The Art____Chapter 4:
A Silly Storm Of Love
by GreggSharp Metroanime@mindspring.com
Ranma 1/2 created by Rumiko Takahashi, AMG created by Kosuke Fujishima, Gold Digger owned/created by Fred Perry, Sailor Moon (c) VIZ.
i don't have money so don't sue me, hire me and we can BOTH make money.
=======
Tatewaki Kuno readied his bokken, glad that there was no crowd of lesser talent to detract attention from him today. No, he had gone home in a funk yesterday and found Sasuke watching a movie. A movie that had revealed to him how to defeat the foul sorcerer Saotome.
Now with his "secret weapon" ready, he was finally rewarded with the sight of Akane and Shampoo Tendo racing towards the school. Behind them was the evil one himself.
Ranma saw Kuno waiting there in front of him, and didn't want to be late to school again. He briefly sprinted ahead of the two girls.
The pattern was of Fire with a trace of Spirit. It was a very familiar spell to Ranma, one of his favorites. "FIRE BALL!"
There was an explosion at the gates of Furinkan High School, it was fairly impressive to the vast majority of people there. That it was only half strength was not immediately apparent.
Passing the unconscious form of Kuno, the three made it on time to class.
Nabiki looked down at Kuno, feeling a pang of sympathy. Then she noted his "secret weapon" and smiled. Oh, this WOULD be interesting.
-------
Kuno entered class late and suffered the usual penalty. The good thing was that by this time his clothes had stopped smouldering.
Nabiki smirked at him when he finally rejoined the class. "Guess a full frontal assault isn't a good tactic in this situation, is it?"
Kuno muttered something about trickery and didn't look at his neighbor.
"You know, Kuno-baby, even the great samurai like Ieyasu and Musashi used a strategy."
"How much?" Kuno spoke barely loud enough to be heard.
"Hey, for 500 yen, a steal at that price, I can suggest a manner you can be guaranteed to fight up front and personal. Though there is one other condition..."
The coin was quickly placed on her desk. He glanced at her, waiting for Nabiki to continue.
"Personal honor is a big thing to Ranma, almost as much as it is to you. Make it a personal challenge for honor and you'll have him right where you want him."
Kuno considered this. "And your condition?"
"Defeat him by all means. Liberate my two sisters from his control. Hurt him if you must, but I want him alive."
"Has he ensorcelled you too, Nabiki Tendo?"
"Hardly. No, I want him for reasons of my own."
"As you will, as soon as he gives up his claim to Shampoo and Akane, I will let him live with the knowledge of his defeat at the hands of Tatewaki Kuno."
---------
"A formal letter of challenge?" Ranma looked from the letter to Kuno.
"Meet me at the school's baseball diamond today after school. I call an honor duel to prove who has the right to court the fair Shampoo and the fierce Akane Tendo."
Ranma glanced up from the letter. "Why did you write it down if you were gonna read it to me?"
"Urrr. How come it's always Shampoo who gets the 'fair' or 'beauteous' tags and all I ever get are phrases like 'fierce' or 'tigress'?"
"Akane, just yesterday Kuno say Shampoo tigress and call you fair. Or maybe he just confused."
Since mages had to have a fair control over their tongues, Ranma avoided saying anything at this point.
"Aiyaa. Ranma you go to this fight?"
"Hey, it's an honor challenge. I gotta go." Ranma glanced back to Kuno. "So what's it to be? You've obviously got a plan here. Standard rules, First Blood, or what?"
"Ring battle, using the infield as the ring. Standard rules." Which meant that defeat was to be knocked outside the "ring", to give up or be unable to continue would end the match.
"Fair enough, but don't you think they should choose for themselves who they can pursue or be pursued by?"
"That is, indeed, the objective." Kuno turned and left, fully confident that by this time tomorrow the two Tendo girls would be his.
The three watched him leave, then shrugged. The next class was about to begin anyway.
-----
By the scheduled time of the battle, a fairly large crowd had appeared. Nabiki, of course, moved through the crowds taking bets. Akane and Shampoo were in the Visitors bench area with Ranma. Akane fuming at Ranma for getting himself in "such a stupid predicament" while Shampoo was worried about Ranma and coaching him in the weak points in Kuno's defense.
It would have been a lot easier to take the duel seriously without Kasumi showing up with a picnic lunch, both Soun and Genma in tow.
