After the chanting began, Ranma had blasted Tarou with a ball of golden light, and then a somewhat transparent web-like structure began to engulf the tower.
***
Staying far enough away from Tarou to avoid being pinpointed by the beast's unusually high sensitivity to hidden foes, Ranma collected all of Tarou's caches of pantyhose. He spun it, using a combination of the Iron Cloth technique and the workings of the Umisen-ken.
He supposed his father had devised the technique originally to allow him to expand how much could be stolen; Ranma had a different plan in mind. Each pair of pantyhose that Ranma picked up was added to his bath towel, not filling it, but actually merging with the cloth.
Infused with chi, Ranma was making a massive screen, one which he secured to the four main struts outside of the tower, and then, while Tarou was mooing for him angrily, all the way to the top.
Within a minute, the hero had managed to cover every exit Tarou could have hoped to use with a fine mesh of chi-resilient pantyhose. He doubted that it would stop a concentrated effort from Tarou, but he wasn't really doing it for Tarou. Once he had finished, Ranma still had a good length of pantyhose left, so he slipped through the screen, inside the cage-match that he and Tarou had collaborated to assemble.
Near the top, from behind a girder, Ranma revealed himself, crying out, "Mouko Takabisha!" and firing a bolt of chi to the exact center of the observation deck's construction; the elevator shaft. There was a hideous wrenching as the blast smashed the shaft clear away from the bottom of the deck, leaving a gaping hole in the floor.
Tarou flew up towards the source of the attack. Ranma went down, and quickly tied lengths of pantyhose to his corner-moorings, then leading four separate lines of pantyhose to the center, where he made a four-way knot. The entire construct of hosiery was now faintly humming to Ranma's senses with his chi, and he nodded, hoping he'd gotten all of the knots right.
"Tarou!" he yelled, slipping out of the Umisen-ken for what he reasoned would be the final time. Tarou bellowed, and dived for him, but he dodged to one side, retreating against Tarou's onslaught, and then producing his ID card from his pocket. Girl, he thought, pressing the seal.
It felt very strange to change without actually being splashed, and Ranma allowed the sensation to distract him. The blow that would probably have taken his head off missed due to her suddenly shorter height, and Ranma leapt away, towards the center of the open archway. Directly into the screen of pantyhose she had set up.
Focusing on her anger and her rage, she flared her battle aura hot, though she concentrated on the Soul of Ice in her right hand. She didn't know if Tarou would recognize the Hiryuu Shouten Ha properly, but there wasn't enough room to maneuver against him in the makeshift arena. At least, not in the traditional sense.
Rebounding with all of the speed and power she could manage, she launched herself towards Tarou, one hand extended as she spun in a spiral towards him. He deflected her easily, and she flew out, crashing into another screen. Reorienting herself, she launched again, and again.
She hammered at him, too fast and powerful for him to catch, but too wildly to land any hits. Eventually, she had managed to line up a spiral of hot air in each of the compass directions angling away from the center of the chamber, where Tarou was slowly retreating, and then four more at higher angles. One final rebound off of the central pin, directly above the elevator shaft, and she launched herself straight down.
Tarou lunged upwards, and she barely managed to avoid crashing straight into him. A glancing blow with his monstrous fist nearly knocked her out of alignment, but she managed to create the final spiral of hot chi. Now all she needed to do....
As she reached the intersection of four knots of pantyhose, she concentrated furiously on the Soul of Ice, passing through the opening in the floor, and grabbing onto the central knots. As planned, cold shot through the pantyhose, focusing in knots she had centered in each screen. When she passed below the floor of the observation deck, and began stretching the four lines she'd arrayed across the floor, those knots unraveled explosively, releasing bursts of cold chi directly into the heart of the hot spirals.
Tarou, too large to fit through the opening, was standing at their convergence point, pounding one fist into the floor to create a larger exit. Ranma smiled grimly, pulled out her ID card, and used it one more time, frowning at how much the brightness of the seal had faded after the third use. Well, fine, he thought.
He was going to give one appropriate battle cry, even if it wasn't considered virtuous. Bellowing at the top of his lungs, he unleashed his attack.
***
As soon as Ranma began rebounding from the screens surrounding the tower, even though he seemed somehow smaller, and his hair had changed color, Nanami knew that it was time to start moving people away. She briefly considered contacting Masamichi and asking for one of the six non-covert operatives, but decided that they wouldn't get through the Diet's red tape in time anyway.
She sent out a wave of mild fear, centered around the tower, and then confidence, from the amplifiers further away. The crowd naturally drew away, just as a voice shook the city, thundering, "Suck it down, Panty-fiend Tarou!"
The last few syllables echoed in the unnatural silence that followed. "Panty-fiend ... panty-fiend ... panty-fiend...."
There was murderous cry of bestial rage from the observation deck, just as Nanami discerned Ranma's form descending where the ruins of the elevator shaft awkwardly hung. Then, nine convection cells formed, nine tornadoes blasting in from separate directions, and the tower's super-structure began to groan in loud protest. She watched, wide-eyed as she could make out rivets and girders being stripped from nearby stuts, and the cyclones began to increase in intensity.
The crowd gasped, and Nanami frantically projected as much calm as she could, no longer needing to project her own fear to move them away.
The tower shuddered once, ominously, and then began to deform, the observation deck blasting clean through to the ground in a billowing cloud of dust as the tower twisted and collapsed into an untidy pile.
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(Posted Wed, 20 Jul 2005 04:49)
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