Cavorting through the air in a spinning aerial kick maneuver, Ranma was contentedly in his happy place. Even with everything that had befallen him, he still could find solace in the martial arts.
Here in the gymnasium of the training facility, he had both the room and the privacy to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet as he went through his kata.
It was just one of many reasons he was glad to work for AEGIS. To be honest, it was really one of the high points in his life, despite it being connected to one of the low points in his life. Where a lot of AEGIS combat personnel didn't relish being sent out into combat against a plethora of dangerous enemies, Ranma welcomed the chance to put his martial arts to work and do a bit of good.
Of course, it was nowhere near as cut and dry as the days way back when. Originally they'd only fought the invaders, but Ranma was experienced with well over a hundred factions. There were good guys, like the Magic Knights Rayearth, who actually protected a fantasy world of a different name despite actually being natives to Earth. Rayearth was just apparently the name of their giant robot, which Ranma had never gotten to see. There were not-quite good guys like the Sailor Senshi, who were quite frankly very confusing and worrisome. Ranma got the distinct impression that even they didn't know what they were going on about. There were of course the obvious bad guys, and Ranma was familiar with a variety of demons from different dimensions, the 'Rokugan Festering Pit Oni' and the 'Baelspawns' being among the worst, at least at the cannon fodder level.
Then, just like the Senshi, there were demons that bucked that trend, and Ranma was actually on good terms with multiple factions of demons, even if he did have to kick their ass because they were under summoning contracts.
What bothered him about AEGIS was the original reason he was with that group as they'd started allying with other similar factions and fighting diversified foes.
He had a Gate. A Gate that extolled a horrible price upon his very soul.
Unfortunately, it didn't do anything obvious and mundane like make him a vampire, destroy his body, blight his soul, or even turn him into a girl.
For that reason, people liked to see him use his Gate, no matter how much he objected, or how violently he objected. To his dismay, even his enemies often demanded him to use it, and it was to them he gave his most violent objections.
...because that was his job...getting violent with the enemy that is.
They called it the Gate of Light.
He called it the Gate of Annoyance.
Everyone summarily ignored him and demanded he use it more often.
They demanded it politely however because the Gate was pretty darn powerful and he kicked fairly major butt even without it.
To Ranma's dismay the gate never fully closed, so he had to live with the side-effects pretty much constantly.
First there were the innate effects, namely increased stats all across the board. Ranma argued it was mostly him, even the enhanced regeneration, but he was mostly ignored on that subject.
The second was an eventuality of the first, as the Gate enhanced his ki, it also affected his ki techniques. He could fire ki blasts with ease, though everyone else considered it his 'Power Blast' and a direct application of the Gate instead of time honed skill.
Damn jerks.
He could do a lot with his golden ki projectiles, from a simple ki blast, to one that detonated like a bomb, a beam that could be rather large, and even a flurry of individual homing energy missiles. He thought it was damn impressive himself, but everyone always wanted to see the fancier stuff.
The real off-shoot of his gate was that he had access to other energy types to project.
Light was obviously one of them, the easiest form being a blue-white hot beam of plasma, light and ki. He could do the homing arrows with it fairly easily, by trying to form balls and bombs out of it didn't work too well.
Then there was the darkness, a cold formless blackish substance that tended to act a lot like endothermic light absorbing goo that would sprout tentacles and act pretty darn sticky and sometimes semi-sentient. As that was the friendly application of it, people didn't like seeing that a lot.
Ranma liked using it because he felt it debunked the whole 'Gate of Light' thing, except everyone would just go on about balance and duality and such nonsense.
Then he'd blast the lab technicians with harmless gobs of the dark stuff. It might have been petty and childish, but it was also satisfying and shut them up about it.
The final energy type happened when he combined 'Light' and 'Dark' and got what amounted to annihilation similar to Saturn's Silence Glaive Surprise. His version tended to be accompanied by a sonic boom that some say sounded like the world tearing itself apart, so some genius had dubbed it 'The Sound' as a counter-point to his partners 'Silence'.
He really wished people would stop naming stuff already.
These abilities, Ranma didn't begrudge his Gate because they were fairly darn useful, and they didn't have much in the way of nasty side-effects. While he'd love to depend on his martial arts skill, he wasn't about to let others down just because he didn't want to use his gate at all.
To his chagrin, there had been a video game released called Metroid Prime Echoes where the heroine had his energy blasting powers, though at least they were original enough to have it originate from some kind of alien power armor.