"Hmmmph." Ranma looked at his father stuffing himself on sandwiches. "Kasumi, I sure hope you put one aside for me, otherwise oyaji there will have actually started on the basket by the time this is done."
"So why don't you use a 'Fire Ball' again and just get it over with," Akane tried to be nice. Kasumi and Shampoo were nice to Ranma and he tended to lock up in their presence, go figure.
"Duh, Akane. Look at the crowd. Fire Ball's an explosive spell with a fair radius. If it was just Kuno, sure no problem, I'd just toast him and he'd collapse."
"Wizard battles not cut and dried, Akane," said Shampoo with a nod. "See occasional fight among Amazon mages. Is like game of shogi or chess, you have to think ahead, see your opponent's move and counter.
"In this case, ai ren please finish quick." Shampoo smiled at Ranma. "Shampoo place bet on you finish fight within five minutes."
"Actually, Shampoo, I was wondering something." Ranma wondered how to put this. He didn't want to insult her, though he didn't really want to be engaged to her either. "You've spent a lot of your life in Japan, why do you talk like that?"
"Like? Ah! Shampoo have hard time with Japanese language. Shampoo speak Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese, English, French, and Ancient Greek okay but never got hang of Japanese. Shampoo very direct, Japanese language not very direct. Philosophical difference maybe?"
"Uh, yeah." Ranma blinked. "Allrighty then. I guess I better get on with the duel since Kuno's finally gotten here. What's with the bag?"
Kuno had two of his fellow swordsmen bring a huge sack into the infield. He then stood next to it and began a long speech that nobody was particularly interested in hearing.
"What's with the scrolls, anyway?" Akane noted that Ranma was carrying a leather side pouch with a few rolled up parchments in it.
"Oh, you know that 'Anything Goes' magery is a generalist style- whatever works, you know. Well, there's some spells that you've really got to be a specialist to carry off properly, or that I just
haven't had a chance to learn properly. Like I can do a simple healing spell to set a broken arm, but if someone got massive internal injuries I'd be pretty lost. You gotta REALLY be up on healing spells for that."
"So in keeping with the Saotome school philosophy of whatever works, you've got scrolls of spells that you might need as backup." Ranma jumped as Kasumi spoke, he hadn't heard her come up behind him.
"Well, gotta get into the fight," Ranma said, recovering. (How the heck did she sneak up on me? Dummy, she's an esper, she probably used some psychic trick.)
Kuno was waiting at the pitcher's mound, still going on about how he would free his two loves from the hold that the sorcerer had them under.
Ranma centered himself, finding his wa. The time for speeches, he felt, was AFTER the battle was won. He'd seen far too many egomaniacs not to have come to that conclusion.
"Now, SAOTOME, I shall defeat you!" Kuno threw an object forcefully at Ranma.
Ranma formed a pattern. "Shield." Then he blinked. Kuno had just thrown a necklace made of garlic at him. "Excuse me? Do I LOOK like a vampire?"
"Laugh this off then!"
"A cross? I didn't know you were Christian..."
"Die fool!"
"Um, Kuno. Wolvesbane is for werewolves. You want to fight werewolves go quarrel with Greenpeace."
"Then take this!"
"Oh no," Ranma said in a voice dripping in sarcasm. "A shinto anti-demon ward, whatever shall I do? Oh, the horror."
"Silence, wretch!"
"Now THIS is interesting. I'm not entirely sure what this is supposed to be." Ranma resisted the impulse to drop the Shield spell. Kuno still had the bokken.
"Then try this!" Kuno threw a bucket at Ranma, who was still trying to figure out what the heck this ball of knotted twine and feathers was that Kuno had thrown at him.
*SPLASH!*
Ranma-chan, dripping wet, made a mental note to find out if anyone actually had a Repel Water spell she could copy the pattern for. Just her luck it would be a specialty spell.
The glamourie immediately took hold, she could tell from the effects on the male portion of the crowd. Once again, Ranma cursed her father (not literally) for annoying that elven mage.
Nabiki closed her eyes. "Good grief, he actually DID think of the 'Wizard Of Oz' as reference material..."
"Truly a goddess made flesh," Kuno said as his eyes tracked Ranma's form in the now-wet shirt. "So it was true, that the evil is washed away by the purity of water, leaving only the good and wholesome behind. Ah, pigtailed girl, tell me...oof!"
Ranma had imbedded her fist into Kuno's face. Hopping back, she readied a pattern then another and another, her chi flaring in anger. "CHI BOLT! ICE HAWK! FLAME FIST! LIGHTNING FLARE!"
