The wilds of Ouzo Island were normally fairly quiet with only the rare soul passing from village to village to see the beautiful forests and the appreciate the sheer glory of the cliff-faces overlooking the ocean below.
That was not the case right now.
"Mouko Takabisha!"
The sound of battle raged through the peaceful landscape.
"Kishin Raishu Dan!"
Trees were falling and landscape was being remodeled as seven masters fought a furiously.
"Happodaikarin burst!"
Figures came into view briefly, as they dashed about, maneuvering to get a shot on each other.
Maneuvering to shape the chi of the battlefield in their favor.
A black-haired young man rushing into the air, and trading blows with an older man in a white gi. Below them, another young man wearing camouflage pants dashed forward under the two, a young woman with short blue-black hair behind him as they dashed for a tiny man in a burglar's black night-suit.
"We're running out of time!" the girl shouted.
"It's coming," the young-man in the camouflage plants called out. "Ranma's almost in place."
Above them, the younger of the two aerial fighters got the better of the deal and tossed the bald older one downward as he used the man's momentum to carry him into the air.
Two more young-woman were circling around behind the battle, carrying what looked like a rug-beater and a ribbon.
"You little brats can't begin to beat me," the withered old man declared as he ricocheted off a tree trunk and back into the air.
"Now, Ryuu!" Ranma shouted as he started the reach the peak of his ascension.
"Saidaikyu Kijin Raishu Dan!" Ryuu shouted as a host of vacuum blades ripped out ahead of him tearing up the land and winging their way toward the withered old gnome who laughed with an almost lunatic fervor as he casually dodged each projectile.
Behind Ryuu, the blue-black haired woman, Akane, had already started her part in the plan.
"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken Kansei!" she shouted, tightening all her chi pathways in a particular pattern that forced the chi flowing in against itself and filling her muscles and bones with chi that wanted desperately to move.
And it carried her with it, in a burst of speed so extreme that she was almost casually dashing around and past many of Ryuu's vacuum blades as she charged in towards Happosai.
She could see Kurumi beyond Happosai twirling her ribbon and filling the region with heat even as Natsume slowly, to Akane's chi-sped senses, set off the Ryuka Ringu in a path that neatly cut off Happosai's escape into the upper sky, forcing him back down to earth and enduring the continued barrage of Ryuu's vacuum blades and taking him right into Akane's reach.
Akane'd needed the full-body chestnut to get in among Ryuu's Kijin Raishu Dans, but that meant she only had two or three seconds left to get her part of the plan finished and release the full-body chestnut before she'd tired herself out too much to reach the next stage of the battle.
Happosai blinked in surprise as he finally caught sight of the insanely fast Akane. He moved to dodge aside of her, but was far too slow in her current state. She caught his hand and twisted him about to slam hard into the ground, bouncing him up into the swirling mass of air stirred up by the Ryuka Ringu and Kishin Raishu's.
Happosai briefly out of control of his own momentum, Akane let the paths of chi open up and the breath of the world about her flowed through in a rush that had her catching her breath. She rolled away from the danger area as she caught sight of Ryuu moving to intercept Genma and Ranma descending.
"Hiryu Korin Dan!" Ranma shouted as he slammed down into Happosai's location.
Kurumi and Natsume were moving forward even as Happosai, a bit less confident, was making a haggard leap away from the impact of Ranma's attack and Ranma himself was catching his breath.
Kurumi's ribbon slashed out for Genma, catching the fat man as he was about to take advantage of a momentary opening in Ryuu's guard. Pulling backward, she set up the balding man for hard impact by Natsume's ice-charged rug-beater.
The sisters nodded to each other as they went past Genma into the confrontation with Happosai. The old man was almost one with the chi currents of the battlefield, and it was wearing his body down. Meanwhile, each of the five of the other masters were going full bore only for brief periods at a time.
All of them could stand toe to toe with Happosai individually. Ranma could probably have killed him if he wanted. If simply killing Happosai were enough, then it would have been a simple matter.
But this wasn't a simple matter of defeat.
Every master could see the threads of knitted chi that Happosai had tied to him and watch as they twisted outward into the distance.
"I should never have acknowledged you as a grandmaster, Ranma," Happosai retorted. "If you take such a rabble into your teaching. Girls and vagabonds."
"Dry up old, man," Ranma shouted. "We're not your school anymore."
"This new school is all of ours," Kurumi declared.
"All of ours," Natsume agreed. "Our techniques, shared between the three of us."
"No more training accidents," Akane said.
"Your time is over, old man," Ryuu agreed.
"Feh," Happosai shouted as Genma came to his side, standing their grimly. "If all you want is to establish your own school, then do so and leave us out of it."
