Note to Darchias: You forgot to vote for who you thought Ranma should end up with.
Also, because I can see the reasoning behind it, I've decided to add Dani to the list of Ranma's possible girls.
I'm a What?
"A halfa!" Kasumi exclaimed again after she was asked what she had said.
"O..kay..." Ranma rubbed his neck as he turned his head to the side in confusion, "Care to explain exactly what that is?"
Kasumi rushed away for a second and came back with some newpaper clippings. It showed a young teen in the first few, and then a man of about twenty one in the newest.
"This is Daniel Fenton," Kasumi began excitedly, "I should have guessed you and your father wouldn't have known about this, but five years ago this young man came up with a plan to save the world by using ghosts and specially made cables to turn the whole world intangible."
"Cool plan. How is it relevant?"
"Well, just recently Daniel came out to the public as half ghost. That's why in these articles," She pointed to the older ones, "he's labled Danny Phantom and in this one," She pointed to the newest, "he uses his real name. Apparently the ghosts he used to fight call what he is a 'halfa,' half a boy, half a ghost. He never said exactly how he became such a being, afraid people would do stupid things to try and become like him."
"Right, so I'm not the only half dead guy floating around," at that point Ranma's snappy comeback died as a thought struck him, "Does it say where this guy lives?"
"Amity Park, why?"
"My ki is gone," Ranma held out his hand and visibly channeled his ectoplasm to his hand, "And this stuff is neat, but I don't know how to use it. That guy, Danny, might have some useful tricks I can pick up."
"Good thinking, boy!" Genma stood with a grin on his face, "You and Akane go on a training trip together and we'll hold the wedding when you get back!"
Akane shouted her usual spiel about not marrying a pervert like Ranma while said martial artist just crossed his arms and looked at his father and mister Tendo, who had joined him in planning the wedding, with a half lidded gaze. If he were in the mood he'd have brought to their attention the fact that he could now fly while invisible and intangible, making it all but impossible to track him, and that he didn't exactly want Akane to come with him.
Instead he let the three idiots go on and on about him while he was still in the room like it was an everyday occurence. Oh, wait. It was.
Ranma turned his half lidded eyes to Nabiki as if to say, 'See what I have to deal with?' but Nabiki just looked amused as usual. Kasumi seemed to be scanning the newpaper clipping for any valuable information which Ranma would thank her for later.
"So who's gonna pay?" That was the magic phrase. Both fathers shut up and looked at the sixteen year old with demanding eyes, "For the plane tickets? Whose gonna pay? Don't look at me, I'm just an unloyal, good for nothing, honorless son," he said mocking his father, "I don't even know how to make money."
Imediately, surprisingly catching the hint that their normal taunts weren't going to work this time, the fathers turned to Nabiki.
"Fine," Nabiki said too easily, "I'll pay for the tickets," Tendo and Saotome began to cheer, "But you two will have to pay me back by the end of the week, or I start adding interest."
"Now see here, young lady," Soun began.
"Shut up, Daddy," it was said in such a cold tone that Soun wilted instantaneously.
"Er, uhm," Genma stumbled over excuses, trying desperately to think of a way to pawn off the debt. He decided to go with a tried and true method; his son, "Ranma will work off the payments when he returns from Amity Park."
"No good," Nabiki crossed her arms much like Ranma had done, "Physical labor only goes so far and not nearly far enough to cover the full price of two round trip tickets to America."
Ranma was now becoming amused. He'd never seen his father actually do anything productive that didn't involve thievery or martial arts. Maybe this would be that once in a life time chance.
But no.
"You should do it for the preservation of your family honor," Genma demanded.
Ranma chuffed and turned to leave. He just managed to hear Nabiki's respone as he made it out the back door.
"Honor," Nabiki spat out almost angrily, "Doesn't keep a roof over our head or food in your fat gut, Mister Saotome. You want to pay in honor? Look somewhere else. I take cash."
A few seconds later Nabiki came out and stood at his side.
"I'm not paying. How are you gonna get there?"
Ranma levitated a couple of feet off the ground, "How do ya think?"
"Nifty."
"Yep," he came back down, but he was showing signs of exertion, "Think I may need to practice for a bit before I do though. I've barely done anything and I feel drained. "
Nabiki looked at the brand new Halfa with a strange new gaze and Ranma found himself uneased by it.
"What?"
"Nothing... it's just odd to see you wiped out by anything other than a full out battle."
Ranma sniffed, "I'll be back to normal in no time. Just need a good night's sleep," a rumble of demonic rage and hunger that chased small birds out of trees and gave squirrels heart attacks seemed to originate from Ranma, "A meal or two might help too."
(##!$%
As it turned out, Ranma needed more than just one night's rest and a couple of meals before he was back to normal. To be honest, if it hadn't been for his newfound intangibility, he'd have been dead that first time Mousse had attacked him after the incident. If it wasn't for that ability he'd have been skewered by hundreds of knives.
Two weeks passed and he still didn't feel like he had the strength to cross the ocean. Hell, he could barely fly to Furinkan without needing to take a break along the way.
