There he is.
What is that stupid boy doing?! School, such a worthless waste of time. What good would school do for becoming the greatest martial artist in the world, and the one who will inherit the Tendo Dojo?
Can't just grab him right now though. Too many people watching. Wait until he leaves for the day, then follow him.
Ranma felt something outside, and he smirked to himself. Really, who did the old man think he was fooling, trying to sneak around like that? The only way he could be any more obvious were to be holding up a sign, proclaiming himself as a stalker!
Although on the other hand, there was some kind of aura about him. It seemed like it was twisting the natural chi in the air around him, making this… gap… where the chi was supposed to be, somehow making him invisible to normal senses. The only reason Ranma himself could sense it was because of some of the similarities between chi and reiatsu, and because of his training with Urahara-sensei and Yoruichi-mama. If Ranma hadn't known what to look for, he probably would have missed it.
An idea came to him. Rummaging around in his bag for a moment and thanking… someone… for the fact that it was actually in-between classes right now, he retrieved his new cellular phone and hit the speed dial option for Urahara Shôten.
"Hello? …Urahara-sensei?
"Yeah, remember how you said the police and most of those food places my ex-old man pissed off are all still looking for him?
"…
"Yes… That's right.
"…Yeah, I seem to have picked up a 'shadow'. Probably about the time school started, maybe a bit after.
"Probably won't make a move until after school, though. Too many people watching right now.
"…
"How many of them do you think you can get out here by this afternoon?
"…That many?
"…
"Yeah, here's my idea…"
Yoruichi smiled to herself, somewhat evilly. Ranma's plan was almost elegant in its simplicity, and in its vindictiveness. Let that fat fool deal with the consequences of his own actions himself, for once. True, it didn't have quite the same level of satisfaction as beating him black and blue, but beggars couldn't be choosers, after all. Who knows, if things played out right, she might still get the chance.
The only thing about the whole plan that Yoruichi regretted was how she could have actually missed out on Genma's presence at the school. True, she hadn't exactly been looking for him, and the fool didn't have enough reiryoku to light a match with, so she only had her own, ordinary senses to rely on – Ranma must have inherited that from his birth mother. Idly, Yoruichi wondered what such a woman would be like. Maybe have Kisuke look her up so that she could contact her. At the very least, the woman should know that her husband's incompetence had cost him their son.
Well whatever happens, Yoruichi decided as she stood, it couldn't happen just sitting around like this. For this to work, as many of Genma's debtors were needed as possible.
There was work to do.
The boy was leaving the school. Good, finally. Follow him, find out where he stays. Then tonight, this charade would finally come to an end.
First, they would go visit that shrine in Azabu in Minato ward, what was its name again? Hikaru? Hiwaza? Hi… well, whatever the name was, they'd go there first, and 'borrow' some scrolls to finally exorcise that demon out of the boy's soul. Then they'd head out for training elsewhere. Maybe down to Kyoto or Osak… no, no, the Kuonjis were still down there, that wouldn't be a good idea at all. Really though, he'd been swindled anyway! If he had known the okonomiyaki hadn't been in the yatai, he never would have agreed to the deal in the first place. Just what the hell were all those worthless ingredients doing in there anyway?!
Anyway, once that demon was taken care of, then they could get back to more important things, such as train the boy to inherit the Tendo dojo, and unite the schools. NOTHING was more important than The Pledge To Unite The Schools, and for Ranma to provide for his wise and deserving father in his retirement.
He was going to the park. Make sure not to lose sight of him. Stick to the trees, wind rustling through the branches will make it easier to conceal movements. Glance around – good, the demon's masters are nowhere around, it'll be easier to take the boy this way. And with the Umisenken's Goshin Dai Ryûsei Fu in place, there was no way anyone could know where he was.
What, the boy stopped? Wait, wasn't this where—?