They moved back to exchanging blows, the five younger masters pacing themselves more evenly as they forced Genma and Happosai into channeling more and more chi from around the environment.
In the far distance, they could hear the scattered sounds of battle throughout the small forest and Cliffside. Happosai had gathered three-hundred years worth of students for this confrontation. He'd probably been hoping the fact that they barely had any students yet would have been enough to deal with the situation. He hadn't counted on them bringing allies.
But then, he hadn't counted on just how much he'd pissed people off over the last three-hundred years.
Amazons, Musk, Phoenix, the Kunos and the Hibikis were confronting his students all across the area. Some students had refused to side with him, of course, but he'd found a use for them anyway.
Hostages.
He'd long ago built backdoors into the chi pathways of his students, openings for a bit of chi sorcery to make sure that he was always on top.
When Ranma and the others started to call him to task for his behavior, he'd tried to get into Ranma's pathways and found them closed to him.
The Soul of Ice, if Genma had ever passed on the flaws he'd carefully worked into the training, then the Amazon meddling had neatly given Ranma the tools to fix them himself.
Natsume and Kurumi were the same.
But they hadn't been aware of what the import of those flaws were, and he still had some he could manipulate.
Genma was among those, though he never had the need. After all, Genma's standing was just as much in threat as Happosai's in this. Poor Hinako, though, what a surprise she'd had when she started falling apart at the beginning of this campaign.
Still, when his rebellious students started falling apart, he'd have expected Ranma and the others to get the message and back off. After all what did they hope to accomplish by this fight?
"A martial artist protects the weak, Happosai," Ranma said as he deflected a happo daikarin which Akane neatly returned at the old man with a volleyball spike. "And you exploit the weak."
"We give them the chance to be strong, boy," Genma protested as he launched a kick at Ranma while simultaneously dodging around Kurumi's ribbon . "Who are you younglings to tell us to stop teaching our students and art."
A signal rippled through the three younger masters as the two young men charged forward to engage Happosai. Ranma falling easily within a four-limbed stance as ki extended from his fingers like claws and tore up the land around him.
"Finally turning up the heat, eh, Ranma?" Happosai asked chuckling. "You know if I die, those others die."
Even as he talked, the three girls turned aside, and slammed into Genma hard. Pulling further on the chi flow than before, enough to slowly overpower the old panda, but not enough to wear out their bodies too much. As their fight continued, Akane trailed quietly further and further behind in the pace of the fight.
Genma noted and snorted briefly as he noted that Akane hadn't dived as fully into the flows of yin and yang as the others. Obviously she wasn't as far along in her masterhood as the others yet.
The fight continued as at least four of the masters pulled out the highest techniques they'd shared between each other to chisel away at the strength of their enemies. They were holding back only enough to avoid slamming through through their opponents and accidentally killing them.
Neither of the elder masters were paying much attention to their path as the next generation traced a series of intricate paths, curling the chi around with them and temporarily reshaping the local dragon lines.
One didn't get to be a master of any sort of Anything Goes without learning at least a little something of chi sorcery, and given their opponent, all five had recently spent much time developing their skills in that area.
As the two fights started moving close toward each other, Akane came closer to the center of it all.
She found the last step in the pattern and stepped within the carefully shaped flow of chi. For an instant, both Happosai and Genma had their backs to her, and in that instant she lashed out with either hand into the vertebrate just under the necks of each man.
Both were wearied by the fight.
Far too tired to resist the intrusion of Akane's chi flow into theirs just long enough to pull a thread out.
Still, Akane was the only one of the five that could have succeeded at this. After all, she was the only one they underestimated.
A twist of the mind and hand later and she pulled both hands back, strands of knitted chi firm within her grasp.
Happosai and Genma froze as each of their opponents stepped away, grim expressions on their faces.
"But," Happosai protested. "How?"
"Do you think we're going to tell you, baka?" Akane declared. "Now you know what happens if I start twisting, don't you."
She flexed her fingers letting a twist of chi work through her enemy's pathways. Genma fell to his knees as he coughed up blood, but Happosai stood firm, a trace of blood leaking from his mouth.
"So here's the deal," Ranma said. "You drop the curse on Hinata, Soun, Tarou an' the rest."
"And you stop teaching," Ryuu added.
"If you agree to that," Natsume said. "Then maybe we can convince Akane to let go of your curse."
"Please forgive me!" Genma said instantly dropping into the Crouch of the Wild Tiger. "I'll do whatever you say!"
Happosai looked towards one of his more promising students and frowned in annoyance. He wasn't disappointed, however, had expected the wimp to give in like that.
"All right," Happosai said. "That's fine, go ahead and drop it and I'll do what you say."
"No good, old freak," Ranma said.
"You let them go now," Akane said grimly. "Or I'll do something permanent next time."
