Being the leader of a small, autonomous tribe in the People’s Republic of China was hardly the easiest of job positions, combining aspects of being the mayor of a fairly large town with the governor of a fairly small province, all dressed up with many of the ceremonial functions of a head of state. Still, Ku Lon managed to balance all of this out pretty well; granted, part of this came from observing the missteps other autonomous regions had made in dealing with the PRC and avoiding them studiously, but much came from her own intuitive savvy. For instance, her decision to tone down the rhetoric in Outsider policy had made it much easier to avoid having to send away perfectly good warriors to commit acts that most municipalities considered to be heinous felonies simply because they’d been defeated in battle—now, there had to be a grave, intentional insult in order to merit that kind of action.
However, the policy of having female warriors marry Outsider males who bested them in combat remained largely unchanged: not only to recruit said Outsiders into the tribe (where they could add to the defense against the other indigenous peoples in the region), but also for their presumably superior genes. Such was the reason Ku Lon had wanted to retrieve the scroll for the Bakusai Tenketsu for Ni Dao, her great-granddaughter’s best friend, who was about to embark on a search for the bandanna-clad Japanese youth who had vanquished her. While it was true that this move did not work on humans, the ability to shatter huge boulders often did have the effect of scaring the pants off of reluctant husbands, who usually had no idea that they were in no danger from their spouse’s ability. And while the Matriarch had told her student that she knew the training methods by heart (and she did), it never hurt to refresh one’s memory, particularly when the consequences for mistakes on the trainer’s part were so severe.
Also, it turned out that asking for the scroll was a good way to make sure it was still in the tribe’s library.
“You’re certain you didn’t misplace it?” Ni Dao asked in an effort to be helpful.
“I have spent the last 12 years systematically organizing those scrolls so that I could find every single one in seconds—trust me, there’s no way it could have been simply ‘misplaced’ without my knowledge,” the librarian responded with obvious umbrage. “Besides, someone did a lot of rummaging around to find it; about a dozen scrolls were misfiled.”
“Could it be a member of the tribe?”
“Unlikely,” Ku Lon replied. “Getting approval to view a scroll like that one from the council isn’t that difficult—at least, not difficult enough to warrant risking the consequences of stealing it.” She turned to the librarian. “When was the last time anyone used it?”
“I think Xian Pu wanted to take a look at it. She hadn’t gone through the proper channels, but I let it slide, seeing as how she’d just won the tribal championship.”
“I see… did she say why she wanted to see it?”
“She mentioned something about verifying a particular detail so she could explain something to that Outsider friend she met—the young man who turns into the redheaded girl.”
“You don’t think he did it, do you?” Ni Dao asked the Matriarch. “He did leave in a hurry, right?”
Ku Lon massaged her temples as she replied, “No, Ranma isn’t even close to being reckless enough to try this. Besides, he wasn’t the one who decided to leave here suddenly. That would be his… father….” The wizened Amazon trailed off as the identity of her chief suspect became abundantly clear to her. “Ni Dao, find my great-granddaughter and tell her I need to speak to her.”
“Of course, Matriarch,” Ni Dao said with a meek, respectful nod. “May I ask why?”
“When Xian Pu finds Ranma, I may have to ask her to run an errand for me,” came the Matriarch’s somewhat cryptic reply.
Genma was still grumbling to himself as he made his way towards the small quarry he’d seen as he’d approached Tokyo with Ranma—he was sure it was there, as he distinctly remembered thinking that it would be a good spot to train the boy in the Bakusai Tenketsu. Of course, since that time, his plans for who would learn the technique had changed drastically, shifting from Ranma to Akane, and then from Akane to Genma himself. Ultimately, it didn’t really matter to Genma who learned the technique, so long as the learning itself reinforced his rightful superiority. Thus, as he walked towards his destination, Genma was also scrutinizing the scroll containing the training instructions for the technique.
Granted, the specifics of those instructions weren’t easy to make out, since Genma couldn’t read Chinese, but the illustrations seemed relatively simple to understand. The student gets tied up, boulders are thrown at him repeatedly, and when it was all said and done, one gained the ability to blow things up (at least, he was pretty sure that’s what the last illustration was showing). The hard part, however, was going to be adapting this regimen for self-study. Still, the stout man was positive he’d be able to pull it off—after all, he’d taught Ranma plenty of techniques that were supposed to be impossible to learn. Surely, he could pick this easily. Thus, he would be proven right, because… well… actually, Genma had been so focused on figuring out how to learn the technique without outside assistance that he’d forgotten why he’d decided to learn it. He was, however, certain that it would prove that he was right and the boy was wrong, and that was the most important thing (even if the subject of their argument had almost completely faded from his mind).
Soon enough, however, Genma reached his destination—and not surprisingly, it was locked up (quarries tend to be dangerous places, after all). Of course, a mere padlock was hardly any obstacle for a thief of Genma’s caliber, and in no time at all, he was inside the premises, looking at his makeshift training grounds.
Alright, Genma thought to himself, how the hell am I going to do this?
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(Posted Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:47)
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