the 1960s. Their remains still littered passes into the mountains.
Those eleven schools had Heirs or were (in the case of Shadow) shut down. Ranma was chosen to be the disciple (if he had the stuff to be an Heir was still debated), it would be the style of:
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(Posted Thu, 27 May 2004 09:46)
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