“No,” Ranma replied as he trudged ahead with obvious effort towards the gate. “Weight trainin’ don’t work unless ya do it all the time.”
For a second Kassy was tempted to just pat him on the back lightly and watch him collapse so she could turn the thing off, if she wasn’t sure that amount of force would liquefy his bones on impact. “Yeah, but Ranma-”
“Stop… talking… gotta… concentrate,” he told her with obvious effort.
For a moment Kassy thought about just telling him to shut up and make the boy listen, but then just shrugged and walked beside him at the insanely slow pace of one footstep every 1.5 seconds. At the least it let her take in the scenery, and unfortunately, the comments of the other students as well.
“Hey check out Saotome.”
“Why’s his face all red?”
“Never mind that. Who’s the cute girl he’s with?”
“A fiancée, duh.” That one came from about twelve different people at once and made Kassy look to the small crowd that answered the question in confusion. Did they really look like a couple? One glance at a slouched over Ranma told her no.
“What makes you think she’s a fiancée?”
“Look at those things on her head. You know any weird girl in this place has to either be out to marry Ranma or engaged to him already. Just look at the other four. All head cases that should probably be committed if it weren’t for the fact anyone stupid enough to try anything would find himself broken in two.” Looking around the schoolyard Kassy could see numerous people nodding their heads in agreement.
“Four?” Kassy mumbled to herself. She looked over to Ranma to ask him what that meant, but with the way his tongue was hanging out and the fact that he looked ready to die from fatigue stopped her. But she did make a mental note to ask him when he was feeling better.
Ten minutes later as the two of them actually got into the school, Kassy looked over to Ranma and crossed her arms. “So, you ready to take that stupid thing off and admit I’m right yet?” she asked with a smirk. “I must admit I’m surprised you made it this far, but there’s no way you’re even going to make it up the stairs with that gravity device on Ranma.”
“I… can… make… it,” Ranma said before taking three steps inside the door.
“Well, maybe in a few hours,” Kassy admitted. “But what I’m talking about is I don’t think-”
*CRACK*
*COLLAPSE*
“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”
“-the chairs or floor will hold your weight,” Kassy finished in a stunned tone as she blinked a few times before quickly rushing over to the hole in the floor and looking down in a panic. “RANMA?” Who the hell builds a basement that deep right under the entrance to a school? She thought before grabbing her skirt as not to flash anyone and jumped down after him.
When Kassy got to the basement floor she threw aside some of the boards on top of the pigtailed boy and let out a frightened groan. With as much as Ranma had his gravity harness turned up, it probably would of killed him had he just fallen down on the sidewalk. It was actually amazing his ankles hadn’t shattered after he took his first step. But from that height… there was no way he could have survived.
For a moment Kassy sat there in silence while looking at the prone body in front of her while it sounded like students continued on about their business overhead, not even bothering to look down. For some reason, maybe out of morbid curiosity, Kassy reached forward to poke the body in front of her… and jumped back with a yelp when it suddenly shifted.
Groaning, Ranma slowly sat up strait and blinked his eyes a few times until the world came back into focus. Two seconds of looking around told him where he was, one of the storage rooms for that second rate supply shop under the school. Stupid shoddy Furinkan construction, he knew from personal experience the place was poorly built, but when the wood is so bad that a student could just fall through, that was crossing the line.
“R-Ranma you’re alive!” Kassy shouted before the boy found himself the subject of an Amazon level glomp and Kassy’s ears practically dancing in front of his face. Then she suddenly pushed Ranma away and studied him for a moment. “But… that doesn’t make sense.”
“Uh, what’re you taking about?” Ranma asked, totally confused.
“You!” Kassy exclaimed. “I know you’re not tough enough to survive a fall like this at fifteen times your normal weight. Now that I think about it, you should have been turned into putty when you landed, but… wait.” Still lost, Ranma wasn’t even able to resist when Kassy suddenly pushed him down and looked at the gravity enhancer. Then a second later she let him go and Ranma was sitting back up while Kassy had an amused smirk on her face. “I really gotta use you to pick lottery numbers sometime.”
“Say what?” Ranma replied.
For a moment Kassy just stared at him then shook her head. “You really don’t have a clue do you? Ranma, when you fell through the floor and hit the ground, you should have been killed because you were at fifteen times normal gravity. The fact that you’re still alive right now is because the battery ran out. Probably as soon as the floor broke under you. If it wasn’t for that, you’d be a pile of mush right now.”
“W-What?” Ranma shouted before quickly taking the piece of Salusian technology off and tossing it away as if it was a grenade about to go off in his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me that then?”
“I was trying to, but you just wouldn’t listen stupid,” Kassy replied in a light tone before flicking Ranma’s head in hopes to knock some sense into him.
“Oh… you know,” Ranma said between pants. “I think you were right about that rest. Goodnight.” It wasn’t like he was going to stay away in class anyway.
“Hey wait, you can’t just,” Kassy cut herself off when Ranma fell over backwards and frowned at the unconscious pigtailed boy. “Great… now what am I supposed to do?”
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(Posted Mon, 26 Jul 2004 01:51)
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