Kuno arced upwards, his body jerking as each successive blast slammed into him, finally coming down just on the other side of the crowd.
At that point, the male portion of crowd, or at least those who were proving that they weren't thinking with the head atop their shoulders, mobbed forward.
Ranma shrieked as she was suddenly surrounded. A Fire Ball at this range would place herself within ground zero. Hide wouldn't help either as she was already in the crowd. "Heeeelllllpppp!" Panic.
She noted in some little portion of her mind, that Akane was laughing herself silly, Shampoo was looking disgusted, and Nabiki was nowhere to be seen.
Ranma tried to form the pattern for a Leap spell but having to fend off probing hands was thoroughly wrecking her concentration.
Someone heard her, and she appreciated the rescue more than words could convey. Kasumi, radiating disapproval, had the crowd retreating in moments, managing to cut through the glamourie by focussing her own abilities in a counterpoint.
Shakily, Ranma allowed herself to be drawn in for a hug. Maybe it was just that projective telepathy of Kasumi's but it just felt so RIGHT there.
"It's okay. They're gone," murmured Kasumi to the girl shuddering in her arms.
Shampoo watched, shocked into immobility a second time. First the crowd of men practically attacking Ranma, then Ranma clinging to KASUMI? Well, Akane was no competition, so she'd dismissed the shy
Kasumi as being no problem. Nabiki was tricky, you could never tell what she was planning. But KASUMI?!?
---------
Meanwhile, two figures crossed a desert, arguing as they had been for the past few months.
"This is the LAST time I let you lead."
"Oh SHUT UP! Curse you, Ranma, I'll find you, and THEN I'LL MAKE YOU PAY!"
"Shouting about it ain't gonna help, y'know."
"Oh, go play with your spatulas!"
----------------
coming next: The Art 5 "Enter Ryouga, Eternally Lost Boy, and Ukyou Can Cook."
"Can I cook, or can't I?"
"Oh shuttup you oversexed [censored]!"
"Actually that would be a werewolf, sugar, and you KNOW I'm not the lycanthrope here. Besides you're just jealous 'cause you don't get even a reference to it in this fic."
"You just talk big anyway, I happen to know you've never [censored]."
"Just wait." *snicker*
A Silly Storm Of Love
by GreggSharp Metroanime@mindspring.com
Ranma 1/2 created by Rumiko Takahashi, AMG created by Kosuke Fujishima, Gold Digger owned/created by Fred Perry, Sailor Moon (c) VIZ.
i don't have money so don't sue me, hire me and we can BOTH make money.
=======
Tatewaki Kuno readied his bokken, glad that there was no crowd of lesser talent to detract attention from him today. No, he had gone home in a funk yesterday and found Sasuke watching a movie. A movie that had revealed to him how to defeat the foul sorcerer Saotome.
Now with his "secret weapon" ready, he was finally rewarded with the sight of Akane and Shampoo Tendo racing towards the school. Behind them was the evil one himself.
Ranma saw Kuno waiting there in front of him, and didn't want to be late to school again. He briefly sprinted ahead of the two girls.
The pattern was of Fire with a trace of Spirit. It was a very familiar spell to Ranma, one of his favorites. "FIRE BALL!"
There was an explosion at the gates of Furinkan High School, it was fairly impressive to the vast majority of people there. That it was only half strength was not immediately apparent.
Passing the unconscious form of Kuno, the three made it on time to class.
Nabiki looked down at Kuno, feeling a pang of sympathy. Then she noted his "secret weapon" and smiled. Oh, this WOULD be interesting.
-------
Kuno entered class late and suffered the usual penalty. The good thing was that by this time his clothes had stopped smouldering.
Nabiki smirked at him when he finally rejoined the class. "Guess a full frontal assault isn't a good tactic in this situation, is it?"
Kuno muttered something about trickery and didn't look at his neighbor.
"You know, Kuno-baby, even the great samurai like Ieyasu and Musashi used a strategy."
"How much?" Kuno spoke barely loud enough to be heard.
"Hey, for 500 yen, a steal at that price, I can suggest a manner you can be guaranteed to fight up front and personal. Though there is one other condition..."
The coin was quickly placed on her desk. He glanced at her, waiting for Nabiki to continue.
"Personal honor is a big thing to Ranma, almost as much as it is to you. Make it a personal challenge for honor and you'll have him right where you want him."
Kuno considered this. "And your condition?"
