Chapter Twenty-Six
Kenneth Bradley Lionhart begged his father on his knees. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he pulled at the pant legs of his father on the threshold of his family's large home.
He was the youngest boy of four brothers, seven years old.
He had done something despicable according to his father. The Lionhart's were a wealthy, prominent family in Japan. What Kenneth had done was now gossip all over the city; it was embarrassing and dishonorable to the family.
"Please father, don't do this! I made a mistake! Please, forgive me!" Kenneth cried.
"You dishonored this family with your unspeakable act! And soiled my name! You are not my son! You're a rotten thief! Lionhart's don't do what you did! Get out of here!" His father was a gruff, tall and staunch man. And the look in Kenneth's father's eyes pierced Kenneth's soul with daggers of pure abhorrence.
Standing at the door, his father pointed outwards.
"Send me to my room without supper, ground me for a month, take away my favorite toys - anything else but this! I can make amends. Please father!"
"Go!" His father's voice was powerful and knocked Kenneth back over and off his knees, off the threshold and onto his rear.
"But where will I go?"
The door slammed in Kenneth's face without an answer.
Kenneth cried. He pounded on the door begging for forgiveness.
His father had just banished him, disowned and disavowed him from the Lionhart family. If Kenneth's mother was still alive, she would never allow this. But ever since she died a few weeks prior, Kenneth had seen a change in his father and an unrelenting cruelness, mostly directed at Kenneth because he had been his mother's favorite.
All Kenneth did was a child's folly, but rumor of it spread, especially after the local police caught him afterwards and the media caught hold of it and plastered it all over the newspaper and other media outlets. For any other family, what happened would mean nothing. But for the Lionhart family, it was a total and utter embarrassment.
Kenneth had stolen a piece of candy from a merchant at a local market bizarre when the family was passing through on their way to a business affair. Kenneth had been hungry. It had been a child's hunger for sweets. A reporter at the bizarre witnessed the thievery and wrote an news article. Soon all the Japan was abuzz with a Lionhart scandal.
Kenneth's father was a proud man and he had had to make an example. All Kenneth wore was a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. And he heard his father yelling at his brothers through the door: "And if any of you help that little thief in anyway, you're out too!"
Kenneth cried for days, begging for food and money on the streets. Without his father, no one recognized him and treated him like a vagabond.
That was until he was rescued by a kind man in a traveling carnival troupe who took pity on him, gave him a meal and offered him a place to stay.
Over the years, here Kenneth grew strong and healthy and did magic tricks for children to earn his keep. His adopted father, a gentle man, loved him more than Kenneth's father had ever did. When word broke on what Kenneth's father had done, the news media outlets chided and ousted him. Newspaper headlines read: "Lionhart Hartless For Casting Out Son!" "Stocks Plummet For Hartless Business!" "Missing Youngest Son of Lionhart Family Still Not Found!"
Kenneth never revealed to his adopted carnival troupe who he really was. And he vowed that he would never use his full name again. Never again would he be known as Kenneth Bradley Lionhart.
For now on, he would be known simply as Ken, the Copycat Magician.
Copycat Ken took his time as he straightened from a crouch.
He had jumped off the roof of the house he had been perched on, watching as the battles raged on between Ranma and his friends. Each had been possessed by Xi'an's demons, but each failed the Master miserably.
He leered with contempt and disdain at the two martial artists who stood before him, and they in kind returned that same contempt and disdain.
But a sinister grin suddenly broadened Ken's face, because he knew he had a huge advantage over the two if they attacked him.
Ken had his chameleon cloak with him, and he could transform into anything or anyone he chose, using their martial arts skills against them. It was his greatest trick, his greatest ploy, and his greatest weapon to defeat his opponents.
When he was a kid, he had developed his magician-like talents in a with his carnival troupe, doing magic shows.
He enjoyed entertaining people and seeing the joy and happiness on their faces, people were amazed at his talents and illusions. He had been known as Ken, the Copycat Magician. He could change into anything. He had a niche for trickery, and even his troupe were amazed.
But after a number of years, he became bored and he realized he got a better thrill in tricking people, even stealing from them, using shock-tactics, and transforming himself into his very own victim, and using their own best defenses against them.
And in a way it was good medicine for the loser. It showed them their vulnerabilities and fallacies.
After researching his opponent thoroughly beforehand, he would engage him/her in a game of chance, in a matter of speaking. Faced with themselves, could they overcome themselves to defeat Ken? A mirror image of themselves?
With this in mind, he left the carnival troupe and branched out on his own, in a life of crime. He would transform into his opponent, often hitting martial arts dojos to beat tougher opponents, taunting them by utilizing his victim's best techniques and skills against them and adding them to his own repertoire. And building his confidence. Although, all he needed was his illusions, he had quite an extensive working knowledge of martial arts.
