This is not the case, however, with an individual who has experienced the Neko-ken training. No matter how developed that person’s higher reasoning may be, when confronted by a threat (i.e., a cat), that person’s choices will be immediately reduced to “fight or flight.” Of course, since the Neko-ken conditions humans to view cats as an undefeatable threat, the choice is almost always “flight”—indeed, it is only when this option is completely denied that the brain will choose the “fight” option instead, at which point one enters into the full Neko-ken.
As scary as the white beast at Ranma’s feet may have looked, it was certainly not blocking off all of his avenues of escape—which was why Setsuna, Haruka, and Minako were greeted with the sight of a towel-clad Ranma zipping down the stairs as fast as he could move (which was pretty damn fast). “Cat cat cat cat cat cat cat cat!”
Fortunately, Setsuna was able to restrain her husband before he put another hole in the wall. “Calm down, Ranma. Now, what’s the problem?” As if it wasn’t obvious…
“CAT!”
“Shhh… why don’t you try and calm down and tell me what happened?”
Unfortunately, Ranma was, well, catatonic. “I was… shower… done… needed clothes… opened door… and… but the c-c-cat… with the teeth and the claws and the scratching…”
“I know, I know—you don’t like cats. Don’t worry, I won’t let him get to you.” Setsuna guided her frazzled spouse to the couch and had him sit down. She then glared at Minako. “You didn’t happen to bring Artemis with you, by any chance?”
“Um… maybe…”
Hotaru Tomoe owned a pair of the best earplugs on the market, and she was very happy with them. Setsuna-mama had given them to her soon after she and Ranma got married, since her nocturnal activities had a tendency to keep the fifteen-well-not-really-but-the-full-story-is-actually-pretty-confusing-so-let’s- just-stick-with-fifteen-for-now-year-old girl awake at night. Like most teenagers her age, she’d known that she would eventually have “the talk” with at least one of her parental figures, but she’d never imagined that it would be the result of this particular set of circumstances. She hadn’t gotten the earplugs right away—it took a few more nights of Setsuna-mama trying to keep things down before Haruka-papa had jokingly made that suggestion. It had to be a joke, because the racer was the one who showed the most surprise when the Time Guardian went out the next day and bought a pair of industrial strength Noise-B-Gone® earplugs from Crazy Ichiro’s Amazing Emporium of Total Bargain Madness!!™ (they were on sale) and presented them to her surrogate daughter; Hotaru had been very pleased with their performance thus far.
But industrial strength or not, there was no way those earplugs could have blocked the macabre howl of distress that shot through the Outers’ home the morning after Ranma-papa returned. Hotaru was up in an instant. Being a virgin, she was far from an expert on sex, but she figured if the Meiohs were making that much racket, it had to be good. However, a glance at her clock caused her to reevaluate her opinion—it was already morning (they couldn’t have been going on for that long, could they?). But, if it wasn’t Setsuna-mama, then what was it?
Noticing that the noise had died down a bit, she tentatively removed her earplugs. She could hear some very loud conversation downstairs, but nothing distinct—at least nothing that would explain the noise. This only made her more curious. Carefully she opened her door and looked down the hall. What she saw surprised her, even if it didn’t exactly explain what was going on.
“Artemis? What are you doing here?”
The Mau advisor stared at the floor and shook his head slowly. “You know, I’ve been asking myself that all morning.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. I came here to see Ranma, but something strange happened, because he suddenly took off screaming like a banshee.”
“Now there’s an understatement.” Heads turned towards the voice that had interjected itself into the conversation. Michiru Kaioh wasn’t the type of person who was usually grumpy in the morning—but then, the current situation was anything but usual—and unlike Hotaru, Michiru didn’t own a set of industrial strength Noise-B-Gone® earplugs. “Artemis, what exactly happened?”
“In don’t know—I was just standing here when Ranma opened the door and froze. Since I didn’t want to startle him, I just meowed a little—you know, so he’d think I was a harmless kitty cat—then he took off like a bargain hunter after the Blue Light Special at Crazy Ichiro’s.”
“Well, we won’t get any answers just standing around here; we may as well go downstairs and find out what’ going on.” Artemis agreed with the violinist suggestion, and added, “Best to be quiet—whatever spooked Ranma might still be around, and we don’t want him panicking again.” As the three slowly went down the stairs, the animated conversation coming from the living room became more intelligible.
“Hold on… just what exactly could cause someone to be afraid of cats?” Haruka inquired, causing Ranma to flinch when she emphasized the final word.
Setsuna looked at her still frazzled husband. When he nodded, she began explaining one of Genma Saotome’s less stellar moments as a martial arts instructor. “When he was very young, Ranma’s father tried to teach his son a technique called the Neko-ken.”
As Setsuna began explaining the specifics of the infamous technique, Artemis abruptly stopped his descent of the staircase. “Is something wrong?” whispered Hotaru.
