Can It Get Any Worse?: Chapter 1
"Why did she make us meet here?" Usagi whined. She was still dressed
in her pajamas and had static electricity crackling through her
unbrushed and unmeatballed hair. The other girls, with the exception
of Ami, were looking equally bedraggled. They hadn't stopped
searching for the new agent of evil until well after sunrise. That
had been three hours ago.
Rei, baggy eyed and more ornery than ever, looked at her semi-friend
flatly and said,"This is Setsuna, she wouldn't tell us if the end of
the world was three minutes away. It probably has something to do
with that guy, though."
Makoto sighed wistfully."I really wish he wasn't some sort of horrible
demon/monster thing in a human suit, because he was a major babe." She
blushed at the memory of the compliment he had paid her.
"Oh shut up," someone snapped from behind them. They all turned with
varying degrees of sluggishness to see the new arrival. She was
short, red-haired, and made all the girls except for one who will
remain nameless(she blushed instead) nearly insane with jealousy."So
that's Pluto's name, eh? Setsuna. Anyone know her last name?"
****
I was not in a good mood. Three dozen pigeons could attest to that,
if they weren't piles of ash and feathers now. And that bus really
shouldn't have gotten in my way.
"Who are you?" black hair and baggy eyed asked in an 'Oh please give
me a reason to kill you' voice.
I might not be able to get to Setsuna, but there were plenty of
targets around here for a little petty vengeance."I'm the retard that
Setsuna tricked into trying to teach you girls how to use your powers.
You all are the sailor senshi, right?" There was a very strong
resembalance between these girls and the senshi from the night before.
At least they could do a passable glamore spell on their own, at least
one strong enough to mislead me. My life would have been a good deal
easier if I had ever been able to do more than make a pimple
disappear.
"What?" the same girl continued.
"Okay, I'll go slowly so no one misunderstands the words that are
coming out of my mouth. I am named Ranma. I use magic. I like to
blow stuff up and kill people that piss me off. I got suckered into
teaching you all how to do your job." I formed a globe of prizmatic
light in my left hand and tossed it into the air. It exploded into
hundreds of motes of light that blossomed into flowers wherever they
struck the ground. A simple illusion that faded quickly, but it
served to get the point across.
"Wow, that was so pretty!" tall, blonde, and 'blonde' exclaimed."Are
you a new senshi? What's your planet? Do you have a cat like Luna or
Artemis? What color is your skirt?" And the deluge continued for all
of three minutes without a single break to breathe.
I noticed that the other girls were all giving the air head looks of
disgust at least as malevolent as mine. Goodie, dissention within the
ranks.
"No, I would kill myself before I let myself be caught dead in one of
those things you call an outfit," I said, finally managing to break
the torrent of neverending questions."I am going to teach you girls
magic. Does anyone not understand that?"
Lo and behold, the girl of a million questions raised her hand."Do you
mean we're going to learn to pull rabbits out of hats and stuff?"
I looked at a girl with short blue/black hair. The spark of an
unusual intelligence burnt within her dark eyes. Wonderful. At least
one with more brains than a turnip."Could you explain to her that I am
supposed to teach you magic? You know, wrath of the kami kind of
stuff."
Non-stupid was explaining while I was being eyeballed suspisciously by
three other girls. To break the uneasy silence I asked,"About the
skirts, do you where those by choice or are they some kind of required
senshi uniform thing?"
They all had the slightly shell shocked expression of someone who just
found out that they're gay. Finally the tall brown-haired girl
answered,"They come with the transformation."
"Transformation?" Great. Now they spring something like a magical
transformation on me. Setsuna was really racking up uncool points.
Long black hair elbowed tall brown hair and she remained silent."Look,
I don't have a choice in the matter. I made a blood pact with Sailor
Pluto. You know who I'm talking about? Tall, has green hair, and
really needs her ass kicked."
"Well, that is true," muttered long black hair.
Before I could get any more info, the smart one called,"I think she
understands now." And it only took five minutes.
I pointed to tall brown hair and said,"She just mentioned a
transformation. Would someone like to explain that a little better?"
