I do not own Ranma or any of the characters, places, intellectual properties etc therein, they are in the sole ownership of one Rumiko Takahashi. That's it, that's all I got... What? Do you just expect me to have witty and interesting things here all the time?; I have school you know, AS-levels and a life! Jokes :-P
The massive doors glided open to merely reveal another corridor, not one to be disheartened by a small setback Ranma took off. He jogged the length of the corridor with Taro in tow; they hadn't bothered to change either of themselves back as they predicted a fight ahead. Ranma was still contemplating the strange reactions he had gotten from Mint and Lime over his exposed chest when they got to the second pair of doors.
Not to be outdone these were engraved with impossibly intricate patterns that swirled hypnotically, almost giving Ranma the impression he was staring at water. It was Taro who snapped him out of the daze as he grunted, already pushing through the doors, snapping Ranma out of his trance. He mentally berated himself from getting so easily distracted, by a door no less, when Xian-Pu was at stake.
They opened out into an extravagant and obscenely opulent bedroom. It was all scarlet red drapes and golden embroidery, if it wasn't such an impressing display of affluence Ranma would have called it tacky. The white-haired youth that had abducted Xian-Pu was sat over to one side of the room, carefully reading through some very old scrolls laid out across a large mahogany desk. He noted the arrival of one pair of large, heavy footsteps and another pair of smaller, quieter ones and naturally assumed it was Mint and Lime.
"Mint, Lime, I already told you, you cannot see the prisoner again, she isn't a to-" He cut off mid-sentence when he swivelled in his seat and saw that it wasn't his faithful bodyguards that had approached him. Instead he noted with some peculiarity that it was a young red-haired girl and what appeared to be some kind of horribly mutated bull. Even now the two intruders were giving him absolutely evil looks that radiated loathing.
This was a fairly normal state of being for Taro but for Ranma a whole new level of hatred he had never really felt before swept over him. Merely looking at the older teen that had so embarrassed him and stole Xian-Pu was enough to make his blood boil. It had finally clicked in his head about the strange reactions he had gotten from Lime and Mint but it was only after he remembered what Ku-Lon had told him about the Musk being an all-male society.
Ranma personally wanted a long, drawn out conflict with herb that would allow him to thoroughly pummel the boy for what he had done but his main concern was Xian-Pu. He reached down to the make-shift top he had created from what little shreds of his shirt were left and pulled it up, revealing his ample chest to Herb. Taro looked somewhat surprised but he understood what Ranma was doing after a moment, especially after he too had seen what happened to Herb's bodyguards.
"What the hell are you doing you perverted girl!?" Herb was shocked to say the least when the red-haired woman he had never seen before suddenly bared herself to him. She seemed even more surprised when he didn't respond in the way she had expected him to. Herb waved his hand in a forceful gesture in Ranma's direction and the pigtailed girl was send shooting across the room as an invisible wall of Ki energy struck her. Her body made quick work of the wall and soon she was lying woozily down in a large pool of water.
She regained her senses and noticed she was in a large pool, or perhaps bath seeing as the water was heated. In fact it was warm enough to have triggered his change and soon a now-male Ranma dragged himself out at the edge of the bath. He hauled himself to his feet but above the noise of him steadily dripping onto the clean, polished floor below him he heard something else. It was a quiet and pitiful mewling, emanating from the far side of the bath.
Satisfied that he had dealt with the lesser of the two threats Herb turned in the direction of the beast. Sizing it up he instantly recognised that this creature was no match for Lime in terms of strength. It briefly made him wonder how he and the girl had managed to get by the two, looking at the hairy thing he surmised it wasn't through stealth. He smiled, it was going to be far too easy to dispatch the poor beast, he might even take his time with it.
Taro was under no illusions that this would be an easy fight; based on the skill and powers displayed in encounter with Lime he knew that these people were serious. Not to mention the small display of Herb's own power when he knocked Ranma through the wall with such little effort. Taro was wary for a similar attack, his instincts told him, for the first time ever, to be cautious with the confident looking-man before him.
When no such attack came Taro's mind overrode his instincts and the boy rushed the Prince. He used a powerful backwards sweep from his wings for added momentum and actually managed to get a solid blow on the snowy-haired man, purely out of surprise. Instantly Herb reassessed his opponent, not by much but it was enough for him to take him somewhat seriously. He stood up, allowing the monstrosity to back up a bit and wiped the blood from his nose; he rolled his head once and smiled at Taro.
