Ranma floated through the door into the Nekohanten with fire in her eyes. “Ghoul!”
Cologne barely glanced up. “Groom. Have you come to marry Shampoo?”
“Like hell!” Ranma howled. Cologne’s necklace was clear as day in the spirit’s sight – a simple string of beads, only one of which was solid in her eyes. That had to be the famed curserock. She lunged across the café to claim her prize.
Cologne blinked at the spectacle. “What are you doing?”
It goes without saying that this thought was echoed by everyone else in the café. Voices coming from nowhere was not on the list of normal everyday happenstances.
Not for the first time, Ranma was glad of her invisibility as she realized something that probably should have occurred to her before announcing herself. She couldn’t lunge. Or jump or run or bounce around. She could fly at a brisk jog.
Which was about ten times too slow to have a chance of catching Cologne.
Cologne calmly took a stack of ramen bowls and went about the café, placing orders and taking new ones. The patrons blinked at her calm speed and the howls of rage that followed her around like some demented invisible game of tag.
Back in the kitchen, the other Amazons working at the café looked to eachother in amusement. “So that why elder want wait tables alone,” one observed.
Ranma was less amused by her predicament. Her limbs were as fast as they were in her human form, if not faster, but she couldn’t translate that speed into moving her body. And all the skill in the world was useless if she couldn’t catch the ghoul! And to make it worse the old crone knew it and was mocking her by going about serving ramen!
Wait. Serving ramen. The ramen came from the kitchen. Cologne had to go to the kitchen to get the ramen. I have you now! Ranma thought gleefully, flying through a wall to the alley outside the café. She smiled at her own cleverness – she could float here waiting for Cologne to pass by on the other side of the wall. She’d be in arm’s reach for a simple snatch and grab.
Only a minute later Cologne was hopping past the wall and Ranma struck. “That rock is mine!”
Cologne’s hands and Ranma’s blurred as if in some steroid-driven children’s game until Ranma felt a light tap on her forehead from Cologne’s cane, and suddenly she was flying backwards into the open sky.
Cologne sighed as she heard another howl of rage, blueshifting slightly with the slow speed of Ranma’s return.
While Ranma demonstrated a persistence bordering on the psychotic, Nabiki engaged in research bordering on the obsessive. Finding references to Hidel was easy enough – the man was a spiritologist some two hundred years ago and while he was not prolific in his writings, his observations of spirits in their natural environments were the most detailed works of their kind. The most common comment on the man was that his genius and insight were wasted on a topic of no practical application.
What really bugged Nabiki was his stance on demons. He was a vocal opponent to even minor summoning. Why would a demon push her to something that was not going to advocate Hell’s agenda? What did they gain? “What are you after?” she muttered.
Well, that was the easy question to answer. They wanted her. Maybe Ranma. But they wanted her to summon them again, spread misery, be evil, so on. For all their subtle machinations, demons were pretty one-dimensional at their ultimate goals. So, working backwards from there, the piece fell into place nicely. This was a lure. They were saying “see, we aren’t all bad, we can be helpful.” It was a classic ploy. Bring the mark in, get him hooked, then extort anything you could when he’s too weak to say no.
Unfortunately, it was a classic because it worked. Assuming she didn’t have to steal the books, Hidel’s works would probably tell her a lot about how Ranma could develop her powers and Nabiki wouldn’t have so much as a smudge on her karma for her trouble. She couldn’t turn that away on principle. She’d just have to be careful, next time.
Nabiki winced. She already admitted there would be a next time. Oh yes, she was in deep trouble.
Nabiki remembered that thought as she paged through An Empirical Study into the Development of Conscious Natural Phenomena by Hidel. The hefty tome was available from her usual supplier at a reasonable price – although she could have done without the curiosity. It was not a typical purchase for anyone. But, it was exactly what Ranma needed. The third chapter was a treatise on the development of rudimentary spiritual abilities. Most of it Ranma had already managed one way or another – she was able to talk, for example, while there were pages on spirits developing the ability to make sounds at all, let alone language.
The sorceress groaned and leaned back, looking at the ceiling of her room. “Maybe this is a dead end after all,” she muttered.
“Nabiki?” came Kasumi’s voice. “It’s almost time for dinner.”
Nabiki frowned. Was it that late already? She gathered her notes and hurried out her room, down the stairs, and out the door. “Sorry, sis, I’m going to look for Ranma!”
Kasumi blinked and watched her departing sister before turning back to her kitchen. The wok wasn’t quite hot enough.
Nabiki knew that there was only one place Ranma was going to be in her state.
“Yaheeeyyaaa!”
And that was sailing through the air overhead. “Ranko!” she called.
Ranma blinked and reoriented herself. “Hey, Nabiki! Just a minute, the ghoul is mine this time!”
Five seconds later. “Ranko, I don’t think-“
Five seconds later. “Ranko-“
Five seconds later. “Could you stop for just a minute?”
Five seconds later. “Nabiki lemme go! I can take her!”
“I’m sure you can,” Nabiki said dryly, “but maybe some training would help first?”
Ranma blinked. “Have something in mind?”
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(Posted Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:37)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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