Sweet Sorrow
After bathing, Ranko dressed again, and slipped out the back door of the
house. As she snuck away, she extended her senses to be sure no-one was
following. She leapt lightly, easily, over the village wall, then moved
quickly through the forest until she found a clearing that had a large
enough stone in it.
She pulled back, allowing Ranma to come to the fore. Onna-Ranma used her
ki claws to inscribe a rune of power and holding on the stone, and
several runes of strength, then begin charging it. She charged it
slowly, but at a steady pace. She was timing herself by what she had
learned charging the stones in the room where she had... had failed. If
she went slow enough, her ki replenished itself, and by the end, she was
still at full, as was the stone.
A little over an hour later, it was done. Ranma eased back, allowing
Ranko to the fore again. At his urging, she focused, and drew up the ki
aura, flickering blue flames that licked about her, then called on the
Neko-ken. As the aura became more solid about her, Ranma watched in the
glassy pool, muttering suggestions. He had noticed, from his external
perspective, what she had not... that the aura was definitely, even
distinctively feminine.
Yet Ranma could see it wasn't working... she couldn't get the aura to
disengage itself. He quickly cast a gate spell, opening a portal to the
location he was scrying, and stepped through. She gasped. "You... you
look like a ghost, Ranma."
"I know." His voice was hollow and thin, strange-sounding even to his
own ears. He reached out with threads of magic, and his will, and pulled
on his ki. It resisted, and he strengthened the pull. Ranko cried out in
pain, as her ki aura tore itself from her, and absorbed Ranma, becoming
a male aura again. She fell to her knees.
"Ranko," he cried out, "Release the stone. You must release the stone!"
Already, he could feel the drawing sensation, as her body reached out to
regain what was hers. The stone flared, and she cried out in relief. She
stood, strong again, and looked at him, glowing blue male half-tiger
standing before her.
"I cannot come too close, Ranko. I can still feel the pull the body has
for its ki. I've got to go away now. Don't worry... I've bound it with
magic. I won't lose it." He turned, and leapt, bounding over the trees,
and away from the clearing.
She stared after him. She had noticed what he had not. Their aura had
grown... the half-tiger that left her was fully ten feet tall. She
wondered how big he would be as a half-dragon.
Meanwhile Kho Lon paused in her slow thoughtful progress towards her
house, and looked to the distant clearing. She had felt that sudden
massive surge of magic and ki, and she started to move in that
direction.
Ranma was moving quickly now, with utter silence. He had a semi-solid
form, he could feel the claws on his feet biting the ground. He passed
within meters of two crouching Amazons, intent on their prey. They
didn't notice him... nor did he notice the two older Amazons nearly a
thousand feet up the slope, watching the younger two. After he was gone,
they came bounding down to land behind the younger two.
One of the younger two turned and hissed. "What are you doing?! You
scared it off!" She was referring to the tiger she and her sister Amazon
had been stalking.
"More important things, child. A massive tiger spirit passed not two
meters from you."
"Over here," said the other woman, "Come here girls, look at these
tracks. What made them?"
"A tiger... a big tiger," the elder of the two girls said.
"Look closer," the woman commanded them. "Look at the stride."
"A two-legged tiger? What is this?" The younger girl looked at the two
older women in confusion. "Tigers don't walk on two legs."
"We watched the spirit. It was a tiger... and a man, and it walked on
two legs, and moved in great bounding strides, but it glowed blue, and
we could see you through it as it passed between us and you."
"What should we do?" asked the older girl, "Send for an Elder, and
follow it?"
"Whatever mischief it plans will already be done by then," the first
woman replied. "We will follow it, now!"
They set off, tracking the tiger spirit. They strung out in a long line.
One would stand where the tiger landed, near the visible indentations of
its claws, while the other three moved ahead to scout for the next
tracks. When they were found, the whole process would repeat. After
tracking it for four hours, they realized it was slowing, and moved
slower themselves. They switched to having two teams, so that two women
together waited at the known tracks, while the other two looked for the
new tracks. One member of each pair stayed focused on their
surroundings, hoping to prevent the tiger from catching them unawares a
second time.
The second woman finally decided she knew where it was heading, and
brought them around to where they would be able to look down upon the
spot from a hill covered in trees and brush.
Though the cover was good, Ranma would have known they were there. But
he did not. He was not scanning the night with his sixth and seventh
sense. Instead, he had turned them inward. He had released the Neko-ken,
and been pleased that his aura seemed to lapse into his own shape, as he
dwelt in it, rather than returning to blue flames.
He had drawn up the magic into himself, and then stared down bemused at
his body. It looked like him, on the outside. He was nude, he noticed,
not having brought any clothing with him. He had been used to having
Fey's clothing to fall back on, but the wristband was not on his wrist,
it was on Ranko's. He decided to see if he could get out of the body
without dissolving it, so he could look into it, and see why he couldn't
seem to breathe, and felt no heartbeat.
The watching girls breathed long happy sighs in awe, when they peeked
over the top of the hill, and saw the naked young man, strong and
beautifully muscled, standing by the deep pool that lay deep and still
beyond the foam that churned at the base of the fifty foot waterfall. It
was a perfect scene to frame what looked like a young god, and the girls
would likely have gotten into a fight over which one got to go down and
get defeated by him for peeping on him, had the older women not been
there to hold them back.
The older women held the girls back for the crucial moments it took for
the tiger-spirit to step from the body, letting it drop lifeless to the
ground. Ranma looked at himself, and realized that in even that short
time, he had grown stronger, because the body had generated ki. "I
should stay in a body, then." he said to himself, and drew up the magic
strands.
The watching Amazons stifled their gasps when the tiger-spirit seemed to
suddenly take on real physical form. No longer a glowing blue, it looked
like a true tiger now, yellow and black, and they had to stifle their
sudden strong swell of desire for the finely muscled form.
