[Episode 212221] [Episode 212221]Ranma stormed out of the bathroom, male again and determined to gain some ground in this strange contest Akane had set up. He marched up to the dojo door, and listened. Akane was still training, but the sound of her voice wasn't affecting him so much anymore. He smiled. Emotional control was key to winning this thing, and in that area, he had her beat. Whatever she was doing before wasn't having any effect anymore, so he was certain to win. Confident in his victory, he straightened himself up, put on a practised smile and slowly opened the door to greet the soon to be loser.
Almost immediately, he felt his legs weaken, and he couldn't do anything more than stare. Akane stopped her elaborate kata mid stance when she noticed him enter. "Hey, where did you go? I thought you wanted to help me train!"
It took him a few moments to regain control of his voice. Somehow, he'd forgotten how to work his mouth in the last few seconds, but it was slowly coming back to him. "A-Akane? Wh-where are your GI trousers?"
She continued with the elaborate kata, barely seeming to heed him. "Oh, they were starting to get in my way. They're in the corner."
He'd have to take her word on that last part, since he couldn't tear his eyes away from her long enough to check. Those deceptively powerful, beautiful legs that were dancing before him, bare and smooth, lashing out with a power and sensuality he found captivating. All he had to do was reach out and...
No! No, he couldn't think like that! This was a contest! It didn't matter how beautiful her legs looked, or the fact that the slightest motion seemed to allow the briefest glimpse of her pan-
"Soul of ice, soul of ice, soul of ice..." he thought, in an effort to control his emotions. She wouldn't beat him. He didn't lose so easily as something like this. He'd start smooth talking her, she'd jump all over him, he'd win and then... dear lord it wasn't working. Why wasn't it working? It had to work! How was this happening? Then he noticed that he was mentally chanting to the same rhythm of her kata. That really couldn't have been helping.
"Well, are you going to help me with my training or aren't you?"
"Uh, sure, in a minute," Ranma squeeked out. "Just got to... uh... try something first."
Alright. So the soul of ice wasn't enough by itself. There was only one thing for it. The old saying about necessity being the mother of invention was about to be proved true again. The trouble with the soul of ice was that as detached as he could become from his emotions, he never completely disconnected himself from his emotional state. After all, if he did that, he'd disconnect himself from his instincts. And that was just asking for trouble, as that allowed him to dodge without thinking. All the better for the technique he usually used the soul of ice for, as he needed to dodge his opponents to draw them into the spiral and make them angry. But yet in this case... He frowned, and closed his eyes. That alone took a great deal of self control, but it was enough. This was the deepest he'd ever gone into the soul of ice... the true soul of ice. He would be as the glacier, immovable, powerful, unstoppable... and completely in control.
He opened his eyes, and watched as Akane finished the kata. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, the kata made her appear very sexy. But at the same time, Ranma didn't feel remotely distracted by it. He glanced in the corner, at the discarded trousers. Just where she said they would be. Perfect. Just as he'd intended. Now, her efforts at seduction would fail. While his were guaranteed to succeed. She'd even admitted it herself: When he bothered, he was a real charmer. But why bother when you know of at least three beautiful girls that would drop everything for a date? He couldn't fail.
As the kata came to its conclusion, Ranma would have gasped had he retained the capacity for shock. Instead, he merely raised an eyebrow. Suddenly, something was beginning to make a little more sense, but he needed more information. The contest could wait for now, his victory was all but assured anyway.
"Akane," he asked. "Just where did you learn that kata?"
She stopped in her tracks, and scratched her head. "I-I don't know. It just sort of came to me, out of nowhere."
Interesting. She probably didn't realise, then...
"Well, it's a funny thing. I didn't notice until you were finished, but... I think that kata was draining my ki."
"It-It was? Are you sure? Oh no, are you alright?"
"Oh, I'm fine," he waved off her concerns. "It was draining me a bit, but not quite at the same rate that Miss Hinako does it." Indeed, and that was what made this technique all the more dangerous. If he hadn't gone into what he now dubbed the "Soul of Glacier", he wouldn't have noticed it himself. The subtle tug at his energy, the gradual, creeping exhaustion he'd been feeling while watching her... He'd attributed it to the desire he'd felt. This technique was potentially far more useful than the other one she had developed... two techniques in one day? Just what did she do today to pull that off?
"Look, I think that it would be better if we refined that kata a bit, rather than work on your ki attack. The kata has more applications during a fight."