"I can do that." Ah, Setsuna was actually stupid enough to show up. I
may not be able to hurt her, but boils and oozing sores don't really
count. No wait, the forces surrounding the image were skewed. It was
just an illusion. Damn, guess I'll have to settle for the gentler
curses.
"That was a real nasty trick you played on me, Setsuna," I
commented."One day you'll regret it."
Setsuna just nodded and introduced me to each of the girls. With
names to put to the faces the glamores were completely broken and I
could easily place them from the night before."The transformation is a
short cut method that allows the senshi to access their power and
provides them with certain spell templates that require no actual
casting to invoke. The transformation automatically includes a
glamore and magical body armor."
I nodded as she explained. The practice wasn't unheard of, at least
it wasn't in the time when most of my more potent tomes of arcane
knowledge were written. I'd never read of such an overall effect
though. Magical body armor? Heh, heh heheheh. My full blown
laughter stopped Setsuna from continuing."Those little pieces of
ribbon and spandex are magical body armor?"
"I'll have you know that during the Silver Millenium that style was
highly fashionable," Setsuna retorted tartly.
Sigh."What effect does the stuff have besides being every fifteen year
old's wet dream?"
"Lessens physical and mystical blows and quadruples overall physical
abilities." This time Ami answered. She had definite potential, both
in power and the full range of mental faculties needed to grasp the
more difficult points of advanced sorcery.
Hmm, maybe I could alter that part of the transformation spell to give
them some decent armor, maybe an actual weapon besides that ridiculous
sceptre of Usagi's."Well then. That's all I need to know I guess.
You can run along now, Setsuna. I expect you'll be needing to hop on
the toilet in about..."I looked at my watch,"six seconds." Six seconds
passed in silence then the illusion of Sailor Pluto abruptly vanished.
"What did you do to her?" Minako gasped.
"Explosive diarhhea." I grinned evilly. The girls all sported looks
of shocked horror."If you knew what she did to me then you wouldn't
think I'm such a horrible person."
I was ignored for a few minutes while a spontaneous debate on what
punishment Setsuna deserved for sticking them with a psychopath like
me. They could at least have the good sense to call me sociopath like
I deserve. I'm not really crazy, really, but I have an image to
maintain.
"Enough of this crap. We have all day to work on deciding what to
teach to whom and I don't plan on wasting it. Get those pen things
that you use to become senshi out and hand them over." They were all
reluctant, especially Rei, but my hard, glowing-eyed stare diffused
that situation. I have to give whoever made these things some credit.
No one would ever think that they were powerful magical tools, novelty
vibrators yes, but never what they truly were.
"Well, here goes nothing," I said, making sure that I had all four
pens and a locket firmly grasped in my right hand. A flash of green
light and a screeching/crunching sound were the only visible effects
generated by the destruction of the henshin rods.
I expected gasps and maybe a few screams, but not Rei lunging for my
throat with claws extended. Despite my suprise, I was easily able to
erect a barrier capable of holding off a completely ignorant,
nonmagically enhanced mortal. This girl has some serious anger
control issues.
"Calm down, damnit. I had to do that. It released your magic into
you without leaving behind a conduit for it to be stolen or controlled
by someone else." Geeze, this was going to be a long decade.
I wasted the next hour determining that each girl had an extreme
elemental affinity that was so ingrained that almost all other magic
was beyond their ability to use. Not my fault. They would all be
extremely good at what they could do, though. Usagi was going to be a
problem. Not just because my left shoe was more intelligent than her,
but because as her control over her true powers grew, her control over
that giant energy crystal she wore as a broach would lessen. She
probably would have been more effective if Setsuna had just excluded
her. I guess I shouldn't complain, I do afterall have all intentions
of taking that crystal with me when I finish this job. None of the
senshi will be able to use it anyway and they don't have to turn into
a freaking girl so they won't be hunted 24/7. Yes, with that crystal
world domination may not be too far over the horizon.
