"How many people have you killed?" Evangeline McDowell asked.
Ranma felt a spike of irritation, but it passed and he didn't turn to face her. "That's really rude."
"One?" the small girl asked. He heard a smirk in her voice. "Lots?"
"I've never killed anyone."
"Yet you cut that corpse so professionally. You must practice."
Ranma didn't reply. Yes, the street light that illuminated the street had a body hanging from it, but he wasn't cutting a corpse. First, lightly whipping something with a long stick while reading a swordsmanship manual was not cutting. Second, the body was the broken shell of a wolf demon. It was just a cover of skin and hair that leaked black goo, a flimsy cover with no internal organs and probably never any life, so he could hardly call it a corpse.
No, Evangeline was provoking him. She had been sitting on the hood of a car behind him for the past five minutes, watching him in silence.
"You might not kill, but I think you've stabbed at least a few people."
"I hunt, brat."
From behind him, Ranma heard Evangeline throwing something at his back. He dropped the manual and parried with the stick, and the projectile fell with a splat onto the concrete. It was a dismembered paw from one of the other wolf-demon remains along the street, remains that the Mahora district mages were methodically hauling off in trucks.
Black fluids dripped from Evangeline's hands, but she didn't look bothered by the darkness against her pale skin. "Yeah, but I think you've done worse," she said.
Under the gold-tinted light of the street lamps, none of Mahora's mundane citizens walked past, even though night had just fallen. No doubt the mages warded the street from their sight.
Ranma shook as much fluid from his stick onto the street as possible. The stuff flowed like fruit liquified in a blender, and smelled like compost.
"What do you want?" Ranma asked Evangeline.
Evangeline pushed some of her long blonde hair away from the unseasonably warm spring breeze, then snarled in disgust as her hair became as tainted as her hands before she caught herself. "Like I said," she said mock-pleasantly, "I want to get to know you."
Ranma turned away again. "I don't want the same."
"So why are you doing that?" Evangeline asked while looking at his sword. She was always asking. "You think you'll get good with swords by using sticks?"
Ranma's sword was an oak branch he carved to the length of an arming sword and tapered for balance. True, his work was nothing to look at, and it was fragile, but for his training it was sword enough.
"If you know an affordable bladesmith," Ranma said, "then I'm listening. Otherwise, why are you here?"
"I'm bored," Evangeline said.
"Me too," Ranma said as he slashed the body down the diagonal from upper right to lower left. It was like cutting a mount of carpet. The book he had ordered off the Internet a week ago remained where he dropped it on the street, and he glanced at it. "When I'm bored, I learn new things. Why don't you do something useful?"
"I'm more interested in you," Evangeline said. "Tell me about all those magic tricks you did tonight."
"What tricks?" Ranma asked. "I don't do magic tricks. Except, you know, the kind magicians do, but I can't tell you those secrets. Magician's code, you understand."
Ranma heard Evangeline get off the car and walk closer, and he grew a bit nervous. "What lip you have," she said. "Too bad you're not witty. I wonder what Konoe sees in you?"
Ranma cut at the body, imagining that he was carving a path down a man's leg. "My conclusions about the old man's motives all begin with him being senile. As for my wittiness—"
He thought for a few seconds, found nothing, and focused back on his repeated swings, leaving his statement unfinished.
Evangeline walked into his line of sight, and her frown told him her patience was wearing. "If you have magic, why are you here hitting a corpse with a stick?"
"I don't know magic, and I'm here because I wanted to learn a dueling style."
That was true. He had put off learning a weapon for one-on-one dueling, and he only had the time because Konoe gave him nothing to do. Besides, that Nanoha girl was still challenging him to a fight.
"And why a European style instead of Japanese?" Evangeline asked.
"Fewer people know western swordsmanship. It's an advantage." Ranma didn't know why Evangeline would ask, being a European herself as far as he could tell. He supposed she was still grasping for personal information, so the answers he gave were true, but he avoided information she couldn't find herself.
He continued his repetitive motions of slashing at the body, sliding forward and back to find the best distances for fast and precise slices.
"Ah dammit," Evangeline said, "I forgot how boring it is to watch someone train."
"Nobody's keeping you here. Go drag bodies with everybody else." Ranma wasn't part of cleanup, but he had fought at Konoe's request tonight. Evangeline hadn't even done that, he knew. "Or go pester the old man."
"How do you know Konoe?" Evangeline asked, while ignoring everything else he said.
Ranma was terse. "I can't remember."
"That fool holds you in some esteem. There must be a reason."
"Konoe doesn't hold me 'in esteem'. He's just afraid he doesn't know what I can do. Like everybody else." Ranma didn't need to mention that everyone else included Evangeline.
