“Yah!” Ranma yelled, sending her foot through the cinderblock.
Nabiki raised an eyebrow. “For anyone else, I’d call that quite a display.”
Ranma snorted and pulled her foot from the unscathed brick. “C’mon, I grabbed Mousse’s chains just fine. What…is…wrong?” she grunted out, striking again in frustration.
Nabiki shook her head. “From what I’ve read, manifestation is one of the hardest abilities common among spirits. Only the most powerful manifest regularly.”
Ranma looked up. “Powerful?”
“Well, relatively speaking,” Nabiki hedged. “Most spirits only manifest to better converse with the Unawakened. And most spirits almost never need or want to do that in the first place.”
“I’d be fine without it but that damn old ghoul!” Ranma snarled and struck the block again. This time it shattered under the blow. Ranma’s breasts heaved as she tried to calm down and stared at it. “It’s working again,” she breathed, leaning back against the dojo’s wall.
Nabiki calmly grabbed Ranma’s flailing arm. “Somehow, I don’t think it’s that simple.”
Ranma grumbled and floated out of the wall. “This is getting annoying.”
By dinner, Nabiki and Ranma had worked out some of the basics of her manifestation. Ranma could make herself visible and tangible with focus, and experienced fun things like gravity in that state. So far, that focus was purely subconscious, something that happened when she let herself get into her Art.
“Three days,” Ranma said confidently. “I’ll have it mastered in three days.”
Nabiki wasn’t so sure, but Ranma did seem to be making incredible process in a short period of time. The shattered cinderblocks in the yard were testament to that.
“You shouldn’t be trying to make that girl body of yours better, boy!” Genma snapped. “You need to become a man again so the schools can be joined.”
Ranma rolled her eyes invisibly. “So what, I should marry your Amazon bride?”
Genma sniffed dismissively. “I solved my Amazon problem easily enough.”
“Oh my,” Kasumi said, smiling cheerfully as she set dinner on the table. “How did you do that, Uncle Saotome?”
Genma was one of the greatest liars to walk the earth, but one does not lie to Kasumi. “Um, well,”
“He ran away until I had to deal with her instead,” Ranma ground out. She smacked Genma in the back of the head.
Genma jabbed his chopsticks at the empty air. “Boy, I am your father and you will show me respect!”
Ranma snorted as she hovered over her normal place at the table. “Thanks to you, I’m stuck like this for kami knows how long. You can bet I respect that.”
Soun looked to Nabiki. “Nabiki,” he pleaded, “you know about this sort of thing.”
“I don’t have a magic wand, Daddy,” Nabiki muttered.
“There must be something!”
“Well, Shampoo said something about a ‘curserock.’ That could mean that Cologne used a magic rock to place the curse on Ranma, or it could mean that the stone was used as an anchor.” Nabiki poked at her food in thought.
Akane blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It means that there are many things it could be,” Nabiki said unhelpfully. “But if I had the rock, this would get a lot easier.”
“Then all we need to do is get the rock!” Ranma cried eagerly.
“The ‘rock’ could be a pebble in Cologne’s pocket or a boulder in China,” Nabiki warned.
Ranma deflated instantly. “Oh.”
“Don’t worry,” Nabiki said with a cold smile. “Shampoo revealed that much with barely any prompting. In time, I’ll get what I need to break this.”
Ranma nodded glumly. The idea of spending more time stuck like this was not a happy one.
“So, Ranma is locked,” Mara mused.
“That’s what Gosunkugi reported,” the imp Gorash confirmed.
Mara leaned back and looked over the report. Nabiki’s wards made direct surveillance of the family impractical, so she had unusually shaky information to work with. Still, that was only by her usual standards. “The Joketsuzoku are testing Ranma, so the next phase will be for them to offer a cure he can earn.”
“We could easily break the spell they placed on him,” Gorash suggested.
Mara scowled at the imp. “When I want your opinion, I will give it to you. Yes we can break the spell easily, but Nabiki is too smart to allow such a favor when another goal is in sight. No, we need something smaller.” She scanned the report again. “Ranma is learning to materialize. That would make this situation easier for her to bear.”
Gorash held his tongue, but looked confused. They couldn’t teach Ranma to use her powers if she didn’t trust them, so how did this help?
Mara went to her desk and pulled up a list. She was silent several minutes as she went over the near-endless passage of words. “Here it is. Gorash, I have your next job.”
Nabiki opened her eyes slowly and smiled blissfully at the redhead sharing her bed. The warmth of her touch, the curve of her face, the blush of her cheeks…if there was any one thing good about what was going on, it was that Ranma needed to sleep with her again.
And if there were two things, it was that practicing her manifestation seemed to make Ranma very, very, very hungry. She giggled lightly. Who knew being an all you can eat buffet could be so rewarding?
Ranma stirred and opened her eyes. She smiled at Nabiki. “Nice dream?”
Nabiki grinned lecherously. “Extraordinary.”
Ranma was quiet a moment. “Um, is that good?”
Nabiki laughed.