"What about me?" Genma whined.
"Quiet, panda," Ryuu snapped, smacking Genma in the back of the head.
"Let go of the curses, old man," Natsume said. "All of them, the ones in your hands and the ones in your back pockets."
"If I die, then so do they," Happosai said and he started to raise one of hands to twist it as Akane had.
Akane was faster and the old man's wrists spasmed, preventing him from controlling the knots of chi to harm his hostages. In punishment, Akane carried through on her threat and Happosai's left knee suddenly shattered with a second twist of her hand.
"There's a lot she can do without killing you," Kurumi promised. "But since you made this curse, you know that."
"And I haven't touched your favorite piece of anatomy yet," Akane noted.
Happosai looked up from his position towards the five younger masters and toward his already surrendered student. Further out, he could feel his other students falling one by one.
No reinforcements were coming.
He only had one choice.
Ranma, Akane, Kurumi, Natsume and Ryuu stood next to each other as they watched Genma leave and Happosai limp off.
"The curses are gone, but how do we know they won't teach anybody," Kurumi asked hesitantly.
"We don't," Ryuu said.
"But if they do," Akane said. "They don't have anymore hostages."
"And all bets are off," Natsume agreed.
"We ain't them," Ranma noted. "We can't take 'em out for what they ain't done yet after we made a deal."
"Let's clean up," Ryuu said, as he looked toward the forest and the dwindling sounds of fighting. "Tell them Happosai's beaten."
Genma finally limped home, relieved that he'd gotten out of that alive. He'd never have believed it if he hadn't seen it. Those five managing to outwit the Master and force them into this parole.
What he found as he came home was a very pleased looking wife.
"Husband," she said. "We no longer need worry about our daughter-in-law's barren womb."
Genma blinked as he listened to what his wife was saying. She was still worried about grandchildren after all this time?
"Careful what you say," Genma said, looking around. "That daughter-in-law nearly killed me a couple of days ago. They could be listening right now."
"Nonsense," Nodoka said. "I'm sure she's much too busy attending to Ranma as a proper wife to be spying on us."
"If you say so, dear," Genma agreed, sighing. "Maybe we should move somewhere."
"Excellent idea, Husband," Nodoka crowed. "After all, then we could leave my darling son Ranma to his life and raise our next children without having to burden him with the fact that we had to have more heirs because his wife is infertile."
"Next…children?" Genma stuttered.
"And I'm certainly you've found all new ways to train our children this time around," Nodoka said as she started to go around packing things.
Genma sweated as he started to weigh his son's and the other young Musabetsu masters' future wrath versus his wife's insistence. He had a guess as to which would win out, and he wanted to be well hidden from his son's eyes by the time that decision was made.
"All right," Genma said, nervously. "Let's get packing."
Maybe they'd move to the Lightning Country, that might be far enough away.
"Left?" Akane said, frowning. "You don't think he's planning something, do you?"
"Nah, this sounded like Mom's idea," Ranma said, obviously upset. "Maybe she doesn't think it's manly to tell your old man what's what."
Akane crossed her arms and her eyebrow twitched as she moved next to her husband. She was surprised that he'd admitted that to her actually, even now. In the old days, he'd never let her know that much about how he's feeling.
"If that's the case," Akane said. "She's not who I think she is."
Akane had no idea that Nodoka was less of the woman she thought than the young wife realized, but for entirely different reasons.
"I'm sure she just feels like giving us space," Akane said. "Maybe she thinks that's why we haven't had children yet. All her hovering?"
"Eh, I guess that's possible," Ranma said shrugging. "There's wars between the Ninjas right now, there's been a bijuu seen on the mainland. It ain't the best time to be moving anywhere."
"I'm sure Genma will avoid the fighting," Akane assured him. "Meanwhile, I think it's time to start agreeing with Nodoka's goal. As of tonight, I'm off contraceptives."
She winked at Ranma who flushed brightly in response.
Genma stared down at the valley below him in horror.
Jusenkyo.
How had he gotten so far off track as to wander into this part of the world of all places? Had he traded brains with the Hibiki boy somehow?
"What's with all the sticks in the water?" the younger of the two girls behind him demanded.
She was a wild and impudent looking six-year old girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.
"Imouto-chan!" the elder of the two said, eyebrows pushing down at the outside corners and up in the middle, showing her embarrassment and nervousness. "Th..th..that is rude."
The elder wasn't all that much taller than the younger, with black hair and a pair of glasses perched on her nose and held to ears with string similar to her father.
"What? Ryoko," the younger said. "You're wondering too."
"It is obviously a training ground, Joseibi," Ryoko explained. "One needs to be able to move from pole to pole without losing your balance. The pools are obviously to prevent injury."
