Ranma wasn’t stupid. Clueless maybe but not stupid. He caught a glimpse of Kurumi’s expression when he departed. He could see that he somehow hurt the pink-haired girl. Ranma shrugged. He’ll square it with her later. Right now, there was training to be done.
Ranma stopped at the edge of town. Waiting for him are his training partners. All six of them.
“Ranma-niichan!” The kids scampered at him when he showed up. The oldest was 8, the youngest, a girl, was six. They were dressed in a variety of Japanese and western clothing.
Everybody! How are you? Ranma smiled as the kids surrounded him. He was practicing in a clearing when he felt eyes watching him. It turned to be a bunch of kids. Where anyone else would have chased them off, Ranma welcomed them. They turned out to be enthusiastic helpers in his training. Ranma, being a kid at heart himself, really didn’t mind. They enabled to bring him the opportunity to enjoy vicariously a childhood denied to him by his father.
“Toturi! Yakamo! Hantei! Kenji! “Ranma called out. He then turned to the sole tomboy of the group.
“Kachiko-chan, how are ya?” Ranma had a soft spot for the girl. He understood, being an outsider himself, how hard it was to fit in into a group.
“I am fine, Ranma-niichan” answered the little girl shyly.
“Good. Hey! You guys ready for our little game?”
“Yayyyy!” The little group ambled to a clearing bordering the forest. Piles of rocks were placed in six groups, arrayed in a semi-circle.
The kids took station, one kid on each pile. Ranma took a cloth and blindfolded his eyes. He called out to the kids in a merry voice.
“Ready! Set! Go!”
A barrage of stones followed the command. Ranma danced and bounced along the edge of the forest, catching the stones and piled them in the crook of his arm. He placed the pile on the ground when it grew to big to be held. The kid who exhausted is pile then went on to the next one. Ranma’s movement at Amaguriken speeds while blindfolded was spectacular. It was a variation of a kyudo training exercise that would had awed and impressed martial arts masters, had they witnessed what to Ranma was a combination training exercise and game.
The kids soon slowed their rate of throwing and stopped altogether due to exhaustion of their arms. Ranma paused under a large tree and waited for a few moments. He took off his blindfolded and grinned at the five of them.
Five? Wait, where’s Kenji?
BONK!
A large bump grew on Ranma’s head as large rock fell on his head. He scowled and looked up. There was Kenji on a branch, grinning wickedly down at him. Ranma grinned back and started laughing with the others.
“Kay, Kenji. I guess ya won the prize” Ranma waited Kenji to drop down from the branch and gave him his prize.
“Here ya go, 6 pieces of candy.” That was the agreement. However can hit Ranma, gets 5 extra pieces of candy plus the normal one piece for helping Ranma. The others trooped to Ranma to get their payment. The kids looked at their one piece and then at Kenji’s pile and looked on sadly. Kenji looked at his friends, then at Ranma, who just looked at him with a quirked eyebrow.
Kenji smiled and gave each one of his friends one more piece. Ranma smiled and nodded at him approvingly.
“Good work, Kenji. Friends are as important as family. Share with them the good as well as the bad.” Ranma’s expression grew wistful momentarily and then shook his head to dismiss the thought. Time to move on.
“Kay kids. Be seeing ya!” Ranma bounded off.
“Bye, Ranma-niichan!”
Ranma finally arrived at the second training area. It was a typical Japanese waterfall. It had spume of water cascading breaking into a fine mist at the base. Water wonderingly streamed away from among water-covered rocks. Swallows dived and darted along the cliff and the rocks at the bottom.
The first order of business was to secure his training aids in a dry and secluded alcove in the cliff. Next order of business was to bound to an area of worn boulders and perch on top of one. Taking a one legged crane stance, Ranma prepared to begin the first set of exercises mandated for a master of the Matsubeto Kakuto Ryu.
One of the problems Ranma discovered when he started training early on was to clear the mind of all thoughts when performing a kata. Complete and total concentration was required during the performance of a kata. One wrong move and the results could result in severe or possibly fatal injury to the practitioner.
“Maybe that’s why Oyajii prefers not to think?” was the last thought Ranma had before clearing his mind of all thoughts.
___________________________________________________________________________
It was later that morning when Rama finally finished the last series of katas with final expulsion of breath. Time for the second exercise.
The exercise involves a variation of training technique that Ranma found in one of the old scrolls in the temple. “Catching A Swallow” was a speed technique utilized in the training of Kojiro Sasaki, a famed swordsman in the Edo period. It called for the swordsman to cut down a swallow as it attempted to weave and fly past him. The technique was designed to be used against a fast and unpredictable opponent.
The one thing that Ranma lacked was a decent sparring partner. None of the local martial artists came even close to his level. Kuno’s level maybe, but that would be picking on the weak. Ranma thought of Kurumi. She certainly does have the strength and perhaps the speed. Ranma brightened at the thought of some serious martial arts partners who weren’t trying to kill him. Ranma launched himself into the air.