"Finally, we can get to the actual learning. This is a very weak
spell that is useless as anything but a magical flashlight. It may
not even be that good if you generate a dark color." I drew my athame
and made a few quick passes in the air, leaving ribbons of white and
green light."Stare at the patterns until your eyes water so badly that
you can't see anymore. When you've done that do it again and again
until you understand how to do what the instructions say." Sure, this
is the hard way, but I'll be damned if I'm going to make it easy on
them. It would take just as long either way, and this method makes it
easier to learn the more complex stuff.
No one even questioned me. I spent half an hour focusing the
spiritual energy that permeated this shrine through my athame and
using it to rework the spells that I had absorbed from the henshin
rods. No exertion at all on my part and I had changed the Sailor
Senshi from sex objects into armorclad and nicely armed devil hunters.
I'd let them activate the spell themselves sometime later and see how
they liked it. I had barely finished when Ami beckoned me over to
her.
A fist sized sphere of soft blue light was slowly orbiting her head.
She was a fast learner. She was even making it move."Nice work. It's
good to know that someone here actually deserves the power they were
gifted with," I sighed.
"This is what the spell is supposed to make, sensei?" she asked shyly.
I nodded and said,"Yep. You caught on quickly. No other spell is
even a fraction as easy to learn as this one, but at this rate you may
get another weak illusion finished today."
Ami beamed at my praise. I was about to go check on the progress of
the others when she shyly said,"Ranma-sensei, I know that you're not
very happy to be teaching us, and that you were tricked into it, but
could you try to be patient with us? Especially Usagi. She isn't as
...dumb as she looks or acts. We've all been through a lot together
and she's never let us down."
I nodded without comment. It wouldn't do to upset my only promising
student. I decided that maybe it wouldn't hurt to be a 'little' nicer
to the girls, but Usagi, in my opinion, was still dumber than my shoe.
Rei was the next to successfully cast the spell. Not suprising now
that I knew she had some pretty extensive spiritual training. Her
natural auraul color was blood red. I was starting to notice a
pattern with this whole color scheme. Next came Makoto with deep
green followed by Minako with warm yellow, and finally Usagi with
virgin white.
"It's pretty late, at least too late for you to learn another spell."
That wasn't entirely true. Ami had managed to learn the flower trick,
but she was vastly outgunning her friends with her learning curve.
Setsuna probably wanted the purely offensive and defensive to be the
main focus. Good, as soon as she got of the toilet she could look
back and see me spending weeks on useless crap. Of course if she
understood more than her temporal magic she could easily know that
there wasn't much other way to teach the senshi.
Before I made my escape I asked,"Do any of you have any actual combat
training?" I wasn't hoping for much, but sometimes even I can be
suprised. Why was I going to teach the senshi how to fight? Beats
me. I guess I like to do a good job, even if I was tricked into it.
"I know how to do this really neat super kick thingy that helped beat
a youma a long time ago." I ignored Usagi's babbling and waited for
anymore responses.
"I have my first dan in kempo," Makoto volunteered. Hallelujeuh!
"I'm a black belt in karate," Rei answered. Praise Bill Gates!
See, never have any hope and anything short of death is a pleasant
suprise."Good. Tomorrow we start the physical side of your
education." I didn't give them time to ask any questions. I sunk into
the shadows and rose beside a trash can in the park across the street.
All in all not too bad of a day. Setsuna should be noticing the
mutant lice any time now.
****
Far off in space in the really darks part where evil tended to
spontaneously appear for no reason but to give super hero types
anxiety attacks nothing was happening and all was right with the
galaxy.
****
Deep under miles of ocean, nothing was stirring, not even a giant
squid, much less a force for evil.
****
Several abandoned fortresses and castles from the time of the Silver
Millenium remained abandoned.
****
Thanks to an industrious American named Quinn Malory there were no
unusual dimensional invaders eying our own little piece of semi-
quantum stability. They were all too busy fighting off a prolific
race of eyeball eating things with an unreasoning hatred of humans
that young Quinn was inadvertently leading on a grand tour of the
known multiverse.
****
And besides a small city in southern California with an extremely high
vampire to human ratio, there was very little active involvement with
the forces of hell.