Ranma stood there breathing deeply after he'd trounced Kuno. He was sweating more than he ever should have after fighting the Blue Blunder and he was cursing inside his mind over the amount of effort he now had to put into this.
'This is insulting!' Ranma stalked inside with his eyes glowing green in irritation, 'A month ago I killed a GOD! Now I have a hard time with Kuno!' He didn't even bother with explaining to the teacher why he was tardy, he just grabbed the buckets and moved to stand in the hall. He focused himself inwards as he stood there, looking at his mind's eye representation of his pool of ectoplasm. What he saw did not make him happy.
The easiest way to think of ki is to imagine amounts of water. The average human has about a bucket's worth of ki in their body. That's all they need for their day to day activities. Your average blackbelt has three buckets. They use that excess ki to increase their strength, enhance their speed, and make it harder for their bones to break.
When Ranma first came to Nerima he had a swimming pool's worth of ki, give or take a few buckets. By the time he fought Saffron, and especially after it, he'd had a small ocean of excess ki to work with. He'd had so much raw energy in his body that he could, if he ever needed too, go without eating for a year.
Now, after two weeks of actively using his abilities to fly, walk through walls, turn invisible, and even turning back and forth between human and ghost forms he only had two buckets' worth of ectoplasm to power himself. It was absolutely ridiculous! He'd been working with it harder than he'd ever worked with his ki and his rate of development was slow as hell, at most adding another teaspoon of ectoplasm a day. At this rate it'd take him another ten years just to get back to where he'd been, raw power wise.
A pipe above him, that fed the school's sprinkler system, chose that exact moment to burst. Ranma turned intangible just before the water hit him, avoiding shifting into his girl form. That was one of only three boons he found with his new abilities. He could fly, he could turn himself invisible whenever he wanted to avoid being seen, and he could make it so the water that activated his curse couldn't touch him... if he had at least a small amount of forewarning.
Ranma began poking and prodding the ghostly energy that he now used, trying to get it to respond. Nothing. Ranma sighed and decided he'd just have to keep practicing and maybe eventually it would start to grow quicker.
That day at lunch, while practicing turning intangible to dodge Akane's mallet for flirting with Ukyo, Kuno came back for a rematch.
"Hold, foul demon! I, Tatewaki Kuno, chosen son of the most noble samurai clan Kuno and appointed by God himself as a holy avenger, shall end your sinister dealings under the same roof as the fierce tigress, Akane! Thine time, borrowed from the unholy lord of chaos and abyss, has come to an end!" Kuno held his bokken before him and made to strike Ranma.
Ranma didn't bother dodging. He simply kept himself intangible.
Kuno's thrust hit Ranma in the chest and met no resistance. Off balance Tatewaki fell forward, his hand passing through the junior classmen.
Ranma almost scoffed at the pitiable skill of the self proclaimed holy avenger when he felt a tug where Kuno had come into contact with his body. The next thing Ranma knew he could hear Kuno ranting in the back of his mind about how he was going to smite the foul sorcerer Saotome, and Ranma was holding a bokken.
To everyone else it looked like Ranma was absorbed by Kuno who now had glowing green eyes.
"What the hell?" Kuno said with Ranma's voice. He stared at his hands and test swung the bokken a couple of times, before looking around. Everything looked... strange. Not quite different, but certainly odd, like he was looking through smoked glass.
Instinct alone brought his bokken to bear, blocking a vicious assault from Ukyo with her giant spatula.
"What did you do with Ranchan, you jackass!" she swung at him again, and again Kuno, under Ranma's control, blocked, but skidded back a few feet.
"What the hell are you talking about, Ukchan? I am Ranma," he dodged her third swing.
"Stop lyin'! We all saw how you absorbed him! Now give!" Another swing. "Him!" Another. "Back!" And yet another.
Kuno dodged the first two and blocked the third before getting annoyed. He proceeded to use his bokken to knock her spatula out of her hand, smack the back of her leg causing her to kneel, and pointed it at her face, a glowing glare on his face.
"Cut it out! I am Ranma!" he held up his hand in front of his face for a second, "I think I'm possessing Kuno or somethin', but I'm the one in control here!"
"How do I know you're not just lying?"
He gave her a deadpan look, "You honestly think Kuno could do half of what I just did to you?"
"Well... no, I guess not," Ukyo stood up slowly, wincing at the small amount of pain on the back of her legs.
Kuno, or Ranma wearing a Kuno colored suit, began to explore this new phenomenon. After a few minutes of testing the limits of Kuno's body and its reflexes he had an epiphany.
"Hey! I could use this to go to America," after that Ranma pulled his ectoplasm back into himself and left Kuno's body behind. Tatewaki looked as if he was waking up from a violence induced nap, rubbing his eyes to get rid of the stars in his vision.
Ranma was about five feet in the air in ghost form grinning before he took off like a shot back home to pack some stuff for his trip to America.
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Chapter end
So for we have four votes for Ember, two for Dani, and none for anybody else. You have until the fourth chapter before I decide, based on the highest number of votes, who is Ranma's girl.