Ranma had to be careful to hide his smirk. So predictable. He imagined he could probably see his former father's rusty mental gears trying to turn, if he looked. An simple matter to lead him on to where he had confronted the fat man last time. He had been practicing here before the last time, because the gap in the tree cover made it perfect for practicing kata without obstacles in the way. If Genma wanted to confront him, he would have to come down in order to do it.
"Ya can come out, Genma, I know ya're there!" he yelled, his voice sounding entirely too smug. It was easy, too. Ever since his rebirth as a Shinigami, Tessai-san had been tutoring him in grammar and language. He could actually speak very well if he tried, but he preferred to talk with his usual slang most of the time because it made his opponents always underestimate him. That was one of the things he liked about school, and about learning in general. If people thought he was nothing but an uneducated, uncultured brute, then they'd be in for a rude awakening once he proved them wrong. There was a certain satisfaction, Ranma found, in bursting people's bubbles like that, in bruising that ego of superiority they had.
Genma's eyes flew open wide. Half automatically, his thought snapped toward checking the state of his concealment… No, the Goshin Dai Ryûsei Fu was properly in place. The inverted chi flow was perfect, or at least as perfect as it could be for an unperfected technique – briefly, Genma felt a stab of regret for not having completed the Senken techniques before he had sealed them. They would still be sealed, too, were this not too important a crisis for Genma to face without them. Once this was finished, maybe he'd reseal them.
It was a bluff, it had to be. The boy had no experience or even knowledge of chi detection! Genma had specifically made sure Ranma had never learned anything of the sort; if Ranma managed to learn that, then all of the methods Genma had in place to make sure the boy stayed under his thumb would be unraveled in an instant! That dark-skinned woman, the Okinawan, she certainly couldn't have taught him, either. She was a woman – women were weak, men were automatically superior at martial arts, a woman could never be as great a Sensei as Genma himself. No, surely the boy was bluffing, trying to trick him into revealing himse—
In this close proximity to the one responsible for all his problems, Ranma could feel his control beginning to strain. The Rage, his rage, the Hollow's rage, was straining at its leash. It wanted to fight, it wanted to kill! It wanted OUT! But no, not now. Ranma for now, was stronger than the Rage. It would be defeated, the Rage would disappear and only he would remain, he would stay in control!
"I said, get out here, old man! You ain't foolin' anyone!" he snapped, and turned to stare angrily straight at where Genma was hiding in the trees.
All of the sexist and self-promoting arguments Genma had been mentally spouting collapsed in an instant. How? How could he know?! The bald fat man immediately began to sweat. If the boy had really gotten so skilled, if the boy was no longer his to control, to do whatever Genma told him to do, what would this mean for the Tendo union?!
That mere thought, the very concept that The Pledge might not be fulfilled… Genma's atrophied mind crashed, shut down, unable to even think such a horrifying thought. There he remained upon the tree's thick branch, unmoving, yet still cloaked within the Umisenken, until—
Ranma's already fragile patience finally broke. "I said…" he snarled, and in an instant vanished—
—to reappear almost instantly behind Genma's head. "GET OVER HERE!" he roared, and slammed his leg hard into the back of the older man's head with a powerful roundhouse kick. Genma was blasted forward by the blow out into the open air, stunned but not otherwise seriously harmed. His concentration however, was shattered, the Goshin Dai Ryûsei Fu dispelling instantly as he became fully visible. He crashed meatily to the ground, but recovered quickly, his reflexes as a martial artist turning it into a roll-slash-handstand-slash-forward flip to land on his feet, and turned to face his former (although he didn't know or wouldn't acknowledge that) son.
In the three days now since that little "training session" with Ururu in the study room, Ranma had all but completely mastered Shunpo. While he still seriously needed to work on his stamina – against Yoruichi-mama, he didn't have a prayer yet of beating her at Onigokko ["Chase the Oni"/Tag] – he could string as many as ten or fifteen Flash Steps together in a row before he started to tire.