Ranma was delighted when he realized he could breathe. Apparently his
tiger and dragon forms, based on his body as they were, had all the
pieces, while the body he was trying to build was being created based on
his spirit, an altogether different situation. He was also surprised
that this body felt hungry... and it grew hungrier as it gazed on the
body lying before it.
At first he was slightly sickened at the thought, but then he realized
that he would have to cut it up anyway, to study it and see what he had
done wrong. He would either have to go and hunt and kill something else,
that had done nothing, so that his hunger would not overwhelm him... Or
eat his own body as he examined it. The decision was an easy one. After
all, this body was his, there was no-one else to care if he ate it. He
supposed he could have summoned some fruit, but this body was that of a
carnivore, and the thought simply didn't have the appeal it would
normally have held for him.
The girls' desire was cramped when the beast reached out and tore off
the boy's arm. The youngest girl could barely contain her retching. The
second woman nudged the first. "Look at it. It is peeling back the skin,
and looking at the muscle, before eating it. Why is it doing that?"
They watched in mingled disgust and awe, as the beast proceeded to eat
its way through the chest cavity. When the beast dove into the
waterfall, to wash away the blood that matted its fur, they saw their
chance, and darted down, picked up the still hot remains, almost whole
except the arm that had been torn off, and made off with it.
When Ranma emerged from the water, cleansed of blood, he shook himself
vigorously, then gaped at the pool of blood, and the complete absence of
his body. At first, he thought a wild animal had come to investigate the
scent, but looking closer, he could see the footprints. The Amazons! Oh,
no... he couldn't let them get that body back to the village. He was
afraid of what Ranko would do when she recognized the face, which he had
not harmed. He hadn't tried the mental communication, and didn't know if
it would work. She would be asleep by now, so he couldn't try without
alarming her. He set to work, hunting them, following the scent of his
own blood.
Several hours later, they stopped and made camp. The youngest girl ran
her fingers across the bloody face. "He was so handsome, so strong... He
would have been a good husband. I wonder who he was?"
"Not Musk, I hope... though who else has such strong males, these days?"
"Oh dear. We'll really be in for it if the Musk catch us carrying one of
their own like this."
"I doubt it. Its fairly obvious that the body was mauled by a beast."
Suddenly, their senses alerted them to approaching danger, and they
grabbed for their weapons. Before they could bring them to bear, the
huge tiger-spirit had leaped over the trees to land in the clearing,
heaved the torn body to its back, and leapt away again.
They cursed fluently. "Now, what? We go back, and track it again?"
"We'll leave a message here for the elders. They will come look, before
tomorrow is finished. Hopefully, they will find this place, read the
signs, and find our message." Even as she spoke, she was writing quickly
on a leaf of parchment. She rolled it into a tube, tied it off, and hung
it from a high branch. "Let's go."
Ranma returned to his waterfall. He had surmised that they had come up
while he was in the waterfall, and hadn't seen the massive tiger. He
figured once they saw what took the body, they would leave well enough
alone. That was why he had moved slowly enough to let them get a good
look at him.
He needed to burn this body anyway. He placed it on a rock, out in the
depths of the pool. Hopefully that would at least keep off any wild
animals drawn by the scent of blood. Before he left, he slashed the face
to ribbons, to prevent identification, in case someone tried the same
thing again.
By the time he had built up a large enough pile of deadwood to lay the
body upon, the women had returned, and taken up their position to watch.
They observed him place the body on the pyre, deciding it must be some
ritual the cat-spirit needed to retain his form.
They watched, and their thoughts seemed confirmed, when he stood back
from the pyre, still unlit, and raised a hand. Sudden blue flames
flicked about it for a moment, as he lifted it to the air, and flames
roared up from beneath the pyre! He watched the orange flames for a long
minute, then decided they weren't hot enough to do the job. He drew up
magic, hands glowing with power, and the flames roared higher and
hotter, moving from orange to yellow, then finally they flared blue.
The blue flame roared leaping high into the air, giving off no visible
smoke, and when it finally died, Ranma leapt off into the night, wanting
to focus on his body as it moved, and leapt, and breathed, so that he
could feel the action of the organs.
The Amazons crept down the hill, and surrounded the fire. One knelt and
felt the ashes. They were a fine gray dust. No flesh, not even bone
remained... and bone always remained. "Very hot fire?," one asked.
"Spirit fire. The spirits took the body," responded another. They pulled
back, and set up camp some distance away. They did not build a fire,
this time.
---
When morning came, they again crept up to the hill. It took them a
moment to realize that the tiger was there, lying sprawled upon the
ground, snoring. They considered moving in and attacking it while it
slept, only to have that option removed as it suddenly stirred. It sat
up, shaking its large head back and forth as if to knock the sleep out.
Ranma looked about blearily. Too early, and his mouth... he tasted iron.
He looked at the pool, and thought about washing his mouth out with
that, then he realized, as his senses were again stretched about him,
more by reflex than intent, that he was being watched by four women.
As he felt their auras, he realized they were not from his village, or
at least, hadn't been there during the time that he had been. He
wondered what to do about it... and realized he was entirely unclothed.
He flicked his fingers and summoned a pair of black silk boxers, then a
pair of loose, baggy pants. He didn't summon his usual tight shirt
though. It would make his fur itch.
He tried to decide what to do about the women... but his head hurt, and
he didn't want to think about it. He would feel better after a cup of
herbal tea, he decided. He glanced in their direction, but saw no
movement. He thought about looking for herbs, but decided not to bother.
So what if they saw he could do magic? It would just make them more
afraid, he thought, and maybe they would go and leave him alone. He
summoned a low table, and a tea set, with five place settings. He wasn't
sure why he did that, but then decided he wouldn't really mind company.
