Ranma was deep in thought as he walked home on auto-pilot. He barely noticed the world around him, stopping at traffic lights and stepping out of the way of other pedestrians without conscious thought. Every now and then he would shift his grip on Hakufu to avoid dropping her, and he even managed to block out his cousin's scent as it tried to distract him like a five star meal.
He still couldn't figure out the reason behind the attack at school. He'd first assumed the order had come from Toutaku, as a revenge for Hakufu beating up that guy at her old school, but according to Ryomou the order had come from Enjyutsu.
As far as Ranma knew, Enjyutsu had never met Hakufu, so she couldn't have offended him personally, and Hakufu hadn't done anything otherwise that would merit her execution. Sure, she had beaten up a bunch of students, but Gakushuu had quickly put her down. And anyway, beating up a few guys was hardly reason enough to order Hakufu's execution.
Ranma guessed the order could have come from Toutaku, like he had initially suspected, and Enjyutsu had just relayed it. But Toutaku didn't have any reason to want Hakufu out of the way either.
Maybe there were some hidden motives involved, some elaborate plan either Enjyutsu or Toutaku had thought up, which was either hindered by Hakufu's presence or helped along by getting her out of the way. If that was the case, Ranma still had no clue what the goal of that plan could be. He simply had too little information. Hell, Enjyutsu hadn't been seen in months!
No matter how he looked at it, the whole thing didn't make any sense to Ranma. But, to be honest, this whole situation, his whole new life didn't make much sense to him.
Take those strange beads, for example. Legend was, the beads contained the souls of warriors who had fought a bloody war in ancient China and had then somehow made their way to Japan. Nobody knew how the beads had made the journey to Japan, they had just one day been there.
For the last 1800 years, people had been chosen to wear the beads and repeat the bloody wars of ancient China, like some demented historical re-enactment of epic proportions. He couldn't see any specific reasoning for why certain beads were given to certain people, but he guessed there was more involved in the process than just throwing dice or consulting a magic eight-ball. The only thing Ranma knew was that the beads were passed down from parent to child, with every generation playing out the war anew.
Which didn't make any sense. If it had been going on for so long, and if the fighters involved had always been that powerful, others should have known about it and either used it to their own ends or put a stop to it. Hell, the fighters involved should have tried to put a stop to it, since a lot of their fates were very gruesome. Yet that hadn't happened. They just went right along with it and, when the time came, they handed their beads over to the next generation.
Lunatics. All of them.
There were other things that Ranma couldn't figure out. He knew that the separate factions involved in the war were now represented by different schools in the Kanto region. How had this been handled 300 years ago, when there hadn't been any public schools? Had they been represented by different dojos, villages, maybe religious cults?
What happened to the schools in the twenty years or so between one generation and the next duking it out over some stupid legend that was riddled with plot holes big enough to drive a truck through? Were they closed down? Opened to the general public? If so, how did the people in charge handle the first fighters of the new generation arriving at school? Did they send all the “normal” students away?
And why wasn't there any historical evidence of past instances of this re-enactment? You'd think a conflict of this size would be mentioned in a history book somewhere, yet there wasn't even a footnote.
It was all just so incredibly moronic. And it was time somebody put a stop to it. If nobody of the people involved was willing to do that, Ranma guessed it would fall to him.
“Say, Ranma,” Hakufu said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Hmm?”
“That last bit you said to Mou-chan, the thing with the maid outfit, what's up with that?”
Ranma smiled. He never would have dared to say anything like that in Nerima, not with four violent girls ready to beat the shit out of him. As much as he hated being sent to some different world and having another guy's thoughts and feelings in his head, playing havoc with his own thoughts and emotions, he had to admit that there were some small benefits to his new life. It wasn't enough to make him forgive Mihoshi, but at least it was something.
“It was nothing,” he told Hakufu.
“I see!” Hakufu exclaimed, smacking her fist into her palm, which caused her to wiggle around. Ranma had to readjust his grip to avoid dropping her. “It's some kind of kinky sex thing you and your girlfriend like to do, right?”
Ranma stopped and turned his head, ending up with his face pressed against Hakufu's right buttock. Blushing bright red, he jerked his head back. “What?! No!” he protested. “I told you already that Ryomou's not my girlfriend!”
Hakufu giggled. “It's okay, Ranma. I'm not judging you, it's just kind of surprising. I never would have pegged you as the kinky kind of guy.”
Ranma growled. “If you don't cut it out I'm going to drop you and let you walk home yourself!”
“All right, all right!” Hakufu said. “I'll be good.”
Shaking his head, Ranma started walking again, grumbling about stupid fool cousins. A short while later Hakufu burst out into another round of giggles. “Who would have thought that little crybaby-Ranma would one day grow up and turn into a pervert?”
“That's it!” Ranma said, throwing Hakufu off his shoulder. “I warned you!”
“Hey! No fair!” Hakufu protested from where she lay sprawled on the side-walk.
Pulling down his eye-lid, Ranma blew his cousin a raspberry. “Nyah! Last one at home is a lazy panda!” he called over his shoulder as he dashed off.
“Hey! That's cheating! You have a head start!”
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(Posted Thu, 18 Nov 2010 06:49)
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