"Defeat him by all means. Liberate my two sisters from his control. Hurt him if you must, but I want him alive."
"Has he ensorcelled you too, Nabiki Tendo?"
"Hardly. No, I want him for reasons of my own."
"As you will, as soon as he gives up his claim to Shampoo and Akane, I will let him live with the knowledge of his defeat at the hands of Tatewaki Kuno."
---------
"A formal letter of challenge?" Ranma looked from the letter to Kuno.
"Meet me at the school's baseball diamond today after school. I call an honor duel to prove who has the right to court the fair Shampoo and the fierce Akane Tendo."
Ranma glanced up from the letter. "Why did you write it down if you were gonna read it to me?"
"Urrr. How come it's always Shampoo who gets the 'fair' or 'beauteous' tags and all I ever get are phrases like 'fierce' or 'tigress'?"
"Akane, just yesterday Kuno say Shampoo tigress and call you fair. Or maybe he just confused."
Since mages had to have a fair control over their tongues, Ranma avoided saying anything at this point.
"Aiyaa. Ranma you go to this fight?"
"Hey, it's an honor challenge. I gotta go." Ranma glanced back to Kuno. "So what's it to be? You've obviously got a plan here. Standard rules, First Blood, or what?"
"Ring battle, using the infield as the ring. Standard rules." Which meant that defeat was to be knocked outside the "ring", to give up or be unable to continue would end the match.
"Fair enough, but don't you think they should choose for themselves who they can pursue or be pursued by?"
"That is, indeed, the objective." Kuno turned and left, fully confident that by this time tomorrow the two Tendo girls would be his.
The three watched him leave, then shrugged. The next class was about to begin anyway.
-----
By the scheduled time of the battle, a fairly large crowd had appeared. Nabiki, of course, moved through the crowds taking bets. Akane and Shampoo were in the Visitors bench area with Ranma. Akane fuming at Ranma for getting himself in "such a stupid predicament" while Shampoo was worried about Ranma and coaching him in the weak points in Kuno's defense.
It would have been a lot easier to take the duel seriously without Kasumi showing up with a picnic lunch, both Soun and Genma in tow.
"Hmmmph." Ranma looked at his father stuffing himself on sandwiches. "Kasumi, I sure hope you put one aside for me, otherwise oyaji there will have actually started on the basket by the time this is done."
"So why don't you use a 'Fire Ball' again and just get it over with," Akane tried to be nice. Kasumi and Shampoo were nice to Ranma and he tended to lock up in their presence, go figure.
"Duh, Akane. Look at the crowd. Fire Ball's an explosive spell with a fair radius. If it was just Kuno, sure no problem, I'd just toast him and he'd collapse."
"Wizard battles not cut and dried, Akane," said Shampoo with a nod. "See occasional fight among Amazon mages. Is like game of shogi or chess, you have to think ahead, see your opponent's move and counter.
"In this case, ai ren please finish quick." Shampoo smiled at Ranma. "Shampoo place bet on you finish fight within five minutes."
"Actually, Shampoo, I was wondering something." Ranma wondered how to put this. He didn't want to insult her, though he didn't really want to be engaged to her either. "You've spent a lot of your life in Japan, why do you talk like that?"
"Like? Ah! Shampoo have hard time with Japanese language. Shampoo speak Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese, English, French, and Ancient Greek okay but never got hang of Japanese. Shampoo very direct, Japanese language not very direct. Philosophical difference maybe?"
"Uh, yeah." Ranma blinked. "Allrighty then. I guess I better get on with the duel since Kuno's finally gotten here. What's with the bag?"
Kuno had two of his fellow swordsmen bring a huge sack into the infield. He then stood next to it and began a long speech that nobody was particularly interested in hearing.
"What's with the scrolls, anyway?" Akane noted that Ranma was carrying a leather side pouch with a few rolled up parchments in it.
"Oh, you know that 'Anything Goes' magery is a generalist style- whatever works, you know. Well, there's some spells that you've really got to be a specialist to carry off properly, or that I just
haven't had a chance to learn properly. Like I can do a simple healing spell to set a broken arm, but if someone got massive internal injuries I'd be pretty lost. You gotta REALLY be up on healing spells for that."
"So in keeping with the Saotome school philosophy of whatever works, you've got scrolls of spells that you might need as backup." Ranma jumped as Kasumi spoke, he hadn't heard her come up behind him.
"Well, gotta get into the fight," Ranma said, recovering. (How the heck did she sneak up on me? Dummy, she's an esper, she probably used some psychic trick.)
