It had seemed such a good idea, at the time.
Just another training ground deep in the barely-explored regions of North-Western China, far from the weakening influences of civilisation, not to mention far from previous indiscretions.
He had even found a native guide willing to lead them to the training ground. Of course, the first sight of it was disappointing…
“This place ain’t so impressive.”
“You very strange one, no, sir? This place very dangerous. No one use now,” said the dumpy guide as Genma set the packs against one another so the wet ground would only soak into the bottoms – packed with things that wouldn’t suffer from that treatment for precisely this reason. “Is more than one hundred spring, each with own tragic legend.”
“Ranma, follow me!”
“Ah! Sir, what you do?”
“I won’t go easy on you, boy”
“That’s how I want it, old man.”
“Please sir! Very bad you fall in spring!”
The two figures leaped at one another, the elder shouting a battlecry, the younger silent as he met the flying kick. He twisted in the air, using his father’s outstretched leg as a springboard for a flip-kick of his own – one that passed just fractionally too high. The older man jolted as his head was clipped by the boy’s toes, but he caught one of the bamboo poles between his legs, slipping down the wet shaft almost to water level before getting a grip and springing away to the top of another pole.
The guide gaped. Few indeed were those who might match such acrobatics. Remembering his duties, he called again. “Sirs, you no want fall in water!”
As the tall poles swayed, the pair observed each other’s stances and prepared to attack once more. Deciding not to let his son have the initiative, Genma accepted a less-than-ideal balance and sprang as Ranma’s pole swayed away, so the boy couldn’t use it as a base to meet the attack.
He didn’t. Cunningly, he waited until the older man was fully airborne, and then slipped his feet sideways off the top of the pole. Dropping his own height just fast enough for his father to pass over his head and then catching the pole with his hands, he pushed upwards in his sire’s wake.
Genma barely managed to set his foot on the next pole, just in time for his son to punch him in the back of the knee. A frantic spring for another foothold, a glance out of the corner of his eye as the boy swung around another pole halfway down to ground level, and then the juddering shock of the pole beneath him belting out from under his foot, with only one option to aim for – which his son felled with a basic karate chop before he got to it. He sailed gracefully through the air, automatically preparing to land safely, ready to leap up and resume the fight – but he’d momentarily forgotten the water beneath.
Ranma swung up onto the pole he had just shortened, flipped up to a higher one, and admired the memory of the huge splash his father had made landing.
After a moment, he wondered aloud, “Pop? What’s up? We done already?”
“Ah!” cried the guide, carefully dashing between the pools below. “Terrible tragic legend of pools, young mister customer! Whatever fall in pool, take body of whatever drown there many many years ago! Mister customer, he fall in Spring of Drowned…”
“CAAATTT!!!”
(Posted Fri, 26 Jan 2007 23:38)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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