The Art____
Art Chapter 2: Here's Ranma?
by GreggSharp Metroanime@mindspring.com
Ranma 1/2 created by Rumiko Takahashi, AMG created by Kosuke Fujishima, etc.
i don't have money so don't sue me, hire me and we
can BOTH make money.
yes, this is an Alterniverse sort of thing. The idea was: with all the talk about dedication to the Art, what other kind of Art could have required this much dedication and training. This is the result.
------
"I gotta learn an Umbrella spell, or maybe a Repel Water or something." A red-haired girl snarled as she glared at the heavens for the brief downpour. "Maybe a weave of Water and Air..."
"Growf," was the only response from her companion, a large panda that didn't seem too happy either.
"So what's at this dojo that I gotta see anyway?"
"Growf."
"You WOULD have to turn into something that can't speak, wouldn't you?" The girl thought about it and decided this was probably just another 'challenge the dojo and learn the techniques' run. She had a bad feeling about it, though. While Martial Arts were a good way to keep body and mind focussed, it was the Art of Magic that was her true dedication.
The two were aware of the attention they were receiving, though they'd walked some truly strange paths where they'd have been ignored as unremarkable. A girl who seemed to have a slight glow around her made more visible by the overcast sky, having a conversation with
a panda, was not something you see everyday even in Tokyo.
"We gotta find some hot water," Ranma suggested. "I don't want to use up the energy trying to cloak both of us with a Hide spell."
"Growfl?"
"No, I'm not gonna do that. What happens if that crazy Valkyrie chick comes after us again? You really want me to use up the energy needed to Shield against her shakti? And how many hits can even my best Shield take from that thing? One, yes. Two, maybe."
"Gruf." The panda seemed disinclined to continue even an attempt at conversation, shuddering at the mention of the Valkyrie.
-------
Soun glanced at the table and noted that a crystal was glowing. "At last, they're here in this dimension!"
"Kasumi!"
Kasumi looked up from where she was boiling noodles in the kitchen. "What is it, father?" While it was true that he was only a step-father, she'd long ago accepted him as if he were her real father.
"Nabiki!" Soun glanced in to find that Nabiki was lost in cyberspace again.
"Oh, is it that time already?" Nabiki glanced at her watch and then her calender.
"What time is what?" Soun always felt like he were three steps behind in a game of chess when he talked to Nabiki.
"Never mind, daddy, I'll be down in a moment. I want to put my best kimono on. First impressions and all that."
"Akane!" Soun looked around, then checked out the dojo. Sure enough, Shampoo and Akane were sitting in full lotus positions facing each other. An occasional spark or shimmer would appear in the air between them as they psychically dueled.
"Akane! Shampoo!" Soun called. He knew better than to get between the two, one of those Lessons You Learn While Waiting For The Casts To Be Removed.
"What is it, dad?"
"Shampoo turn make dinner tonight?"
"There's a family meeting, NOW."
Shampoo exchanged a glance with Akane as they followed their father into the house. "You think this time is that time?"
"We'll find out? Why are you so anxious anyway?"
"Not everything in life is fight, Akane. Not only pleasures in life through conflict. Old Amazon saying: 'Don't discount simpler pleasures in life.'"
"If it involves boys I don't see how it could have ANY pleasure involved."
"Maybe so, Akane, but you not going to dispute simple part, ne?"
Akane snorted an agreement as she entered, then assumed a neutral expression. They'd agreed earlier to act surprised when/if this iinazuke thing came to pass.
-----
"...and if my friend's son were to marry one of you, the Tendo legacy would be assured." Soun looked over his step-daughter, two daughters, and adopted daughter.
"Wait a minute, don't we get some say in who we're supposed to marry!" Akane, as usual, was angry. Her Aesir blood contained the berserker taint, and so Rage was something that empowered her. Unfortunately, her frequent tapping of that quality tended to keep it bubbling near the surface.
"Hang on, sis, you never know, he MIGHT be cute," Nabiki wondered if her sister had forgotten about their conversation last year. There hadn't been any mention of the subject to Akane since then,
though Nabiki and Kasumi had conferred on the findings of some of the divinations since then. Shampoo had been told shortly after she'd returned from her tribal village. "Right, daddy?"