Kuno was waiting at the pitcher's mound, still going on about how he would free his two loves from the hold that the sorcerer had them under.
Ranma centered himself, finding his wa. The time for speeches, he felt, was AFTER the battle was won. He'd seen far too many egomaniacs not to have come to that conclusion.
"Now, SAOTOME, I shall defeat you!" Kuno threw an object forcefully at Ranma.
Ranma formed a pattern. "Shield." Then he blinked. Kuno had just thrown a necklace made of garlic at him. "Excuse me? Do I LOOK like a vampire?"
"Laugh this off then!"
"A cross? I didn't know you were Christian..."
"Die fool!"
"Um, Kuno. Wolvesbane is for werewolves. You want to fight werewolves go quarrel with Greenpeace."
"Then take this!"
"Oh no," Ranma said in a voice dripping in sarcasm. "A shinto anti-demon ward, whatever shall I do? Oh, the horror."
"Silence, wretch!"
"Now THIS is interesting. I'm not entirely sure what this is supposed to be." Ranma resisted the impulse to drop the Shield spell. Kuno still had the bokken.
"Then try this!" Kuno threw a bucket at Ranma, who was still trying to figure out what the heck this ball of knotted twine and feathers was that Kuno had thrown at him.
*SPLASH!*
Ranma-chan, dripping wet, made a mental note to find out if anyone actually had a Repel Water spell she could copy the pattern for. Just her luck it would be a specialty spell.
The glamourie immediately took hold, she could tell from the effects on the male portion of the crowd. Once again, Ranma cursed her father (not literally) for annoying that elven mage.
Nabiki closed her eyes. "Good grief, he actually DID think of the 'Wizard Of Oz' as reference material..."
"Truly a goddess made flesh," Kuno said as his eyes tracked Ranma's form in the now-wet shirt. "So it was true, that the evil is washed away by the purity of water, leaving only the good and wholesome behind. Ah, pigtailed girl, tell me...oof!"
Ranma had imbedded her fist into Kuno's face. Hopping back, she readied a pattern then another and another, her chi flaring in anger. "CHI BOLT! ICE HAWK! FLAME FIST! LIGHTNING FLARE!"
Kuno arced upwards, his body jerking as each successive blast slammed into him, finally coming down just on the other side of the crowd.
At that point, the male portion of crowd, or at least those who were proving that they weren't thinking with the head atop their shoulders, mobbed forward.
Ranma shrieked as she was suddenly surrounded. A Fire Ball at this range would place herself within ground zero. Hide wouldn't help either as she was already in the crowd. "Heeeelllllpppp!" Panic.
She noted in some little portion of her mind, that Akane was laughing herself silly, Shampoo was looking disgusted, and Nabiki was nowhere to be seen.
Ranma tried to form the pattern for a Leap spell but having to fend off probing hands was thoroughly wrecking her concentration.
Someone heard her, and she appreciated the rescue more than words could convey. Kasumi, radiating disapproval, had the crowd retreating in moments, managing to cut through the glamourie by focussing her own abilities in a counterpoint.
Shakily, Ranma allowed herself to be drawn in for a hug. Maybe it was just that projective telepathy of Kasumi's but it just felt so RIGHT there.
"It's okay. They're gone," murmured Kasumi to the girl shuddering in her arms.
Shampoo watched, shocked into immobility a second time. First the crowd of men practically attacking Ranma, then Ranma clinging to KASUMI? Well, Akane was no competition, so she'd dismissed the shy
Kasumi as being no problem. Nabiki was tricky, you could never tell what she was planning. But KASUMI?!?
---------
Meanwhile, two figures crossed a desert, arguing as they had been for the past few months.
"This is the LAST time I let you lead."
"Oh SHUT UP! Curse you, Ranma, I'll find you, and THEN I'LL MAKE YOU PAY!"
"Shouting about it ain't gonna help, y'know."
"Oh, go play with your spatulas!"
----------------
coming next: The Art 5 "Enter Ryouga, Eternally Lost Boy, and Ukyou Can Cook."
"Can I cook, or can't I?"
"Oh shuttup you oversexed [censored]!"
"Actually that would be a werewolf, sugar, and you KNOW I'm not the lycanthrope here. Besides you're just jealous 'cause you don't get even a reference to it in this fic."
"You just talk big anyway, I happen to know you've never [censored]."
"Just wait." *snicker*
