The bear took about half an hour to die, but it didn't go far from where Ranma shot it before bleeding too much to move. Ranma was quite happy not having to hunt down anything for the night's meal, but as he laboriously cut the thighs from the animal and trimmed off the fat, he had to consider the waste not being able to preserve most of the meat.
"Ranma," Konoka called from behind him, "We're done dig—"
The girl's voice halted when Ranma turned toward her, allowing her a good view of the carcass as well as the large stain of blood splattered on his lower clothing. Konoka instantly covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut in revulsion. There was a smell as well, but Ranma had long stopped noticing.
"You're done with the pit?" Ranma asked. He had ordered the girls to dig out a pit for cooking. Bear meat would be easiest and safest as a stew.
Konoka nodded, even though her eyes were still shut tight.
"Good," Ranma said. He decided to let Konoka leave before she threw up. "Go see if Setsuna's done gathering wood."
The girl immediately rushed off, and Ranma turned back to his grisly work.
Dinner was awkward, not the least because Ranma hadn't changed out of his stained clothes while cooking. Or eating. Everyone else kept glancing at him in disquiet or disgust. Yue and Nodoka were equally repelled by the crimson splotches on his pants as Konoka had been, but nobody was bothered enough to refuse dinner. The stew wasn't gourmet fare, since the bear was tough and he had no flavorings to make the meat taste better, but as always food was food and the girls were hungry.
The night was cool and quiet after dinner, with the sounds of the wind and nocturnal animals giving a low rumble of background noise amidst the oaks. Nodoka and Yue had done a pretty good job—even without his instruction—putting up a debris hut, draping foliage over a wooden framework that leaned up against a nearby tree. He thought they were simple city kids, but the three bookish girls had their random competence. Not enough that he gave them a task with dangerous tools—he could only trust Setsuna around a hatchet—but it was nice that he didn't have to hold their hands. Sitting around the fire's bright and crackling glow, Konoka, Nodoka, and Yue were reading.
Ranma sat against the firm trunk of a tree, practicing his posture and breathing exercises while looking way up at the clouds hanging in the night sky. His eyes followed the faint motion of those clumps of gray that were slightly illuminated by a tiny gibbous moon visible from the clearing. Looks like there won't be rain tonight.
Setsuna was watching him. Ranma didn't need to divert his attention to know this because Setsuna had been watching him constantly during the day or so he's known her, so when Konoka commented on it suddenly, Ranma was only surprised that nobody else had noticed it before.
"Why are you staring at Ranma like that?" Konoka asked.
As usual, Setsuna didn't reply to Konoka's question.
From where Konoka's voice came, Yue's did as well. "So," she said with that flat tone of disinterest, "are you falling for him, or what?"
Ranma heard Setsuna sputter. He wasn't sure why Setsuna's stoicism would find this a good time to crack.
"Why would you think that?" Setsuna said with maybe a hint of hysteria. Did the question really rattle her so much?
"Well," Yue said, "you're always looking at him. And you sit closer to him than you do us. Makes people wonder."
Ranma chuckled at that, and he could feel three gazes instantly land on him. "She's not sitting close to me," he said, hoping to spare Setsuna some of the embarassment she no doubt felt. "She's sitting between me. Between us."
Konoka asked, "You don't think it's because she sees something in you, Ranma?"
He could hear a bit of hesitant teasing in Konoka's voice, as if she wasn't sure she should ask that. "Oh, I'm sure she sees something," Ranma said. "It's just that when you spend enough of your life—"
He almost said "hurting people".
"—fighting, you learn what protectiveness looks like."
The girls were quiet for a long second, then Ranma heard Setsuna get up. "You claim you're a martial artist," she said with a heavy touch of venom in her voice. "In the name of the Gods Cry, I challenge you to a match."
Ranma could feel space bend around him, faintly tugging him in Setsuna's direction. It was how his refined sense for Chi manifested, and the gravity of Setsuna's stoked energies—though still suppressed enough to be invisible—told him she wasn't the first-year swordsmanship student he had guessed her to be until now.
He drew his sight back from the clouds to his body in a snap, ignoring the moment of disorientation. When he turned his head, Setsuna was already standing before him with a stout tree branch in her hand. He didn't have to guess how she would use it. The other three girls were silently watching with a mixture of horror and interest.
"Really," Ranma asked with bored look at Setsuna, "if you want a fight, you could just skip the formality and take a swing."
"I'm not some barbarian living in the woods."
A fair point. Ranma didn't have a comeback for that, so he chuckled. "And when did I earn this much of a grudge?"
"This isn't about a grudge," Setsuna said with an irritated glare at his flippancy, "or about your attitude."
"Then there's some other reason?"
"I just want to see what kind of fighter you are. As a martial artist, you should understand such a desire."
"I understand it fine," Ranma said. He turned his gaze away. "I don't like indulging it though. Besides, is it okay for your friends to see this kind of thing? I remember the Gods Cry was pretty secretive about their style."
The comment made Setsuna pause, but she quickly rallied. "There's no need to display any secret arts. All I ask for is a simple match, to the first clean strike."