He summoned five tatami mats, and knelt on one, pouring the herbal tea
into his cup. He lifted it, and took a large sip, rolling it around in
his mouth, to get the taste of iron out, then spat it behind him. He
took another sip, and swallowed this time. He looked directly at the
women, with a challenging gaze, and smiled at them. He wasn't really
aware that smiling with a mouth full of terribly sharp teeth is not the
most reassuring thing you can do.
"Aiiee... he knows we are here!," the youngest squealed. The second
woman slapped the girl's head. "If he was unsure before, he knows now,
foolish girl. Well we know he can move faster than we. We cannot run and
hope to escape, if he chooses to follow. Let us go down and meet him. It
seems we have little choice to do otherwise." She stood, holding her
spear, and stepped out of the underbrush, and walked down to the grassy
waterside, followed by the other three, all holding their weapons
nervously.
He had placed the four additional settings and mats across the table
from himself, reckoning they would not want to get too close. He was
only partially right. The closer they got, the stronger their desire for
him became. As they approached, he smiled again, and holding the tea pot
delicately in his massive hand, he poured tea into the four cups. They
sat gingerly on the mats, watching him. It was only then that he really
realized that he had gotten larger. Even sitting down, he towered over
them.
The two younger ones still looked fearful, but the elder had firmed
their faces. They would not show weakness before a spirit, lest he take
it as an invitation to attack. They gripped their cups firmly, and
drank, praying inside that it not be poisoned. He had drunk first after
all, from the same teapot, but wait... he had... yes. Both coming to the
same conclusion, they followed his pattern of swishing the tea in their
mouths, then turning to spit it behind them, before drinking from their
cups. The younger two followed suit, as he looked on.
When he saw that they weren't going to take the lead and speak, he
decided he needed to impress on them that he was not prey, to be hunted.
He raised his large claw, and the first woman's spear jerked forward,
almost pulled from her grasp, as the haft just below the head slapped
into his palm. She gasped, eyes wide in fear, as he casually snapped the
head off the weapon. He took the metal head in one hand, holding it
above the other, and supplied great heat with his ki, as he had done
when learning weaponsmithing.
They gasped in awe, and the acrid scent of fear rose from them, as the
droplets of brightly glowing molten metal dripped through his fingers to
roll and pool on his palm. "I am not for hunting." Ranma said plainly.
His voice was different in this form. It was deeper, rougher, almost a
growl. The women nodded slowly. Finally, the woman who's spear he had
destroyed spoke. "We were not hunting you, Lord Spirit. We are Amazons,
and we must investigate possible dangers to our tribe."
"I am no danger to your tribe. I am here, not to disturb you, but to
work in peace. I must make a body for my sister... but I must perfect my
own first. I have no female example to work from, but I will manage."
His words were simple, direct. He was stating in the plainest terms why
he was here, hoping they could see his sincerity, and would leave him in
peace.
He did not really consider the effect his words would have from their
perspective. He didn't know that they had seen everything they had.
He didn't know that they had watched as he pulled the body apart,
examining each piece before eating it. He didn't realize the
implications they would draw from his statement of the lack of a female
example. Each of them was picturing this beast slowly stripping their
flesh, examining each piece, as he devoured it.
Furthermore, he had just told them enough to realize that he was not yet
confident of his understanding of the male body... much less the
female... He would surely need many examples, and they had just told him
they were from a tribe of Amazons. His smile, meant to put them at ease,
seemed to them the grin of a beast looking forward to having some fun.
Their hands were cold with sweat, and even to themselves they stank of
fear, as they sat drinking their tea, and wondering how they would get
out of this. Ranma smelled their fear, but didn't realize the real
reason for it. He figured he had done enough to ensure they would not
return, not realizing that he had in fact done exactly what would ensure
their return in force. When he saw that they had finished their tea, he
waved a hand, and the tea set disappeared, as did the table and mats. He
stood, and they got shakily to their feet, looking up at him with
fearful eyes. Even the older women could not disguise their terror, and
they were frightened still more by the fact that they could still feel a
strong udnercurrent of desire for him, through their fear, leading them
to believe the desire was unnatural, perhaps even magical in nature.
"Remember," he said, in a deep rumble, "I'm not for hunting." He turned,
and with several leaping bounds, was quickly out of sight. The Amazons
sagged against each other in sudden relief, as the fear and desire both
drained away.
"He doesn't need us?" The youngest asked hopefully.
"Not yet," replied the first woman, "Not yet. You heard him, he must
master the male form, before he begins on the female. We must destroy
him before that time. We must get to the village, quickly, to warn the
elders." With that, they were off.
The next day, when Ranma awoke, there were two elders and ten strong
warriors concealed on a hill across the stream, protected from his sight
by a powerful magical medallion worn by one of the elders. They watched
with wide eyes, as he stood up, stepping up and out of his body,
becoming once again the glowing entity of ki, before suddenly filling
out again. The tiger-spirit picked his old body up, and carried it to
lay by the water. He tore open its chest, and washed the blood away with
water.
The elders had looked at each other with awe in their eyes when he had
stepped from his body. A spirit of pure ki... unbelievable! Silently,
they praised their luck at its decision to examine its own body. Had
they not seen it arise so easily from its prison of flesh, they would
have attacked. They realized now that slaying its body would have little
effect on it, and settled in to watch, hoping to see a weakness.
They looked on, as the creature removed one organ after another, tracing
the connections between them, and slicing them open to examine the
inside, before laying them back in the body. After examining his own
chest cavity for nearly an hour, the spirit shucked his new body, then
suddenly became a strong young man, shucked that body as well, then
picked up the tiger body he had just discarded, and put it back on.
He lay the boy's body down, and broke open its chest in the same way. He
had done better... there was a heart, and lungs, and he had been able to
take a breath. Still, the stomach wasn't connected to the mouth, and the
lines that went from the heart to the lungs were missing. He sighed.
