"... That's not a tiger..." Genma muttered even as he fought the fear paralysing his body. There would be plenty of time for that later (preferably once he got his hands on some - make that a LOT - of saké to help him deal with it!
"... Map not mention Spring of Drowned Monster." The Guide replied. "Guide better go tell Beijing about great new terrible curse." Even as he said his parting words he began his flight from his most recent customers, at speeds more commonly associated with horses or automobiles. After all, it was important that his heard about this new development! That it would also take him far, far away from the cursed springs and its most recent victim was merely a side benefit.
Ranma was on the other hand rather pleased, even as he pulled himself out of the now rather small spring. The Great Will might have suffered from GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out), but it was after all the Great Will, not merely an advanced and user-friendly computer program. It had taken his guidelines and subconscious desires and cross-referenced them to the available curses, and found what might be called an ideal match.
Megistotherium Osteothlastes was the largest mammalian predator ever to walk the Earth, which it did, some five to twenty million years before Ranma's time. How it ended up in the Springs of Jusenkyo, being a native of what would become known as Sahara, is a long and complicated story. Suffice to say, the beast ate the sorcerer responsible (as well as several innocent bystanders, one particularly dim-witted warrior by the name of Tâzhì Wâzhì, two cows, and a cart of vegetables), and the local lord forbade summoning magicks for the foreseeable future - that being two hundred years, by which time the incident was all but forgotten and the lord's family driven into exile by the newly arrived Amazons.
Of course, this was unknown to Ranma, who hadn't bothered with asking for that sort of information. He was in any case busy with working out the kinks of his new body while shaking off the worst of the murky water and mud from his black fur. Currently, he stood just over two meters at the shoulder and almost six meters from his snout to the tip of his almost two meter long, bushy-haired tail, and a quick query to the Great Will revealed him to weigh precisely 1,292 kilograms, not counting the dirt on his coat - a bit on the light side, really, but nothing that couldn't be fixed by eating healthy.
Healthy as in a cow or two, a day.
Noticing his pops still frozen with fear, Ranma grinned. This translated into his animal form curling its lips back to reveal the many, sharp and most of all big teeth in his almost meter-wide jaw.
Noticing his son/moneyticket-turned-monster staring at him, Genma felt a cold shiver down his spine. The shiver turned into goosebumps as the beast grinned, revealing teeth that were far too big for the elder Saotome's comfort. When the younger Saotome licked his lips and took a step toward him, survival instinct, sharpened by years under the Dreaded Master (may he rest forever!), broke through the fear-induced paralysis and turned it into a fear-enhanced flight, as Genma ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. Behind him he could hear the barks and growls echo throughout the valley.
Had he known that those sounds were actually Ranma's laughter, he would probably have run even faster.
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(Posted Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:20)
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