She scowled at him. "You're not just trying to learn it for yourself, are you?"
"Not really." Yes he was. Even if it was just how to defend from the attack in future, learn its weak points, how to recognize it being used... any information he could get might potentially save his life some time down the road. And while Akane was a very talented martial artist, she was most certainly not in his league. Besides which, even if the two of them did know the technique, it was very likely they'd both use it in very different ways. First things first...
"I need you to show me the kata again, from the beginning." He copied Akane as she adopted the starting position as carefully as he could. Extend the leg there, bend the elbow here, twist there, and-
He fell over, and almost lost the soul of glacier.
"Uh, let's try that again."
"Honestly, Ranma. You can't even get that far into it? It's not difficult."
He should have felt annoyed for that dig. He knew that intellectually. The scowl was an act, to throw her off the lack of emotion. She would expect it. There wasn't any anger, malice or irritation behind it in the slightest.
He fell over again.
The third time through, he took the steps on a much slower level. Akane, on the other hand, was taunting him by going through that one damned bit of the kata at ever increasing speeds. Until she tried going too fast and tripped over herself.
"Okay, okay, I'm done here for the day," she'd said, gathering her trousers and swaying out of the dojo. "I'm going to take a bath. You enjoy trying to figure out that basic step!"
With her gone, he dropped the soul of glacier, and his eye twitched for a full minute before stopping. Stupid tomboy, teasing him over this. He'd identify the problem, work past it, and then he'd show her who had to catch up with who! He'd leave her in the dust!
And then, he felt it. His body simply refused to move any further, for reasons he couldn't identify. The movement was a perfectly valid one, he knew all too well that the skeletal structure, muscle layout and nerve workings should, by all rights, allow him to move that way. And yet, he couldn't move it a single inch in the direction he wanted. As if some invisible force was holding him back.
So the question became, why could Akane do it and he couldn't? What was different between the two of th-
The answer was somehow so obvious and so stupid that he couldn't believe it. It couldn't be that. What sort of sense did that even make? But, heck. It had to be something. So Ranma casually walked outside the dojo, towards the pond, and splashed himself in the face before heading back in.
"Alright, so first I do this, and then I- whoah!"
Off she went, and it felt as natural as breathing. All Akane had done was show her the basic setup, but once he got past that basic obstacle, the rest was easy. He tried to focus his attentions on how the technique might be able to affect the ki of others, but quickly realised how difficult that was without someone else around to actually drain the ki from.
"Oh well," he thought. "It feels kinda nice doing this." He sighed. "But my trousers are starting to itch something awful..."
He stopped the kata for the time being, to take stock of what he'd learned. Alright. So only women could actually do the version Akane was doing. That made the technique distinctly less useful. "Unless," he pondered out loud, "There's a version for guys."
Ten minutes later, Nabiki wandered in through the front gate. Today had been productive. Another day, another sucker. It was just that kid's poor luck to transfer into her class, and have absolutely no idea who and what he was messing with. One of the easiest baits and switches she'd pulled recently, since the sap had no prior warning.
"Hiiiya! Ya!"
She smiled a cruel smile, and snuck towards the dojo, camera in hand. Oh, sure, girl form Ranma would bring in more money from Kuno and the perverts at school. But there was also a lot of money to be had for getting photos of him as a male to the fiancee brigade. Akane would never buy one, of course. Silly prude. But the others would be all over them. They would eat those photos... right... up?
There he was, in the middle of the dojo. With his shirt off. With sweat pouring from his forehead, and muscles and washboard stomach and...
The camera tumbled to the dojo floor as Nabiki stared in awe. She barely acknowledged the unusual nature of the kata, or the fact that it managed to highlight all of Ranma's most alluring physical features. Nor did she notice that she was feeling a little bit more tired just watching him run through it. Although it must be said that the poor girl had a fairly large list of things she hadn't noticed. For example, the passage of time, the drool forming in the side of her mouth, Ranma finishing up the kata then walking past her and saying "Hey Nabs, you dropped your camera" while carefully placing it into her hand and making her grasp it.
She didn't miss when her little sister tapped her on the shoulder and said "Nabiki? I need to talk to you about something."
Nabiki shook her head to clear the cobwebs out. What had she been doing again? She'd heard Ranma in the dojo, and then... "Something the matter, sis?"
Then she looked up, and Akane's eyes flashed a weird colour. She didn't quite hear what was said next, but she could tell that she agreed with it completely and without question.
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(Posted Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:41)
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