Nabiki groaned as she forced her eyes open and lifted her head to look at the clock on her desk past the red hair of the succubus curled against her, then groaned again. She’d never been a morning person to begin with, considering how late she’d finally given up on her research for the night and called Ranma in to bed her normal wake-up time would have been bad enough, and it wasn’t close her normal wake-up time.
Ranma stirred in her arms as the knock on their bedroom door sounded again. Opening her eyes, the succubus looked toward — and through — the door. “Huh, I wonder what Mom wants,” the redhead mused as she slipped out of Nabiki’s embrace and floated up into the middle of the room.
“Only one way to find out,” Nabiki grumbled as she sat up and rubbed at bleary eyes, blanket pooling about her hips to reveal the T-shirt she normally slept in. “Come in!” she called out more loudly, and after a moment the door opened to reveal her future mother-in-law and sensei in the mystic arts, looking refreshed and wide-awake in a worn keikogi and hakama, a bundle of clothes in one hand and a bokken in the other.
Nabiki groaned at the sight. “Nodo — Mother, I know you didn’t get home until after we went to bed, and that was too late! Why aren’t you still in bed?!”
Nodoka shrugged, one eyebrow rising. “I didn’t want to put off your first morning of training, so I used a refreshening ritual. Why were you up so late on a week night?”
“Refreshening ritual? Training?” Nabiki asked, focusing on the part of Nodoka’s comment that mattered most to her at the moment.
“Yes, you don’t ... ? Well, obviously not or you wouldn’t ask. Yes, it is possible for a sufficiently powerful or skilled Initiate to put off the effects of fatigue for a time. They’re only delayed rather than eliminated, though, so it isn’t something you can do very often without hurting yourself. And as for training, not all threats to an Initiate are mystical, some are very physical — and even some of the mystical ones can be handled by a properly prepared katana. While I don’t expect you to become a competition-level practitioner, I do expect you to achieve basic competency. So, why were you up so late last night?”
“Damn, I could have used that,” Nabiki muttered, grimacing as visions of all too many way too early mornings to come passed before her eyes. Well, girl, you wanted someone to train you instead of this catch-as-catch-can self-study you’ve been doing so far, and you got it. She waved toward the seat at her desk. “For why I was up late last night, Ranma, Akane and I had an ... interesting evening after you left.”
Ranma had perked up at the mention of training and even more when she heard it would be with the katana (Genma had included some weapons training, but only enough that Ranma could use them without embarrassing himself — which put him ahead of most practitioners, considering his skill in unarmed combat), but now Nabiki winced at the disgusted angry fear suddenly radiating from the cute redhead. Looking up, she spread her arms. “Get down here, Ranma,” she ordered. Ranma quickly obeyed, and Nabiki hugged the stiff succubus, fighting her own burning anger. She’d insisted they review what had happened when Ranma had been summoned in their shared dream, and now she ached with her own need to rend and destroy like she hadn’t felt since the betrayal that had led to her Awakening.
But that wasn’t what Ranma needed to be sensing right now after reliving the whole ugly incident, and she throttled back her hatred and focused on the joy her armful had brought into her life. “No ducking into the Voice, this time,” she whispered in Ranma’s ear, running her hands up and down along Ranma’s sides. Ranma nodded jerkily, and the middle Tendo and Nodoka waited until Ranma slowly relaxed under the gentle caresses and waves of love and concern washing over her from her lover and mother.
Nabiki waited until Ranma was practically limp and purring in her arms, then quickly ran through their separate run-ins with Gosunkugi. By the time she was finished, Nodoka was on her feet pacing back and forth, hand gripping her bokken’s hilt so tightly her knuckles were bleached white. Whirling to face Nabiki, she growled, “I don’t care if that idiot is a Gosunkugi, this cannot be allowed to go unpunished!”