The noise nearly put Ranma into panic mode as his brain rewired itself into a flight reflex that a normal Ranma had long ago extinguished. His recent training kicked in and the boy steeled himself, slowly pulling his body around to face the noise. Over in the very far corner on the white-tiled room was Xian-Pu, in her cat form, rather ungraceful stuffed inside a cage that was too small for her. He immediately rushed over, completely uncaring that she was a cat, and quickly looked over the cage.
Xian-PU's mews turned from sad to hopeful as she saw her Airen suddenly appear, admittedly through the wall but it was good nevertheless. She quietened down when she saw a bead of sweat roll down Ranma's forehead and remembered how difficult it was for him to be close to her like this. He couldn't find a key to the small lock that adorned the door to the cage so instead he resorted to simply breaking open the cage.
He was about to bend the small steel bars apart when, similar to his own entrance, when Taro's beast form crashed through the wall from the bedroom. He was thrown with considerably more force and created a large crater in the far wall before sliding limply into the water. Ranma had no more cold water left to convert Taro back into a form he could actually be of use in so instead he allowed the boy to remain unconscious.
Herb strode proudly over the rubble and immediately noticed the lack of his two previous opponents, instead there was the floating form of a young man and another shirtless boy holding Xian-Pu's cage. He laughed immediately, insulting Ranma even more as he did so.
"I should have known Jusenkyo was at play here when that monstrosity walked through the doors. Personally I have always been curious about the result of Niuhōmanmaorennīchuan, but I never imagined it to be so ugly. As for you, what kind of idiot manages to get a Nyannichuan curse anyway? To turn into a girl; how embarrassing." Ranma managed to stay calm throughout the teen's tirade; using the soul of ice he had learnt from Ku-Lon to keep his emotions in check.
He carefully set Xian-Pu's cage back down where it was before, he couldn't risk endangering her right now. Slowly he began moving sideways, even as Herb continued to laugh at his misfortune, except herb hadn't le the move go unnoticed. He immediately let out a barrage of Ki attacks that arced through the air like glowing scythes. By the skin of his teeth Ranma was able to dodge all of the energy blades but it seriously exerted him and his ability to contort his body mid-air.
His confidence was raised as he dodged one after another Ki blades, each one coming close enough to him to hear it buzz slightly with energy but none striking him directly. Already he could feel the ambient Ki on the room and could even sense Herb using his own vast store to launch attack after attack. Ranma landed during a brief interlude as Herb regained his composure, about to switch tactics when he noticed he wasn't accomplishing anything.
"So, the boy can run and jump, oh how impressive" It was the most indignant form of sarcasm that Ranma barely even listened, he instead used the brief pause to his advantage.
"So, I hear you're a prince, shame you live in such a dump." Herb looked at him appalled; he lived in only the height of opulence and luxury.
"What would a street urchin like you know of finery?" Ranma smirked, pleased that his opponent had taken the bait.
"Enough to know that somebody's overcompensating for something." Herb's eye twitched at the statement and unleashed a whole new wave of attacks. Ranma barely had to use his full skill to avoid these, the angered teen's aim was dreadful now and the blades of Ki simply cut through air instead of their intended target. Ranma continued to taunt now that he had some breathing room to move a bit more freely.
"So what, you have to kidnap girls? Can't get one for yourself?" Herb's attacks only increased in intensity. "Let me guess, mum issues?" Herb let out a roar and sent out an energy blade so large that it sheared clear through a large stone pillar behind Ranma, missing the teen by a meter. As his anger and fury increased the power of his attacks did as well, however his accuracy diminished. That was all Ranma needed as he quickly moved around Herb. Constantly moving and dodging, all the while growing more confident.
Herb stopped for only a moment to realign himself but that was all he needed as Ranma finally released all the pent up energy inside of himself through his hands.
"Moko Takabisha!" The blast of light hit Herb squarely on the chest, incinerating one of the blades he had just sent out. The blast was even strong enough that Ranma had to shield his eyes as it died down, the light was that intense. When he finally could lower his arms his spirits dropped unfathomably. Herb stood, surrounded by scorch marks on the floor, completely unscathed, smiling broadly.