"And what good would a plain duel to one point be?"
"When you beat me before, I was unarmed. I want to know if I can beat you with a weapon. It's just to prove myself."
Something about that explanation didn't sound right, but Ranma didn't mind taking her at her word. Besides, whatever her reason for challenging him, he needed her help to get all the girls out of the forest. He stood up slowly and stretched his arms, then turned toward the girls.
Setsuna bowed shallowly with her hands at her sides and her eyes firmly locked on his.
Ranma looked over at Konoka and the others. They were watching with rapt attention, and he couldn't help feeling like a dinner and show for these girls. With a shrug, he took off the sheathed knife worn behind his waist and set it to one side. Setsuna watched in confusion, but without letting her ask why he was disarming, Ranma pressed his palms together in front of him with fingers spread, closed his eyes, and slightly bowed his head forward in salute. When he opened his eyes again, Setsuna looked even more confused.
"So," Ranma said, with a tone that was completely unconcerned about the fight, "what style do you want to compare against?"
In contrast, Setsuna sounded very tense indeed. "How many styles do you know?"
"Bits and pieces. You could say I collect random techniques and training styles."
"Then I'd like to face your strongest style."
The strongest style, Ranma thought, wasn't something he would turn on a little girl. "I'll show you my favorite," he said, "but don't cry about it later."
If Setsuna noticed the difference, she didn't show it. The two of them moved a small distance away from the campfire, and Setsuna readied her branch with both hands, pointing the tip towards Ranma's head in a basic kendo stance. Her breathing became measured and calm. The mundaneness of it almost made Ranma cringe.
Ranma bounced on the balls of his feet for a moment before raising his fists defensively in front of him, then relaxing and letting his hands fall open. A swirl of wind wrapped around him, gently ruffling the few loose flaps of his hunting outfit. "My style is called Silver Wind Tribute, if you care to know. I'll let you start."
The two of them stood quiet and unmoving, giving Ranma a chance to admire the feel of Setsuna's energy shifting inside her body. One of the spectators—Ranma didn't see who—started to speak, and as if it was a signal, Setsuna jumped the meter between them with a heavy two-handed slash towards his head. He had no doubt a stick that size would cave in a normal man's temple, so he pushed himself back with his leading foot, just barely avoiding cranial damage. When Setsuna's slash arrested itself at chest level and she shifted into an advancing cut to his left, he flipped to his right. Setsuna's attempt to tag him with that second cut as he leapt past her failed—the tumbling movement carried him far past the girl.
The flip ended in Ranma rolling into a squat, facing Setsuna with an amused smirk on his face. If nothing else, her annoyed expression already made this match more interesting than when he had wrestled her into a chokehold and pointed a blade into her back.
Still, if she was only using kendo then the match wouldn't get anywhere. And flowing cuts, while a mainstay of fencing and very nice to look at, required too much lower-body stability to catch up with his style's characteristic mobility.
Ranma figured he should just end it quickly. When Setsuna moved forward toward him again, he stepped inside her range with a burst, punched her with one fist like spear to the stomach, and stepped back out of range just as quickly. The shot knocked her right on her rear.
Setsuna got up again expressionlessly, even though such a blow should've knocked the air out of a grown man and left him gasping for half an hour. She had cushioned the blow with her internal energy. It made sense, Ranma supposed, since she wasn't using that aura of hers to perform any Gods Cry techniques.
"That's a hit," Ranma said.
Setsuna looked surprised, as if she had forgotten what the terms of the match were. "I didn't feel anything," she said after a pause.
This made Ranma's mood darken. "It looked pretty clean to me." He turned to the audience that was sitting by the campfire. "What do you think?"
"Are you alright?" Konoka asked Setsuna, halfway scrambling up from her sitting position and looking like she was in a small panic.
"Fast," Nodoka murmured. Maybe. Ranma couldn't hear her well because the girl with the fringe lost the ability to enunciate whenever he looked in her direction.
"I've seen more elaborate fight scenes on TV," Yue said, then turned back to her book.
Ranma turned back to Setsuna. "Everybody agrees, I won."
Setsuna scowled back, pointedly ignoring Konoka. "The match isn't done. That was too quick."
Ranma walked over for his knife. "You're not changing the rules on me, are you?"
"That exchange wasn't enough. I already know you're fast and you can dodge. That fight didn't prove anything."
"I didn't think it would. I don't think the next one will either."
"Fine, then I'll challenge you using my school's techniques."
Ranma sighed, and hooked the knife and sheath back onto his waist. "Didn't we establish that you can't show those to your friends?"
"We can have the fight were they can't see."
The response made Ranma give a melodramatic groan. He sat back down next to his tree, and said, "Not tonight dear. I have a headache."
Over to the side, Yue snickered, then quickly covered it up.
"Do you think this is funny?" Setsuna all but snarled while scathing Yue with a quick glare.
Ranma gave Setsuna a flat look, smiled for just a moment, then turned his gaze up to the cloudy sky again for his exercises.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:12)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.