Restart Deluge! Sightless Spark: Don't Provoke Him [Episode 242459]

by KLSymph

Those words had just left Konoemon's mouth when Ranma's arrow struck the old man's shoulder. A shell of blue light glimmered over Konoemon's body, and the arrow rebounded off to land on the ground.

"Come now," Konoemon said, "don't be petulant. I am here to talk."

Ranma was wary, but he set his bow aside and slid from behind the tree into Konoemon's sight. He took comfort in knowing Konoemon couldn't see him much better, since the contours of his body and the details of his face were hidden beneath his dark hunting outfit and hood. "What do you want?" he asked.

Konoemon stood with hands open. "Only to know why you've treated my girls so harshly. Setsuna told me a story, but surely you have your own side to give."

A pointless request, Ranma thought. He had no interest in explaining anything. "If you care so much about those girls, you should be with them, not hiding in a clearing and talking to me."

Konoemon raised his hands as if to hold back Ranma's irritation. "I do not wish to start an argument, Ranma—"

"Then why did you give that Gods Cry girl a sword and tell her to find me?"

"To give us some time to speak."

"Then do so. What do you want? I know you want something."

Ranma's refusal to humor Konoemon's pleasantries left the old man sighing.

"Your father asked me to talk to you."

This reply piqued Ranma's interest. The last time he checked, Genma was working mundane jobs. "Why?"

Konoemon spoke with an air of severity. "He claimed that you've separated yourself from human contact too much this past season, and you've not shown any interest in ending your seclusion. Genma was concerned that your social development would be stunted if you don't spend more time with children your age."

Ranma snorted. "Sounds a bit high-brow, coming from Pops."

"He didn't use these words, of course. Genma wanted to enroll you into school, and since he promised before—""

As Konoemon spoke, Ranma felt a few suspicions click into place. "You sent these girls?!" he said suddenly, loudly, and with narrowed eyes.

The change in his expression cut Konoemon's line of thought. "That's a rather large jump."

Not so, Ranma thought. If Genma told Konoemon about Ranma's camp, it explained why Konoemon's granddaughter and students blundered there. "Those girls couldn't last a day in the woods!"

Konoemon looked at Ranma good and hard before relaxing his wrinkled face. "I wanted them to find you—"

"And you did this because you wanted me in school? You thought those girls would convince me?" As annoyed as Ranma felt about Konoemon's actions, the confirmation lifted a burden from his shoulders. "Well," he said, "that makes everything easier. I've delivered the girls back to you. Maybe it was one of your games, but my job is done."

The declaration left him feeling a little lighter, and as Konoemon began to protest, Ranma turned on his heel to leave. He did so just in time to notice Setsuna behind him, swinging her sword at his shoulder.

Practiced reflex sent his gloved left hand against the descending steel, pushing it past, while his right hand reached for the knife holstered behind his waist. The back of Setsuna's sword bit into the dirt before his feet. She wasted no time pulling it out and backing away with a scowl.

"You will not leave," Setsuna said, "until the headmaster has finished speaking."

As Ranma relaxed his knife hand, he gave the girl a dark look. Her actions finally made sense. Konoka, Yue, and Nodoka might have lacked an ulterior motive, but Setsuna had been watching over them. Setsuna lead the others, which meant she lead them to his camp after they became lost. Setsuna also started this business by attacking him. Was that part of Konoemon's plan?

He glanced at the sword Setsuna held, and noticed she wasn't cutting at him when she attacked. "And you're going to stop me? With the blunt side of your sword?"

"I hoped I would not need to threaten you," Setsuna said. She turned the long field sword—as long as she was tall—until the sharp outer curve faced him. "However, if you think to go through me, then come."

Ranma grimaced, though Setsuna couldn't see it. "If you make this more difficult, I'll walk all over you."

He stepped forward with hands at his side, and his boots scuffed the hard dirt ground. One step. Two steps. He strode deliberately toward Setsuna and the trees beyond her. It was one thing, he thought, for Setsuna to fight him because of a bad first impression, or because of martial artist pride, or because of how he treated her friends. He had no interest in fighting her because Konoemon wanted it.

The moment he stepped within Setsuna's range, she jumped forward with her sword raised high. He watched the girl swing towards him, as if to slash him from left shoulder to right hip. He watched until the moment before the edge—covered with a visible layer of white aura—touched him.

The moment passed.

The edge parted the mud-colored cloth layer of his hunting garb.

The edge parted the padded shirt beneath that outer layer.

The edge parted the skin beneath that shirt.

Ranma felt the sword draw an icy cold line across his chest, leaving a long gash in his skin as it passed.

Red warmth splashed across the ground.

He staggered, squeezed his eyes shut, and clutched his chest with his right arm. The pain of the gash changed from icy cold to burning hot, as if someone had poured a line of molten iron across his body.

