“Are you sure this is really necessary, Matriarch? I don’t want to be a burden.”
Ku Lon sighed and put her hand to her temple. Ni Dao was a nice enough girl, but she seemed incapable of believing that anyone would want to take a personal interest in her. “My dear, you are about to embark on what could be a very long journey, and in every journey, there are obstacles. Some of them are emotional in nature, some are intellectual, you may even come across bureaucratic obstacles if you’re particularly unlucky. This technique will simply allow you to efficiently remove some of the physical obstacles you may encounter.”
“But doesn’t Xian Pu know it already?”
“Yes, she does, but she is not traveling for the same reason you are, and her journey may be quite different.”
“Oh. Alright.” The blue-haired girl looked at the ground for a while before speaking again. “Um, may I ask a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“You already know this technique, right?”
“Of course.”
“So why do you need to get the scroll for it?”
Ku Lon chuckled softly to herself. “My dear, I’m not getting it for me, I’m getting it for you. You see, I prefer to let my students learn what’s in store for them whenever it’s feasible to do so.”
“Oh, that makes, I guess… but—”
The conversation was stopped short, however, by a cry from within the large hut where the tribe’s archives were kept. “It’s not here!”
Ni Dao stared in confusion at the distraught Elder who came rushing outside. “What do you mean?”
“The scroll for the Bakusai Tenketsu—it’s missing!”
Akane took several deep breaths to calm herself as she approached the dojo. She’d already seen enough of Genma’s actions to know that the man fully assumed that reality would bend to meet his every expectation (kind of like Kuno, though admittedly not nearly as severe), and she was probably going to need a lot of patience to get him to understand that she simply wasn’t interested in learning the Bakusai Tenketsu (not from him, anyway). This would be no easy task, as Akane’s patience with most people tended to wear very thin very quickly, but she was reasonably certain that this situation could be fixed without too much trouble.
However, as she drew nearer to the small building, Akane could hear two voices raised in heated argument, which she almost immediately identified as belonging to Ranma and his father. Apparently, Ranma had taken it upon himself to make her case for her, and from the sound of things, both men had cast patience by the wayside quite a while ago. Rather than try to get in the middle of a debate between two very talented and very angry martial artists, Akane decided that her best course of action was to wait by the door until a pause in the shouting match could let her enter with relative safety.
“Why are ya so hell-bent on teachin’ this technique ta Akane anyway? Even if it is ta try an’ make up for what ya did earlier—and somehow I really doubt it would—it still don’t make no sense for ya ta be so damn insistent.”
“I’m a sensei! Teaching the Art is what I do.”
Ranma, however, wasn’t buying that reasoning. “Sorry, Pops. Akane ain’t yer student, an’ ya don’t got no right ta make her yer guinea pig, especially on a technique you don’t know.”
“Are you volunteering?”
“Hell no!”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s dangerous an’ it’s stupid! Ya can’t just go around teachin’ techniques ya don’t know.”
“What are you talking about, boy? I did it all the time with you, and look how you turned out.”
“What are ya talkin’ about?!”
“Name me one technique I taught you that you didn’t successfully learn.”
“How ’bout the Neko-ken?”
“Um, excuse me, but I believe you did learn the Neko-ken, and quite successfully I might add.”
“An’ now I can’t look at a cat without flippin’ out!”
Akane’s eyes went wide with surprise upon hearing this. Sure, she knew that Ranma was uncomfortable around cats, but she’d never expected that it would be the result of his martial arts training. Just what had Genma been “teaching” his son over the last decade, anyway?
“So? It doesn’t change the fact that you’re practically unstoppable when you use the technique.”
Ranma’s eyes narrowed. “When I use the technique, I go insane.”
“Oh, must you always be so negative?”
“I’ll be as negative as I want if your stupidity puts the people I care about in danger.”
“There’s nothing to worry about!”
“Ya wanna throw rocks at my sister-in-law! How am I not s’posed ta be worried?!”
By now, Genma’s frustration had grown to the point where he was physically shaking. “Fine! If you’re going to be so stubborn, I’ll prove that there’s nothing to worry about!”
“An’ how are ya gonna do that?”
“Simple. I’ll learn it myself.”
“Okay, it’s official. You’re crazy.”
“There’s nothing crazy about it, boy; the training’s simple enough. I just need you to throw boulders—”
“No way. I ain’t gonna be a part of this. You wanna get yerself killed, yer gonna hafta do it on your own.”
“Why you— Fine! I’ll do it myself. If you need me, I’ll be at the quarry outside of the city limits.” With that Genma turned and stormed out of the dojo, nearly knocking Akane over without so much as a word spoken to her, his desire to teach the Bakusai Tenketsu to her having been completely superseded by his desire to prove his son wrong.
“Should I call the ambulance now, or wait until ya don’t come back tonight?” came Ranma’s bitter retort, but his father was already out of hearing distance, headed towards the makeshift training grounds he’d selected.
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(Posted Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:06)
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