“Uhm, so this is a school for Faerie Craft, then?” Ranma said, looking around for a safe topic of conversation.
Akane’s smile brightened again and she bounced to her feet. “That’s right! Do you want to see the training hall?”
“Oh, my!” exclaimed Nabiki with rolling eyes. “Now you’ve done it. Akane’d spend every waking moment playing with her faeries, if she could.”
“Oh, don’t mind, Nabiki,” Akane chided as she lead the way to the attached hall. “She barely practices enough to keep her faeries in shape.”
“Nice,” approved Ranma as he studied the well ventilated hall. He took in the various barrels of assorted earths, metals, and woods, stacked around the rim, the troughs of clean water and well fueled fire pots. He admired the heavy stone maul, razor sharp katana, and limber wooden bow on display above the racks of practice blades. “Not at all bad!”
“Thank you,” Akane beamed. “That is, uhm… hey! Want to spar?” She turned to lift two well used practice blades from the rack, and offered one to him with an underarm toss.
“Erum, sure,” Ranma said hesitantly, catching the blunt tipped, light and flexible foiled weapon by the guard, then stepped out onto the small arena. “It never hurts to practice, I guess.” He reached out and felt his faeries already flittering around excitedly, drawn by his interest and ready to lend their craft.
He reached out with faerie enhanced senses, and several other immaterial presence brushed his awareness. Her fire, air, and water faeries, he guessed and took their measure while waiting with a deceptively casual stance, blade held loosely against his thigh. Akane limbered up and drew on her faeries’s essence. Fairly strong, he observed approvingly, but faerie power wasn’t everything.
She frowned slightly as Umi’s water crafting conveyed to her his arrogant indifference, then she smirked and moved confidently. She flowed with the speed and grace of a consummate air crafter while her fingers trailed a line of scarlet flame in a wild, eye catching arc; her arm whirling to cast the distracting flame as though it were a gymnastic ribbon.
Ranma waited until he felt her blade, the true attack, flick out with deft aim. He suddenly drew on Makoto, leapt and tumbled over her head with lightning quickness.
Akane had half turned in surprise, hair whipping about in a swirl, by the time Ranma had landed on his free hand, but he was still able to lash a resounding sting across her rear end. Metal craft guiding the foil with elegant precision.
“Neat trick,” he remarked as he flipped over and bounced away. “But it will take more than a little fireworks to distract me.”
“You… jerk!” she hissed, and called upon Hikaru to launch a dart of flame from her finger. “That wasn’t… That really hurt, you know!” The sting wrought tears welling up in her eyes, however, cleared away almost at once as her water faerie swiftly drew them away.
‘Oh, well, it was worth a try,’ he thought, and reached out with one hand and casually batted the fire bolt aside with a gust of Makoto assisted wind. It was, he noted, just maybe a wee bit hotter than a practice flame need to be; a downside to baiting a fire crafter.
“Did you know, you’re cute when you’re angry?” he remarked, and smiled contentedly at the response. He hurled a spray of water towards Akane’s re–aimed fire bolt with a whispered command to Ami, then sprinted back across the field in a low dive as she backhanded the volley with her own water crafting, letting the deflected spray provide cover. ‘Ah ha! Powerful, but clumsy when upset.’
‘Curses!’ Akane gasped and tried vainly to protect her rear. ‘Foiled again!’
Soun and Genma gloated over image of Michiru’s scrying playing out on the surface of their hot tub.
“Yousie old friend,” Genma slurred and hiccuped. “Fey ice getting along swell.”
“It was seelie to worry,” Soun sobbed happily. “Our pots and pans are working to purplexion!”
Nabiki munched on an apple as she watched, from behind an observation screen, her prospective groom fence with her younger sister. It was hard to follow the action as they darted back and forth across the field, their practice swords a blur even to her finely honed metal craft. It was pretty clear though, that Akane was outmatched.
Which had been fairly obvious going into the match, considering that he had a full spectrum of faeries to draw from. Not, she suspected, that Akane’s pride would have allowed her to admit it to herself. Still, she should have made a better showing of herself.
Nabiki’s calculating eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. It was hard to tell, but the dazzling flashes of flame seems to be coming exclusively from near the resonance of Akane’s practice blade. Either Ranma’s fire crafting talent was too weak to manifest a combat flame, or…
‘Oh, my!’ Nabiki murmured enviously and her eyes darted to the firepots. ‘Tricky, tricky!’ If she was right, he was using a different kind of fire crafting on her sister. It was impossible to tell without fire or water crafting senses of her own, but Nabiki rather suspected that her hunch was correct; that his faerie was radiating hot emotions to throw Akane off balance.
‘I’ve got to watch out for that,’ Nabiki noted sourly. On occasions like this, she might wish that her own manipulative talents lay a little more in that direction, but she got by well enough relying on her earth crafting ability to encouraging a certain kind of response, and her well honed wits.
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(Posted Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:58)
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