Nabiki shook her head, smiling wryly at the role reversal. “Isn’t it the student that’s supposed to be calling for immediate action and the mentor counseling patience?” she asked with forced lightness, feeling Ranma beginning to tense up again under the onslaught of her mother’s anger. “Gosunkugi didn’t actually do anything, Ranma at least cracked the idiot’s ribs if he — she — didn’t break them, I did my best to emasculate him, and he’s due some serious bad luck in school from my Journeyman’s Curse. Leave it, if he didn’t learn anything from this fiasco I’m sure he’ll give us further opportunity to let him know what we think of him. But what did you mean, you ‘don’t care if he’s a Gosunkugi’?”
Nodoka broke off her pacing, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths as she fought her anger under control. Finally, she resumed her seat and did her best to review what Nabiki had told her with a clear mind. “This is bad, very bad,” she finally said thoughtfully. “The Gosunkugi family aren’t people you want for enemies — their name is on that list of possible demon summoners I gave you earlier. And while they aren’t as traditional as I used to be, they are firmly stuck in the past. They think our major mistake leading up to the last war wasn’t adopting the ways of the fascists, but that we didn’t invade Siberia instead of hitting Hawaii and taking southeast Asia, and put off a war with the United States until after we’d consolidated our conquests in China and had developed the Siberian resources. But why would they be attacking you? Why would this ‘Mara’ say that it’s because they’re patriots?”
Nabiki closed her eyes and reviewed what she’d tasted of Gosunkugi’s emotions the previous evening as well as what she could remember of their few previous face-to-face encounters. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t really know,” she admitted. “Considering that Gosunkugi didn’t know what he was doing yesterday I don’t think the rest of his family is involved, yet. But I can’t think of anything I might have done to offend him, and I think what I sensed mixed in with his hatred yesterday was jealousy. I just can’t imagine why he’d be jealous of me.”
Nodoka simply gazed at her for a long moment, then shook her head. “You really don’t understand, do you?” she mused. “For you, magic must just be a tool or a threat. But for the Gosunkugi family, it’s what they are — without it, they’re nothing, their history revolves around it. Much like Saotome-san and the martial arts, now that I think of it, we’ll have to make sure Ranma’s more well-rounded.”
Ranma grimaced, relaxing again as the supercharged emotions faded into intellectual consideration. “That means payin’ more attention in school, right?”
“Well, paying attention, anyway,” her mother responded, smiling at her for a moment before looking back up at Nabiki. “I suspect that your own level of initiation outstrips his considerably, and considering that they consider themselves to be among the elite, perhaps he didn’t take it well. But why did this keep you up so late last night? It sounds as if everything was over by sundown.”
“It was, but I spent hours after getting home looking for some way to protect Ranma from being summoned.”
Ranma straightened, twisting out of Nabiki’s hug to hover a few feet away. “Did ya find anything?” she asked eagerly.
Nabiki shook her head. “No, I didn’t — or rather, nothing beyond the three ways I already knew of, and none of them are exactly optimal.”
“So, what are they?” the red-haired succubus demanded. “Maybe we can use one a’ them until ya think a’ something better.”
“Well, the first you already know, it’s how we first met.” Nabiki paused for a moment, smiling fondly as she remembered the day a busty redhead with a cute smile showed up in her broken summoning circle instead of the ugly death, or worse, that she’d feared, before refocusing on Ranma. “If I cast a summoning and go for as much time as I can, it should last for up to a week. With that in place, anyone else trying to summon you would have to overcome the strength of the ritual as well as your own willpower. The problem is that that would mean you’d bounce to me whenever you get splashed — not the worst thing that can happen, but not exactly convenient if, say, you want to spar with Akane as a succubus. Also, if someone was attacking someone you were trying to protect other than me, all he’d have to do is splash you with cold water and you’d instantly be somewhere else, maybe miles away or more.”
“Yeah, that wouldn’t work so good,” Ranma agreed. “Kinda hard ta protect the weak if a splash a’ cold water sends ya on yer way.”
“Right. Now, the second two ways are more permanent, but both have serious problems — the familiar bond and the purpose bond.”