"Did you think I was bluffing?" Setsuna asked him as he stumbled back. "Did you think I would let you walk away, and leave unjustified all the misery you heaped on us?"

Throughout Ranma's body, inner vessels channeled Chi from his heart, swirling and shaping unseen glyphs beneath his skin. Beneath the pain of Setsuna's cut, he could feel the motions and the patterns take form.

Ranma opened his eyes, and his energies stilled. Under his ripped clothes, the line of opened flesh closed and sealed under sutures of new skin. He felt the pain abruptly dull to nothing as he snuffed all nociperception in his torso.

What a shame, Ranma thought as he lowered his arm. He had indeed believed that Setsuna was bluffing. He gambled that she had more restraint, or lacked the guts to commit to an attack. Somewhere deep, he gambled on Konoemon holding her back.

The gamble failed, and now he was stuck. Setsuna attacked him, and he promised to retaliate.

Ranma straightened, and Setsuna raised her sword. When she did so, her eyes strayed from him onto the edge of her sword. There, a thin red vapor floated and vanished, leaving the steel clean.

He could see the confusion in the girl's eyes as they darted to his chest, then to the ground where red had fallen from her slash. Nothing. No splash of color in either place.

Setsuna hurriedly locked her gaze on him again. "So it's true," she muttered.

Ranma didn't know what Setsuna meant. Maybe she thought he was invincible, which was silly, but he pretended that before. He turned his head to check Konoemon's reaction, and found the old man watching the two of them with undisguised curiosity. A whisper of movement warmed him that Setsuna was moving during his inattention, and when he stepped to the side, he felt the ill breeze of her sword passing near.

When Ranma saw Setsuna recovering from the miss, he stepped into the girl close enough to swing an arm at her unguarded face.

He didn't slap Setsuna. That would be crude.

What he did do was no kinder, though. Inner vessels entwined beneath his gloved palm, shaping in his hand a small disk of distorted air.

Ranma's palm met the side of Setsuna's jaw with the lightness of a leaf floating to earth. The expansion of distorted air along the axis of the disk he held was not light. It was an explosion, and it hurled Setsuna's entire body like a doll for a full ten meters.

She would've gone farther, but a forest has trees.

Ranma flexed his fingers, feeling the stiffness of the kevlar material. He was impressed that Setsuna had enough of her wits protect herself, landing from her collision only a little stunned by the sudden accelerations. He was more annoyed, though.

With a thick aura of protective energy burning around her, Setsuna took up her dropped sword. Her breath was labored, but Ranma could see she was unhurt. He walked forward, and he could see Setsuna considering her options. Before he could move close enough to attack with his hands, she dropped into a low stance and stabbed her field sword at him with both hands.

Months ago, when Ranma built the martial style he called "Basic", he asked his dad to contribute a technique that complemented the style's defensiveness. Genma had hemmed and hawed, but after long persuasion, the man offered a trick for escaping Chi senses. It was best used for stealth, but Ranma found a niche use in distraction.

As Setsuna's sword tip pierced the space where Ranma's chest should've been, Ranma's energy flickered to the left, while his body moved to the right. For a moment, Ranma could see Setsuna's confusion as her senses disagreed. A person's energy and a person's body should occupy the same space. Which sense, sight or spirit, was the illusion?

Setsuna turned her thrust into a slash at Ranma's spirit presence. Uselessly.

Since she stopped him from leaving, Ranma figured he'd at least take Setsuna's ability to do so again. A few broken bones would suffice.

Ranma's fist struck her in the center of her chest even as his wayward presence dissipated. Setsuna's protective aura just managed to protect her ribcage from breaking. Genma's Chi suppressing technique had lasted a single blink.

Setsuna fell back at the pain in her chest, and her breaths came in wheezes. Ranma again approached her without hesitation, and Setsuna's aura guttered when his body flickered three steps ahead of where it stood.

His palm struck her chest. Setsuna fell gasping onto her back, and Ranma raised one boot, but when he tried to deliver it to her chest for a third hit, Setsuna blurred.

Ranma's senses were sharp. They had to be, because Basic exploited precise movement in its counterstrikes. While no mundane fighter's eyes could see Setsuna's Chi-enhanced leap, Ranma followed it easily. The girl had jumped upward fast enough to clear the tops of the trees above, and she descended with the entirety of her strength in a two-handed slash toward his head.

To slash at that speed required strict timing, which in turn required estimating the victim's distance. Ranma fouled that estimate by jumping to meet Setsuna and grabbing her hands before she could complete the swing.

They landed back on the dirt with a thud that Ranma felt in his bones. He sagged at the impact, and when he looked up, he saw Setsuna's eyes flashing at his moment of vulnerability.

Ranma's grip slid to Setsuna's wrists to keep the sword overhead from cutting into him. Setsuna used her higher position to press him further downward until he was almost on one knee.

Then her eyes widened as they saw the pale skin of her wrists blacken at the touch of his gloves.