This would be a long slow process... and then he would have to do the
same with women. Sighing, he gestured at the bodies, and they erupted in
crackling blue flames that quickly reduced them to ash.
He sat lotus style, and went to reach for his flute, but it was not
there. He realized, once again, that Ranko had the Dragon Fang. Aah...
he could use that wakizashi he had made. He pictured where it sat,
cradled on wooden pegs on a board in his room at the castle, and he
called to it, and pulled it to him.
The watching elders gasped in awe when he pulled a beautiful dark blue
wakizahi from nowhere. They were even more startled when it became a
dark blue flute, and the tiger began to play. The warriors around them
sighed happily, thrilled by the beautiful music. The elders were
concerned... they could feel the ki that imbued the music with power,
and wondered what the beast was trying to accomplish. They could see
that the tiger's eyes were closed in concentration.
They all gawked in startled wonder when a gorgeous green haired neriad
rose silently from the water, only hair covering her heaving upper
body, to lie listening upon a stone amidst the depths of the pool. The
young warriors saw only a well-endowed young woman with greenish skin,
brilliant sea-green hair, and a long snake's body below the waist. The
elders though, saw a being of power, a neriad, a spirit of water, drawn
up, entranced by the tiger-spirit's music.
When he lifted his head from his flute, to draw a deep breath, and sigh,
and look about him, the neriad slipped quietly from the rock back into
the silent depths of the pool. She was gone before his gaze fell upon
the rock, and the elders realized to their shock that the tiger-spirit
had not only not intended to summon the water-spirit, but been unaware
of doing so. The power implied in being able to accidentally summon a
being of such power stunned them.
The music had eased his emotions, and his heart was steady again. But
his mind still roiled with tangled thoughts. He needed to clear his head
now. He leapt gracefully out to that stone in the depths of the pool,
and began a slow kata. He did not see the neriad rise amongst the
concealing waters of the waterfall, but the elders did. They too
watched, entranced at his powerful forms and flowing punches and kicks.
They were stunned when he reached the aerial portion of the kata,
moving considerably faster now, and several times landed upon the water
and leapt lightly again, leaving only the faintest of ripples behind.
The first time his fist moved faster than sound, cracking the very air,
they all jumped in shock, but the neriad clapped her hands in delight.
The tiger-spirit paused suddenly, landing lightly on the stone, and
looking around for the source of the sound. The neriad moved from the
concealment of the flowing water, holding her upper body easily above
the water, and moved toward him. She opened her mouth, when his gaze lit
upon her, and sang at him, a warbling beautiful sound like water
babbling across stones in a shallow stream.
He stared in awe at the vision of beauty moving towards him. Not again,
not again, he was thinking desperately, afraid that he recognized the
hungry, possessive look in her eyes, but he seemed powerless to flee,
mesmerized by the beautiful sound of her voice. Tigers, unlike most
other cats, are not afraid of water, but will indeed go swimming in it
for pleasure. He slid off the rock, and used the Juushin Jisei to hold
himself partially submerged, so his head was level with hers. His eyes
flicked down, and he saw her long body snaking away beneath them.
"Lady," he said, in his deep rumbling voice, "I'm sorry, but I cannot
understand you." She had reached him them, and immediately raised a hand
to run lightly along his chest, feeling his powerful muscles. "I did not
mean to disturb you. I did not know this was your pool. I will leave, if
you wish." He made the offer in hope that she would ask it, though the
feel of her hand on his chest made him think she did not want him to
leave. He was rather worried, in fact, about what she probably did want.
The watching Amazons were equally mesmerized by the sight. Only the two
elders knew fear. They too could not pull themselves away, but they had
heard stories of what angry water spirits could do, and they imagined
that both spirits would grow angry if they detected their presence upon
the hill.
Ranma moved slowly to draw up threads of magic. He could see she was a
being of magic, and he wanted to move slowly enough that she could have
time to see what he was doing, and that there was no need to fear it.
When he completed the spell, he spoke again, and though his voice came
out sounding like the rushing of water down a thin gorge, he understood
it, and her response. "I say again, Lady, it was not my intention to
disturb you. I am sorry. I did not know this was your pool, and I will
leave, if you wish it."
"Please, do not leave. Your music speaks to my heart, fierce tiger, and
I enjoyed watching you play above my pool. You are pleasant to look
upon." He felt her coils sliding about his body, submerged beneath the
rippling surface of the pool, a cold caress. "If I let you stay, will
you play for me again?"
"Lady, I cannot stay forever, but if you let me stay, I will play for
you." She smiled at that, and he saw that she had long fangs, like a
poisonous snake, but it only made her smile more beautiful.
"I can see that another holds your heart, fierce tiger, so I will not
ask more of you than that, and that you let me watch you at play."
"At play, Lady? I do not understand you."
"When you danced upon the water, just now. You are beautiful, you know."
"Oh... my katas. Yes, Lady, I do not mind if you watch my katas."
"What are you doing here, fierce tiger? Why do you sit and play by my
waters? I thought you called to me, but that is not why you are here, is
it?"
"No, Lady." He smiled. "I am making a body for my sister, that together
we may free my Lady from bondage, and find my mother."
"A noble cause, indeed. I could wish your heart were not already taken,
fierce tiger." She smiled at him, then backed away, and sank beneath the
water.
The watching elders had not understood the words, but they could see
that some agreement had been reached. They watched in surprise and
wonder, when the tiger-spirit rose smoothly from the water, then padded
across the surface as if it were solid ground, to stand upon the near
shore, and shake the water from his fur.
He looked about him, then bounded off, disappearing into the distance
almost instantly. The elders took the warriors back to the village. They
would have to convene the council, to debate what to do. They were not
sure that even the whole village had the power to fight this thing.
