10 Rings: That's not so wise, man. [Episode 4391]

The dark spirit let himself be known as Wiseman for a reason.   The wraith was the archetypal evil vizier — the sly advisor who ruled from the shadow behind the thrown without the occupant noticing his influence until too late.   But more than that, he was shrewd, and cunning, and conniving, and always had a backup plan in case the backup plan failed.

The boy was not his usual choice of host.   He had been the perfect pawn to aid in corrupting Mars, but he would never be a leader, even with Wiseman’s sly guidance.   He was by far too much of a loner by nature and cruel fate.   Yet this host’s usefulness did not end with the loss of the genie ring.   The boy was strong and a natural fighter and his loneliness often lead to deep depressions which Wiseman could exploit.

After his defeat, Wiseman was able to add hatred and envy to his tools.   It was all too easy to make his host believe that he’d been merely tricked and beset upon by thieves.   After all, the loss of the pretty ifrit had struck the lonely boy hard.   Wiseman drew on that rich feast of dark energy and used it to augment the boy’s training – pushing him in directions he might never have willingly taken, honing him into a tool of vengeance.

There was only one flaw with his tool.   That twice be damned sense of direction.   The boy simply could not be trained to follow even the simplest directions, even with Wiseman riding inside.   The brooding darkness Wiseman needed to condition his tool only seemed to aggravate the problem.   Lost in dark thoughts, the boy wandered through the world without paying the slightest head to obviously landmarks.

But patience was Wiseman’s forté.   He was the spider who lured his prey into his web of deceit, not the stalker.   The boy’s wandering had one blessing, they tended to take him to strange, out of the way places.   One such wandering had lead him to Wiseman’s cage, and another to claim Mars’ ring.

The sword, Wish-bringer, was not a jinn cage but an artifact from the genie wars.   It’s wishcraft power was limited in many ways, but potent in others.   It was also a damn fine weapon in the hands of a trained warrior.   Wiseman could not believe that the boy had wandered right up to it, or that he intended to keep unknowingly wandering right passed it.   True, the sword was bound in stone until drawn by the one marked by the guardian monk’s scroll, but Wiseman was not one to play by the rules.   Seizing the opportunity, he’d enraged the boy with a surge of dark energies, the unleashed his coruption enhanced might on the stone.

‘Boy, you hold the ultimate key to your rival’s defeat,’ Wiseman told his protégé as Ryoga claimed the sword.   ‘With this blade I –er– you may claim the rings once more.’

It was while Wiseman paused for a gloating laugh that Ryoga held the sword up high and proclaimed, “Haha!   I wish I could see the look on Ranma’s face when I show up with this!”

‘Ahhaha… what?   Noooo, we’re not ready yet!’

Timing is everything.   Ranma’s face was surprised by Ryoga’s sudden appearance, then Ranma and his djinya vanished.   “Ranma you coward!   Come back here so I can beat ya to a pulp! ’

‘Ack!  Thank darkness he left!” Wiseman panicked briefly.   ‘He had Mercury and Venus with him, as well as Saturn and Mars!   You‘re not ready to face… What’s that annoying ticking sound?’

“It looks like we got out of there just in time,” Saturn observed as the fireball erupted from the window of the love-hotel across the street.

“Poor Ryoga,” Mars sighed darkly.   “He never could show up at the right time.   Oh, well, he wasn’t much of a master anyway.   What should we do now?”