"He'll be here any minute." Soun wondered about it himself. He had been told years ago that due to a misunderstanding with some otherdimensional Thing that they weren't including personal names in any of the usual correspondence. "Saotome and his son have been off exploring the multiverse for the past ten years on a training journey. They recently crossed into Asgard."
"Oooh, Asgard." Nabiki oohed appropriately. "Wonder if they got to meet Granddad Magni."
"So they've been to Asgard, big deal."
"Father, how old is this fiance? Younger men are so...young."
"Is he cute?" Nabiki silently congratulated her half-sister. Kasumi made it sound like she was condemning the idea as unworkable while still leaving it open. They already knew quite a bit about what was going on, but their father was enough of an emotional wreck without realizing exactly how little control he actually had over his life. She noted that she sounded a little eager herself, and wondered how much of her own attitude was an act.
"I...don't know."
"You don't know?" Nabiki stopped, he couldn't be THAT clueless, could he?
"I've never met him."
Kasumi sighed and covered her face with one hand. Nabiki noticed the gesture and realized that Kasumi was covering a smile. That they knew far more about what was going on than father was hardly new.
"Aiyah," said Shampoo, duplicating Kasumi's gesture and managing to sum up the entire situation. "Shampoo hope for best but this sound as bad as when honored adoptive father invested in sumo pig wrestling."
"So what exactly are we doing here, anyway?" The voice was of a boy, somewhat irritated. "Are we going to challenge them for their secret scrolls or what?"
"Ah, that must be them!" Soun Tendo beamed and started getting up.
Nabiki exchanged a glance to Kasumi who nodded. It sounded like their iinazuke hadn't been told yet. This WOULD be interesting. Smiling, she ran to open the door.
Outside was a middle aged man in a white gi that had a couple of oddly colored patches on it. Her attention was largely captured by the young man who was standing nearby, looking over the house with an
oddly distracted look.
"Oooh. He IS cute," she called back to the others. Turning back she noticed how shocked the young man in question was. Leanly muscled, hair back in a loose ponytail, filled out his clothing rather tightly
in all the right places.
"Uhm. Then these are friends of yours, pop?"
Nabiki smiled and invited them in, watching the young man's butt as he passed her. Yup, he might not be rich, but she WAS a teenage girl and money wasn't quite everything. It came close, but it wasn't everything.
Soun smiled as they entered the room, and almost hugged Ranma, a warning glare made the older man reconsider. "So you must be Genma's boy."
"Yeah. I'm Ranma Saotome."
"RANMA!?!" Shampoo leapt to her feet. "Did you say 'Ranma'?"
"uhm, yeah. Is there a problem?"
Shampoo's eyes went to Nabiki and made a silent promise that they would speak LATER. "No, just old story my great-grandmother tell me. Coincidence."
Nabiki thought about this. Come to think of it,they had always referred to Ranma after that first meeting as the "fiance" or "male visitor" just in case anyone should overhear or be scrying on them. Shampoo hadn't been present for that first meeting.
"Well now, Saotome, have you thought about your decision?"
"What decision would that be?" Ranma was puzzled. He had a bad feeling about this.
Even Akane got this without the whispered commentary from Shampoo. Ranma hadn't been told why he was coming here.
"To pick your fiancee, of course." Soun noted Genma casting a spell and a brief image of a shield settling into place around his old friend.
"WHAT?!?" Ranma went into obvious shock. He looked rather panicked, the discipline necessary for the Arts Magical having gone on coffee break.
"This is my stepdaughter Kasumi, she's 19. This is my daughter Nabiki, she's 17. This is my daughter Akane, she's 16. This is my adopted daughter Shampoo, she is also 16. Pick any one you want, she'll be your new bride."
"Eeep." Ranma glared at his father. "Pop, what are you trying to pull? You deliberately didn't tell me about this!"
"You'd have cast a Hide spell and run for cover if I'd told you," Genma managed, increasing the flow of energy to his Shield spell just in case. "It's for your own good, boy."
"Shampoo think he kinda cute. Shampoo will marry Ranma." Shampoo smiled while looking over Ranma like a cat with a new playtoy.
