Sitting in a café sipping on his tea, Ranma was enjoying the moment.
His master on the other hand seemed to be intent on something.
Of course, she was always planning something, so he'd long since stopped worrying over those looks of hers. If he did give her the satisfaction of responding, she would just use his reaction to her advantage.
Giving up on getting a reaction from merely gazing at him, Caerula resumed sipping from her tea. "I have a special reason for our visit to this area child."
For his part, Ranma merely acknowledged her with a look. It was after all a given that she had a reason for her visit. She had a reason for pretty much anything, where even inconceivable random events could be traced back to her surreptitious planning.
"You see, the Tendou family lives in this ward. They practice the same school as your father, and I have it on good authority that both Genma and Happousai have been visiting that dojo over the years."
Mulling it over, he could definitely see his master was up to something. "So? It wouldn't be something as petty as revenge. They're not worth it."
Smiling faintly behind her tea cup, the vampire was amused with her disciple as he tried to see through her ploy. "Oh, but of course, I did say it was special. I want you to challenge their heir."
Sipping his tea, Ranma showed little interest in the prospect. "What makes that so special?"
Not bothering to hide her smile, the vampire spoke up as if enjoying some delicious secret. "Ah, call it whimsy. I just want to see how far you've come, and that heir would be the closest comparison to where you would have been."
Internally, Ranma was beginning to worry. This reminded him of the time his master figured out he knew that she had their little 'random adventures' fully planned out. Apparently figuring out that he could detect the traps by merely watching her had been appreciated as it did take skill to figure it out, but she'd just adapted to him in turn.
By the same token, she'd recently begun smiling as if she were enjoying herself and calling it 'whimsy', which was truly starting to get creepy.
There was for instance that run in back in back in China with the Joketsuzoku tribe. It was part of a three stop tour through the region, though the phoenix kami had been rather disappointing as apparently he was in the bawling brat stage of the death and rebirth cycle.
The dragon prince of the Musk had actually been fairly entertaining, but a little too pompous to hang around with.
The Joketsuzoku had been one of a number of vaguely interesting tribes that practiced esoteric martial arts. Unfortunately a not single one of them had been quite up to Herb's level. There had been some stronger female warriors that might have been fun, but by and large the older women warriors weren't interested.
So they'd stayed around and soaked in some of the culture and styles. Unfortunately, the Joketsukozu were a tad proud of their selves and not overly friendly with 'outsiders'. Worse, Caerula enjoyed the trip to China mostly because Ranma didn't speak Chinese. While he had picked up a smattering of it, he was barely at the pidgin level.
As was often the case, Caerula had turned a small incident into something worthy of fighting her student over.
Ranma didn't know what his Master did, but he'd found himself on a large log facing their village champion, a petite violet haired girl. He didn't know what was going on, but there was a lot of screaming and anger floating about, which was unfortunately all in Chinese.
Then Caerula had off-handedly mentioned that they had some strange rules about outsiders and made some subtle hints at death and slavery.
Ranma unfortunately hadn't had the time nor the linguistic ability to find out more, so he drew the fight out a bit. His opponent had definitely been into it, with the facts that she was looking forward to her victory and giving him no quarter in achieving it made abundantly clear.
It had been disappointing how easy it was to smack her down in the end.
Then the girl had gotten up with a funny look in her eye, which quite frankly made him feel uneasy about the whole deal.
Resuming his stance to show he had no intent of falling prey to her plans, the girl had stopped with another strange expression on her face.
At that point, Caerula butted in again, apparently not satisfied that her student was in enough trouble. The violet haired girl started shouting. Caerula got smug. Shortly afterwards, Ranma saw his defeated opponent sag in shock as his Master delivered a terrible blow to her ego.
It wasn't until three days later that the girl showed up again. This time she had a whole new set of behaviors that threw Ranma completely as to what her intentions were. Instead of being combative and angry, she had been overly affectionate. When she wasn't hanging off his arm, she'd been trying to get into his pants. He may not have spoke her language, but he did have keen eyes, and knew it was all an act for some deeper motive.
For those reasons, he'd rebuffed her attempts as firmly as he felt necessary. That had continued throughout their entire trip back from China with the girl getting increasingly desperate. As time went on, it became increasingly obvious she was desperate to complete her goal.
Eventually she'd given up.
He had also by then picked up enough Chinese to know what both the girl and Caerula were saying.
When he'd questioned the vampire about why she'd arranged the match knowing the girl would lose and have to try to marry him, he'd received an open reply. While she might have said it was an effort to arrange a match with a strong woman to continue his bloodline, he knew that was a pretty weak excuse. There were of course better ways to do it, the best being to simply find a worthy woman and point her out.
That hadn't been the only instance of her arranging a little romantic chaos for him, and it was all part of this disturbing new 'whimsy' of hers.
[To defeat owner in savage combat, please use the rear door.]
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(Posted Sun, 30 Jul 2006 10:52)
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