"Unfortunately...
...yes, he's my father, but he's a fake and a thief."
He seemed reluctant to say it, possibly due to the weight of sadness that seemed to have settled over him, yet he seemed to believe that telling the truth was too important to do otherwise.
Seeing the shocked expression of the older man, he continued in an attempt to fully explain his words before any denials could come forth. "Those with knowledge of my natural talents and that he is my father tend to assume he speaks the truth about being a Demon Hunter despite the obvious signs. Truthfully though he's not one of the truly bad fakes, like the kind of scum that would have killed or enslaved your daughter for existing and then proclaimed to the people about saving them from a terrible beast in an attempt to reap false rewards. For the most part he's just a petty thief, and if real trouble pops up, he'll at least try and rescue any innocents involved before running away. Mostly though he's just incompetent and stupid."
Soun finally erupted into emotional denial, enraged that the young man would defame his father so, "Have you no respect for your father? He's a great man who's saved countless lives. It saddens me to see such disrespect from his own child!."
As her father degraded into tears, Nabiki looked over the sad young man, even the reactions of his three companions telling the same truth from different angles. "Well, I for one feel sorry for you putting up with 'Uncle Saotome'. I don't doubt your story for a second. You don't seem much like him though, so what happened there? I mean you've never visited with him here."
Nodded quietly, the pig-tailed Demon Queller took a nice long sip of tea. "Well, when I was six he pulled a bone-headed 'training method' out of his ass. Of course, any sensei worth their rice would have realized that binding a six year old and covering them in fish paste before throwing them into a pit of starving cats was a bad idea. The booklet he was reading it from had it clearly labeled as an example of what only a true idiot would do."
Taking another sip and catching his breath, Ranma calmed himself as the bad part of the story was over, "Luckily instead of dying, my power awakened and saved me. It drew the attention of several demon hunters and since then I have been raised by those that saved me."
One eyebrow hiked high up her forehead, Nabiki found that level of stupidity hard to fathom and she dealt with Tatewaki Kuno on a regular basis. "You're kidding, right?"
Quietly sipping his tea, Ranma somberly shook his head.
Akane had been miserable for two days for apparently no good reason at all. This she discovered as Kasumi took a keen interest in her new body, and such an interest left her in too good of a mood to be grouchy.
For one, her entire pelt of fur had been shampooed and conditioned and then fluffed dry to the point where it was the softest and silkiest thing she had ever felt. Such treatment had also resulted in a combination of motions between a full body massage and the stroking a pet cat would receive, which was a major contributor to Akane's mood.
Nothing had been overlooked, her claws had been trimmed, the slits in her eyes examined and even her new kitty ears had been cleaned. Kasumi had even cleaned the tufts of fur between her toes, coincidentally discovering one of several new ticklish points the tigress now had. It had been made obvious that Kasumi was following Ranma's lead and the big kitten would be tickled into submission if she ever turned back into a grouchy kitty.
Not that it would happen anytime soon, it was difficult to feel anything other than happiness when Kasumi Tendou thoroughly loved every part of one's being, down to the odd little tufts of fur.
So Akane received her last round of fluff drying via towel with much good nature.
After it was finished, Kasumi held up one of her own dresses for Akane, "Here, I hope this will fit you."
Finding it thrilling to literally be trying to fill one of her big sister's house dresses, the Tigress soon became puzzled before realizing her breasts wouldn't fit within the top. It was instead like trying on an old dress from her childhood, where even if it had fit what had been a calf-length skirt on Kasumi would have ridden up her thighs. Giggling, Akane handed the dress back to Kasumi after holding it up to her front to check the style. "It looks like I grew up too fast, Big Sister."
After gathering Akane's hair with a bow, the two finally exited the bathroom, with Kasumi making a mental note to find a nice bow for Akane's tail.
They found their family and guests seated at the table, though conversation had apparently dulled to a friendly banter between Nabiki and the three girls. Taking their seats on Nabiki's side of the table, the two freshly washed girls joined in on the meeting.