After bathing, Ranko dressed again, and slipped out the back door of the
house. As she snuck away, she extended her senses to be sure no-one was
following. She leapt lightly, easily, over the village wall, then moved
quickly through the forest until she found a clearing that had a large
enough stone in it.
She pulled back, allowing Ranma to come to the fore. Onna-Ranma used her
ki claws to inscribe a rune of power and holding on the stone, and
several runes of strength, then begin charging it. She charged it
slowly, but at a steady pace. She was timing herself by what she had
learned charging the stones in the room where she had... had failed. If
she went slow enough, her ki replenished itself, and by the end, she was
still at full, as was the stone.
A little over an hour later, it was done. Ranma eased back, allowing
Ranko to the fore again. At his urging, she focused, and drew up the ki
aura, flickering blue flames that licked about her, then called on the
Neko-ken. As the aura became more solid about her, Ranma watched in the
glassy pool, muttering suggestions. He had noticed, from his external
perspective, what she had not... that the aura was definitely, even
distinctively feminine.
Yet Ranma could see it wasn't working... she couldn't get the aura to
disengage itself. He quickly cast a gate spell, opening a portal to the
location he was scrying, and stepped through. She gasped. "You... you
look like a ghost, Ranma."
"I know." His voice was hollow and thin, strange-sounding even to his
own ears. He reached out with threads of magic, and his will, and pulled
on his ki. It resisted, and he strengthened the pull. Ranko cried out in
pain, as her ki aura tore itself from her, and absorbed Ranma, becoming
a male aura again. She fell to her knees.
"Ranko," he cried out, "Release the stone. You must release the stone!"
Already, he could feel the drawing sensation, as her body reached out to
regain what was hers. The stone flared, and she cried out in relief. She
stood, strong again, and looked at him, glowing blue male half-tiger
standing before her.
"I cannot come too close, Ranko. I can still feel the pull the body has
for its ki. I've got to go away now. Don't worry... I've bound it with
magic. I won't lose it." He turned, and leapt, bounding over the trees,
and away from the clearing.
She stared after him. She had noticed what he had not. Their aura had
grown... the half-tiger that left her was fully ten feet tall. She
wondered how big he would be as a half-dragon.
Meanwhile Kho Lon paused in her slow thoughtful progress towards her
house, and looked to the distant clearing. She had felt that sudden
massive surge of magic and ki, and she started to move in that
direction.
Ranma was moving quickly now, with utter silence. He had a semi-solid
form, he could feel the claws on his feet biting the ground. He passed
within meters of two crouching Amazons, intent on their prey. They
didn't notice him... nor did he notice the two older Amazons nearly a
thousand feet up the slope, watching the younger two. After he was gone,
they came bounding down to land behind the younger two.
One of the younger two turned and hissed. "What are you doing?! You
scared it off!" She was referring to the tiger she and her sister Amazon
had been stalking.
"More important things, child. A massive tiger spirit passed not two
meters from you."
"Over here," said the other woman, "Come here girls, look at these
tracks. What made them?"
"A tiger... a big tiger," the elder of the two girls said.
"Look closer," the woman commanded them. "Look at the stride."
"A two-legged tiger? What is this?" The younger girl looked at the two
older women in confusion. "Tigers don't walk on two legs."
"We watched the spirit. It was a tiger... and a man, and it walked on
two legs, and moved in great bounding strides, but it glowed blue, and
we could see you through it as it passed between us and you."
"What should we do?" asked the older girl, "Send for an Elder, and
follow it?"
"Whatever mischief it plans will already be done by then," the first
woman replied. "We will follow it, now!"
They set off, tracking the tiger spirit. They strung out in a long line.
One would stand where the tiger landed, near the visible indentations of
its claws, while the other three moved ahead to scout for the next
tracks. When they were found, the whole process would repeat. After
tracking it for four hours, they realized it was slowing, and moved
slower themselves. They switched to having two teams, so that two women
together waited at the known tracks, while the other two looked for the
new tracks. One member of each pair stayed focused on their
surroundings, hoping to prevent the tiger from catching them unawares a
second time.
The second woman finally decided she knew where it was heading, and
brought them around to where they would be able to look down upon the
spot from a hill covered in trees and brush.
Though the cover was good, Ranma would have known they were there. But
he did not. He was not scanning the night with his sixth and seventh
sense. Instead, he had turned them inward. He had released the Neko-ken,
and been pleased that his aura seemed to lapse into his own shape, as he
dwelt in it, rather than returning to blue flames.
He had drawn up the magic into himself, and then stared down bemused at
his body. It looked like him, on the outside. He was nude, he noticed,
not having brought any clothing with him. He had been used to having
Fey's clothing to fall back on, but the wristband was not on his wrist,
it was on Ranko's. He decided to see if he could get out of the body
without dissolving it, so he could look into it, and see why he couldn't
seem to breathe, and felt no heartbeat.
The watching girls breathed long happy sighs in awe, when they peeked
over the top of the hill, and saw the naked young man, strong and
beautifully muscled, standing by the deep pool that lay deep and still
beyond the foam that churned at the base of the fifty foot waterfall. It
was a perfect scene to frame what looked like a young god, and the girls
would likely have gotten into a fight over which one got to go down and
get defeated by him for peeping on him, had the older women not been
there to hold them back.
The older women held the girls back for the crucial moments it took for
the tiger-spirit to step from the body, letting it drop lifeless to the
ground. Ranma looked at himself, and realized that in even that short
time, he had grown stronger, because the body had generated ki. "I
should stay in a body, then." he said to himself, and drew up the magic
strands.
The watching Amazons stifled their gasps when the tiger-spirit seemed to
suddenly take on real physical form. No longer a glowing blue, it looked
like a true tiger now, yellow and black, and they had to stifle their
sudden strong swell of desire for the finely muscled form.