Akane was now looking shocked. "Shampoo, what?"
"Now, now, as the eldest here, it is my duty to fulfill family honor." Kasumi smiled in a sort of absent manner, radiating niceness. That was one thing about Kasumi's projective telepathy, she tended to project whatever emotion she was feeling the moment.
"Kasumi?!?" Akane went from shocked to flabbergasted. Kasumi interested in a younger guy? Well, it was also true that there wasn't a line forming at the door.
"Now now, maybe we shouldn't rush the poor boy. After all he has three prospective fiancees and doesn't know any of us well enough to make an intelligent choice. Waiting, say a month, that would be the sort of reasonable decision a mage would make, right?"
"Nabiki?" Akane vaguely remembered last year's meeting, but found herself wishing for a few rehearsals.
"Oh, don't worry Akane. We all know how you hate boys," Kasumi said with a smile.
"Kasumi right. Akane not worry about this. Shampoo win anyway."
"I don't think so, Shampoo. You're right about one thing at least, that Akane would definitely be the WRONG choice here."
"Waitaminnute!" Akane glared at her three sisters. She didn't like being forced into a marriage, but here she was being shoved out of it like she couldn't possibly compete in this arena. Pride was in a battle with reason and reason was very rapidly being knocked into submission. So she was being tossed out like yesterday's ramen?
"Shampoo sorry, Akane. You no competition but Shampoo not be mean, just not want see you hurt when you lose."
Akane growled and glared over at the boy whose head kept jerking around to stare as each girl spoke. His mouth was still hanging open.
"Well, Akane, that pretty much settles it. This way he only has to make a choice out of us three."
"Uhm, right." Ranma finally shut his mouth. The thought of three attractive women arguing about who would get to marry him was so far from his usual train of thought that he was feeling a curious dislocation. Strange? No, this was downright alien.
"I'm a woman too, you know. If I want to marry this jerk, I've got as much a right as anybody else!" The message suddenly reached Brain that Mouth had gone off on its own initiative. Akane immediately shut her mouth, sat back down from where she'd raised herself up to protest, and tried not to look at anyone.
"That's my boy," Genma said, proudly beaming at his son to have four women ready to be his fiancee.
"You do your father proud," wept Soun Tendo.
"What the heck happened," whispered Ranma. This was almost as bad as what had happened on that trip to Faerie. Wait, that's it. "There's something you all should know before you go volunteering like
that."
Picking up his glass of tea, now quite cold, Ranma looked over the four. He thought this would eliminate some or all of the prospects. "While we were travelling, looking for new magic to learn and practice, my old man heard some things about a plane of existence known as the Faerie Realm."
"The Land Of Mists & Change, Where Chaos Dwells and transmutation magicks are at their strongest, where the nature within shapes the nature without." Nabiki smirked as she saw Ranma's surprise. "Hey, we're a family of espers with a direct descent from a Norse godling, don't expect us to be ignorant about such things."
"Mister Saotome, how could you do something so dangerous? Don't you know that no-one who enters the Faerie Mists returns unchanged?" Kasumi didn't even bother looking over at Genma, she was watching Ranma
with a friendly smile and blushing slightly.
"Ah, no." Genma held up a travel book. It could be clearly seen that the text was written in Old Atlantean, but the picture labels were in Japanese.
"I take it you don't read Atlantean."
"Bingo." Genma said just before the cold tea hit him. His form blurred and a panda was now glaring at his son.
"Inner natures are revealed, huh, pop! Should have known you'd have a totem like Panda." Ranma poured the remainder of the tea on himself.
"Panda," read Nabiki from her copy of "Twodog's Guide To Totems & Familiar Spirits." She flipped it open and read silently the entry that related Panda to Weasel and mentioned one should expect a low moral character from such totem-bearers. Nabiki nodded to herself, no
surprises there.
Ranma's form shrank as soon as the tea hit it, becoming just a little over five feet in height. He became female, the hair turning red, the eyes turning a brilliant blue, a faint glow seeming to appear around her.
"Interesting, looks like a power up." Akane was interested in this, after all, if it had to do with fighting she was quite intrigued.
