Ranma sighed and looked to Nabiki. “Fine, I’ll go. But I won’t have any fun!”
Prophetic words. The Tendo-Saotome group arrived at the fair around twilight. It was the kind of place Genma would never have allowed Ranma to go; tasty snacks roughly as healthy as a bucket of extra-sweet lard, games for children, performers and haunted houses…a good time with no room for training or physical exertion, well-lit with attractive paper lanterns and too crowded to make a clean get away after a scam.
Ranma was in hell. Everywhere she looked were games she couldn’t play and food she couldn’t eat. Even her father was having fun and the kids certainly enjoyed playing with the panda-baka.
Nabiki glanced up at her floating fiancée. “You okay?”
“No,” Ranma growled.
Nabiki smirked. So Ranma couldn’t play the games herself – as far as she was concerned that wasn’t half the fun to be had at a fair. She watched Akane scamper off like a giggling schoolgirl and Kasumi wandered off to see if there were any recipes worth trying at the stands. “You know, there’s a lot more than just games here. Look up.”
Ranma looked at Nabiki skeptically and did as she was told. Paper lanterns, gaudy displays, floating people, streamers, probably some fireworks later…
…wait. Pause, rewind, play. Floating people? “Nabiki, why are there floating people?” Ranma asked in an all-too-reasonable tone.
Nabiki smirked. “You didn’t think you were the only spirit at the fair, did you? Feel around; this place is a hotbed of excited emotion. Or maybe I should say a buffet.”
Ranma blinked and considered. Truth be told she hadn’t really considered other spirits much. Nabiki’s crash course in spirit life had focused on the dangers of demons and summoners, not other nature spirits. “So they’re attackin’ the fair?” she asked dubiously.
“What? No! Stop thinking like a martial artist.” Nabiki blinked and sweatdropped. “Maybe next I’ll ask the sun to rise at midnight. Anyway, they’re here to feed.”
Ranma blinked again and blushed furiously. “That’s gonna be messy.”
Nabiki glanced at Ranma’s emotions and facepalmed. “Not every spirit feeds by sex, cutie.” She pointed to various spirits in turn. “That one just feeds on happiness. That one, adrenaline. Luck. Drama. Laughter. Artistry.” Her finger came to a tiny, thin, blonde, man-shaped spirit. “I have no idea what that thing is, but given how he’s dressed I’m thinking greed. Wait, no, those fox-eared guys are greed.”
“Shakkiin!”
Nabiki watched as the tiny spirit apparently made some poor short guy trip and fall painfully on his girlfriend. “Misfortune, then.”
Ranma growled and cracked her knuckles. “I’m gonna show him what ‘misfortune’ is.”
Nabiki sighed and put her hand on Ranma’s shoulder. “Ranma, spirits like that have been tripping up people since the beginning of time. Remember, a spirit that looks like a person represents part of what it means to be human.”
Ranma relaxed and thought that over. “Law of the jungle kinda thing?”
“Something like that. Fighting demons is one thing, but harmless pranksters like that help build people up.”
“Like pops.”
Nabiki flinched slightly. “Yeah, well, you see a spirit tossing a kid down a pit, you’ve got my permission to beat the crap out of him.”
Ranma nodded, looking over all the spirits floating around. It was interesting, but the novelty was wearing off and she was beginning to remember that she was miserable.
Nabiki smiled. “Now, the game. There are three kinds of game owners at a fair. You’ve got the ones who love smiling kids more than making a profit, you’ve got the businessmen, and you’ve got the cons.”
“Cons?”
“People who rig their games. See, a kid-lover runs games where you have a good chance of winning. The prizes aren’t great, but that’s not the point. The businessmen run hard games with decent prizes. But they’re games you can tell are hard, where the fun is the challenge, not the win. And the cons run games that make it impossible to win.”
“That’s not fair,” Ranma said with a scowl.
“They’re not supposed to be fair, they’re supposed to take your money. Now the game is to figure out which one is which.”
Ranma cocked her head and considered. “Well, the games that no one wins are the cons, right? Where’s the challenge?”
Nabiki grinned. “The cons let just enough people win to look respectable, usually people that keep on playing. They lose some money in prizes, but the appearance of a chance makes people pay more.”
“Oh.” Ranma looked around. This ‘game’ wasn’t her element, it was Nabiki’s. She didn’t know how to read people like—wait. Yes she did. Ranma grinned evilly. “Show a fake weakness to lure your opponent into making a mistake. The con will try and look like a kid-pleaser but run the harder games. Make your opponent doubt his own strengths and fear yours. The con will never let a player think they might win if he could instead say he will win. Make an opening to hide a weakness. If the con is accused of cheating, someone will win almost immediately.”
Nabiki blinked, surprised. “Well whaddya know. Anything Goes Scamming Arts. That’s right. And one more.”
“What?”
Nabiki pointed to a goldfish game and the greed spirit floating over it. “You can tell a lot about a place by the spirits that take to it.”
Nabiki’s game kept Ranma entertained for a good hour. They’d spot a guy taking advantage of happy children and find some way to beat him at his game. Nabiki’s mercenary nature was palpable as she carried some of the most unwinnable prizes in the fair around, and Ranma was more than content with the kids cheering as the big bad men were humbled.
It was all going well when Akane decided to play a round. She pegged one of the goldfish catching games and had already lost a few thousand yen.
Ranma growled in her throat. She could see the disks practically melt in contact with the water. It was all a matter of speed – to get the fish before it was too wet to hold. Akane was doing better than most, but that was still abysmally short of success.
“Any ideas, Nabs?” One thing Ranma had realized was that with so many people milling around, her voice coming from nowhere was easily dismissed by the crowd.
“Maybe you can grab the fish as the paddle hits the water?”
“Hmmm,” Ranma considered. “But my hands would be visible where they push the water away. I’d have to…grab…fast…”
Nabiki looked up at her floating lover. “You okay?”
Ranma gave her a silly grin. “I think I know what to do,” she said in a dazed tone.
Nabiki sweatdropped. Ranma was acting like she had an epiphany, and Nabiki had no idea what was about to happen.
Ranma yelled in time with Akane and lunged as the Tendo girl struck the water. The spirit’s hand passed through the paddle and the water to grab the tail of a goldfish and throw it into the air. Then Ranma’s hand was out, and the water rippled only slightly from the paddle.
Everyone stared at the goldfish as it dropped neatly into stunned Akane’s bowl. “I did it!” Akane cheered. Her paddle wasn’t even broken! “I’m going to try again!”
Nabiki watched in wry amusement as Ranma ‘helped’ Akane. The spirit had to reach into the water at the same moment Akane moved, get the fish into the air, and keep the water from ruining the paddle, all without her watery silhouette being seen. What was really amazing was how fast Ranma was doing it! Nabiki had never seen anything like it.
Within minutes ‘Akane’ had caught every goldfish in the tank. “So they’re free, right?” she asked the gamekeeper excitedly.
The man’s face was a picture of shock and rage. “Not yet! One more thing! Bare handed piranha catching!”
Everyone just stared at the tank of lethal fish.
Almost everyone. “KASHUU TENSHIN AMAGURIKEN!”
Now everyone was staring at the fish flying above the tank.
Almost everyone. Nabiki smirked at Ranma as she floated by the tank with a pleased, proud air about her. And the gamekeeper was too busy screaming in terror as he was buried under the now-falling and angry piranha.
”Bring on the ghoul,” Ranma called, cracking her knuckles. “I’m ready.”
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(Posted Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:40)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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