Sure enough, he'd gotten maybe a half mile when he heard a fight going on.
There were some short guys with beards and such and some really really BIG guys who apparently had some religious avoidance of bathing or something.
Ranma shrugged and waded in, correctly intuiting that the really short guys being surrounded by the really big guys were the ones being attacked.
This was a much tougher fight, but Ranma broke up the big guys' formation that were throwing boulders at the little guys and the little guys rallied after the fourth really big guy went down.
After getting a meal (who was he to refuse - he'd only had mutton a few times in his life and he recognized the scent quickly) from the little guys, Ranma left again.
He had found it, he realized. This had to be THE perfect training ground. Really bad guys and a wide variety of them EVERYWHERE. Food (that mutton was even better than he'd gotten at that Chinese village and that had been pretty damn good), targets, different sorts of conditions, all he needed was secret martial arts scrolls to come by and hit him in the face!
Behind him, a dwarven cleric finished an entreaty to his divine patron to help the wandering hero they'd just proclaimed a dwarf-friend. (Which all of the dwarves felt far more practical than if he'd been declared a elfriend.)
The dwarven deity in question saw the wandering hero, realized that the tale of the wandering hero (and number of giants he'd felled) would be growing daily, and because he had a sense of humor - said why not?
WHAP!
Ranma reached up and looked everywhere around him. Nobody. So who had thrown this old scroll in his face? Waitaminute. Scroll?
Ranma carefully unwrapped it, and a childish glee quickly transformed his features. A new martial arts technique! With his "I Got A Hole In Me Pocket" technique, that was TWO new techniques this week! Hot damn he was on a roll!
Let's see, this one was for - ooh. That would hurt, except the sword bent where it hit that guy in the drawing. Something like the Ironskin technique then? Hmmm. He couldn't read this junk over here, probably that weird language everyone spoke.
Ranma stood, a fire in his eyes, a song in his heart, a goal in his mind. It was a new martial arts technique that nobody back home had heard of!
And if there was one, there might be more!
After spending some time checking to see if any of the trees had more scrolls, Ranma set off. He had to find someone who could translate this stuff!
Ranma had gone three hours at his usual speed when he found a village. A really tough fight broke out with him fighting those uglies from before, while the natives seemed to be those thin pointy-eared types he'd met before.
Again he attacked the attackers from the rear. Again they started falling as Ranma was moving faster and hitting harder than they expected, and again the defenders began rallying after Ranma had managed a Hiryu Shoten Ha in the middle of the enemy encampment. After pointing at the scroll and trying Japanese, English, and his handful of Chinese - the pointy eared elf-types all started pointing at a distant mountain and a symbol on the scroll.
Ranma immediately, naturally took off. He'd master this new manuever yet!
It was really a pity that there weren't some enemies around the tower.
Dark lighting, shadows that seemed to creep along the twisted corridors, little droplets of oily water filtering through stone to plop ominously into dark pools, faint green mist providing illumination inside the tower.
All this atmosphere wasted because there was no one who could appreciate it.
The Dark Lord, resplendant in his spiked bronzed armor, seemed to ooze menace as a small imp fluttered in from a high window.
"Boss, dere is da problem," said the imp.
The eyeholes of the spiked bronze helm seemed to flash with appropriate malevolence.
"Dem giants youse sent to deal with dat party of stumpies? Dey got wiped out. De orcs and ogres and goblins dat were gonna destroy dat elven town and desecrate dem churches? Dat got wiped out too."
The armor stirred to look directly at the imp.
"I DUNNO!" screamed the imp as its life passed before its eyes. "I wasn't dere! You knows dat!"
The armor shifted slightly.
"I SWEARS IT. I'd swear it on me mudder's grave but I ain't never had no mudder. I saw some of da giants after da bum was through with 'em, they got mangled pretty bad - some of da armor looked like dey'd used siege equipment on it or something." The imp could bathe in lava without discomfort, but it was currently sweating in the chill room.
The armor seemed to find some confirmation before it sat back in the throne and a gauntleted hand tapped thoughtfully.
"It wasn't my fault," insisted the imp.
Fingers snapped. The imp exploded in a shower of gore. The armored figure got up and crossed to a stand which held a single sphere of obsidian on it.
Ranma leapt from one branch to another of the old trees, which was a lot more fun than trudging along the road when he noticed:
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(Posted Wed, 03 Dec 2003 12:46)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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