Ranma shook his head. Yet, evil as they were...
...
Yet, evil as they were...
......
Okay, okay... there was no good side to this; no good to why Heta became Happosai and how he’s more or less made the most evil martial arts school on the face of the planet. This was just plain NUTS!
Shaking his head to try and clear his thoughts of why the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts came into existence, Ranma decided to go back to the section on the current students of the accursed art. He’d read eight of them so far: him, his Pops and the Tendos... and Natsume and Karumi, if you counted them.
So who were the other students? Ranma hadn’t finished reading the section, and he knew there were... twelve people that were unknowingly keeping the old bastard alive because they had once or currently practiced the damned school of Anything Goes in their lifetime.
Flipping back to the page he was pretty sure he left off on, (he’d used his index finger as a book-mark) Ranma went back to the page
So who were the remaining unlucky ones?
Outside of Ranma Saotome and Natsume Tendo, the most important student of Happosai is his first student in Modern times, trained four years before either Genma Saotome or Soun Tendo. Hinako Ninomiya is not only the one whom will the part of the ‘innocent’ in his plans for Rejuvenation, she is also the reason he is still alive today.
Ranma gawked at the book he was holding. Miss Hinako!? What’d she have to do with the old goat’s plan?
Bringing his face back down into the book, the pigtailed martial artist went back to reading up on what part his teacher had in all of this.
When Hinako was only a six-year-old child, she had already been suffering from emphysema for the previous year and a half, and had then begun to develop the secondary terminal condition of kidney failure. Understandably, her grieving parents had the child hospitalized as a facility properly equipped to care for the Terminally Ill, in an effort to make her remaining days as comfortable as possible. While there she was discovered by Happosai, whom saw in her the potential this as a perfect solution to keep himself going.
As for why he would need the younger girl to keep himself going, Happosai had been at the hospital, for a reason important to him. He visiting his LAST student in the man’s final hours, one Arsène Lupin III, (1937-1991).
Under the teachings of Happosai, Arsène Lupin III had become an internationally known thief whose high-point in fame was from 1967 - 1972, (although his most famous crime was his final score, the 1979 theft of the riches of the Duchy of Cagliostro). Unlike most of modern students of Happosai, Lupin III was a very willing disciple, and had been able to do much with the style of Anything Goes, and became deeply rooted in the Curse of the Art. Although he could have been considered a scoundrel with a heart, overall Lupin III was a cynical playboy who took whatever he wanted under his own explanation/rectification that, whom he was stealing from could ‘take the loss’.
Unfortunately for the grandson of the famed ‘Gentleman Thief’, the curse had gotten to him in his retirement, and it was his Playboy tendencies, enhanced by the curse of the Anything Goes, that had done him in. He had developed more than a few STD’s during his retirement, including AIDS from his fun between the sheets, having thrown caution to the wind and going after any woman to catch his fancy, and he had to pay the steep price for the debauchery he had partaken in his middle-age.
And without anyone else, it looked like that Happosai would finally die as well.
Lifting his head back up from the book, Ranma blinked his eyes in surprise. Arsène Lupin III, the world’s most famous thief in the late 60’s/early 70’s was one of Happosai’s ex-students?
“Damn...” Ranma said softly, in awe of the fact that one of the earlier practitioners of the Anything Goes style was someone so... criminal, (not that he would expect much from Happosai choosing a student). It made Ranma wonder who else the small bastard had corrupted over the course of history?
Still, Ranma needed to finish up what he was looking at first. He wanted to know what part Hinako had in this.
And so it was that upon finding Hinako, and seeing the young girl on her deathbed as well, Happosai got the idea of how to keep himself going. While there was nothing he could do for his favored student Lupin III, (there was just so much going wrong with his body) he could do something for this young girl.
While the Grandmaster of Anything Goes would have disdained the fact she wasn’t a mature woman, children were something that Happosai has always had use for. He found that children of modern times were not as discriminatory as adults, and were just as gullible as back during his day. They were something he could manipulate rather easily and without complications most of the time.
With this perfect opportunity given to him, he intended on making Hinako into his new student to extend his own life. He saw it as a fair deal. He’d teach her some of the tricks of his School to save her life, and in becoming a practitioner of his Art, she would save his. Thus, he inducted the girl quickly into being a new student of the Anything Goes style. He taught her a chi-draining technique that was centered around using circular objects as a source of focus. Through this, she would gain energy to revitalize her body to keep herself alive and healthy.
And it didn’t hurt that she’d been trained by practicing using the technique on the nurses, stopping them from chasing the old man after he had stolen their underwear.
Ranma rolled his eyes. That was typical of the old freak.
And so, even though she was still an innocent youth with just having learned one specific technique of the Anything Goes, it was still enough for Hinako to be considered a student, and so the curse of the school was beset upon her; working on her in ways as the technique she was taught, and her reason for needing it technically made her into a chi-vampire.
Unfortunately, because she had staved off death by using this technique, the woman is caught in a flux between how she should be aged now, and when she first started learning the technique. The schism happens whenever uses this technique; she physically matures into an older, twenty-something woman, (her proper age) because it is the energy she has stolen that has kept her alive and going... but the rest of her time, when the energy is dispelled by ninety-percent, she reverts back to being a young, energetic child, her true state...
The state she should be dead in.
Also with the schism in bodies, Hinako’s personality changes to reflect her different ages. This has proven a boon to the Grandmaster of the accursed Anything Goes, as it leaves Happosai the ‘innocent’ he needs.
Ranma gripped the book tightly now. That slimy, rotten... it was one thing, tricking adults into this, but kids? Man, now he really felt sorry for his crazy teacher. The bastard used her from the very beginning, before his old man or Mr. Tendo!
Somehow resisting the urge to rip the book in two, Ranma read on...
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(Posted Sun, 11 Mar 2007 14:50)
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