The red-haired succubus floated beside Akane as the raven-haired girl strode along the sidewalk toward the dojo, Ranma smiling at the way her student was almost skipping with the joy she was radiating. They’d had a couple days to make up for Ryoga’s late-night visit (and for Ranma to mostly recover from the beating she’d received, she thought, though a wonderful session with her lover had maybe also helped — she was still working out just what her capabilities and limitations were). So in spite of the long boring Monday evening Ranma in human form and Akane spent sitting in mystic circles while Nabiki and Nodoka had chanted in order to strengthen their protections against mystical assault, followed by a long and equally boring Tuesday at school, the succubus was in almost as good a mood as the human girl. The practice session at the park, the nature spirit hiding behind trees, benches, and people while trying to ambush Akane, had gone very well — Akane’s newly awakened sense (or perhaps a sense she was newly aware of) was proving even more effective for tracking and detection than sight. Like Ranma’s sight when a succubus, it was blocked by anything alive but not by nonliving objects (like Akane’s clothes, and the suddenly blushing succubus forced her eyes up to her companion’s face).
“Hey, Tomboy, ya did good,” the redhead said at last.
Akane glanced out of the corner of her eye toward the spot where she could sense her sensei, face clouding up and joy tingeing with anger at the nickname for a moment before she forced a grin. “Thanks — and I didn’t even have Nabiki around to distract you,” she jibed back. “I’m a little surprised you did so well, with how late you two stayed up last night.”
Ranma’s blush deepened, her hand rubbing the back of her neck under her loose hair, happy that the other girl couldn’t see her. “Uh, yeah, sorry ‘bout that, didn’t mean ta keep ya up,” she mumbled. “We think it might help me —” get over that beatin’ I took. “Ah ...”
“Why didn’t we wait after school for Nabiki, anyway?” Akane asked after a moment, when it became obvious her sensei (and friend?) wasn’t going to finish the sentence.
“Nabiki had ... business ta take care of, and —” and I didn’t want ta be there as a human, ‘cause it’d look like I’m the muscle fer her blackmail. And it’d be even worse as a spirit, ‘cause they really hate Nabs, and she’s miserable about it.
Looking around for a distraction, the succubus puffed out a light sigh of relief at the sight of three girls she thought she recognized from class in a nearby vacant dirt lot carrying weird-shaped clubs and surrounding another girl, her smoothly muscled body enclosed in the faint image of an unfamiliar school uniform and her hair tied up in an oddly off-center ponytail. “Akane, eyes right,” she murmured.
As Akane turned to look, the three Furinkan girls charged toward the stranger, shrieking their anger. Even as they ran forward, clubs upraised and thrown, the stranger stepped back and raised a hand, and Ranma’s eyes widened as the entire length of the ribbon she sent spinning toward her attackers glowed with ki. The strength of the glow failed to match that of Kuno’s bokken or Ryoga’s bandanas, but it strengthened the swirling fabric enough that airborne clubs were knocked aside and the attackers screamed in pain as it slammed across them and knocked them to the ground.
“If I may restate it ... !” the stranger shouted, her ribbon spinning around her, “ ... perhaps this ... or this ... or this will be clearer!” With each shout, the ribbon slashed out at her defeated attackers, smashing them screaming back into the dirt — until with a loud SNAP Ranma caught the ribbon with one hand, flying backwards to pull its wielder stumbling forward. The girl recovered and moved back, eyes widening as her weapon’s length pulled taut, running suspended in the air from her hand to wrap around apparently empty space.
“Don’t ya think that’s enough?” the now hovering invisible succubus asked. “I mean, you’ve already won, right?”
“What kind of magic is this?” the stranger gasped, and the ribbon’s glow began to fade as she lost her concentration in her shock.
Behind Ranma, Akane helped their schoolmates to their feet. Ranma ignored the murmurs behind her, ‘Ranko’ the only word she understood, focused on the stranger staring at the space occupied by her ribbon-wrapped hand. Then the ki completely faded from the fabric, and it dropped through her fist to the ground. “No magic,” Ranma replied with an invisible shrug, “just Ranko, a local spirit that don’t much care fer people that keep up the beatin’ after they’ve won.”
