‘Well, isn’t this awkward?’ thought Ranma as he stared back at the girls appraising him with various emotions. The eldest smiled politely, the youngest looked uncomfortable, and the middle sister’s initial interest seemed to have faded soon after she noticed his travel worn clothes. “Uhm, so… Sorry about, Pop. The old man can be a bit… uhm… yeah…” He floundered.
“Oh! You have a fire faerie, right?” one of the girls interrupted. The youngest he thought. She indicated the firepot strapped to his belt, snuggly holding charcoal embers and his faerie. “Why don’t you release her into our hearth?”
Ranma blinked, then nodded. “Sure, if it’s no bother. Thanks, uhm…”
“I’m Akane,” she announced with a flash of a dazzling smile and guestured towards the fireplace with a florish. “And this is my Hikaru. I hope our faeries can be friends. Uhm…” She fidgeted nervously for some reason.
The named faerie stirred from the fireplace, rising up to full height in a column of roaring flame to curtsey before shrinking down to a more manageable size. While Ranma set his traveling pot down next to the hearth, he notice several others sitting empty by the fireside. He beamed down at the figurine and introduced, “this is my Rei,” with a releasing gesture and directing thought.
He felt his faerie flow from the coals in his firepot as an invisible surge of heat in the air, then she manifest in the flames and stretched out to full size to indicate her pleasure. She shrank back down into another doll–sized figure and regarded the other occupant with oddly cool detachment for a fire faerie. Hikaru danced around her guest brimming with curiously and childlike eagerness.
“You’ve also named your faerie?” Nabiki murmured derisively. “How very common.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that!” Akane defended with a sniff. She turned back to Ranma and beamed, with renewed eagerness and a proud gesture through the open door towards the villa’s central garden. “Anyway, and that is my Fuu … and my Umi!” She smiled proudly at the revelation.
In response to her calls, an azure–haired head lifted out of the ornamental pool, formed out of water, and gazed at Akane affectionately. A whispy emerald–haired figure manifested above in response to the second name, then drifted elegantly on the breeze.
“Well then,” Ranma stated proudly, “this is my Ami, and my Makoto.” Two similar apparitions manifest beside Akane’s faeries; one an arctic blue haired water faerie the other a shapely swirl of smoky brown–haired air faerie. “That’s my Hotaru,” a childlike figure formed and peered shyly out of the shadows of the garden foliage before her purple haired head vanished back into the undergrowth. “That’s my Usagi,” an alabaster statue of marble with sandstone hair, emerged out of the ground, “and this is my Minako,” golden sparks flashed from his drawn dirk, coalescing briefly into a feminine figure of electric golden sparkles.
He sheathed the blade, then turned back to Akane who suddenly wasn’t smiling. Waves of hostility seemed to roil off of her. He blinked in bewilderment at the sudden change. “Uhm, what?”
“Oh, nothing!” Akane stated flatly and dismissed her faeries with a huff.
“You’ll have to forgive our Akane,” Nabiki smirked. “She doesn’t like being shown up.” She gazed at Ranma with renewed interest, “you must have such strong faerie craft to have attracted so many attendant faeries at your age?”
“Well I don’t like to brag,” Ranma lied, “but I could easily become a senshi of any order already.”
Akane sniffed derisively.
“Well, well, now,” Nabiki murmured predatorily, “you are a diamond in the rough, aren’t you?” She gazed at him speculatively. ‘Handsome and talented, if poor and crude; perhaps I can put some polish on him?’
“Uhm… what?” Ranma hesitated nervously as his watercraft conveyed her shifting emotions. Both younger girls leapt from one state to another unpredictably. Only Kasumi maintaining a placidly calm aloofness; and he could not tell at all how deep ran those still waters.
“Oh, don’t mind, Nabiki,” Akane interjected saccharinely, “she’s a nice enough girl, but she is a little bit of a gold digger.”
“Akane!” a mortified Kasumi protested. “It isn’t proper to reveal the truth about your sister like that!”
“Argh!” Genma exclaimed as he leaned back in the hot tub. His water faerie, Michiru, rose up to rub his back, steam rising from her liquid apparition. “This is a very nice villa you have here, Old Friend.”
“Well, it certainly keeps the rain off my head, that’s for sure,” Soun agreed modestly as his water faerie did likewise.
“Mmmmrph,” murmered Genma contentedly as he drew a mouthful from his wine bottle. “‘sa life.”
“Do you suppose the children will be alright?” Soun worried.
“Ahahaha! Three pretty girls and my Ranma?” Genma asked rhetorically. “They’ll get along like a house on fire!” He paused mid laugh to consider the prophetic implication of his remark. “Well, perhaps we should check on them at that. Michiru…”
At his bidding, his water faerie sank back into the water and dissolved. Soun felt her leave the tub and drift out of the room as a moist chill in the air.
“Right,” said Genma, reaching for another bottle, “now, where were we?”
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(Posted Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:17)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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