Fight? The idea was funny enough that Ranma had to chuckle. "Why should I?"
"What do you mean, why should you?" If Ranma squinted, he could almost see faint steam in the air above Nanoha's head. "Just because you don't care," Nanoha said, "it's nothing to do with you? What you did isn't your fault?"
At that question, Ranma's mind leapt to the legality of dojo challenging, even though he knew Nanoha wasn't talking about that. Was it technically his fault? Well, the fault would fall on his parent, so....
"Even if it's my fault," Ranma said straight to the point, "I'm still not fighting you."
Nanoha stood rigid and trembling. "Why not? You're fighting all the time, and I know you're not afraid of it."
"I have other things to do," said Ranma, since he had produce and fish to refrigerate.
"Something bad," said Nanoha, "even if you're not lying, but I think you are. What do you have to do around here?"
He'll have to distract her to get away, Ranma figured. He glanced at the pork bun he had spat on the ground. "My next meal isn't going to make itself while I fight you. Beyond that, I don't see why you should know."
Ranma could see Nanoha struggling to not strangle him.
"Why won't you fight me? Is it because I'm a girl?"
First, he'll have to get her mind off fighting. Ranma stopped himself from giving the blunt answer. "That doesn't making me eager. Besides, I don't fight because I want to. If you're giving me the choice, I'd rather not."
He sighed. "And if you're going to fight me, at least wrap up your hand properly first."
Nanoha looked down at her botched bandage job, then back up. "So it's because you think I don't have the skills."
Ha ha, what a leap. That wasn't the reason, but if that was the reason she wanted to hear, alright. "Yeah," said Ranma without hiding the humor on his face, "you're not very good."
"Oh really?" Nanoha lowered her sword to plant that fist on her hip. "Then at least you can fight me so I can see exactly how much better you are."
Ranma blinked at that. Did she want revenge or not? But putting that aside, he saw a chance. Even if she still wanted to fight, at least her mind wasn't on her brother.
"No," he said. "I'm not going to fight you."
"Why? You challenged my family dojo to test your skills, right? But you won't return the favor?"
"First, challenging dojos wasn't about favors the last time I did it. Second, I'm not a dojo."
And if he treated her like many dojos treated challengers, that would just anger her more.
Ah, dammit, he had to get out of here.
"Look, if this is just for revenge," he said, "or family honor, or anything like that then there's nothing in this for me when I win."
Ranma watched the girl's reaction. She had lowered her sword, but now pointed it at him again.
...No, she knew she wasn't going to win, so she didn't react more to that statement. She wasn't challenging him expecting to win. She had some other reason.
But... that wasn't his business. He was going to refuse her, whatever her reasons.
"I do take challenges," said Ranma, "but only real ones. ones where everyone has a purpose they're ready to die for then and there."
Ranma walked up to the girl who wanted so badly to fight him until her sword was up to his chest. "If you're going to fight me, bring a real sword and something worth fighting for. Otherwise, be a nice little girl. Smile more. Play with friends. Go home."
The moment those words left his mouth, Ranma wanted to pound his head into a wall. Why did he give her this speech? If she trained for years to fight for her family honor or to avenge her brother or something, that answer would only encourage her. Today was just a bad day.
The quivering blade-tip at his chest dropped, and Nanoha ground her teeth as her eyes went down to her wrapped right hand, then over where Takamichi was standing ready to interfere. She looked back up at Ranma. "And if I do that, you'll fight me seriously?"
She was backing off? Huh. Ranma forced himself to answer her question. If he had read the situation correctly, then he should say:
"No."
But before she could start glaring again, he continued. "If I was fighting for a real purpose, I'd be willing to hurt other people, and I'd fight on the spot. I wouldn't give my opponents the choice of fighting me."
Ranma nudged the sword away with a finger. "But even though you came with a weapon, you haven't tried to attack me in all this time. You're not the kind of person who fights like that, are you? So I don't think I'll ever fight you seriously."
At that, Nanoha cringed back. Bullseye.
Ranma turned to Takamichi. "I'm leaving. Be a good teacher and get her hand fixed."
And with Takamichi's assurance he would prevent Nanoha from following, Ranma lugged the groceries down the street.
He was an idiot, Ranma decided. That Nanoha girl wouldn't give up, and he totally failed to get anything from Takamichi. The waste was almost comical.
That idle thought crossed Ranma's mind a few seconds before one of the delinquent cliques came for him before homeroom the next morning.
Ranma thought, really? After yesterday? They're still coming?
But he continued walking down the hall as if he hadn't heard their yelled insults from far behind him.
After leaving Nanoha yesterday, and after Takamichi hadn't helped him, he went to Konoe to yell about the crappy school with the idiots bothering him two days in a row. Konoe told him something about this school, how it lacked funding and manpower, and the teachers concentrated on the smart kids while neglecting everyone else. The school became a place to put dumb kids who both didn't qualify for the better Mahora schools' scholarships and couldn't afford to buy their way in, so violence was rampant and the school didn't have enough people to control it.
