“Everyone but Minako—she’s probably still asleep.” Rei didn’t see what all of the fuss was about. Sure, Ranma would probably have some severe psychological problems with cats, but that didn’t seem to warrant Ami’s panicked reaction at not being able to reach Minako (and by extension, Artemis). True, the blue-haired Senshi hadn’t gone into any detail about what cats did to Setsuna’s husband, but it couldn’t be that bad, could it? “Look, how about we wait a few minutes, and if you can’t reach her on her communicator, you can just call her on the telephone, okay? In the meantime, you can tell us exactly why you’ve called this meeting.”
Ami reluctantly agreed to do so. “Well, last night, at the party, I had the Mercury Computer do a diagnostic scan of Ranma’s physical/mystical matrix, in case there was anything unusual. Naturally, there’s his curse, so I knew something would show up, but I wanted to get a few more technical details than he wouldn’t be able to provide. I read the results this morning, and there doesn’t seem to be to much to be worried about.”
Here, Ami was cut off by a rather annoyed black mooncat. “‘There doesn’t seem to me much to be worried about’? Ami, you made it sound like you had something urgent to tell us about—specifically, something to tell me and Artemis. This sounds like nothing more than a waste of time.” Luna was usually not that irritable, but then, it wasn’t often that Usagi pulled rank to keep her from doing something she wanted to do.
“I’m not finished,” Ami replied, nonplussed. “While his curses aren’t of are concerns, his martial arts training is.”
“What? Why?”
“From what my Computer could tell, Ranma apparently has access to a technique that greatly increases his strength and agility—I’m not really sure, but he might be as powerful as one of us in our Senshi forms when he accesses it.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” asked Makoto. “I mean, it’s always good to get extra help, right?”
“It would, except this ability also causes a temporary loss of sanity—it essentially turns Ranma into an uncontrollable ball of destruction when he’s exposed to its trigger.”
“And what’s that?” asked Usagi.
“Cats.”
“WHAT?!” responded a chorus of voices. “Perhaps I’d better explain,” interjected Rei, who went on to describe what she’d seen when she’d scryed Setsuna’s husband with the Great Fire.
“Wha— What could possibly have happened?” asked a bewildered and somewhat nervous-sounding Usagi.
Surprisingly, it was Luna who answered. “The Cat Fist.”
Ami turned to the mooncat. “You know what this is?”
Luna nodded. “Yes. The Cat Fist, or Neko-ken, has been around for a long time, but it was banned, mostly for being completely and utterly inhumane. It was created in the days before the Silver Millennium by a rogue Mau who thought that our traditional service to humans amounted to slavery, so he developed this technique in order to subdue them. By starving some of our less advanced cousins (mainly housecats since we resemble them so much) and repeatedly throwing a human into that pit wrapped in some sort of food, usually fish, one could instill a fear of cats into that human so great that the subject would begin to think like a cat—but what this Mau didn’t count on was that not only would these neko-humans not respond to his orders, but they would also be able to tap into ki reserves previously unheard of, making them potentially very destructive. Not surprisingly, he was killed by his first successful experiment, but when humans found out about it, some of them tried to refine the technique themselves in a lust for power. The results were always bad.”
There was a long silence, before it was broken by Usagi. “Umm… I think we’d better figure out where Minako and Artemis are. Now.”
At this point Makoto reentered the conversation. “Well, as we were leaving the party, Mina-chan did say she was going to try and make amends for poking Ranma’s breasts… Maybe she’s going to the Outers to see him…” Another silence as everyone present realized that Murphy’s Law made this possibility extremely likely.”
“Makoto, that’s information we really could have used about five minutes ago,” Rei said with a glare.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Ami, “but right now I think we need to concentrate on finding Minako and Artemis at contacting the Outers. We can have petty arguments later.”
Luna nodded her head vigorously in response. “Agreed. I just hope we aren’t too late.”
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(Posted Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:43)
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