As introductions to the family had already been made, Ranma instead introduced his group to Akane. "Nice to see you looking freshly fluffed Akane. I would like to introduce you to three of my partners. You met Shanpu already. To my left is Anthy, and beside her is Utena. Now, would you like to know more about what you've become, or would you like me to get to reading your aura to see if there is any problem to you changing back?"
The tigress considered it, her tail casually lashing too and fro behind her. "I suppose as long as you do the aura thing, I'd like to know what's going on first."
Nodding, Ranma finished his tea and took a deep breath to prepare himself for telling the tale.
"It began over three centuries ago in Shanpu's village in China."
"First though I should tell you about the four common groupings of demons. There are the Oni, who act like nature spirits, they'd not a happy bunch, but they can get along with humans sometimes. Then there are the Genma, and as the name says they're Demons of Darkness and Illusion. Fairly nasty and they have a long standing war with the Oni as some of the Oni help certain human warriors and monks fight the Genma. Then there's the Makai kingdom of demons, a sort of underworld where dead souls go. Finally there's the Shikima who are also exist in another world but are sexually based demons."
"Now, back with Shanpu's village, they had been a village of warrior women at war with various people for quite a long time. Then about three centuries ago they developed the ceremony for transforming a warrior into an Oni warrior woman. While the ceremony is expensive, this gave them the edge to bring the wars to an end, conquering one neighbor and becoming allies to another."
"Unfortunately, a rogue ninja from Japan by the name of Happousai stole various scrolls and treasures from the tribe. While they were eventually recovered, the technique was brought here to Japan and perverted to create demon-woman slaves for use in combat and the sex trade. Eventually the original technique made it here and the perverted version made it back to China."
"Now in Japan, this didn't come to serious light until the 50's, where the government started trying to track and police the various supernatural entities. This didn't go to well. That was when the Onimusha of the Forest, the Onimusha being a human warrior who fought the Genma with the aid of Oni magic, he started unifying the various groups with the help of the government. The demons willing to cooperate along with certain demon hunters formed an organization with the Onimusha as the leader, who in turn reported to the government in a diplomatic role."
"That basically gave the supernatural people that had hidden from the public a type of government of their own which cooperated with the Japanese government. That same organization is what called me in after the public display of demon magic you were cursed with. That same organization can also help you live in peace, or you can train and join the behind the scenes fight against the bad demons if you want."
This caused a few slipped gears with the tigress, but as she had experienced quite a lot first hand, her mind was willing to adapt to new ideas, causing her to pose a question. "So, there are...'good' demons?"
The young man nodded, apparently enjoying the wise sensei role. "Right, even though the magic that did this to you was the evil kind of magic, it was evil because it was against your will and trying to change you into a toy for someone else. You're basically a tiger-girl, no more or less evil than you were before. You'll probably like having a bit more red-meat in your diet, but that's it. I doubt he gave you any evil impulses, but you might have some sexual compulsions, which hopefully I can remove or bypass."
That gave the tigress a pause as she considered just what Kuno might have done to her. Oh yeah, Kuno was a pervert, and the various idiotic phrases he spouted like 'my fierce tigress' wouldn't be fun if they came true. These thoughts left a rather nervous girl, who asked sheepishly, "Ah, could we do that aura thing now and find out?"
Nodding once in acceptance, the young man stood to walk around the table to the nervous tigress. Halfway there he paused, looked up and asked with the patience of the long suffering, "Uhm, Shanpu, do you mind? I can't do this with tits on the brain."
Giggling the purple haired girl released him before floating back and turning a few lazy flips.
Sitting down behind Akane's position at the table, he waited for the big tigress to awkwardly move around to face him. Once they were both sitting cross-legged facing each other, he got her to lay her hands out palm up. Then hovering his hands over hers he closed his eyes and began meditating.
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(Posted Sat, 24 Jun 2006 21:43)
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