It was all an illusion, a trick of the eye - but it was a trick only a master magician could do - using his illusions against some of the strongest martial artists he could find.
And as he traveled the countryside, his escapades and notoriety grew, until everyone who heard the name "Copycat Ken" - a name given to him by his victims - became scared at the very mention of it.
Fear added to the illusion to trick his opponents and it helped defeat them even before they faced him. They wondered what he'd do to them, so they were unprepared. And an unprepared opponent was a loser.
But one person beat him, and this made him furious - Ranma Saotome. No one had ever beaten him before.
"I'll use my greatest trick yet!" he had said, transforming into all the opponents he had recently faced to get their best skills into one. But something went wrong, and he started to get confused. And his illusion was used against him. He tricked himself. In that sense, he made himself lose. And he vowed not to let that happen again.
Ranma Saotome and Ryoga Hibiki had already seen his transformation trick. Yet, they didn't know how it was done.
But Ken knew all of Ranma and Ryoga's techniques, including the Chestnuts Roasting Over A Fire technique, for which Ranma learned from Cologne, Shampoo's great-grandmother, and Ryoga's Lion Roar Shot, which was a very powerful technique, using a person's Chi to generate enough inner power to strike at his opponent with psonic energy. Ranma had an inferior version of it, and thus it didn't concern Ken.
So it was time to put that knowledge to the test. The method to use each technique was simple, but generating enough Chi to use them was another story. So, a trick was needed to overcome that. And he had it.
The demon inside him had it! It had all the power he would need to defeat these two.
Ken recalled the day he was defeated by Ranma. He had ran away, training for weeks, and harbored a deep resentment for Ranma. Each trick a magician did took deep concentration, that a master magician could focus in a heartbeat to do. But to have that trick used against the magician was the ultimate disgrace.
But with Master Xi'an, he learned to focus. Now he had the determination, skill and power he'd need to defeat Ranma for that utter embarrassment.
It was the time to get his revenge! It was time to wipe out that disgrace! It was time to reestablish the fear that was evoked whenever anyone thought of Copycat Ken!
"Time for real fun to begin, Saotome!" Ken said. "I won't hold back!"
"Bring it on, Copycat Ken!" Ranma said. "Anything you can dish out, we can overcome! We've beaten your tricks before! "
"Ah yes, but like I said, I've learned some knew ones and refreshed my mind on the simple ones."
And before Ranma could fully react, Copycat Ken send a power gust of negative energy telepathically through the air, and threw Ranma - more like pushed him - into the Tendo pond.
Ranma made a huge splash that halfed the water in the pond, throwing water everywhere. Soaking Shampoo and Mousse, activating their curses.
But Ryoga was quicker than the rest, and managed to jump out of the way from the on-coming water. He back-flipped onto the porch as it washed underneath the foundation.
Ranma emerged, his cursed activated, turning him into a buxom-large breasted, same-aged girl with red hair. "Hey!" he cried out. "That was a low-down dirty trick!"
"Tricks are my specialty, Saotome!" Copycat Ken said. "But that was nothing! Watch this!"
Copycat moved his arms fluently through the air making hand gestures as he did so, and used his Chi to transform the rest of the water in the pond into a spiral water serpent, and sent it towards Ryoga. "Once I get you out of the way, Hibiki, none of you will be a match for the master! All your curses will be activated! You're be at his mercy!"
The water serpent spiraled towards Ryoga, with what looked like four razor sharp teeth ejecting from its inner mouth, but with a fast forward blast of his Lion Roar Shot, Ryoga destroyed it forthright, and the water serpent sizzled into nothing.
"Anything else?"
"How'd you do that?" Ken said.
"I could ask you the same question, Copycat Ken," he said. "Is that demon inside your calling all the shots now, using its spirituality to generate this power of yours? You're just a puppet to it!"
Copycat Ken growled angrily. "Why you cocky, son-of-a-bitch!"
"It's not cockiness, it's confidence, and your tricks are nothing I haven't seen before," Ryoga said. "I should let you read my journals some time, after all this demon stuff is dealt with. You'll be amazed what I've experienced lately."
Suddenly Ryoga clutched his stomach and folded over, and put a hand to his mouth as he felt bile reaching to the surface. He felt sick.
Was the poison starting to take affect sooner than he had thought? Where was Akane with those herbs?
"Feeling sick, eh?" Ken said, putting hands on his hips. "Looks like you over-estimated those herbs you said you were taking. I wonder even if you cured Akane - "
He looked up and saw Akane come running out of the Tendo house with a clear bag of herbs. She looked perfectly fine, no sign of sickness.
Indeed Ryoga had cured her when they kissed.
But Ken couldn't let her give those herbs to Ryoga. He had to stop her, at all costs!
To be continued...