Also in the department of stuff he didn't mind was the fact that he had a sword. Unlike most swords, his straight double edged sword that possessed such simple clean lines had a crystalline blade. When it wasn't in his possession, the blade would like like it was formed from smoky black quartz. When he did hold it, it would change color like a mood ring, often settling into a smoky white with specks of bright colors in it. For that reason, the damn jerks had to go and call it the 'Rainbow Sword'.
Despite the dorky name, he could focus a little ki into it and have a darn impressive bladed weapon as the crystalline blade lit up with his inner light. As he didn't like using the rest of his gate powers, this was something he appreciated when faced with regenerating slobbering demons as it was much more energy efficient than just blasting away.
That mostly summed up the things he liked about his gate.
The rest of it he pretty much hated.
For one, since the gate was never actually closed, if he tapped too much energy at once, depleted his ki, got seriously injured, became demon tainted or any of a host of other things, the bloody gate would just iris open on him, flooding him with the power needed and damning him with the consequences.
...the horrible, horrible consequences...
When fully opened, the true power of his gate came forth. His clothing would change to some kind of robes that were somewhat fashioned upon old Japanese nobility fashions. Blades of Light would spring up behind him, acting like wings, decorations, weapons and shields. That aforementioned power boost from the gate went on to ridiculous levels, basically making him fairly overpowered to the point where it had been dubbed his 'God Mode'...
...he really wished they'd stop naming things, or at least come up with better names than mere video game terms.
He did like the ability to fly when he had the 'wings' out. That made it almost worthwhile, consequences be damned.
Of course, someone had borrowed the idea of his powers and created an OAV series title Tenchi Muyo where the poor guy got ahold of the Light Hawk Wings and had a bunch of crazy women chasing him. Despite the fact that Ranma could sympathize with the poor fictional guy, it only increased his annoyance that they started calling his own power the Light Hawk Wings, which only served to popularize his powers even further.
He currently had the techs coming up with a better name to throw the media via threat of reintroducing them to overly friendly blobs of darkness with tentacles.
That of course brought him around to the horrible, horrible price of his powers.
They called it the Aura of Awe. He had glared at them, but the damage had been done, it had a name now.
When he opened the gate fully and transformed, his mere presence typically ended the battles. Anything that was moderately humanoid tended to stop and reconsider whatever had made him annoyed with them. Big time evils and obviously non-human stuff weren't much effected by it, which was why he'd got to test out the combat powers a fair bit.
The true horror was one he hadn't realized until it was too late, the price already having been paid.
When girls witnessed his power, it got their attention. There was of course only one kind of attention this got from girls. He blamed that for him having such a rabid fan club.
When the gate was as closed as it got, girl's tended to take undo notice of him. At full power, the effects were simply horrible.
One prime example of that was Asuna Kagurazaka, a girl a few years his junior. He'd met her when he'd first registered with AEGIS and joined Mahora Academy. Back then, she'd had quite the reputation as a little demon, her little ponytail bells alerting foolish mortals to her presence.
In short, she was a foul tempered little brat. A bit on the perverted side too as she had a crush on a much older teacher there.
Then, fate had horribly snubbed him once more, forcing him to rescue her from some demons. He'd been over his head dealing with such powerful forces of evil back then, so he'd opened his gate partially for the boost, unaware of the dreadful consequences. After getting her out of their clutches, he'd been forced to use his now most dreaded power, the power to heal almost any wound or ailment.
After making sure she was safe, he went back to play with the demons some more. Shortly afterwards, he'd left the academy on break for a bit more training, and he thought that had been the end of it.
Just in recent months he'd met her again, their paths not crossing mostly because she went to an all girl's portion of the campus. She no longer had that silly schoolgirl crush on Takahata-sensei...because she had a fairly serious crush on him.
As did several other girls.
Ranma kinda got clued in to the cause of his increasing popularity with women when demons and even female styled robots were looking at him funny.
Heck if anyone needed proof to the horrible consequences of his power, they had only to look at his frequent partner, Hotaru Tomoe. She'd been exposed to his power the most often of anyone, and it was so painful obvious in how she followed him around like a lovesick puppy.
He really hated drawing that analogy because she really was a sweet girl. It did happen to be the truth, every time she looked at him, it was with blindingly obvious affection. Sometimes it almost seemed to be that the girl could barely stand to be in his presence, something that was backed up by the mere fact that she'd faint from joy if he smiled at her too warmly.
