She sighed and shrugged, perhaps it would be best to ask. At any rate, she had to at least maintain the appearance of keeping her form sharp. Even if routines that would run her ragged before barely phased her now.
She paused and started into another near perfect routine...
****
Shampoo was moderately puzzled as she paid attention to Kodachi. The girl was hiding her full potential. The practices she was running weren't coming close to getting her heart running. She was at most doing a light warm up.
That didn't make sense, however, since Shampoo had fought Kodachi and the girl had never operated on this level before. Indeed, she could keep up with Ranma probably at this level.
Come to think of it...Shampoo hadn't really been feeling fatigued at all since her...accident...maybe she should...
****
Kodachi and Shampoo were both moving before anybody else was aware of it. The wall exploded inward so quickly after, however, that nobody noticed the almost precognitive reactions of the pair, not even each other.
"AHHH!!!" a shrill, high-pitched voice declared as...something seemed to breeze into the gymnasium at the end of a half-leep. "If it isn't the self-styled black rose!"
The creature, a deathly pale woman...by appearances at least...with long thin arms and legs and long, pale hair that seemed to drift in the air behind her. She laughed and her voice echoed through the air about her.
"Can't escape me now little black cow!" the woman gasped from her feather light touch upon the ground.
Shampoo hesitated only briefly before running out of the room. She hated to abandon the field, but her grandmother insist she keep her senses secret.
"Who, pray tell, are you?" Kodachi demanded effecting her normal arrogant demeanor.
"I am Ittan-momen, little fool!" the white woman declared, laughing insidiously. She lashed outward and her long, white arm seemed to stretch out, and grow longer as it hurtled toward Kodachi.
The gymnast's eyes widened fractionally, and she barely managed to avoid getting hit by the arm. Then it shifted and an enlongated elbow smacked into her face, sending her flying backward against and through the bleachers.
"Too easy," Ittan-Momen said, drawing her arms back in to a near human appearance. Not quite though, it wouldn't do for this day's actions' legal ramifications to follow her after all.
That's when something slammed into her from behind, sending the self-proclaimed "Ittan-Momen" flying across the St. Hebereke gymnasium.
"It is quite rude to behave in this manner," her attacker declared in a soft-voice that was very much the opposite of what one would expect if the identity of the girl behind the mask were known.
Ittan-Momen stood up and looked over her challenger. She was a slight girl wearing a black and red spider-motifed jumpsuit showing no skin, but certainly showing a very well defined form.
"You dare place yourself in my way?!" Ittan-Momen shouted.
"I only mean to insure that you understand how rude you are being," the spider-woman corrected.
Her hand lashed out again, and this time the target did not just barely dodge. Instead, the spider-costumed girl ducked and weaved inward, virtually dancing over a second ribbon-like limb, only to be caught, twisted about and slammed into the ground by a tangle of steel-like hair.
Ittan-Momen tried to spring upon her dazed foe, only to acquire a face full of some vile...substance that her foe had apparently tossed at her.
Kodachi, or Spider-Rose rather, took the time to shake off the reminder of the effect that slamming into the floor had had, and charged forward, making use of her new strength to make up for what her training lacked and pounding the attacker of her school.
She soon found herself flying backwards as the white-faced monster kicked her away. Kodachi collided painfully with the pillar, but didn't let herself slide back down, instead taking a postion high in the rafters and readying herself to try and immobilize the creature in a more firm manner.
That's when the police sirens started to blare and the white-faced creature snarled.
"Another time, little spider," she hissed, bouncing away and virtually sailing on the breeze with her mallealable body forming into nothing more than her namesake.
Kodachi would have liked to chase the creature, but she had to make sure that she was digged up from under the wreckage of the bleachers. She frowned, another time indeed.
From a safe vantage point Shampoo considered the situation. Grandmother HAD to give her that costume soon, no way she would let herself be upstaged by Kodachi Kuno.
Hmph, as if that costume and the bad acting job could hide who she was from Shampoo.
****
Elsewhere, Asuka Saginomiya was reshaping her features into her normal appearance, a bitter, angry expression crossing her face.
Well, that made two pests she would have to deal with. This spider-woman, and Kodachi Kuno. Assuming, of course, that Kodachi had survived. Given her luck, that was assured.
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(Posted Mon, 02 Dec 2002 06:22)
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