That kind of information he expected from Konoe, who was too busy with old man problems to look deep into middle-schoolers at a different school, and only viewed what little he knew through a bureaucrat's perspective. Ranma figured out the same superficial impression from going there two days in a row.
Still, superficial didn't mean wrong. The students probably all either banded for protection or shrank away from all conflict, which explained why everybody in the hallway avoided his eyes. To the average student, his actions probably looked no better than a common delinquent's.
And that explanation explained why the students from previous years seemed so reluctant to do anything.
The kids behind him continued to yell. They were still a long distance behind, but catching up.
If he looked over his shoulder, he might glimpse their appearance and make some effort to identify them, but turning his head was... effort.
Konoe gave no specifics about what he called the delinquent cliques—Ranma supposed "gangs" was too high a name—but after thinking about it, Ranma had some guesses why the kids behind him so eagerly confronted him. First, probably because they were at least smart enough to see him as a threat after he abused Wrinkles, much less the arm-breaking, and they wanted to test his limits. Second, to preserve their own reputations if he had already fought them. Third, uhh, Ranma didn't think too hard on the subject. For all he cared, all of them were noisy and annoying, nothing more.
The kids continued to catch up, cutting through the morning hallway crowd. The crowd's reaction varied. Some students before him watched in expectation, while most tried to pretend nothing was happening and discreetly moved to the walls to avoid unfriendly focus.
Well, whatever gets them through the day unharmed, Ranma supposed. He wasn't asking them for moral support.
Ranma thought for a moment, and decided to continue down the hallway past his homeroom, instead of going in. Bringing in a confrontation wouldn't help.
The people behind him had to jog to keep up as he approached the stairwell past his homeroom, and after arriving at the stairwell, he finally deigned to stop, turn, and regard his pursuers.
Hmph. Setting aside their dirtiness and their fistfuls of melee weaponry, the thought that rolled through Ranma's head was: only six? With the yelling, he thought there were more.
Like his attackers from yesterday, the kids today started brainlessly charging him from a distance and at different distances from Ranma, so they came almost one at a time and couldn't slow down.
So in a cold display of untouchability, Ranma tossed each kid into the stairwell.
"Wait," said the girl from the disciplinary council after hearing Ranma's rundown of the morning. "Your grade's homerooms are all on the ground floor. If you were just getting to school and going straight to homeroom, how could you possibly throw them down the stairs?"
Ranma stared at that girl, the same one who wasted his lunch period yesterday trying to recruit him and doing the same right now.
His answer was horrible. "I never said 'down'."
He continued to stare the girl down until her brain reviewed his words and the meaning clicked, and she retreated as if the air around him just froze over. "Why did you go that far?"
It was a stupid question, so Ranma gave another horrible answer. "To hurt them."
He meant he wanted to stop their attacks, and throwing someone into the sharp and unyielding stairs had stopping power comparable to breaking his arm. Compared to crippling, the harshest bruises and soreness were kinder.
Not that Ranma expected today's extra mercy to be much appreciated.
Ranma suddenly wondered how that Nanoha girl would feel, if she knew he beat up these guys but refused her challenge. Would she feel offended? He had reasons, but nothing much better than because she's a girl, and Ranma couldn't throw a girl into stairs to make her go away... but she probably wouldn't accept that. She wanted him to fight her seriously, but if he wasn't fighting the cliques at school seriously, he was hardly about to fight Nanoha so.
As he pondered the reactions of one girl, Ranma knew he was missing the reaction from the girl in front of him, but he could guess that she'd find "to hurt them" offensive. Whatever her reaction was, he didn't mind it and instead concentrated on his lunch, which he was eating in the lunchroom regardless of what the kids there thought, or what anybody from a student council subcommittee wanted.
He had made his lunch this morning, and as Ranma chewed on the pieces of fish he fried, he considered the bitterness of charring mixed in.
After all this time, he should be better at this.
"So come on," the girl was saying, though Ranma heard a note of impatience that surely came from how Ranma was ignoring her. "If you join us, you'll have official support to fight the creeps who are bothering you already, instead of always being watched and judged by the teachers. And you'll have the chance to help other people just by doing what you're already doing."
"I know," said Ranma. "You told me yesterday."
Truthfully, Ranma figured the student council wanted him on their side because they didn't want him joining any of the delinquent cliques, or maybe starting one. Maybe they were shorthanded like the teachers.
This girl didn't give him more reasons for joining, but at least she didn't say anything daft like "offering him protection". And when he pointed out yesterday how stupid it was to threaten him into joining with "we'll be your enemies if you don't", she stopped. That put her and the council she represented above the intelligence of most everyone he knew in this school.
And truthfully, joining a club just for official permission to fight was nothing to laugh at. Joining to help others was exactly the issue that Ranma tried to talk to Takamichi about. Joining would give him a task to direct his time and energy.
It would probably get him in Konoe's good graces too.
The girl asked, "What do you say?"
(Posted Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:39)
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