Ranma was delighted when he realized he could breathe. Apparently his
tiger and dragon forms, based on his body as they were, had all the
pieces, while the body he was trying to build was being created based on
his spirit, an altogether different situation. He was also surprised
that this body felt hungry... and it grew hungrier as it gazed on the
body lying before it.
At first he was slightly sickened at the thought, but then he realized
that he would have to cut it up anyway, to study it and see what he had
done wrong. He would either have to go and hunt and kill something else,
that had done nothing, so that his hunger would not overwhelm him... Or
eat his own body as he examined it. The decision was an easy one. After
all, this body was his, there was no-one else to care if he ate it. He
supposed he could have summoned some fruit, but this body was that of a
carnivore, and the thought simply didn't have the appeal it would
normally have held for him.
The girls' desire was cramped when the beast reached out and tore off
the boy's arm. The youngest girl could barely contain her retching. The
second woman nudged the first. "Look at it. It is peeling back the skin,
and looking at the muscle, before eating it. Why is it doing that?"
They watched in mingled disgust and awe, as the beast proceeded to eat
its way through the chest cavity. When the beast dove into the
waterfall, to wash away the blood that matted its fur, they saw their
chance, and darted down, picked up the still hot remains, almost whole
except the arm that had been torn off, and made off with it.
When Ranma emerged from the water, cleansed of blood, he shook himself
vigorously, then gaped at the pool of blood, and the complete absence of
his body. At first, he thought a wild animal had come to investigate the
scent, but looking closer, he could see the footprints. The Amazons! Oh,
no... he couldn't let them get that body back to the village. He was
afraid of what Ranko would do when she recognized the face, which he had
not harmed. He hadn't tried the mental communication, and didn't know if
it would work. She would be asleep by now, so he couldn't try without
alarming her. He set to work, hunting them, following the scent of his
own blood.
Several hours later, they stopped and made camp. The youngest girl ran
her fingers across the bloody face. "He was so handsome, so strong... He
would have been a good husband. I wonder who he was?"
"Not Musk, I hope... though who else has such strong males, these days?"
"Oh dear. We'll really be in for it if the Musk catch us carrying one of
their own like this."
"I doubt it. Its fairly obvious that the body was mauled by a beast."
Suddenly, their senses alerted them to approaching danger, and they
grabbed for their weapons. Before they could bring them to bear, the
huge tiger-spirit had leaped over the trees to land in the clearing,
heaved the torn body to its back, and leapt away again.
They cursed fluently. "Now, what? We go back, and track it again?"
"We'll leave a message here for the elders. They will come look, before
tomorrow is finished. Hopefully, they will find this place, read the
signs, and find our message." Even as she spoke, she was writing quickly
on a leaf of parchment. She rolled it into a tube, tied it off, and hung
it from a high branch. "Let's go."
Ranma returned to his waterfall. He had surmised that they had come up
while he was in the waterfall, and hadn't seen the massive tiger. He
figured once they saw what took the body, they would leave well enough
alone. That was why he had moved slowly enough to let them get a good
look at him.
He needed to burn this body anyway. He placed it on a rock, out in the
depths of the pool. Hopefully that would at least keep off any wild
animals drawn by the scent of blood. Before he left, he slashed the face
to ribbons, to prevent identification, in case someone tried the same
thing again.
By the time he had built up a large enough pile of deadwood to lay the
body upon, the women had returned, and taken up their position to watch.
They observed him place the body on the pyre, deciding it must be some
ritual the cat-spirit needed to retain his form.
They watched, and their thoughts seemed confirmed, when he stood back
from the pyre, still unlit, and raised a hand. Sudden blue flames
flicked about it for a moment, as he lifted it to the air, and flames
roared up from beneath the pyre! He watched the orange flames for a long
minute, then decided they weren't hot enough to do the job. He drew up
magic, hands glowing with power, and the flames roared higher and
hotter, moving from orange to yellow, then finally they flared blue.
The blue flame roared leaping high into the air, giving off no visible
smoke, and when it finally died, Ranma leapt off into the night, wanting
to focus on his body as it moved, and leapt, and breathed, so that he
could feel the action of the organs.
The Amazons crept down the hill, and surrounded the fire. One knelt and
felt the ashes. They were a fine gray dust. No flesh, not even bone
remained... and bone always remained. "Very hot fire?," one asked.
"Spirit fire. The spirits took the body," responded another. They pulled
back, and set up camp some distance away. They did not build a fire,
this time.
---
When morning came, they again crept up to the hill. It took them a
moment to realize that the tiger was there, lying sprawled upon the
ground, snoring. They considered moving in and attacking it while it
slept, only to have that option removed as it suddenly stirred. It sat
up, shaking its large head back and forth as if to knock the sleep out.
Ranma looked about blearily. Too early, and his mouth... he tasted iron.
He looked at the pool, and thought about washing his mouth out with
that, then he realized, as his senses were again stretched about him,
more by reflex than intent, that he was being watched by four women.
As he felt their auras, he realized they were not from his village, or
at least, hadn't been there during the time that he had been. He
wondered what to do about it... and realized he was entirely unclothed.
He flicked his fingers and summoned a pair of black silk boxers, then a
pair of loose, baggy pants. He didn't summon his usual tight shirt
though. It would make his fur itch.
He tried to decide what to do about the women... but his head hurt, and
he didn't want to think about it. He would feel better after a cup of
herbal tea, he decided. He glanced in their direction, but saw no
movement. He thought about looking for herbs, but decided not to bother.
So what if they saw he could do magic? It would just make them more
afraid, he thought, and maybe they would go and leave him alone. He
summoned a low table, and a tea set, with five place settings. He wasn't
sure why he did that, but then decided he wouldn't really mind company.