"My mother is a valkyrie in mortal guise," Ranma said. "This form reflects that side of my heritage."
"Well Ranma, why don't you go take a bath? We need to talk to Daddy anyway."
"OK," Ranma considered arguing but he wanted time to think this over. This had not been expected, the pattern of the past few years having become thoroughly disrupted.
Kasumi led Ranma upstairs to where his room was, and Nabiki waited until Ranma had come back down and gone down the hall to the furo before she turned to Shampoo.
"Okay, Shampoo, spill the beans."
"What you mean, Nabiki?"
"You didn't react to him until you heard the guy's name, then suddenly you're all anxious to get connected. What gives?"
Shampoo blushed and started playing with her fingers. "Is like this, you know great grandmama Cologne? She say watch for boy name Ranma, he 'diamond in rough' - you marry him and much honor to tribe."
"Hmmm. Something more than I thought is going on here." Nabiki steepled her hands and looked at Shampoo with a flat gaze. "You two," she indicated her father and Ranma's father with her thumb, "get ready
to marry off a Tendo and a Saotome. Shampoo's great grandmother wants Shampoo to marry a Ranma. The obvious solution is to have Shampoo Tendo marry Ranma."
"Shampoo think so too. Everybody happy."
"Except," Nabiki glared at Shampoo. "It's too contrived. I think I'm going to have to examine this all very carefully. I do NOT like being manipulated. I'll bet this was why Cologne hid the evidence of you still having family until AFTER the adoption was done."
"Aiyahh. You right."
Nabiki stood up and fixed the two fathers with the look that gave her the title "Ice Queen" of Furinkan. "You two hold off on your little plans, by the time the month is out, I should have more info."
--------
Cologne watched the scrying pool in the Amazon Village. Nabiki had figured it out sooner than had been expected, but the situation with Shampoo had been engineered on the spot anyway.
Cologne smiled. Things could still work out.
---------
Ice that had been ancient when the Egyptian sorcerers had fallen into disfavor with Akunaten cracked as Frostbite moved slightly. Things were progressing. It had, after all, been foreseen.
Ja ne,
Gregg
Art Chapter 2: Here's Ranma?
by GreggSharp Metroanime@mindspring.com
Ranma 1/2 created by Rumiko Takahashi, AMG created by Kosuke Fujishima, etc.
i don't have money so don't sue me, hire me and we
can BOTH make money.
yes, this is an Alterniverse sort of thing. The idea was: with all the talk about dedication to the Art, what other kind of Art could have required this much dedication and training. This is the result.
------
"I gotta learn an Umbrella spell, or maybe a Repel Water or something." A red-haired girl snarled as she glared at the heavens for the brief downpour. "Maybe a weave of Water and Air..."
"Growf," was the only response from her companion, a large panda that didn't seem too happy either.
"So what's at this dojo that I gotta see anyway?"
"Growf."
"You WOULD have to turn into something that can't speak, wouldn't you?" The girl thought about it and decided this was probably just another 'challenge the dojo and learn the techniques' run. She had a bad feeling about it, though. While Martial Arts were a good way to keep body and mind focussed, it was the Art of Magic that was her true dedication.
The two were aware of the attention they were receiving, though they'd walked some truly strange paths where they'd have been ignored as unremarkable. A girl who seemed to have a slight glow around her made more visible by the overcast sky, having a conversation with
a panda, was not something you see everyday even in Tokyo.
"We gotta find some hot water," Ranma suggested. "I don't want to use up the energy trying to cloak both of us with a Hide spell."
"Growfl?"
"No, I'm not gonna do that. What happens if that crazy Valkyrie chick comes after us again? You really want me to use up the energy needed to Shield against her shakti? And how many hits can even my best Shield take from that thing? One, yes. Two, maybe."
"Gruf." The panda seemed disinclined to continue even an attempt at conversation, shuddering at the mention of the Valkyrie.
-------
Soun glanced at the table and noted that a crystal was glowing. "At last, they're here in this dimension!"
"Kasumi!"
Kasumi looked up from where she was boiling noodles in the kitchen. "What is it, father?" While it was true that he was only a step-father, she'd long ago accepted him as if he were her real father.