Ranma was having fun. Trying to catch a flying and erratically weaving bird while bouncing from ground to cliff face and back while avoiding being wet or becoming a red spot on the ground was a challenge. Keeping the bird from becoming a meat paste in his hand and releasing it while trying to catch another one was an even greater challenge. He was a red and black blur as he darted in and among the swallows, catching and releasing in moments, the shaken swallows flying off in different directions. Ranma was literally a hawk among the swallows. A hawk that does not kill its prey. But all good good things must come to an end. Time for the final exercise.
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The sun was about two hours from the zenith when Ranma bounded back to the ground and approached the alcove and took out the towel and the pipe. He quickly rubbed himself dry, folded the towel into a belt and tied it around his waist. He then walked up to branch stream of the waterfall, slowly backed into it, careful to keep his flute dry.
The water activated his curse, changing Ranma into onna-Ranma. She took a breath and began the final exercise. This would be the culmination of a week’s worth of practice. If it works, she can rival Herb in power, given time.
Ranma worked with Kamahito-sensei in the creation of this new technique. The omnyou mystics were masters in the harnessing and use of ki. Kamahito had never seen the amount of ki that Ranma can generate but he was aware of the uses and dangers of ki. In discussion of techniques, Kamahito remarked on the dangers of using emotion based attacks like the Moko Takabisha and the Shi Shi Hodokan. Yes, they are powerful. Yes, they can be easily generated. The danger is losing one’s control to that particular emotion during a fight. A depression-based attack can cause the person to not care to what happens around him. A confidence-based attack may cause the user to feel invincible. The result is a loss of judgment and control during a fight. Ranma shuddered at the thought of Akane ever discovering and using a ki attack based on anger. Kamahito urged Ranma to find another way to generate ki.
Discussions and experimentation led Ranma to devise a not only a new technique, but the possible basis for a whole series of techniques. One that was not dependent on strong emotions, but on calm and tranquility
There were two stumbling blocks. One was that feelings of peace and tranquility were few and far in between. The second was the method of achieving that state. Kamahito and Nakahito use sutras to achieve that state. Ranma tried and was bored stiff within minutes. Despite his perseverance, she remained cold, wet and busty. She had come close to giving up when Kamahito suggested an alternative: use of music to invoke the state of tranquility. Ranma readily agreed, seeing the advantage of using that method. She might not be able to play the flute during a fight, but the memory of the music will be more than enough to invoke the technique on command with time and practice.
The remaining question was what to name the technique. The answer came to Ranma in a flash. If the Soul of Ice was the suppression of all emotions to generate cold, then the release of an emotion to generate heat is possible. Ranma decided to name the technique the Soul of Fire. To prepare for this Ranma decided to use a flute. It took him a day to learn how to play the flute; two more days learn how to play well. Today was the culmination of a weeks worth of effort.
Ranma closed his eyes and began playing. It was a simple melody. It was one he heard on his ten-year training trip. It was a melody played a farm boy when he rested from tending his crops. He had stood there, entranced, until his baka oyaji clouted him on the head to get him moving. But Ranma never forgot it.
As Ranma played on, the few and precious memories of peace and tranquility came back to him. Watching the stars in the middle of an open field by the campfire. Passing through a sunlit and dappled forest. Walking by majestic waterfalls. The remembrance of a particularly good meal. The view upon reaching the top of a mountain. But the most powerful memory came last: the vague and half-remembered voice of his mother singing him a lullaby.
Onna-Ranma’s aura became visible around her body and grew bright. Instead of the color of confidence, blue, it was a hot white. It slowly grew to and takes on an appearance of licking flames. Ranma’s body began to revert back to male form as steam started rising from the water pouring over him. Soon the water stopped touching him, turning into steam almost immediately.
Ranma continued playing, improvising and creating variations on the melody and still creating variations on the melody. The melody echoed and soared above the cliff walls, creating a harmonic counterpoint. It was as if another flute was playing half a beat behind him. The swallows ceased their flying and perched on the cliff walls, heads cocked while they listened with bright-eyed expressions.
Finally, Ranma stopped playing and stepped forward. He opened his eyes and watched the plume of the steam generated finally rose and disappear into the blue sky. He noted the sun was at the zenith and approaching early afternoon. He reckoned he had been under the water for about two hours or so and stayed completely dry. Not bad. Not bad at all. He not only invented a new technique but the basis for whole new series of moves. Herb is going to be completely floored if they ever happen to meet again.
It had been said that there had been moments in time that men had received epiphanies so strong and profound that it changed the course of their lives and history. Newton and the apple. Archimedes and the bathtub. Ranma had such an epiphany. His father had been the source of most of his problems. They all stemmed from one fact, his inability or stubborn refusal to consider the consequences of his actions and decisions, especially toward his son. Ranma had finally noticed his growing tendency to do the same. Which lead him to this thought:
Kami-sama, I’m gonna turn into Oyajii!
Not now, not soon, maybe not in the near future. But if he does nothing, who is to say he won’t turn into his old man? Ranma shuddered at the thought. Perhaps another chat with his sensei is in order. With that thought, he bounded into the sky and out of the area towards the temple.
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(Posted Sat, 24 May 2003 08:22)
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