"Whatever," Joseibi said. "There's a house down there, maybe they have something to eat that wasn't alive an hour ago."
"No, we're going to leave," Genma said. "This isn't where we want to be."
If the Jusenkyo guide saw him with the two girls, word would get to one of the three tribes in the area. They didn't particularly have a good opinion of him. If they didn't try to kill him themselves, they'd pass word on to Ranma that he was seen with two young girls near the cursed training ground.
"Go where you want," Joseibi said as she already started down toward the house at a run. "I'm going down."
"Imouto-chan!" Ryoko called out moving to follow her sister before turning back to her father. "Sumimasen, I shall bring her back quickly."
"Yeah," Genma said, refusing to step down into that valley and be seen. "I'll be getting dinner and camp set up, back that way, where we camped last night."
"Hai! Father," Ryoko said before heading back to catch up to her younger sister, calling out like a nervous nag.
Genma shook his head at the display.
He could barely believe that the persistently frightened girl was his daughter. It was embarrassing, and that supposed control technique hadn't worked out for her at all. She was just as skittish as ever, perhaps more so.
What's worse, it seemed to have made her chi channeling clumsy. At the moment, her capacity and endurance for drawing on the ambient chi more than made up for her inefficiency and clumsiness at using it. She seemed to have an edge on Ranma at the same age in capacity and endurance.
Besides, given Nodoka's insistence on Ryoko learning how to use a blade and study some subjects, the girls' overall skills were somewhat behind Ranma's at the same age. She was slower to learn, probably because of how many different things she was being expected to learn.
History, etiquette, tea ceremony, flower arranging.
It was miracle that the girl's natural genius could still shine through all that nonsense.
Of course, Joseibi hadn't developed any talent for drawing on environmental chi, but then he didn't spend much time with her. His blonde daughter didn't seem interested in fighting at all, even flat out refused some training. Genma would have been more insistent about it, but every time he was about to respond to one of Joseibi's refusals, Ryoko decided to ask questions about something.
In any case, he needed to be gone before something happened to attract attention to him.
Meanwhile, Ryoko had an easy time keeping up with Joseibi. The younger girl didn't take training nearly as seriously as Ryoko did. The problem wasn't catching up to the girl, it was getting her to come back. Granted, some part of Ryoko knew she could just pick up the younger sister and go back, but the black-haired girl wouldn't do that to her sister.
"Father said we don'….do not…do not," the girl urgently corrected her use of the contraction, "want to be here."
"He probably conned someone down there," Joseibi responded. "And quit botherin' with the stick. Mom isn't here to keep our speech 'proper' and crap."
"Imouto-chan," Ryoko said. "Watch your language!"
"Hai, hai," Joseibi said, yawning as she still walked forward. "Look, I'm tired and I'm dirty, and those pools can't be all that deep, so what's the harm of a little bath."
Ryoko thought about it briefly, biting her lip. Joseibi smirked as she ducked her head. It was usually easy to convince her elder sister on the small things. At least, it was whenever Mom wasn't around to play with her sword.
"It will have to be very quick," Ryoko said. "And I shall see about directions from the people at the house."
Things went predictably downhill from there.
Genma watched as his eldest daughter fretted over the little blonde fox that was his youngest. Ryoko obviously blamed herself for the accident, her eyes even seemed to be flickering orange as she continued to make sure that Joseibi was fine and healthy, even while her eyes flickered to the kettle on the fire and the small pile of clothing she'd set aside for her sister when the curse was reversed.
The fox meanwhile was glaring at their father.
He didn't know why the girl blamed him. It was her disobedience that got her in the trouble.
Still, it would make travelling with her easier. Next time she got out of line, he'd just splash her with water. Good thing it was Joseibi that was cursed and not Ryoko, he could survive Nodoka finding that out.
Now, Jusenkyo placed them between the Wind and Earth countries. They had a good two months or so before Nodoka expected them back from this little trip. It would be best to travel straight through Fire Country at this rate.
That would bring them close to Konoha.
Genma smiled at that.
Rumor had it that Konoha was still in recovery from that attack a few years back, it would probably be quite ready for a visit by a martial artist and chi master. The only problem would be trying to find the techniques that didn't depend on chakra.
He'd seen what happened when you mixed chakra and chi. It didn't usually work out well.
Fortunately, most of the ninja taijutsu arts and a few ninjutsu types were usable with chi given some easy conversions.
That was going to be dicey, however. He'd need Ryoko to decipher a ninja's training scroll. It was odd that Ranma's analytical ability had extended outside of combat to things like ciphers in Ryoko's case. The only thing that was really all that different was the extent of scholarly education that Ryoko had at Nodoka's insistence.
But silly things like reading more books couldn't have been the reason for such a useful ability.
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(Posted Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:27)
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