Nodoka winced, and Ranma looked confused at the disgust she felt suddenly radiating from her mother. “I take it they’re bad,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” Nabiki agreed. “Well, actually, the familiar link isn’t so bad, so long as it’s limited to an animal. It forms a bond between the target and the Initiate that lasts so long as they both live. Through the link that master will always know where the familiar is and use any or all of its senses — see through its eyes, hear through its ears, smell what it smells, feel what it feels. The master can also draw on the familiar’s energy to stay alert during long castings. The familiar cannot even consider harming its master, and must follow any orders it’s given as best it can. This is all fine — so long as the familiar is an animal or nonsentient nature spirit. If it’s a sentient nature spirit or demon, you might as well use the term ‘slave’ instead of ‘familiar’ — not what I want our relationship to be like.”
Ranma grimaced. “Ya got that right,” she agreed, then blanched at a sudden thought. “Could Gosunkugi summon me an’ do that to me?” she asked, looking sick.
An suddenly uncertain and concerned Nabiki glanced at her mentor.
“Yes, but not easily,” Nodoka said to her ‘daughter’ reassuringly. “One problem with using the familiar bond on sentients is that it can be resisted by the victim. That’s why almost all familiars are either animals or very weak demons — the animals can’t resist, at least not effectively, and low level demons usually don’t want to resist. They’ll use the period of servitude to encourage their ‘masters’ to become more and more corrupt. Nature spirits are another matter — they’ll fight the forming bond, and so for a nature spirit with any real strength of will, the Initiate will need an extended casting time to strengthen the ritual, help from other Initiates or quite a few supporters, some way to weaken the will of the victim first, or more likely some mix of the three. If this Gosunkugi scion is working alone as Nabiki thinks, he is very unlikely to be able to do any of that.”
Ranma sighed with relief, color returning to her face. (Nabiki wondered for a moment at how closely succubae mimicked humans, seeing how they didn’t have blood, or anything like it, and most humans couldn’t even see them.) “So, what’s the last way?” she asked.
“That one’s nasty,” Nabiki said with a shudder, and Ranma winced at the disgust her mother was again radiating. Her fiancée continued, “The purpose bond is where a spirit or demon is bound to a task rather than a person. The task can be anything from as simple as ‘guard this treasure’ to as complicated as ‘look after this family’s well-being’. This bond is only used on demons or sentient nature spirits, because the nonsentient spirits will usually be so bound up in the task that they starve to death—the ones that ‘eat’, anyway. And unlike the familiar bond, this one doesn’t end when the Initiate that cast the ritual dies — if enough people are involved in the ritual, it can take centuries, even millennia for it to weaken enough for the demon or nature spirit to break free.”
Pausing for a moment as she thought over what she’d said, Nabiki added, “I’ve wondered how nature spirits bound to one room keep from going insane, I figured the stories of the djinn trapped in centuries in bottles were examples of that. But I suppose the Voice would be a big help in keeping trapped nature spirits mentally stable.”
“Okayy ... so neither a’ those will work, so what will?”
“I don’t know,” Nabiki admitted. “I’ve gone through all the books I’ve managed to pick up again and didn’t find anything new. You, Mother?”
Nodoka shook her head. “No, nothing I can think —” Breaking off, she thought for a moment, then actually grinned. “Actually, there is something we can do ... or I can do, rather. Am I correct that Gosunkugi knows Ranma’s name?” The two teenagers exchanged glances and nodded. “Good, that means he’ll be using it in any attempted summonings. But I’m the one that has official custody of Ranma, and the only reason I kept the Saotome family name when I divorced Saotome-san was so that Ranma would have an easier time finding me if he ever looked. Now that we’re together again, there’s no reason I can’t go back to my maiden name — and Ranma, as well.”
Nabiki grinned viciously at the thought. “Oh, that’s beautiful. We can keep ‘Saotome’ as Ranma’s use name, and Gosunkugi can try summoning after summoning and get absolutely nowhere! And he’ll have no idea why it suddenly isn’t working....”
“Yes, a pleasant thought,” Nodoka agreed, then glanced at the desk clock. “Well, it’s gotten too late to start your training this morning, Nabiki, we’ll just have to put it off until tomorrow. Why don’t you two head for the furo, and I’ll go help out Kasumi.”
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(Posted Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00)
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