That meant that she was not a little conflicted over the idea of getting training from him.
What she needed was to be alone, and that wasn't exactly easy in this house. With Ranma and his jerk father staying with them, there were six people in the house at most, and even if her home was big, it wasn't that big. Staying in the dojo wouldn't work, since there were three other martial artists who might want to use it. Taking a long soak was out of the question, since her sisters might come in to join her. And most of the rest of the house was out of the question, since anyone might come by her at any given time.
There was only one place where she could be assured to have some sort of privacy, and that was her own room. It might have been recently violated by the actions of the idiot fathers, but the thing was that it was also her place. If she didn't want to let someone in, then she would have the option of refusing them entry. Should they try to get in anyway, then she'd have the option of sending that idiot away in a most violent manner. Her only other choice was to go out jogging, to school, or something like that, but going out in public wasn't exactly helpful if she was aiming to stay in private.
As her walking had led her there anyway, she decided that it would be best to just go with the flow. Slipping into her room, she took in the restored look of it, and tried not to remember what it'd looked like earlier. She wasn't exactly successful, which resulted in a bit of her bad mood returning. Giving a small growl under her breath, she made to shut and lock the door before going over to plop onto her bed.
Sleep wasn't her aim though, as there was too much going on for her to truly relax at the moment. Rather, it was a good place to rest, as it was soft, and allowed her to let gravity hold her there. Looking up, she stared at her ceiling, and really didn't see the white color of it, or the flatness of its surface. Her own thoughts were what her mind focused on, and she knew that she had to muddle through them.
The truth of it was that she truly did want to be a better martial artist. Getting stronger might provoke Kuno and his band of idiots, but gaining in her skill level would be nice. She'd long been aware of the fact that her father wasn't training her as much as he could have, but that had been fine for her. After all, she was a high school student, and her life was not about simply being the best. Yet, it might not be all that bad to get a special technique or two to be able to use as part of her 'bag of tricks'.
Knowing Ranma had shown that truth to her. He was capable of plenty of really amazing things, and she wouldn't mind being able to pull off a move like he could.
Genma's offer might let her do exactly that. What he was suggesting had the possibility of making her stronger, which, at the very least would allow her to do better against the idiots who bothered her. Then she might be able to get people to take her seriously, and not just see her as a prize to be won. Being able to blow things apart with a touch would certainly impress on people that she was a serious martial artist.
Not that she was all that sure that she believed his story about how he got the scroll. She knew that really was a good fighter, but, despite how weird other cultures could be, she had a hard time seeing how even a defeated fighter could simply hand over the secrets of their techniques. Heck, she wasn't even sure if she could imagine someone willingly giving Genma anything, never mind something so important.
To tell the truth, she didn't exactly trust Genma herself, as he'd proven time and again to be something of a fool. He'd already stuck his nose in where it wasn't wanted on more than one occasion, and he had gone with ideas that were clearly idiotic before. The whole 'rivalry' thing stuck out as part of it, as it didn't seem to truly fit, as it was 'friendly' at its worst, and both fathers had never shown any hint of wanting to out do each other. Their plan to engage their children had been one to join the schools after all, and it was kind of hard to keep up a rivalry when the expected future of the school would go through a couple that unified the two branches of their style.
For some reason, that made her smile, and she wondered if her father's friend had ever stopped to actually listen to the words that he spouted off. In the stillness of her room, she could hear the echoes of his comments, and couldn't help but snicker over some of what he'd said. That didn't mean that she particularly liked him, but he did come off as something of a clown if the one seeing him wasn't directly involved in his idiocy.
What she needed to figure out was if he was too untrustworthy to learn from, and that was a very important question to her mind.
Being in Japan should have helped him find his way around, but Ryoga had long ago learned to not hope for such an easy way out. Past experience had taught him that he would have trouble, especially since he could get caught up in the local situations easier now. He could get out of them, but sometimes they could be more annoying than they were worth. And from time to time, he'd get stuck in a path, unable to find where he wanted to go, like he was now.
That was why he was so frustrated at the moment. Finding himself in a rural village outside Tokyo's metropolitan areas was bad, but workable. Going from that southern spot to a similar place north of the city was a pain that he didn't need to experience. It annoyed the heck out of him, but all that he could do was to try again, despite the fact that he wanted to make the road take him to where he wanted to be.
As such, he missed how he was passing a post office in Nerima that was the same one that had been handling a letter written by a pigtailed boy and sent by his wife.
Had he known that fact, he might have been a little less put out, but he was totally oblivious to how close he'd come to actually succeeding, while:
(Posted Mon, 19 Feb 2007 03:05)
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