Ranma shook her head as she looked over her daughter, the youngest of her children by several minutes. The girl had a real problem with handling impacts. That had forced Ranma to take her slowly through the various body-hardening techniques, making the difference between her and her siblings that much more extreme.
Given a choice, Ranma wouldn't even be forcing martial instruction on the scholarly girl, but their life didn't allow for much leeway. Demons, sorcerers and monsters of all stripes were drawn to her children. Some were simply curious, others sought to make use of or destroy them.
"Are you going to explain what happened?" Ranma asked the three teens standing before her with an arched eyebrow.
"Boom! Weee!" Eija said dizzily, drawing sweat from everybody present.
"Ma'am!" Sousuke said stepping forward a crisp manner that proudly screamed soldier to Ranma. "If I may explain."
She took a moment to take the boy's measure and liked what she saw. He held himself like a warrior, and she could see by his face that he'd seen battle. Raw, unchecked battle the likes of which she usually tried to ghost past. There was no hint of chi mastery in his aura, but there was a good potential.
He'd seen a lot and done a lot, but he was no burn out. His stance spoke of military discipline, something Ranma had precious little of, but had learned to respect. This was an active soldier.
Ranma was very curious about just why such a person was here, of all places.
"Go ahead," Ranma said, moving to take Eija from Kyouko and lay her gently on the ground so she could check her daughter over as he talked.
"What, but..." the blue-haired girl started to demand.
"Excuse me," Ranma said sharply, turning to look at Kaname. "But the kid said he'd give me an answer already, so wait your turn."
Ranma felt the edge of a headache as she looked at the girl. There was something about her that seemed to distort her chi field in little spatters of static throughout her aura.
She'd felt this before, usually when she was encountering something new and her senses hadn't figured out how to handle it just yet. Looking back at the soldier, she arched an eyebrow and nodded in what she considered a subtle display of realization.
Ranma's legendary poker face had never really left her, though, and several sets of thoughts were going through the heads of the teenagers.
"What the hell is she smiling at him like that for," Kaname wondered. "Oh hell, is she some sort of cradle robbing old woman?"
"She's made me," Sousuke said. "And Kaname? How could she be so quick?"
"Wow, Kaname and Sousuke are so obvious even perfect strangers can figure it out," Kyouko said.
"She's got a good hand, fold," Eija mumbled.
Ranma turned attention back to her daughter and was pleased to note that there seemed to be no major injuries, just the concussion which she could deal with easily enough, starting with some light shiatsu.
"I was recovering my shoes from the foot-locker when I noticed that someone had tampered with my locker," Sousuke explained. "As I could not be certain of what had been placed in my locker..."
"Oh hell, you blew it up, didna ya?" Ranma asked as she continued to massage Eija's temple.
"Affirmative, Ma'am," Sousuke said.
"Oww, my head..." Eija muttered.
"Shhh," Ranma said. "Ya gotta a concussion, Eija-chan, just lay down and don' try nothing and I'll take care of it."
"I could..." Eija started to say.
"The last time ya tried to cast any spell like this," Ranma interrupted in Greek. "You puked your guts out and ended up stuck in bed for two days. Healer, let someone else heal ya." The last was said with a bit of good humor and ended with a friendly thump on the injured girl's arm.
"Hai, Mother," Eija said in frustration, rubbing at her arm.
"That should do it, now just sit there," Ranma said. "We'll be going home in a moment. Now, you wanted to say something?"
Ranma turned from her crouch to look up at Kaname expectantly, trying not to blink at the continuing headache that looking at her caused.
"Well...ummm..." Kaname said, trying to find a way to dig out of the hole Sousuke just put them in.
"Now, why were ya not talking to my other kids?" Ranma asked again, arching an eyebrow.
"Well...they're ummm," Kaname said nervously. "They probably would have killed us..." she didn't sound half so certain as she had a moment ago.
"Deimosu and Naiki?" Ranma asked with a laugh, then seemed to think again. "Well, maybe Naiki. What about you, pigtails?"
"Oh, I was just helping my friend," Kyouko said.
"Anyway, don't let me hear about this again, or whoever's responsible for each of ya is gonna hear about it."
She reached down to help up her daughter, frowned meaningfully at each of them before walking away.
"Bai bai," Eija said tiredly, waving from on Ranma's back.
"Spells?" Sousuke said in curiosity.
****
"This DNA strand is amazing," the tech said to Gauron. "It's holds layer upon layer of coding, like one of the geometrics that seems to hold more space than it takes up. Every time we think we've hit the end of it, there's more coding."
"Is it something we can use?" Gauron asked. "Like the Whispered."
"Maybe with a living example," the tech said. "But this isn't a repository of knowledge like the Whispered, this is all stuff that is built into the organism."
"How about brainwashing?" the pyschotic asked.
"How old are we talking about?" the tech asked. "I wouldn't want to play games with the person behind this past a few years old."
"So we'd need infants is what your saying," Gauron concluded. "That could be fun."
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:03)
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