Ranma began to notice the changes that had been wrought by the magic box. First was the fact that the dining room of the Nekohanten seemed much smaller than it used to. Then there was the fact that he was looking down at everyone—even Soun Tendo, who topped six feet tall. Ranma noticed his arms next; they were bulging with muscle and covered with black fur. He held up his hand and saw his fingers were tipped with vicious looking claws that seemed to extend to the length of small daggers and retract again as he flexed them.
Gulping in trepidation, Ranma spotted a large mirror on one wall and he stepped over to it.
Now, it should be said that Ranma's current state of mind was a fractured mess. There was currently a three way battle being waged between his ears by the three distinct pieces. In one corner was Ranma's conscious mind. In another was the Nekoken that had begun to emerge thanks to Shampoo and Akane. And in the last corner was the programming that Iceron had included in the transformation spell. The programming would have overwhelmed any of the other two by themselves, but as it was the three fragments achieved an odd sort of balance—at least until Ranma looked in the mirror. The horror Ranma saw when he looked in the mirror gave the Nekoken just enough power to edge into control. However, unlike the previous times, it was unable to fully suppress Ranma's consciousness or Iceron's programming. Basically, Neko-Ranma was able to think on a human level—filtered through the instincts of the cat of course, which amounted to most of Ranma's ethical and moral standards being ditched in favor of satisfying basic drives. Neko-Ranma was also aware of its cool new powers thanks to the tutorial contained in Iceron's programming. The directives of the programming, like Ranma's morals and ethics, were tossed out for the same reasons. Thus the Nekoken evolved into The Smilodon.
So as the gather NWC watched in dismay, Ranma's hybrid form shifted to his full smilodon form—which was as big as a small car and stood four foot tall at the shoulder. The big, prehistoric hunting cat surveyed the room and its occupants.
The Smilodon was aware of a number of things. Foremost was that he was the very first of his kind and by extension, currently the only one. Enter basic drive one: find a strong mate, make more smilodons. Of the six females in the room, only the ancient one qualified as strong enough, but the Smilodon recognized she was long past the time when she could provide him with a litter of kittens. Three of the others were borderline and he might eventually add them to his pride, but he knew there were more powerful potential mates out there.
Finding none meeting his needs, the Smilodon saw no reason to stay. He activated his last gift, the power of shadow, and the shadows boiled up around him, surrounding him in a dark aura, and he faded from sight. The last thing to fade was his hugely fanged grin in a far more frightening parody of the Cheshire Cat.
"Noooo!" the fiancées howled, rushing over to the area where the Smilodon had been and finding not a trace of him.
"What just happened?" Nabiki blinked.
"The Shadow Dance..." Cologne breathed in awe. She'd read about such a technique but in all her three plus centuries, she had never witnessed it. "Son-in-law could be halfway across the planet by now."
The Smilodon stepped out of the shadow of a tree and found himself...
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(Posted Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:34)
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