It was a quiet trip out town, giving Nabiki a chance to better examine her new owners.
The leader looked the most like Ranma; he was human with black hair tied back in a pigtail. There were only two obvious differences from the real-world Ranma she knew: one, he was dressed not in Chinese style silks, but in a black cotton outfit with lots of pockets, hooks, and other things that clearly marked him as an adventuring rogue; and two, there was a spark of intelligence in his eyes that the real Ranma only had when he was inventing new martial arts techniques on the spot.
The other male was one of the fighters, but obviously not human. He was a dwarf, with a thick black beard, broad shoulders, and well-defined muscles. He had worse manners, if such a thing were possible, than the original Ranma, but surprisingly, although he was only eye-level with her chest, he wasn't ogling her breasts as she would have expected from this game. He was decked out in what appeared to be standard fighter gear for men in this game: a hard leather vest left open to expose his chest, arm bracers, heavy boots, and loose pants. Strapped to his back was a giant sword that practically screamed, "I'm too dumb to know what a shield is for."
The wizard looked a lot like Ranma's female form, save for a set of pointed ears. She was slimmer than the original as well, but not by much, and her ample 'assets' hadn't been affected. The outfit, however, was about as far from something Ranma would willingly wear as one could get. It was a one-piece, high cut along the thigh to show every inch of leg, low cut in front to show as much cleavage as possible, with holes along the front, side, and back to show more skin around her waist than it hid. With that one-piece base, it was augmented by an ankle-length cape, elbow-length gloves, high-heeled boots, and even a ribbon in her hair, holding her scarlet main in a ponytail rather than the usual pigtail. And every scrap of cloth was in pink, light pink, or white. Her eyes, while not vacant, flittered from distraction to distraction.
The last Ranma was both the most surprising and the least really. She was a cat-girl, but unlike the slave sold just before Nabiki herself, this Ranma was obviously no sex slave; she sported a set of claws on each hand and each foot, and every move she made had all the grace of the original going through his katas. Her cat-like eyes also shifted frequently, but whereas the wizard was obviously scatterbrained, she was on guard. She wore little more than a very skimpy red bikini, lacking even the boots the others wore.
The oddest thing about this group, Nabiki noted as they moved was how little they conversed. Even when they came to a fork in the road, the rogue would simply pick something and the others would follow. When the wizard was distracted by a pretty flower and slowed to a stop, the others did too without even a word, only to pick up again as soon as she lost interest.
"So," Nabiki ventured when she thought they were sufficiently far from the village, "who are you guys, anyway?" The silence had been getting to her, and she wanted answers, even if she wouldn't like them.
The rogue sighed, "You know, Nabiki, I really wish you hadn't stolen that computer from me."
Nabiki raised an eyebrow. "Ranma? How did you get in here? More to the point what are you doing in my room?"
The rogue smirked, slightly. "I saw you get sucked into this thing. I figured that since your father was likely to make me come after you anyway, I might as well get a head start on it. Unfortunately, he," Ranma indicated the dwarf, "jumped the gun as usual. I'm just glad none of us chose the sex slave class; I had to pick a lot of pockets to get the money to buy you, you know. Though, now that I think of it, why the heck did you choose sex slave anyway?"
"I didn't want to," Nabiki growled out. "My hand slipped."
Ranma shook his head, but didn't say anything.
"What about the rest of these people?"
Ranma sighed again, "I don't know. I think I have an idea or two but I'm not sure."
The elven girl frowned and took a step back. "'I'm not sure'," she parroted, "You never talk like that."
Ranma shook his head, "No, I don't. He does."
The dwarf snorted, "Bah. Leave me outta this, you freak."
Now Nabiki was confused. The dwarf had sounded exactly like Ranma. She looked back to the rogue for an explanation.
"I think we can agree, the neko-ken proves I'm pretty fucked up in the head, right?" rogue-Ranma answered, glancing at the cat girl and suppressing a shiver. "And you remember teasing me about that episode when Akane knocked me into the koi pond and I thought I really was a girl, one that didn't like the martial arts." This time he was looking at the wizard.
"You're saying you're all Ranma?" Nabiki asked. She wasn't sure she believed it, but then again she was here inside a role-playing game.
"I always feared that the neko-ken training did more than just make me think I was a cat. This seems to be proof of that."
"Alright then," Nabiki commented, "that explains the girls, I suppose. But who are you two supposed to be then?"
"Best guess," rogue-Ranma responded, "is that he's the spiting image of what our father tried to make me into. Well, except for the part about being a head shorter than the rest of us. I'm everything I had to suppress over the years that didn't go to the two yin-aspects."
Before Nabiki could continue the conversation,
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(Posted Tue, 23 Sep 2003 02:51)
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