Orion was lost.
This didn't bother him nearly as much as one might think. For one thing, he was relatively sure he was still in Japan. This was good.
One might wonder why this would worth noting, or being thankful for. But then one might not know what it was like to have followed Ryoga Hibiki.
It was pretty much a complete fluke that Ryoga had been home at the precise moment that Orion had arrived there, following rumors of an "invincible fighter" who practiced an obscure form of bando using an umbrella and something called the "iron cloth" technique.
The boy in the bandanna had seemed completely surprised when he had shown up at his own front door, and expressed great thanks to the heavens when he carefully made his way through the front door without apparent mishap. Orion had thought this strange. He didn't know what he was getting into.
The boy whom Orion assumed was Ryoga seemed to mill around his house at random (with the moon cat following stealthily) until he had arrived in the kitchen, at which point he stuffed his backpack full of food and other supplies, checked the notes on the fridge, mumbled about his parents missing his birthday party - or was it that HE had missed his birthday party, he couldn't remember - again, wrote a few lines on a list, and then tried to exit the house, failing for a full two hours.
Orion had looked over the list he had been writing on.
[Things I've suffered because of Ranma Saotome, by Ryoga Hibiki: Stealing my bread (this one had several counter slashes next to it), humiliating me in combat (this one had even more marks than the first), taking the good spot at lunch before I could find it, showing me up in gym, calling me names, leading me home (this one had a '?' next to it), picking fights with me, getting mud in my hair, tearing up my favorite uniform, playing my Nintendo without asking, running out on our fight, getting stuck for a week in some tar pits in L.A., getting chased out of some place called "Area 51" by men with laser beams, missing my favorite TV shows, breaking my favorite umbrella, getting chased by wolves, getting lost in the girls' locker room (this also had a few counter slashes), losing my shoes...]
The gray moon cat continued to read down the list in a sort of morbid fascination, not understanding one bit of it. Then he turned his attention to the last items on the list, where the ink hadn't completely finished drying from Ryoga's last additions.
[... getting cursed to turn into a pig, almost getting eaten (this one had a full five marks already, despite being a new item), getting trampled (this one had four marks), ending up naked in public (this one had seven).]
Returning, for a moment, to the hypothetical reference to the reader, one might discern from the most recent additions to this list and the obvious omissions exactly where in the Ranma timeline this is.
This was of no concern to Orion, who shook his head and attempted to put the ridiculous list out of his mind. He had serious matters to attend to.
Hearing Ryoga's cry of joy upon finding the front door, Orion hopped off the kitchen counter and moved to pursue. After a little observation, he'd determine if the Hibiki boy was an acceptable candidate, and then he'd make his move.
_____________________________________________________________________
And that was the sad sequence of events that had led him through Canada, Peru, and half the Middle East before he'd shown up in a port on some city on the western coast of Japan (he didn't bother to note which, as he was still following Ryoga at the time).
Said martial artist had just turned into a pig (after seeing both the Jusenkyou and family curses in action, Orion had long since stricken Ryoga as a possible ally; how would he find his way to the battles?) when he caught sight of a young man and a bald older man emerging from a bath house located on the docks. He had immediately charged for some reason, only to get trampled by a sudden rush of sailors double-timing it to their boat. Orion had not heard from the pig/boy since then.
He made a decision to follow the pair that the pig had charged pretty much on a whim. Although the larger man wore a gi and they both had a certain grace that identified them as trained fighters to Orion's seasoned eyes, he had no reason to think they were anything special. Still, he had no current leads, and he still wasn't sure how to get back to Tokyo, so he went ahead and followed them.
_____________________________________________________________________
The next day saw Orion desperately trying to remember the names of some of the deities worshipped during the Silver Millennium so that he might thank them.
The "light sparring" that Ranma Saotome and Genma Saotome partook in the morning left the moon cat with his jaw on the ground. They took leaps twenty feet in the air, exchanged blows nearly too fast for Orion to track, and each of them ended up being smashed into small craters on the ground before they got right back up, growled, and then charged again. One missed kicked ended up hitting a large tree, and Orion watched in fascination as the entire tree shook violently from the impact.
And then, as sudden as it began, the father called off the sparring, yelled at his son for slacking off, and then declared his intent for them to keep traveling toward Tokyo to see an old friend of his.
Orion nodded intently. This was it. Just what he had been waiting for.
_____________________________________________________________________
Frowning at the downpour, Orion considered calling off his recruitment efforts at witnessing his prospective warriors change. After seeing them reverse the change an hour later (oddly enough using the same mechanism that Ryoga had used), he shrugged off the curses; while turning into a panda might hurt Genma's combat ability, he was undoubtedly still a powerful fighter in that form. Ranma didn't suffer any real drawback from his curse, except that it seemed to make him depressed and surly (which Orion could sympathize with).
The tomcat crouched down lower in the bushes, listening carefully as son berated father for taking him to such a dangerous place. This was followed by a long string of stupid ideas that Genma had apparently forced upon his son for the sake of the art. Orion waited for Genma's denial, or at least rebuttal.
Instead he got, "Stop whining! You sound just like a little girl!"
Orion had to consider dropping Genma from his roster at this point. Not because he was emotionally abusive and his training exercises were nearly suicidal (Orion could admire that in an instructor, and it had produced SPECTACULAR results), but because the man seemed to be rather immoral, lazy, and apparently stupid, as evidenced by the way his son creamed him right after the "little girl" comment.