Setsuna's reaction was instant. Before he forced any more Chi into her body, she kicked him in the chest—which he didn't feel—and sent him reeling back. Her wrists were already black and blistered, and Ranma saw Setsuna fumbling with the hilt of her sword. She couldn't muster the strength to hold it firmly, not with the agony that Ranma's technique instilled.

It was the same technique he used to hobble her before, but back then it was painless. Too bad, he had no time for that kind of precision. Or care.

Ignoring the dissonance of being kicked in a recent sword wound and feeling nothing of it, Ranma walked up to Setsuna again. This time, her attack was so pitiful he didn't need any technique to pull the sword from her hands. Setting the blade on the ground, Ranma grabbed Setsuna by the front of her jacket before she could back away.

Konoemon's hand fell onto his. "That's enough, Ranma."

Ranma turned his eyes toward Konoemon very slowly before he released Setsuna. With a sharp turn of his hand, he flung off Konoemon's grasp.

He said, "I haven't walked over her yet."

"Look at her hands," Konoemon said with a frown. "She can no longer fight. To continue is petty cruelty."

No longer fight? That's stupid. All he did was corrode Setsuna's skin, and while it must hurt, why would it prevent her from fighting? When he took a slash to the chest, did he stop? No, Setsuna might not want to continue, but that wasn't enough. He wanted her truly, physically unable to obstruct him again.

Konoemon said, "Don't do—"

Ranma yanked Setsuna by the collar with his left hand, tipping her forward and off balance. In his right hand, he shaped another disk and pressed it into the top of Setsuna's back.

The blast of Setsuna meeting the unforgiving ground sent the treetops shivering. She probably broke a few things.

In the blast's same instant, an instant too late for it to matter, Konoemon knocked Ranma back with a clap of thunder.

Ranma pushed himself up from the ground. He saw Konoemon's back as the old man chanted over Setsuna's prone form. Konoemon had turned Setsuna face up, and her bruises were fading as he watched.

Was Konoemon healing her again? Ranma couldn't allow it. Healing the girl would just force Ranma to hurt her twice, and that would be genuinely petty and cruel.

Without a word, he aimed a punch at Konoemon's back. His punch met the solid, glowing blue shell that deflected his arrow before. Ranma pounded his fist against the barrier again to no effect, and Setsuna's eyes blinked open and began to focus on him.

Ranma saw Konoemon glance at him as the old man continued to chant and as color—not much, but some—returned to Setsuna's pale skin. Konoemon's expression was guarded, not infuriated, but Ranma knew what elderly displeasure looked like.

Konoemon's face clouded in puzzlement when energy in the air coalesced into a shining point at the end of Ranma's index finger. Puzzlement turned to shock when Ranma flicked the dot forward, shooting a thin and incandescent white line that punched a tiny hole in the blue shell of Konoemon's barrier even as it punched an equally tiny hole in the cloth of Konoemon's robe, and then in the flesh of Konoemon's arm.

Ranma had to admit, if he hadn't seen Konoemon spin fast enough to dodge a point-blank dart to the lung, he wouldn't have believed the old man could do it.

The blue shell that covered Konoemon and Setsuna crumbled as Konoemon cradled his arm. Still on the ground, Setsuna tried to rise, but Ranma's boot on her chest stopped that nonsense.

Ranma looked down on her. "Well," he said, "I guess this is fine." He lifted his boot away just as quickly. Now that he fulfilled his threat, he was satisfied, and he didn't need to continue any humiliation.

"It is regrettable," Konoemon said, "that things have reached this point." Konoemon allowed his arms to fall, and Ranma noted that the old man no longer seemed in pain. "Genma warned me you would be disagreeable, but I sent my granddaughter and her friends in the hope that in aiding them, your defensiveness might be softened. How could I have known you could be this belligerent?"

Konoemon waved a wrinkled hand, and a soft sheen of green light rose into the sky. Ranma stared at the old man in confusion, until he felt the presence of many spirit sources tugging at his balance from every direction.

Seconds passed in silence as he wondered how he could deal with reinforcements, and when a dozen dark-robed mages burst into sight and ringed him in with Setsuna and Konoemon, he had thought of only one thing to try.

In one swift motion, Ranma reached down and pulled Setsuna up by the neck with his left hand. She must've been poorly healed, because she managed only a half-breath and a quiet cry as he spun her forward and curled his left arm around her throat. Her injured body, too weak stand, dangled in his grip.

Konoemon's expression fell as Ranma lifted Setsuna's pained face for all to see, while around them, the hooded mages stopped their advance. Though Ranma didn't want to do it, he pulled his knife from his back holster and pressed the point against the back of Setsuna's jacket, to the right of the girl's spine.

"Hmm," Ranma said at a sudden realization. "I think we've gone in one big circle."

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(Posted Fri, 31 Dec 2010 00:01)


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