As a human, in his human body, Ranma's Shunpo was limited to being only on the ground; he could leap forward and to a lesser extent, side-to-side, but his human legs weren't strong enough yet to let him jump very high or far with it. His reishi body, however, had no such limitation. Ranma had instantly converted himself fully to reishi mode, leapt with Shunpo almost straight upward over Genma's head, then converted back to full human, all in the space of a heartbeat, without anything out of place – he was still wearing his school uniform, and as far as he could tell, none of his Hollow features had manifested themselves yet, other than the voice.
Strangely, though, after that strike Ranma felt the Rage beginning to weaken, relaxing its hold over his emotions and thoughts so that he could regain control. That puzzled him. Had the Hollow inside him, whose name he still did not know, simply waned, satisfied with only that little victory, allowing his likewise-unnamed Shinigami self to take back over? Or perhaps did it think this idea of his was good for its own, often bloodthirsty tastes, and decided let him do the work that he wanted?
Ranma shook his head quickly. No, best not to think about it. He had more important things to worry about now.
"Yer pathetic, old man! Makin' it so obvious that yer followin' me, ya might as well put up a sign sayin', 'Here I am! Attack me!'" he jeered, making sure to keep in character. This whole plan of his hinged on keeping Genma angry and concentrated solely on Ranma himself, that he would fail to notice the police, the debt collectors, and everyone else surrounding him until it was too late. Once he had been cut off and captured, all possible avenues of escape removed, it would be a long time before Genma could come back to bother Ranma and his new family again.
Genma snapped up the bait flawlessly. "Foolish boy!" he bellowed, immediately trying to seem as though he had meant to do that all along. "We've wasted enough time here already! We need to get moving if we're going to get that demon inside you removed, so get can get back to training!"
"Demon?" Ranma said incredulously, then he started to chuckle. Then he started to snigger, and then finally he burst out in laughter. The head-thrown-back, nearly manic kind of laughter, the type that you could tell had only a razor's edge that separated it from madness. "You think…" he choked out in-between laughs, "that this… this thing… inside me… is a demon?"
Then the laughter and the dark mirth cut off as though a switch had been thrown, instantly replaced with ice-cold rage. "YOU STUPID IDIOT!" the neo-Shinigami screamed into Genma's face, even though there was over a meter between them. Unlike before, the fury that was swelling in Ranma's chest now had nothing to do with his Hollow side, but instead came from Ranma himself. How dare he… how dare this man try to run away and shove the blame onto something, anything other than on himself where it belonged!? Genma was taken aback by the anger, the sheer hatred in his son's voice. "That 'demon' you so conveniently choose to pin your own incompetent stupidity on, old man, is my own self! You're the one who turned me into that thing with that stupid technique, you worthless fool! You and no one else!"
Genma trembled. Was the boy right? Had it really been the Neko-ken itself that had done this to him? Was it really his fault?
No, no it couldn't be. He knew what he was doing. So he hadn't read that last page at first, he could still make it work! The important thing was that Ranma learned the technique! It wasn't his fault he had such a worthless son who turned himself into a demon just because he couldn't learned such a simple, unbeatable technique! It was Ranma's fault, not his!
"Stop your whining, boy! You sound like a little girl!" he finally yelled back, and reached to grab hold of Ranma's school jacket. If the boy wouldn't come on his own, then Genma would just knock him out and drag him along! They needed to be out of here as quickly as possible. People were beginning to get suspicious of his presence here; the police would not be too far behind.
Ranma's blood boiled, a red haze threatening to settle over his vision. Oh, that does it! That's it! he snarled in his mind. This fool didn't want to accept the consequences of his actions and run away like the coward he was? Fine! Then Ranma wouldn't be held responsible then for what was about to happen!
Despite herself, Sailor Pluto felt herself breaking into a nasty grin as she watched the burgeoning fight scene from the Time Gates. This should be good.
Unknown to either person, a certain part-time cat wore the exact same expression on her own face, watching in human form from the branches of another, different tree.
All the players were gathered, the stage was set, the script was in place. Now all that was left was to allow the opening act to play out. Yoruichi excused herself for the metaphor, but this looked to be a very good show.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:37)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.