Besides that, his intuition was telling him to beware of Genma, whereas Ranma seemed to radiate the type of rough, brash honesty and simplicity that was quite valuable in soldiers.
Another day of observation clinched it. Genma was out, but Ranma was most definitely in. The boy was perfect for the job. All he needed to do now was convince him...
_____________________________________________________________________
The very next day, Orion got his break. Genma ordered his son to stay put while he went into town to send a post card to let his friend know they'd be arriving soon. Ranma shrugged off his departure and did one-handed push-ups in the forest clearing where they had made their camp.
Orion waited for Genma to leave, thankful that the Saotomes seemed to favor forest environments, even when there were urban routes and convenient forms of transportation to Nerima (where Genma said they were heading). It would have been much harder to track them otherwise, and one could only shrug off the sight of a particular cat following you for so long.
The moon cat made his move, strutting out into the open from the bushes where he had been hiding.
Ranma made no notice at first. His senses recognized that something was moving around him, but that it was neither hostile nor a human. Animals were commonplace in Ranma's experience and were to be ignored except in the cases of hunting or an attack.
"Meow," tried Orion.
THAT got a reaction.
"GWAH!! C-C-C-C-C-CAT!!" Ranma fell to one side and then scrambled away, sitting up and then pushing himself backwards along the ground with his feet until he hit the trunk of a tree. "G-G-Get away! Shoo!"
Oh-kay. This was not part of the plan. Orion frowned deeply. He knew Ranma wasn't afraid of common animals normally, so the obvious answer to this dilemma was that the boy had a phobia.
'Just &^$#!!! perfect. The Powers that Be drop a primo hand-to-hand specialist right in my furry lap, and of all the damn animals he has a terrible, irrational fear of, it's CATS.'
He decided he'd try to work around it for now. Perhaps he could reason with the boy.
"Okay, look, I'm not gonna hurt you."
"IT TALKS!! HELP!! POP!! ANYONE!! DEMON CAT!! DEMON CAT'S GONNA EAT ME!!" Ranma screamed, jerking his head left and right and completely forgetting, in his terror, that he could just run away and outrun the feline easily.
Orion's eye twitched. "Stop that yelling you damn coward! I'm not gonna eat you!"
"Lies! I know all about you evil monsters!" Ranma accused, pointing a shaking finger at the gray feline. "You almost got me once, but not this time! Nuh-uh! Never again!"
"Look here, you little-" he started stalking forward, only for Ranma to yelp and jump up into the tree he had backed into, wrapping his arms and legs around a branch.
"STAY AWAY!!"
Growling, Orion decided to try a different tactic. "Look, I'm not REALLY a cat, okay? Can cats talk?"
"Apparently," said a shuddering Ranma.
"NO, they can't. So I can't be a cat, can I?"
"You look like a cat and you got claws and teeth like a cat. That's close enough for me!" Ranma said.
Orion frowned, and forced himself to retract his claws. Extending them while annoyed was a common practice of his. "Look, I PROMISE I won't hurt you. Now come down, I just want to talk!"
"Go talk to someone in town! I'm sure there's plenty of cat lovers there! Just get away from me!"
Orion growled again, not noticing as his claws once again extended. "This is IMPORTANT, Saotome. I'm not about to leave just because you happened to have a bad experience as a kid."
Ranma just shuddered badly.
"Okay then... you asked for this..." Orion crouched down, and then leapt onto the tree trunk, quickly scrambling up the side and then leaping onto the same branch as the horrified teenager.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! HELP!! GET IT OFF ME!!"
"GIVE UP!! I WON'T BE DENIED WHEN I'M SO CLOSE!!"
"DEMON CATS!! THE END TIMES ARE UPON US!! ABANDON ALL HOPE!!"
"IF YOU DON'T SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME, YOU JUST MIGHT BE RIGHT!!"
"OW! OW! IT HURTS!!"
"STOP BEING SUCH A BABY!! I SAW WHAT YOU AND YOUR FATHER DID!! THIS IS NOTHING!! NOW GET DOWN!!"
"Mrrrowr..."
"I SAID LISTEN TO... wait... what?"
Orion blinked and looked down... or rather, up at the young man whose head he was clinging to the back of. Ranma seemed to be in a different position than he was just a moment ago; instead of having his arms wrapped around the tree branch, he was now clutching the branch with his hands and the tips of his feet, as if he was hanging on with his fingernails and toenails.
"Saotome? Uh... something wrong?" He tried. While he knew he should be glad that Ranma stopped his fearful shouting, a dark, cold pit in the middle of his stomach told him that this might not end well for him.
That being said, he figured the least he could do was get off the boy. Releasing his grip, the military advisor flipped in midair to land on his feet.
He was understandably concerned when Ranma did precisely the same maneuver, landing in precisely the same way: on all fours.
Ranma then sat on his haunched, glaring down at the gray moon cat imperiously. Orion knew that stare. It was the stare he gave to other tomcats when they started yowling about him being in their territory. It was a stare that said: "At some point in the very near future, I'm going to get tired of you existing, and fix that problem with extreme prejudice."
"... This might be trickier than I thought..."
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(Posted Tue, 07 Nov 2006 09:42)
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