He was actually pretty worried about the girl. All she ever seemed to do was think about him. As far as he knew, she didn't have a social life. Like the lovesick puppy she was, she'd anxiously wait out the time she wasn't with him, then light up with eagerness in his presence. The girl probably didn't even realize she had friends, though Ranma was hesitant to call them that since they were all card carrying members of his fan club. Of course, since that meant they enjoyed Hotaru always talking about him, it might have been on purpose.
Some people had the temerity to ask why he didn't just tell the girls off if he didn't want to be bothered by an over eager harem of girls.
He'd done it before actually. When he'd become aware of Asuna's new crush, he'd shot her down in the hopes that she wouldn't spend enough time around him to get as bad as Hotaru.
The girl had been crushed, broken almost. Ranma had kept tabs on her but refrained from encouraging her as it was for the best in his mind.
To his relief, she'd pulled herself back together after a few days.
To his horror, she'd only become committed to improving herself to be worthy of him. To that end, she'd trained towards the goal of joining AEGIS and becoming one of his partners.
...and people asked why he didn't try to discourage the girls.
That of course brought to mind the other terrible effect of his power. The dreadfully named 'Light of Hope' which was closely tied to his dreaded 'Healing Light', was not as terrible as the 'Aura of Awe'. It did however manage to make the consequences of the Aura of Awe so much worse.
Hope was the side-effect of his powers awakening other powers, something his healing powers often did with an almost certainty.
In Asuna, this meant she had a pseudo gate that could summon swords and armor, along with a strange magic immunity that made her a type of pseudo-magic girl. This of course meant she wasn't far from actually becoming an official partner for him, which was an increasingly popular career goal at AEGIS, particularly among new recruits.
Luckily, he had Hotaru around with her own healing power, one he'd willingly and gladly enhanced. Hotaru wasn't around all the time, so he had to heal people sometimes. Due the fact that Hotaru could only heal wounds and not really do much purifying or curing, he had to heal even more people himself.
At least he didn't have to heal every case that popped up. He did appreciate that much at least.
The effect with girls was pretty much obvious. They would become infatuated with him in some manner befitting their personality, then either gain a power of some sort or simply become more powerful. If only it hadn't been for that last part, he'd just have a bunch of normal schoolgirls that sighed at the thought of him to deal with.
Instead he had a situation with girls that made him happy to go out and face an army of demons. The growing problem though was that increasingly more girls were showing up to spoil that last glimmer of hope, sometimes even betraying their own comrades in the process.
He had also healed guys, something he'd originally hoped was safe. As he expected, some just thought of him as a buddy afterwards and it was actually nice to have some friends.
Of course, he was never so lucky with his power. To his confusion, he found himself healing a surprisingly large number of girls that just pretended to be guys for a variety of reasons. Even creepier, some would turn out to have the power to turn female, or acquire such a power via 'Hope'.
To his horror, there were indeed those guys that just liked him 'that way', one notably creepy one being the psychic named Kaoru.
It was at times like then that Ranma was actually happy to be surrounded by super-powered, often jealous girls of questionable sanity.
Stopping his kata, Ranma came to a halt within in the sanctity of the gymnasium he used for training.
Seeing her opportunity, Hotaru trotted over to him and began blotting at his face with a towel.
For his part, Ranma indulged her. She was a refreshingly sweet girl, and much more innocent than the average girl in love with him. Unfortunately, she'd largely burned through the whole shy thing for the most part, leaving a very happy and quite attentive girl.
That was of course the most insidious part of the gate. Ranma was a softie on girls, even kinky demonic ones. When a girl was honestly putting her heart into it and being nice to him, even if it was in her own strange way, he had a hard time begrudging her that.
He had to draw the line somewhere, even with Hotaru. As considerate as she was, if left to her own devices she'd occupy all of his time. Her attentions weren't terrible by any means, but she alone could take up a lot of his time. The consequence of that being that an infatuated girl seeing Hotaru getting time with him would at the least demand her own fair share of attention.
Sighing, Ranma took the towel from the blissed out girl before wrapping it around his shoulders.
Ah yes, the most ultimate of horrors, the pleading heartfelt gaze of a lovesick girl.
...well, actually the most ultimate of horrors was two or more of those girls getting together and causing serious property damage, but that's another story.
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(Posted Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:30)
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