"Nabiki!" Soun glanced in to find that Nabiki was lost in cyberspace again.
"Oh, is it that time already?" Nabiki glanced at her watch and then her calender.
"What time is what?" Soun always felt like he were three steps behind in a game of chess when he talked to Nabiki.
"Never mind, daddy, I'll be down in a moment. I want to put my best kimono on. First impressions and all that."
"Akane!" Soun looked around, then checked out the dojo. Sure enough, Shampoo and Akane were sitting in full lotus positions facing each other. An occasional spark or shimmer would appear in the air between them as they psychically dueled.
"Akane! Shampoo!" Soun called. He knew better than to get between the two, one of those Lessons You Learn While Waiting For The Casts To Be Removed.
"What is it, dad?"
"Shampoo turn make dinner tonight?"
"There's a family meeting, NOW."
Shampoo exchanged a glance with Akane as they followed their father into the house. "You think this time is that time?"
"We'll find out? Why are you so anxious anyway?"
"Not everything in life is fight, Akane. Not only pleasures in life through conflict. Old Amazon saying: 'Don't discount simpler pleasures in life.'"
"If it involves boys I don't see how it could have ANY pleasure involved."
"Maybe so, Akane, but you not going to dispute simple part, ne?"
Akane snorted an agreement as she entered, then assumed a neutral expression. They'd agreed earlier to act surprised when/if this iinazuke thing came to pass.
-----
"...and if my friend's son were to marry one of you, the Tendo legacy would be assured." Soun looked over his step-daughter, two daughters, and adopted daughter.
"Wait a minute, don't we get some say in who we're supposed to marry!" Akane, as usual, was angry. Her Aesir blood contained the berserker taint, and so Rage was something that empowered her. Unfortunately, her frequent tapping of that quality tended to keep it bubbling near the surface.
"Hang on, sis, you never know, he MIGHT be cute," Nabiki wondered if her sister had forgotten about their conversation last year. There hadn't been any mention of the subject to Akane since then,
though Nabiki and Kasumi had conferred on the findings of some of the divinations since then. Shampoo had been told shortly after she'd returned from her tribal village. "Right, daddy?"
"He'll be here any minute." Soun wondered about it himself. He had been told years ago that due to a misunderstanding with some otherdimensional Thing that they weren't including personal names in any of the usual correspondence. "Saotome and his son have been off exploring the multiverse for the past ten years on a training journey. They recently crossed into Asgard."
"Oooh, Asgard." Nabiki oohed appropriately. "Wonder if they got to meet Granddad Magni."
"So they've been to Asgard, big deal."
"Father, how old is this fiance? Younger men are so...young."
"Is he cute?" Nabiki silently congratulated her half-sister. Kasumi made it sound like she was condemning the idea as unworkable while still leaving it open. They already knew quite a bit about what was going on, but their father was enough of an emotional wreck without realizing exactly how little control he actually had over his life. She noted that she sounded a little eager herself, and wondered how much of her own attitude was an act.
"I...don't know."
"You don't know?" Nabiki stopped, he couldn't be THAT clueless, could he?
"I've never met him."
Kasumi sighed and covered her face with one hand. Nabiki noticed the gesture and realized that Kasumi was covering a smile. That they knew far more about what was going on than father was hardly new.
"Aiyah," said Shampoo, duplicating Kasumi's gesture and managing to sum up the entire situation. "Shampoo hope for best but this sound as bad as when honored adoptive father invested in sumo pig wrestling."
"So what exactly are we doing here, anyway?" The voice was of a boy, somewhat irritated. "Are we going to challenge them for their secret scrolls or what?"
"Ah, that must be them!" Soun Tendo beamed and started getting up.
Nabiki exchanged a glance to Kasumi who nodded. It sounded like their iinazuke hadn't been told yet. This WOULD be interesting. Smiling, she ran to open the door.
Outside was a middle aged man in a white gi that had a couple of oddly colored patches on it. Her attention was largely captured by the young man who was standing nearby, looking over the house with an
oddly distracted look.
"Oooh. He IS cute," she called back to the others. Turning back she noticed how shocked the young man in question was. Leanly muscled, hair back in a loose ponytail, filled out his clothing rather tightly
in all the right places.
