For those unused to Nerima, the sight of a young man running along the power lines with a huge, stone filled pack upon his back, flipping and cartwheeling as he ran, would have been unusual.
Here, it was just obvious that Ranma was coming back from a training trip, having recently learned a technique.
"Here or there matters not, told you I did. My home was destroyed, return I cannot. To be a Jedi, accept you must what cannot be changed." A ghostly image spoke from within the rock filled pack.
After two months of listening to this little creature and its profound statements Ranma had built up a great deal of trust for its advice, even though it went against a lifetime of teaching.
Yoda's image sighed, shaking his head. "Once more your thoughts return to your father, and his ways. Become like him you will, if follow him you continue."
Ranma's hair stood on end. Even after two months of hearing that it still put a chill down his back every time his new teacher repeated it. As usual, the gender challenged martial artist had picked up those techniques Yoda taught in record time, all that his new master had been willing to pass on to him as yet, anyway.
The mental stuff was taking alot longer to get right, but Ranma had sworn he would master them all the same, and Yoda had promised him greater techniques once he did!
"Mind your steps!" The Jedi Master brought his student back to the present. "That path you shall not take."
"But I was just going back to the dojo. You said once I got that Force-blast thing mastered that we'd return to Nerima."
"Nerima this is, yet that way you shall not go. Another path you must take."
"But pops, and the honor agreement." A month ago he would've shouted or sworn, but he was past that now. "How am I to..."
The young man got cut off by an irate little master. "Honor? Hmph! What knows he about honor? Shows it does he? Displays it in his actions? Hmph! Speaks much he does, yet nothing understands. Many fiancees do you have. Stay with another. Choose for now you will which one to favor. The choice, final, needs to be not."
"Ain't I gunna spar with pops?"
"For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on how you are to be trained! You are reckless, yet proud also. Much worse, this pride, a great weakness for your mind. Many times your enemies, advantage of this have they taken. Humility I must teach, if this flaw is to be corrected."
Ranma stood there scratching his head. It was not like they'd not had this discussion earlier on their training trip. In fact, many, many times. But at last something was sinking in.
Yoda, sensing this, seized the opportunity to elaborate and reinforce this new insight for his padawan's sake. "Trained you, your father did. Your body, great strength he gave. You mind, much weakness did he impart. This he did for his own sake, not for your benefit."
"Hey! Pops wasn't gunna make me dumb or nuthin! Sure, alot of what he did was stupid, but I'm the best!"
"Oh!" Yoda's eyes widened and his ears lifted. "Smart, your father is?"
Ranma paused in shock. "What are you talkin about! That moron? He's an idiot! He couldn't count to ten on both hands!"
The little master's gentle smile was triumphant. "What know you that your father has not taught? Hm? Techniques mean I not. Knowledge of other sorts, I ask about."
The teenaged martial artist froze white from his shoes to the top of his head.
"Yes!" Yoda agreed. "At last you listen. Despised he did others' wisdom, taught you to value them not. Shunned you did, at his insistence, all others words and your experience to follow his counsel. But what knows he? Hm? Cannot pass on that which he has not. What could he teach, about how to think, avoid trouble or solve problems? Hm? What does he impart, but his own idiocy?"
If strangers had looked upon them they could have seen Ranma's jaw drop to street level from his perch over twenty feet up.
Pouncing on this moment of revelation, Yoda added, "Who the most foolish is, the fool who leads or the fool who follows? Hm? A blind guide marked your path since your youth. Eyes you must open, a larger world to see."
The Jedi master sighed as he sensed his virtually comatose student at last accept what had been hardest so far to teach, that his father had nothing further to impart, and it was time to move beyond and overcome his dependence on him.
'A great victory this was. That man, an anchor he did not need. Ever pulling downward he was.'
Not for the last time the recording wished that it was real so that it could pat his student's shoulder, offering calm reassurance when words could not reach him.
The sun was beginning to set when at last Ranma recovered his senses from his life altering realization. Yoda's voice was soft, not interrupting. "Come. Go we must."
"Right." Ranma began leaping, canceling out his and his pack's weight not to strain any wires as he hopped toward...
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(Posted Tue, 07 Jun 2005 21:59)
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