"He's putting you up in a marriage meeting with his granddaughter. He doesn't seem afraid." Evangeline didn't sound afraid either.
That marriage meeting was just a roundabout way of giving Konoka a break from all the older men Ranma heard Konoe had been setting her up with. It made Ranma feel used.
Ranma said, "He should be."
"Oh? What, are you going to make a move on that girl?"
Ranma still stood with his back to Evangeline, but he could hear lewdness in that tame-sounding statement. He was glad he didn't have to look at her face. A kid so young shouldn't be that coarse. Ranma shook his head.
"And why not?" Evangeline asked. "Konoka seems pretty sweet. You're not, but you're too ugly either. Maybe you'll make a cute couple. And young girls are so delicate. Fragile. Compliant."
Ranma canceled his stab into the wolf, or else she would take it the wrong way. Evangeline burst out laughing at his discomfort, and she did so with a fullness of voice nothing like what a small girl's laughter should be.
Evangeline McDowell looked cute from a distance, but she was not cute.
"So if not Konoka," Evangeline asked, "does that mean you have higher standards?"
Ranma didn't answer.
"Or do you have someone waiting for you already?"
"Of course not."
"Then who is this in your picture? She's quite a looker. Nice face, well groomed, expensive looking clothes—"
Ranma finally turned, and saw Evangeline staring back at him all amused while holding the picture that someone stole from his room a month ago. He knew it was the New Years festival photograph, one of his few keepsakes. Now he knew who broke in, and he honestly wasn't surprised Evangeline had done it.
"Would you not spread that gunk all over my things?" he asked.
Evangeline looked at the goo on her fingers, then nonchalantly flicked some of it off. The motion probably ruined the flimsy photo even worse. Ranma must've looked angry, because her amused smile grew. Ranma felt a ridiculous urge—no. He forced it down.
"So is this a sweetheart of yours?" Evangeline asked, looking suddenly disappointed at his lack of outburst. She glanced at the picture again. "Or maybe the other one? Or both? You seem happy to be caught between them." She reconsidered her assessment. "Well, compared to your usual grumpiness. The other girl looks even less happy, but I've seen weirder romances."
Ranma glared, and said, "They're acquaintances."
He could tell Evangeline was playing with him. She was fishing for information, but he knew she didn't care, and it offended him more to see her mocking the few relationships he had tokens of than to see her merely mocking him.
"That's so cold," Evangeline said with that mock-pleasant voice. "Not even friends, but acquaintances?"
"I don't have friends. I don't stay long enough to keep any."
"How very sad for you. I think I'm getting weepy."
Was it okay for a girl to have such a uncompassionate tone? It was almost enough to make Ranma question his own callousness toward friendship, but at least he was a guy. He had excuses.
"Give me back my picture," he said. "You're dirtying it."
"No," Evangeline said, dangling the picture from blackened fingertips.
When Ranma strode forward, she stepped back quickly, perhaps expecting to finally see a display of violence. Ranma continued advancing with the wooden sword in his hand until Evangeline was pushing herself up against the glass window of a storefront.
She didn't look worried, of course, even though he towered over her, and her small smile would've been disturbing if her thoughts mattered to him. When Ranma met her eyes and raised his hand, she didn't even twitch.
Ranma stooped and snatched the picture from her fingers, then began carefully wiping the blackness from it with his sleeve.
He couldn't get the picture clean, not all the way, and it looked like Evangeline had crumpled it some time ago.
"For a guy who's so pissed all the time—" Evangeline said, and now she was frowning again as she leaned against the glass behind her as Ranma continued to press her there with his closeness. "—you're damn hard to set off sometimes."
Ranma graced her with a disapproving downward glance.
Evangeline saw it, and it must have vexed her more. "Look at you, fussing over some picture of a few girls at a party. I thought you were tougher." She gestured toward the street where the mages were still carting away mounds of bodies with a moving van and power-washing the streets with hoses. "An hour ago you were killing—sorry, 'hunting' down demons with a bunch of mages twice your age. Aren't you ashamed of that dichotomy?"
"Nope," said Ranma as he continued to wipe. "Why should I be ashamed of cleaning a picture?"
"I should've burned it instead," Evangeline said. "Would that have gotten some response from you?"
Without warning or hesitation, Ranma stabbed his sword—a piece of wood he had cut to a blunt slab the day before—through the curtain of Evangeline's blonde hair on one side of her pale neck. It sank half of its length into the storefront's window with the sound of a bullet striking, punching an elegantly minimal hole and producing a rounded web of cracks that Ranma could see even with Evangeline's hair still in the way. From somewhere inside the store, an alarm began to warble.
Without a trace of malice in his face or voice, Ranma said, "Possibly."
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(Posted Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:34)
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