Wood.
In the Eastern tradition, one of the five prime elements.
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that: wood was also the representative of life, the characters for wood and chi being the same and the concepts inextricably entwined.
Now, Ranma was looking forward to his first encounter with Kuno, and actually having a planned means on hand to embarrass the… He realised that was a completely wasted effort. The deluded fool was perfectly capable of embarrassing himself in front of everyone and anyone; more, he was perfectly capable of not noticing he had done it, too, and take the reactions of the audience as the adulation due one of his stature. Which was true, if you looked at it a certain way.
Nevertheless, the potential in reverting the Blue Thunder’s bokken to the state it last saw when growing on an oak tree – slightly whippy, pliable, with sprouts and leaves – was obvious.
The other potentials in being an elemental representative of Life were even greater. Reverting a piece of wood from mere timber to a living plant was an extreme of enhancing the health of a living tree, which was a subset of enhancing the health of a forest – insects, birds, and animals included. Ranma liked wilderness. It was where he had spent much of his formative years, it was where his father had most closely approached being a respectable teacher and parent (admittedly due to the reduced access to civilised distractions like sake), and it was where many of the greatest of the true masters his father had dragged him off to were to be found; or, failing the real thing, it was something they consciously tried to emulate in their homes and dojo. The lessons learned when the pair were invited to depart after sparring sessions in a Master’s gardens were not, as Genma believed and lectured, the virtues of not being caught; the time he was begrudgingly permitted to practice bonsai at the elbow of their host because said host refused to teach him otherwise was not, as Genma declared, wasted.
Genma refused to see, but Ranma had noticed after he arrived in Nerima that martial artists were respected in much the same way as a rabid dog. It was others who had respect without reserve, and once he made the first connection it was easy to see that healers topped that list. Had he come to the realisation outside of Nerima, he might have chosen teachers as his notional benchmark for respectability; but since it was the departure of Doctor Tofu that brought the inspiration, after the arrival of Principal Kuno (and that palm tree was so sprouting roots), he had no particular respect for anyone who claimed to a career in education.
In the mean time, it was necessary to practice the Art, and Wood granted a new facet to the Ranma branch of the Anything-Goes School.
{Pops, you are in big trouble.}
“I, what – Ranma?” marginally distracted, Genma looked around the valley quickly. “Where are you hiding, Boy?”
{Not hiding, Pops,} replied Ranma, adding a perfectly normal basso rumble to return his father’s attention to the huge prehistoric cat. He took another couple of steps forward. {Just… throwing my voice.}
Genma took another five or six steps backwards, pausing only when jostling against the Guide (who knew the ground a bit better, even walking backwards) led him into the edge of the thicket of bamboo. He paused, glancing between the massive feline making a casual approach and the vegetation tangling his trousers.
{Flourish}
“Wha?”
Ranma grinned. Genma trembled, because with those huge fangs his son’s grin was decidedly alarming. The Guide, figuring that it was not necessary to outrun the tiger (only the other guy running away from it), bolted for his hut. Neither saw what Ranma did: the three metre diameter thicket targeted by his new power beginning a growth spurt that would carry it through a couple of decades in as many minutes.
Under favourable conditions, some species of bamboo can grow by a foot a day. In the Jusenkyo Valley, the local species weren’t that prolific; but they normally grew the multi-metre poles that sprouted across the pools anew each year. Genma had two sprouts in his right trouser leg… and was well inside the area of the effect.
PING [2:50:00]
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(Posted Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:21)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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