He summoned five tatami mats, and knelt on one, pouring the herbal tea
into his cup. He lifted it, and took a large sip, rolling it around in
his mouth, to get the taste of iron out, then spat it behind him. He
took another sip, and swallowed this time. He looked directly at the
women, with a challenging gaze, and smiled at them. He wasn't really
aware that smiling with a mouth full of terribly sharp teeth is not the
most reassuring thing you can do.
"Aiiee... he knows we are here!," the youngest squealed. The second
woman slapped the girl's head. "If he was unsure before, he knows now,
foolish girl. Well we know he can move faster than we. We cannot run and
hope to escape, if he chooses to follow. Let us go down and meet him. It
seems we have little choice to do otherwise." She stood, holding her
spear, and stepped out of the underbrush, and walked down to the grassy
waterside, followed by the other three, all holding their weapons
nervously.
He had placed the four additional settings and mats across the table
from himself, reckoning they would not want to get too close. He was
only partially right. The closer they got, the stronger their desire for
him became. As they approached, he smiled again, and holding the tea pot
delicately in his massive hand, he poured tea into the four cups. They
sat gingerly on the mats, watching him. It was only then that he really
realized that he had gotten larger. Even sitting down, he towered over
them.
The two younger ones still looked fearful, but the elder had firmed
their faces. They would not show weakness before a spirit, lest he take
it as an invitation to attack. They gripped their cups firmly, and
drank, praying inside that it not be poisoned. He had drunk first after
all, from the same teapot, but wait... he had... yes. Both coming to the
same conclusion, they followed his pattern of swishing the tea in their
mouths, then turning to spit it behind them, before drinking from their
cups. The younger two followed suit, as he looked on.
When he saw that they weren't going to take the lead and speak, he
decided he needed to impress on them that he was not prey, to be hunted.
He raised his large claw, and the first woman's spear jerked forward,
almost pulled from her grasp, as the haft just below the head slapped
into his palm. She gasped, eyes wide in fear, as he casually snapped the
head off the weapon. He took the metal head in one hand, holding it
above the other, and supplied great heat with his ki, as he had done
when learning weaponsmithing.
They gasped in awe, and the acrid scent of fear rose from them, as the
droplets of brightly glowing molten metal dripped through his fingers to
roll and pool on his palm. "I am not for hunting." Ranma said plainly.
His voice was different in this form. It was deeper, rougher, almost a
growl. The women nodded slowly. Finally, the woman who's spear he had
destroyed spoke. "We were not hunting you, Lord Spirit. We are Amazons,
and we must investigate possible dangers to our tribe."
"I am no danger to your tribe. I am here, not to disturb you, but to
work in peace. I must make a body for my sister... but I must perfect my
own first. I have no female example to work from, but I will manage."
His words were simple, direct. He was stating in the plainest terms why
he was here, hoping they could see his sincerity, and would leave him in
peace.
He did not really consider the effect his words would have from their
perspective. He didn't know that they had seen everything they had.
He didn't know that they had watched as he pulled the body apart,
examining each piece before eating it. He didn't realize the
implications they would draw from his statement of the lack of a female
example. Each of them was picturing this beast slowly stripping their
flesh, examining each piece, as he devoured it.
Furthermore, he had just told them enough to realize that he was not yet
confident of his understanding of the male body... much less the
female... He would surely need many examples, and they had just told him
they were from a tribe of Amazons. His smile, meant to put them at ease,
seemed to them the grin of a beast looking forward to having some fun.
Their hands were cold with sweat, and even to themselves they stank of
fear, as they sat drinking their tea, and wondering how they would get
out of this. Ranma smelled their fear, but didn't realize the real
reason for it. He figured he had done enough to ensure they would not
return, not realizing that he had in fact done exactly what would ensure
their return in force. When he saw that they had finished their tea, he
waved a hand, and the tea set disappeared, as did the table and mats. He
stood, and they got shakily to their feet, looking up at him with
fearful eyes. Even the older women could not disguise their terror, and
they were frightened still more by the fact that they could still feel a
strong udnercurrent of desire for him, through their fear, leading them
to believe the desire was unnatural, perhaps even magical in nature.
"Remember," he said, in a deep rumble, "I'm not for hunting." He turned,
and with several leaping bounds, was quickly out of sight. The Amazons
sagged against each other in sudden relief, as the fear and desire both
drained away.
"He doesn't need us?" The youngest asked hopefully.
"Not yet," replied the first woman, "Not yet. You heard him, he must
master the male form, before he begins on the female. We must destroy
him before that time. We must get to the village, quickly, to warn the
elders." With that, they were off.
The next day, when Ranma awoke, there were two elders and ten strong
warriors concealed on a hill across the stream, protected from his sight
by a powerful magical medallion worn by one of the elders. They watched
with wide eyes, as he stood up, stepping up and out of his body,
becoming once again the glowing entity of ki, before suddenly filling
out again. The tiger-spirit picked his old body up, and carried it to
lay by the water. He tore open its chest, and washed the blood away with
water.
The elders had looked at each other with awe in their eyes when he had
stepped from his body. A spirit of pure ki... unbelievable! Silently,
they praised their luck at its decision to examine its own body. Had
they not seen it arise so easily from its prison of flesh, they would
have attacked. They realized now that slaying its body would have little
effect on it, and settled in to watch, hoping to see a weakness.
They looked on, as the creature removed one organ after another, tracing
the connections between them, and slicing them open to examine the
inside, before laying them back in the body. After examining his own
chest cavity for nearly an hour, the spirit shucked his new body, then
suddenly became a strong young man, shucked that body as well, then
picked up the tiger body he had just discarded, and put it back on.
He lay the boy's body down, and broke open its chest in the same way. He
had done better... there was a heart, and lungs, and he had been able to
take a breath. Still, the stomach wasn't connected to the mouth, and the
lines that went from the heart to the lungs were missing. He sighed.