****
So, why was Setsuna getting the Inner Senshi a classical sorcerous
education?
****
Ranma didn't care for the whole safety of the world, cosmic balance
between good and evil crap. He figured if things ever got bad enough
where life on Earth was threatened, he could just call up a gateway to
an alternate earth or maybe try to break into heaven. Everyone has to
have a hobby.
Disgustedly, Ranma threw down the tv remote and stalked into the
kitchen. He would never have guessed that unlimited access to as much
free porn as he could stand would take all the fun out of actually
watching it. Damnit, Setsuna was just asking for a viscious case of
crabs.
****
Across Tokyo in a suprisingly large house for such a crowded area, one
Soun Tendo, emotional wreck extraordanaire, was rereading his mail.
Tendo, bringing Ranma from China
Saotome,
"Oh happy day! Girls! Kasumi, Nabiki, Akane! Come here! Your
father has an announcement to make!
****
"I said no and I mean no!" Ryoga shouted in fury."I would rather die
than pretend that I was Ranma! Do you hear me?! I would rather DIE!
Do you have any idea what he would do to me if he found out I was
impersonating him again?"
"What could be worse than turning into a pig when you get splashed
with cold water?" Genma asked dumbly. He had to do something or the
schools would never be joined. If they could get rid of the boy's
directional curse and have those fangs ground down, Nodoka may even be
fooled.
"I don't know," Ryoga said calmly before exploding,"Maybe being a pig
all the time!!!"
The boy had a point."What if I taught you secret techniques so
dangerous that I sealed them away years ago? Techniques powerful
enough to defeat even my misguided son."
Ryoga lowered the umbrella that was about to crush Genma's skull and
asked,"What techniques? Magic?" He shuddered at the thought of using
something as horrible as magic.
"No, you dolt! Martial arts techniques, not that magic crap. The
Umi-senken and Yama-senken are powerful beyond belief and can only be
truly mastered by someone both strong of body and mind." Genma looked
at Ryoga doubtfully as he spoke the 'mind' part. There really wasn't
much choice though.
"And all I have to do is pretend that I'm Ranma and you'll teach me
how to defeat the real Ranma?" There had to be more to the deal.
Genma forced a laugh."Well of course you'll have to marry one of
Tendo's daughters. I hear that they're all more than nice to look at,
especially the oldest."
The mention of marriage led Ryoga's small mind straight to what
married people are supposed to do. Before he could even respond, a
fountain of blood erupted from his nose and he passed out.
The boy would do for now. Genma hoisted Ryoga onto his shoulder and
started jogging toward the coast of China.
****
Across the pacific ocean, Bill Gates, the only man richer than the All
Mighty, chuckled darkly as the latest version of Windows was shipped
out. Try to take away his monopoly would they? Try to split his
company into mere shards of its greater whole? Ha, they would all
pay, and their little dog too.
****
"I still don't think we can trust her," Rei said. She was tossing her
sphere of light from one hand to antoher.
"She finally managed to get Setsuna," Minako commented."That makes her
ok in my bag." She didn't notice the stares her comment recieved.
"Setsuna wouldn't have gotten her to teach us if she wasn't
trustworthy," Makoto added.
"And look what she got for her troubles," Rei retorted.
"But from what she says, Setsuna did something pretty bad to her. She
seems nice enough to me even if she is a little rough around the edges
and way to masculine for someone so pretty." Thankfully no one took
notice of the last part of the remark from the nameless senshi.(Oh
come on, it isn't like this is supposed to be hard to figure out)
"Okay then, what happens if we need to fight a demon, or rescue people
from a burning building or something?" Rei sounded desperate to find
some unexplicable fault with Ranma.
"That is pretty important. I'm sure that she'll tell us about that
today," Ami said.
Usagi was too busy showing Luna her own light sphere to contribute
anything meaningful to the conversation.
****
Author's Notes: I hope to god that my writer's block has finally
chosen another helpless victim to torment. Maybe it has, but I'm
guessing that it's probably just on vacation. Send C&C to
dark_phoneix@hotmail.com please.