Nabiki and Ranma left for school early. Explaining the situation to the Furinkan staff was not going to be easy. Kuno’s declarations about Akane were one thing, and Ranma’s curse was a curiosity, but the idea of a student being a spirit full-time was something else entirely. Nabiki just hoped she could get through this without needing to get into the technical details. The one thing every Awakened learned was that the more people learned about magic, the fewer people could accept it without reservations. Nabiki was amazed her family hadn’t turned on her when she revealed everything to them; the gossipbed that was Furinkan would not be as forgiving.
Nabiki’s worries were halted as her empathic senses went black. Not silent, black. The deepest, most impenetrable darkness imaginable. Someone nearby was feeling something so suffocatingly negative as to overwhelm her senses. She heard Ranma gasp in surprise and knew she felt it, too.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Nabiki admitted, looking around for someone, but the street was completely empty.
“Up there!” Ranma snapped, pointing along their path, well above the horizon.
Nabiki craned her neck up and scowled. “An imp.” So, this is what a demon felt like up close.
“Greetings, Tendo Nabiki,” the creature said smoothly as it came down to the ground. It landed in a crouch and bowed its head low. “This unworthy is pleased to meet you.”
Ranma slid between Nabiki and the demon, taking a combat stance. “Stay behind me.”
Gorash twitched slightly. Ranma was a young nature spirit, unskilled, weak. To be challenged by one such as her…but he couldn’t touch her. And besides, given her combat skill, she didn’t need natural defenses to defend herself. “I am not here to fight.”
“And I’m s’posed ta believe ya?” Ranma drawled.
Gorash held out one hand and impaled the palm with a claw. “By my blood I swear, no harm to you and yours, until the sun has crossed the sky.”
Nabiki blinked and put a hand on Ranma’s shoulder. “That’s a binding oath. He can’t attack until sunset.”
Ranma didn’t lower her guard. “You trust him?”
“Of course not,” Nabiki answered.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” the imp interjected. “But I come with a gift of good faith.”
“I accept no gift you offer,” Nabiki said quickly. “I owe you no debt.”
Gorash smiled slightly. “No debt,” he agreed. “You can find information you need in the works of Hidel. Your supplier has a copy in stock.”
Nabiki’s eyes narrowed. “And why are you telling me this?”
“As I said, this knowledge is a gift. Good day, Miss Tendo.” And with that, the imp simply vanished.
Ranma relaxed slowly as the black emotions vanished as suddenly as they arrived. “What was that all about?”
“I wish I knew,” Nabiki said uncertainly. One thing she knew, she was going to look up ‘Hidel’ before she went for any of his writings.
School as a succubus was still new enough that Ranma felt like a sideshow freak by lunch and was pulling her hair out by gym class. They were swimming today, which even under normal circumstances would give Ranma pause. She floated by Akane and waited for the class to end.
Not that they were exactly alone.
“So Ranko, did Ranma teach you to fight like that?”
“What did you mean, you can’t call him back?”
“Where does Ranma go when you’re here, anyway?”
“How’d you throw Mousse?”
“Did you really help Nabiki in that gymnastics thing?”
“Can you appear here?”
Ranma hung her head. “I really don’t know, guys. I’m new at the spirit thing.”
She instantly knew that was the wrong thing to say. “What does that mean?”
Ranma grasped for an answer. “Well I only recently became…that is to say before I fell in that spring…I mean before /Ranma fell…”
Akane scooted to one side and just watched the fiasco in the making. She didn’t think Ranma could keep it up for long.
Up in her classroom, Nabiki grimaced at the suspicion directed at her and ‘Ranko.’ It had been a hasty lie, solid enough for the occasional disappearance, but this was too much. They simply hadn’t anticipated Gosunkugi’s pictures or Kodachi’s fight or Mousse or Cologne. Anyone that could anticipate all this should head to a casino and make himself a fortune.
By the end of the school day, Nabiki and Ranma were both convinced that the ‘Ranko’ deception was at the end of its useful lifespan. Too many people knew the truth, and several had cause to want Ranma discontent with his situation.
The two were headed home when a bicycle flew through Ranma’s head. “Nihao, Smart Girl. Airen here, yes?”
“Yes, Shampoo,” Ranma sighed.
“What do you want?” Nabiki snapped.
Shampoo looked hurt. “Shampoo have news of curserock.”
Nabiki stilled. She assumed Shampoo had information, but why was she giving it freely? She had a sudden case of déjà vu, thinking back to the imp that morning. “What kind of news?”
“Great grandmother have curserock on necklace. Wear always. You have curserock, you break curse.”
Ranma smiled brightly and spun around. “To the old ghoul!”
“Ranma wai-! Yeah I didn’t think that was going to work,” Nabiki grumbled as Ranma flew off. She turned back to Shampoo. “Why tell us this?”
Shampoo stopped searching the skies to look at Nabiki. “Shampoo hate spirit-Ranma. Smart Girl like airen this way?”
“Not exclusively, but yes.”
“Pervert.”
Nabiki smiled. “Thank you.”
Shampoo blinked repeatedly.
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(Posted Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:01)
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