"I am descended from Dragons you fool; you think a mere Ki attack can fell me? My kin are the masters of life force, performing indescribable feats the likes of which you could never imagine." Ranma wasn't one to let go of an advantage and immediately moved forward whilst the boy talked. The pigtailed martial artist always had a back-up plan and this time he had been tracing said plan out from the very start of the fight, moving only now to complete the spiral.
By the time that Ranma was close enough that Herb's aim started to become a problem again the young Prince was practically burning with hot, angry Ki. However in the split second that it took for Ranma to throw his fist up all of that burning KI completely disappeared.
"Hiryu Shoten Ha!" Herb had redirected it all and as cold Ki met equally cold Ki Ranma's upward punch was just that. Thrown completely off balance by the sudden manoeuvre Ranma was taken easily by a particularly savage kick from Herb that launched him across the room, back through the hole Taro had made and onto the ground on the far side of the bath. Herb triumphantly walked back through the rubble of the hole and watched as Ranma slowly picked himself up.
"Really boy, you still wish to fight? Never have I met somebody with such a will to die, it's almost amusing." His face hardened, "Almost. However I take it that you being here is a sign that the Amazon's have no intention of handing over the Nyannichuan waters." Still with that iron mask of a face, Herb walked quickly up to the cage where Xian-Pu lay, hissing vehemently. He picked her and the cage up and, making sure Ranma was looking first, held her at arm's length over the steaming waters of the bath.
"I wonder what will happen to the girl when she changes back inside the cage. How about you, do you think that the solid steels bars will break apart or do you think she'll be shredded as she expands?" Ranma just stared, horrified at what the Prince was contemplating.
"You asshole, why would you do that?" Herb smirked.
"She's no longer of any use to me; if the Amazons won't cooperate then I will have to make an example of this one." With that Herb simply dropped the cage. Time moved from that point in slow motion, during the brief conversation Ranma had been moving back against the far wall, Herb merely assumed it was in horror of his actions. Instead Ranma had been preparing and as soon as Herb dropped Xian-Pu he pushed off the wall with all his power and flew across the room.
He caught the metal cage even as the bottom of it touched the surface of the water. He rolled in the air, launching the cage up and away from the water to land safely on the far side, clutching it to his chest. Herb turned, actually somewhat impressed, not that he showed his rival that.
"It is of no consequence how long you prolong the inevitable, soon enough the both of you will be dead on the floor." Herb almost stammered the last word as he noticed a sudden change in the pigtailed ten before him. It was subtle and only his keen eye noticed the difference. Ranma had tensed up slightly and he was swaying just a bit as if he was swinging some imaginary tail. The most prominent change however were the boy's eyes, they had taken on a vaguely yellow hue and the pupils had squeezed themselves into slits, giving the boy a hunting impression of a cat.
With his heightened senses for such things Herb also noted a sudden rush of Ki to both the boy's hands, an almost inhuman amount. Even he had difficulty maintaining any kind of construct, lacking the sheer focus, yet here this boy was, fashioning a set of claws that didn't appear to be going anywhere. Herb sneered; it appeared he had once again underestimated his opponent, nevertheless he wou-
He was cut off in the middle of that thought as Ranma suddenly appeared before him without any sign of movement whatsoever. Even Mint wasn't that fast, always leaving the slightest of blurs that a well-trained eye could spot, yet Ranma appeared to teleport. Herb wasn't given the time he wanted to think about this sudden increase in speed as an equally fast flurry of slicing blows were dealt across Herb's body.
He could block many of them but for each time he raised his arms in defence they would receive four equally spaced cuts. They weren't deep but the cuts and blows just kept coming, all over Herb's body flesh was being sliced and blood started to ebb out the fresh wounds. It reminded him remotely of Mint's tactics of a thousand small cuts over one large one, to wear out an opponent with blinding sped. Except the performance Ranma was putting one was so much faster, more agile and a lot more deadly.
Every time Herb would go to counter attack or switch to the offensive he was rewarded with even more vicious cuts. With warriors spirit he managed to stay on his feet but that was about all he could do as Ranma backed off, his eyes returning to normal as he shook his head. Herb eyed him one last time, his body absolutely covered with nasty cuts from Ranma's Ki claws. Then he simply fell backwards, unconscious from the wear and blood loss before he even hit the ground.