Ranma looked around the treetop city of Seer's Hamlet in awe. Although skyscrapers in most major metropolises were taller then the biggest trees here by a very wide margin, the very fact that trees could grow to be this huge was stunning to the Earth native. In addition, the construction of the buildings was so... uniform. He'd expected everything to be primitive-looking. Although the style was a world removed from what Ranma knew, it looked as though it had been designed by some new wave architect on Earth.
Even more surprising than that was the shear diversity of people present. Many were human, but even they wore such a dizzying array of clothing and accoutrements that they might as well have been of a different race entirely. Ranma came from a society that valued fitting in above almost everything else. Homogeneity was the order of the day. Obviously not here, though.
"Wow..." Ranma uttered under his breath as he took in the whole scene.
He heard a chuckling come from behind him, and Ranma turned around to find Brianna standing next to a really big furry guy with an amused grin on his face. "Impressive, isn't it?" the man said.
"Uh... yeah. You are..."
"Garfield Silvear." The tall werecat extended a hand in greeting to Ranma. "But call me Gar. And you are..?"
It must be understood that Ranma, at one point, would have been scared of this man. Not because of his size or strength. He had fought much bigger and far stronger beings than a werecat. The 'cat' thing was a problem, however.
The first time Ranma laid eyes on Brittanny, he took in her appearance, filed it under "cursed", and that was that. He'd seen people that looked weirder than her before. That frog guy was case in point, and Taro's cursed form was just that much more so. For several weeks, Ranma spent time around the Diggers place, working and fighting alongside Brittanny, never once questioning her appearance.
Then somebody mentioned something about werecheetahs. Ranma wasn't really sure what a cheetah was, so he asked about it. Brittanny got the part about a cheetah being a member of the cat family when Ranma finally made the connection. The results were typical of his cat fear. Ranma screamed and hauled ass away from Brittanny as fast as humanly possible. Which, for him, was damn fast.
Brianna caught up with him shortly after he took off. Ranma was fast, but Brianna had more advantages in that area than Ranma ever would. In the resulting conversation, the pig-tailed martial artist laid out the reason for his sudden exodus. Gasps were heard, dark oaths were issued, particle weapons were charged, and the GPS coordinates for Nerima were called up before Dr. Diggers managed to calm Brianna down.
For the next few weeks, Ranma went through some rather unorthodox therapy to alleviate his terror over the felines he had come to dread. Mostly, it was hammered into his head that Brittanny, nor any other werecat, was actually a cat. Numerous types of exposure slowly ablated Ranma's fear to a manageable level. He still got uptight around cat-type creatures, like Brittanny and Stripe, but there was no longer any threat of him falling into the Neko-ken as a result.
Which was why Ranma was able to stand in Gar's presence without freaking out. "Ranma Saotome." He took the offered hand and groaned inwardly at how huge the guy was in relation to him. Close up, 7'6" was real big when you're only 5'10". Although Ranma had grown to be taller than most of his native countrymen, on Jade that didn't mean much.
"So, you like our little town here, huh?"
"Uh...yeah. It's huge. I never expected this place ta be so big."
"Seer's Hamlet is the biggest city on this continant," Gar explained. "Several hundred thousand people live here, so making use of all available space is required." He gestured to the various trees, all of which had large structures protruding from their trunks.
The werecat turned back to Ranma, and seemed to be sizing him up. "Brianna here tells me you are training under Master Julia."
Though Brianna herself stiffened up at Gar's side, Ranma nodded. "Yeah, she's a tough sensei. Lucky for me I already knew a lot of what she had to teach. Now she's got me coming up with new ways ta put my technqiues to 'constructive use'." He snorted a bit. "Dunno why. What's the use of being able to build a house when a guy's tryina beat your head in?"
Gar sweatdropped, but regained his composure when Brianna said, "Hey, don't you have to meet your friends?"
"Yes, I do. Do you want to come along?"
See other episodes by lil bunny MoFo
(Posted Mon, 07 Aug 2006 02:47)
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