“Not even a spirit may interfere in the affairs of a Kuno!” the stranger declaimed, and as she spoke she slipped a foot under the handle of one of her attackers’ clubs. Kicking it up, she caught it and Ranma dropped straight down to bury herself waist-deep in the bare earth as wood suddenly shining with ki swept through the air where her shoulders had been a moment before.
Spinning to fly through the murky ground, looking up through the surface, the succubus passed beneath the girl (resolutely ignoring the view it gave her through see-through panties) to come up directly behind the stranger, clasped-together hands catching a heel and spilling the girl forward as Ranma headed skyward.
The girl reached forward as she fell, her dress flaring out around her as she turned her stumble into a handspring. She spun around as she landed on her feet, futilely searching for her invisible opponent. “I see I have some preparations to make before we meet again,” she said. “Remember, I am Kuno Kodachi, the Black Rose of St. Bacchus’s School for Girls!” And with that, she bound to the top of the fence at the side of the empty lot and away across the translucent roofs, wild laughter trailing behind.
From where she hovered scores of feet about the ground, Ranma watched Kodachi dwindle into the distance. “Great, another Kuno, as crazy as Tatewaki,” she muttered.
Turning and looking down, the redhead found Kodachi’s three attackers clustered about her student, tears rolling down their cheeks, wailing, “Akane, please, you have to help us!”
“So you were all ambushed? The entire rhythmic gymnastics martial arts team?” Akane asked from where she sat on her bed, her eyes locked on the bruises and bandages on the faces of the three girls kneeling on the bedroom floor on the other side of a tea tray set for four.
“Every one of us!” one of the girls agreed. “None of us will be able to compete now, we’ll have to withdraw from the match!”
From where she was hovering above the bed beside her student Ranma had to agree, the succubus’s eyes hard as she surveyed the multitude of cuts and what must be bone-deep bruises she could see through the faint images of their clothes, covering the girls’ bodies.
“Akane, you must take our place, no one else at Furinkan can possibly keep that bitch from getting away with this!” another girl asserted, tears streaming down her face.
Whoa, hold on a minute! Ranma glanced over at the youngest Tendo. As she’d feared, the girl’s eyes had lit up at the request.
“Of course —” Akane started, before Ranma broke in.
“A’ course you’ll ask yer sensei about it first, right?”
Akane turned to look up at the spot where she sensed her teacher hovering, face darkening with anger, only to break off to take a deep breath. After all, Ranma was right — she had accepted him as her teacher, and she had to accept the limitations that went with it. And they had a cover story to maintain. “So why don’t you switch so I can ask him?” she ground out.
Ranma nodded in spite of the fact that only Akane could ‘see’ it, and glanced down through the floor at the furo. The room on the floor below was empty. “No problem.”
“From Ranko’s memories, ya want Akane ta take yer place at the next match, right?” Ranma asked from where he now sat on the bed beside Akane, dressed in a set of his preferred Chinese clothes that was kept in the room by the furo.
The girls nodded.
“So tell me just what this rhythmic gymnastics martial arts is all about.”
One long explanation later, Ranma had to admit that the basic concept wasn’t all that bad. Sure, the ball and hoop were pretty silly, but the clubs and ribbon were useful and the training and flexibility needed for the moves was top-notch. “An’ when’s the match?”
“Uh ...” The girls exchanged nervous glances. “Next Tuesday.”
“Next Tuesday ... ya mean one week? You expect Akane ta learn a completely new style in one week?”
Ranma opened his mouth to reject the request outright, but paused at the pleading expressions on the faces of the three girls ... and his student. “Bring over the equipment an’ some training manuals, an’ I’ll see what we can do,” he finally agreed with a sigh. “If by next week I think Akane’s got a shot at at least makin’ a decent showing, we’re in. But only if, an’ I wouldn’t count on it.”
But his last sentence was drowned out by happy squeals from the team, and his heart sank as the three girls jumped up to hug Akane, then rushed from the room to fetch the requested equipment and manuals. This was not going to end well.
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(Posted Thu, 30 Jun 2011 05:07)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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