"Uhm. Then these are friends of yours, pop?"
Nabiki smiled and invited them in, watching the young man's butt as he passed her. Yup, he might not be rich, but she WAS a teenage girl and money wasn't quite everything. It came close, but it wasn't everything.
Soun smiled as they entered the room, and almost hugged Ranma, a warning glare made the older man reconsider. "So you must be Genma's boy."
"Yeah. I'm Ranma Saotome."
"RANMA!?!" Shampoo leapt to her feet. "Did you say 'Ranma'?"
"uhm, yeah. Is there a problem?"
Shampoo's eyes went to Nabiki and made a silent promise that they would speak LATER. "No, just old story my great-grandmother tell me. Coincidence."
Nabiki thought about this. Come to think of it,they had always referred to Ranma after that first meeting as the "fiance" or "male visitor" just in case anyone should overhear or be scrying on them. Shampoo hadn't been present for that first meeting.
"Well now, Saotome, have you thought about your decision?"
"What decision would that be?" Ranma was puzzled. He had a bad feeling about this.
Even Akane got this without the whispered commentary from Shampoo. Ranma hadn't been told why he was coming here.
"To pick your fiancee, of course." Soun noted Genma casting a spell and a brief image of a shield settling into place around his old friend.
"WHAT?!?" Ranma went into obvious shock. He looked rather panicked, the discipline necessary for the Arts Magical having gone on coffee break.
"This is my stepdaughter Kasumi, she's 19. This is my daughter Nabiki, she's 17. This is my daughter Akane, she's 16. This is my adopted daughter Shampoo, she is also 16. Pick any one you want, she'll be your new bride."
"Eeep." Ranma glared at his father. "Pop, what are you trying to pull? You deliberately didn't tell me about this!"
"You'd have cast a Hide spell and run for cover if I'd told you," Genma managed, increasing the flow of energy to his Shield spell just in case. "It's for your own good, boy."
"Shampoo think he kinda cute. Shampoo will marry Ranma." Shampoo smiled while looking over Ranma like a cat with a new playtoy.
Akane was now looking shocked. "Shampoo, what?"
"Now, now, as the eldest here, it is my duty to fulfill family honor." Kasumi smiled in a sort of absent manner, radiating niceness. That was one thing about Kasumi's projective telepathy, she tended to project whatever emotion she was feeling the moment.
"Kasumi?!?" Akane went from shocked to flabbergasted. Kasumi interested in a younger guy? Well, it was also true that there wasn't a line forming at the door.
"Now now, maybe we shouldn't rush the poor boy. After all he has three prospective fiancees and doesn't know any of us well enough to make an intelligent choice. Waiting, say a month, that would be the sort of reasonable decision a mage would make, right?"
"Nabiki?" Akane vaguely remembered last year's meeting, but found herself wishing for a few rehearsals.
"Oh, don't worry Akane. We all know how you hate boys," Kasumi said with a smile.
"Kasumi right. Akane not worry about this. Shampoo win anyway."
"I don't think so, Shampoo. You're right about one thing at least, that Akane would definitely be the WRONG choice here."
"Waitaminnute!" Akane glared at her three sisters. She didn't like being forced into a marriage, but here she was being shoved out of it like she couldn't possibly compete in this arena. Pride was in a battle with reason and reason was very rapidly being knocked into submission. So she was being tossed out like yesterday's ramen?
"Shampoo sorry, Akane. You no competition but Shampoo not be mean, just not want see you hurt when you lose."
Akane growled and glared over at the boy whose head kept jerking around to stare as each girl spoke. His mouth was still hanging open.
"Well, Akane, that pretty much settles it. This way he only has to make a choice out of us three."
"Uhm, right." Ranma finally shut his mouth. The thought of three attractive women arguing about who would get to marry him was so far from his usual train of thought that he was feeling a curious dislocation. Strange? No, this was downright alien.
"I'm a woman too, you know. If I want to marry this jerk, I've got as much a right as anybody else!" The message suddenly reached Brain that Mouth had gone off on its own initiative. Akane immediately shut her mouth, sat back down from where she'd raised herself up to protest, and tried not to look at anyone.