The mooncat apparently didn’t hear her, because he seemed to be talking to himself. “The Cat Fist? It actually exists?” He’d always thought that that was just a story that the Mau told to their kittens to scare them into good behavior, like Macavity or El Broosha. Even if it did exist, the concept of someone actually wrapping a kid in fish products and repeatedly throwing him in a pit of starving cats just seemed so ludicrous that he’d never seriously thought that anyone would be dumb enough to do it. But the more he thought about it…
It does explain why he would be afraid of cats… Just then another thought occurred to him. Minako was down there—and in all likelihood Setsuna knew he had been in her house. And she would want to know what he was trying to do with Ranma. Oh crap. “Um, on second thought, I’ve caused enough problems; maybe I should just leave. In fact, I think I’ll just show myself out—”
The mooncat was cut off as Michiru picked him up. “And just where do you think you’re going?” Artemis slumped in defeat as the violinist cradled him firmly in his arms and took him up to her room. “Now, I’m going to close the door, and you’d better be here when I get back, or I’m getting some new strings for my Stradivarius. Capiche?”
Artemis nodded. “Uh huh.”
“Good. Now if you’ll excuse us, Hotaru and I need to join the others so we can figure out what to do about this mess.”
Ranma had managed to calm down somewhat in the absence of any feline menace—he was still panicking, but he wasn’t as loud and he was much more lucid.
“Are ya sure the c-cat won’t be coming after me? They can sense fear, ya know.”
Minako did her best to reason with the martial artist. “Come on, I’ve had Artemis for more than two years now—if he was going to fly off to Vegas, he’d have done it by now!”
“That’s what they want you ta think!”
A loud sigh came from the staircase as Hotaru and Michiru entered the room. “Don’t worry, Ranma. I put Artemis in my room, and I shut the door firmly. He won’t be getting out anytime soon.” Not if he knows what’s good for him.
When Ranma breathed his sigh of relief, Haruka decided to rejoin the conversation. “Uh, you’ll have to pardon me if I’m being insensitive, but why are you worried about one cat? Sure, I could see why you’d want to avoid large groups, but you’re a martial artist! Surely you don’t have to worry about one cat, right?”
Haruka probably would have been chewed out for her insensitivity if Ranma hadn’t immediately sighed and replied to her: “Ya think I don’t know that? Of course I know that I don’t hafta worry if I’ve only gotta deal with one of ’em. The problem is, whenever I see a… ya-know-what, what I know goes out the window and pretty much gets replaced by what I feel, an’ I feel like they’re gonna tear me ta shreds!”
“Sorry I asked…”
“It ain’t yer fault—an’ it ain’t yer fault either, Minako. No way ya coulda known that I had the stupidest fear ever.”
“Come on, Ranma-papa—it’s not so bad.”
“Yeah, Napoleon was afraid of cats, too.”
Everyone turned to look at Haruka. “What? It’s true; I saw it on Hey! Spring of Trivia.”
Setsuna decided took the awkward silence as her cue to end the conversation. “Well, I’d say that now would be a good time for my husband and me to leave for our honeymoon.” She stood up and stretched a bit. “Oh, and Minako?”
“Yes?”
“If you want to make up for all the trouble you’ve caused over the last twenty-four hours…”
“Of course I do!”
“…you can help Haruka and Michiru move furniture.”
That was not what Minako expected to hear. “What?” she squeaked. Manual labor on a Sunday morning did not sound appealing.
“They’ll explain everything. Now, the sooner we get my husband away from Artemis, the sooner things can settle down.”
“But… it’s Sunday!”
“Last I checked, Minako, you didn’t belong to a religion that was subject to the Ten Commandments, so the ‘Sabbath-rest’ excuse won’t work.”
“Awww…”
Ranma was getting nervous—there was still a cat in the building, after all. “Um, can we go, uh, soon? Please?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to put on some clothes first?”
“Huh?” Ranma looked down and realized that he was still in his bath towel. He started blushing… and when he looked up, he realized he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t noticed, since Minako and Hotaru were almost as red as he was. “Um, yeah. Uh, my pack is still up in our room… Michiru, you said um… that the c-c-c—”
“Artemis?”
“Yeah, you said he couldn’t get out of your room, right?”
“If he did, I’ll take care of him personally,” said Minako.
“Good… uh, since I never unpacked…”
“Just take your pack along, Ranma. Don’t worry about me—I have my own set of clothes at the cabin.”
A few minutes later, the Meiohs said their goodbyes and began roof-hopping towards the nearest train station.
“You can come out now, Artemis.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Whew. Well, I’m glad that’s over. I guess I’ll head back and let the others know where you’ll be all day…”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wh-what do you mean, Mina-chan? It’s not like I can do a lot of heavy lifting…”
“You managed to drag a full size Sailor V game an entire city block all by yourself in one night so you could install it at the Crown Arcade. I think you can handle this. Now move it—if I have to suffer, so do you.”
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(Posted Sun, 22 Jan 2006 00:14)
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