This would be a long slow process... and then he would have to do the
same with women. Sighing, he gestured at the bodies, and they erupted in
crackling blue flames that quickly reduced them to ash.
He sat lotus style, and went to reach for his flute, but it was not
there. He realized, once again, that Ranko had the Dragon Fang. Aah...
he could use that wakizashi he had made. He pictured where it sat,
cradled on wooden pegs on a board in his room at the castle, and he
called to it, and pulled it to him.
The watching elders gasped in awe when he pulled a beautiful dark blue
wakizahi from nowhere. They were even more startled when it became a
dark blue flute, and the tiger began to play. The warriors around them
sighed happily, thrilled by the beautiful music. The elders were
concerned... they could feel the ki that imbued the music with power,
and wondered what the beast was trying to accomplish. They could see
that the tiger's eyes were closed in concentration.
They all gawked in startled wonder when a gorgeous green haired neriad
rose silently from the water, only hair covering her heaving upper
body, to lie listening upon a stone amidst the depths of the pool. The
young warriors saw only a well-endowed young woman with greenish skin,
brilliant sea-green hair, and a long snake's body below the waist. The
elders though, saw a being of power, a neriad, a spirit of water, drawn
up, entranced by the tiger-spirit's music.
When he lifted his head from his flute, to draw a deep breath, and sigh,
and look about him, the neriad slipped quietly from the rock back into
the silent depths of the pool. She was gone before his gaze fell upon
the rock, and the elders realized to their shock that the tiger-spirit
had not only not intended to summon the water-spirit, but been unaware
of doing so. The power implied in being able to accidentally summon a
being of such power stunned them.
The music had eased his emotions, and his heart was steady again. But
his mind still roiled with tangled thoughts. He needed to clear his head
now. He leapt gracefully out to that stone in the depths of the pool,
and began a slow kata. He did not see the neriad rise amongst the
concealing waters of the waterfall, but the elders did. They too
watched, entranced at his powerful forms and flowing punches and kicks.
They were stunned when he reached the aerial portion of the kata,
moving considerably faster now, and several times landed upon the water
and leapt lightly again, leaving only the faintest of ripples behind.
The first time his fist moved faster than sound, cracking the very air,
they all jumped in shock, but the neriad clapped her hands in delight.
The tiger-spirit paused suddenly, landing lightly on the stone, and
looking around for the source of the sound. The neriad moved from the
concealment of the flowing water, holding her upper body easily above
the water, and moved toward him. She opened her mouth, when his gaze lit
upon her, and sang at him, a warbling beautiful sound like water
babbling across stones in a shallow stream.
He stared in awe at the vision of beauty moving towards him. Not again,
not again, he was thinking desperately, afraid that he recognized the
hungry, possessive look in her eyes, but he seemed powerless to flee,
mesmerized by the beautiful sound of her voice. Tigers, unlike most
other cats, are not afraid of water, but will indeed go swimming in it
for pleasure. He slid off the rock, and used the Juushin Jisei to hold
himself partially submerged, so his head was level with hers. His eyes
flicked down, and he saw her long body snaking away beneath them.
"Lady," he said, in his deep rumbling voice, "I'm sorry, but I cannot
understand you." She had reached him them, and immediately raised a hand
to run lightly along his chest, feeling his powerful muscles. "I did not
mean to disturb you. I did not know this was your pool. I will leave, if
you wish." He made the offer in hope that she would ask it, though the
feel of her hand on his chest made him think she did not want him to
leave. He was rather worried, in fact, about what she probably did want.
The watching Amazons were equally mesmerized by the sight. Only the two
elders knew fear. They too could not pull themselves away, but they had
heard stories of what angry water spirits could do, and they imagined
that both spirits would grow angry if they detected their presence upon
the hill.
Ranma moved slowly to draw up threads of magic. He could see she was a
being of magic, and he wanted to move slowly enough that she could have
time to see what he was doing, and that there was no need to fear it.
When he completed the spell, he spoke again, and though his voice came
out sounding like the rushing of water down a thin gorge, he understood
it, and her response. "I say again, Lady, it was not my intention to
disturb you. I am sorry. I did not know this was your pool, and I will
leave, if you wish it."
"Please, do not leave. Your music speaks to my heart, fierce tiger, and
I enjoyed watching you play above my pool. You are pleasant to look
upon." He felt her coils sliding about his body, submerged beneath the
rippling surface of the pool, a cold caress. "If I let you stay, will
you play for me again?"
"Lady, I cannot stay forever, but if you let me stay, I will play for
you." She smiled at that, and he saw that she had long fangs, like a
poisonous snake, but it only made her smile more beautiful.
"I can see that another holds your heart, fierce tiger, so I will not
ask more of you than that, and that you let me watch you at play."
"At play, Lady? I do not understand you."
"When you danced upon the water, just now. You are beautiful, you know."
"Oh... my katas. Yes, Lady, I do not mind if you watch my katas."
"What are you doing here, fierce tiger? Why do you sit and play by my
waters? I thought you called to me, but that is not why you are here, is
it?"
"No, Lady." He smiled. "I am making a body for my sister, that together
we may free my Lady from bondage, and find my mother."
"A noble cause, indeed. I could wish your heart were not already taken,
fierce tiger." She smiled at him, then backed away, and sank beneath the
water.
The watching elders had not understood the words, but they could see
that some agreement had been reached. They watched in surprise and
wonder, when the tiger-spirit rose smoothly from the water, then padded
across the surface as if it were solid ground, to stand upon the near
shore, and shake the water from his fur.
He looked about him, then bounded off, disappearing into the distance
almost instantly. The elders took the warriors back to the village. They
would have to convene the council, to debate what to do. They were not
sure that even the whole village had the power to fight this thing.