"That's my boy," Genma said, proudly beaming at his son to have four women ready to be his fiancee.
"You do your father proud," wept Soun Tendo.
"What the heck happened," whispered Ranma. This was almost as bad as what had happened on that trip to Faerie. Wait, that's it. "There's something you all should know before you go volunteering like
that."
Picking up his glass of tea, now quite cold, Ranma looked over the four. He thought this would eliminate some or all of the prospects. "While we were travelling, looking for new magic to learn and practice, my old man heard some things about a plane of existence known as the Faerie Realm."
"The Land Of Mists & Change, Where Chaos Dwells and transmutation magicks are at their strongest, where the nature within shapes the nature without." Nabiki smirked as she saw Ranma's surprise. "Hey, we're a family of espers with a direct descent from a Norse godling, don't expect us to be ignorant about such things."
"Mister Saotome, how could you do something so dangerous? Don't you know that no-one who enters the Faerie Mists returns unchanged?" Kasumi didn't even bother looking over at Genma, she was watching Ranma
with a friendly smile and blushing slightly.
"Ah, no." Genma held up a travel book. It could be clearly seen that the text was written in Old Atlantean, but the picture labels were in Japanese.
"I take it you don't read Atlantean."
"Bingo." Genma said just before the cold tea hit him. His form blurred and a panda was now glaring at his son.
"Inner natures are revealed, huh, pop! Should have known you'd have a totem like Panda." Ranma poured the remainder of the tea on himself.
"Panda," read Nabiki from her copy of "Twodog's Guide To Totems & Familiar Spirits." She flipped it open and read silently the entry that related Panda to Weasel and mentioned one should expect a low moral character from such totem-bearers. Nabiki nodded to herself, no
surprises there.
Ranma's form shrank as soon as the tea hit it, becoming just a little over five feet in height. He became female, the hair turning red, the eyes turning a brilliant blue, a faint glow seeming to appear around her.
"Interesting, looks like a power up." Akane was interested in this, after all, if it had to do with fighting she was quite intrigued.
"My mother is a valkyrie in mortal guise," Ranma said. "This form reflects that side of my heritage."
"Well Ranma, why don't you go take a bath? We need to talk to Daddy anyway."
"OK," Ranma considered arguing but he wanted time to think this over. This had not been expected, the pattern of the past few years having become thoroughly disrupted.
Kasumi led Ranma upstairs to where his room was, and Nabiki waited until Ranma had come back down and gone down the hall to the furo before she turned to Shampoo.
"Okay, Shampoo, spill the beans."
"What you mean, Nabiki?"
"You didn't react to him until you heard the guy's name, then suddenly you're all anxious to get connected. What gives?"
Shampoo blushed and started playing with her fingers. "Is like this, you know great grandmama Cologne? She say watch for boy name Ranma, he 'diamond in rough' - you marry him and much honor to tribe."
"Hmmm. Something more than I thought is going on here." Nabiki steepled her hands and looked at Shampoo with a flat gaze. "You two," she indicated her father and Ranma's father with her thumb, "get ready
to marry off a Tendo and a Saotome. Shampoo's great grandmother wants Shampoo to marry a Ranma. The obvious solution is to have Shampoo Tendo marry Ranma."
"Shampoo think so too. Everybody happy."
"Except," Nabiki glared at Shampoo. "It's too contrived. I think I'm going to have to examine this all very carefully. I do NOT like being manipulated. I'll bet this was why Cologne hid the evidence of you still having family until AFTER the adoption was done."
"Aiyahh. You right."
Nabiki stood up and fixed the two fathers with the look that gave her the title "Ice Queen" of Furinkan. "You two hold off on your little plans, by the time the month is out, I should have more info."
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Cologne watched the scrying pool in the Amazon Village. Nabiki had figured it out sooner than had been expected, but the situation with Shampoo had been engineered on the spot anyway.
Cologne smiled. Things could still work out.
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Ice that had been ancient when the Egyptian sorcerers had fallen into disfavor with Akunaten cracked as Frostbite moved slightly. Things were progressing. It had, after all, been foreseen.
Ja ne,
Gregg
