Time Well Spent


When they returned to the castle, Alana spoke to him about what he had
done. Under her guidance, he started studying the power, extending on
it, and coming to understand it. She showed him the traditional ways of
using magic to change forms.

He found that when transformed using traditional means, most of his
power was unreachable. He could take on the form of almost any animal,
but while in the form, about the only magic he could accomplish was to
allow himself to return to his normal form, or take on a different form.
He could still access his ki though, and while he could not channel or
use as much in the smaller forms, he could use his ki claws, and he
could use the Juushin Jisei Ryuu techniques.

In spite of the disadvantages, he spent time in a number of forms over
the next year, amongst training with a number of masters, and teaching
in his dojo.

He became a garden snake, in his own gardens, and learned to slither, to
move by pressing himself against the ground. He learned to track scents,
and interpret the information his heat sensitive glands gave him.

He became an adder, and learned how to strike, to coil his body in
layers of tension, before throwing himself forward with blinding speed
to sink his fangs into a target, pouring in the venom that would disable
it.

He took the form of a constricting snake, a boa, and practiced by
wrapping himself around stone statues and applying pressure until they
crumbled to dust within his powerful coils. He also learned, in the
beautiful ten foot body of the boa, to climb trees, and move from tree
to tree.

A lizard, next, small and lithe. He learned how to focus on his
environment to get his skin to shift in shade and color, and make
himself nearly invisible against almost any surface, and how to use his
claws to race across the ground, and to scale vertical surfaces at
nearly equal speed.

He entered a pond as a snake first, learning to swim as such, then as a
fish. He didn't care much for being a fish. Most of the other fish would
leave a snake alone, but as a fish, he was constantly darting away.

He moved to mammals, and became a ferret. He liked that... it moved much
like a snake or lizard, but he had more energy, less desire to just sit
in the sun or shade and do nothing.

Though Ranma didn't really think of himself as a predator, he quickly
learned that taking predatory forms was the best way to avoid other
predators, though it didn't always work.

It was during this time that Arkus returned his attention to Ranma.
Initially he couldn't find Ranma, until rather suddenly a garden snake
ballooned into a young boy. At first, he was delighted. Ranma was
putting himself in real danger. With only the most minor of tweaks,
Arkus should be able to get him near something truly dangerous to
whatever form he was in, and then, snap, it would all be over. But the
boy seemed to glance around as if irritated by something, and reach out
as if to flick it away.

Arkus' mirror proceeded to explode, sending shards of silvered glass
everywhere. Arkus swore. Obviously the boy had reached a level of
awareness equal to that of that damned Master, but he was far more
powerful. Arkus decided that when he recovered and managed to replace
his mirror, he would have to have a basin installed. Water was much
safer for scrying on the brat.

Finally, Ranma moved on to birds, and learned to fly. He learned to
hover as a hummingbird, spent considerable time as a crow learning both
to fly for long distances, and more importantly, how to behave as part
of a flock, then moved on to the larger birds of prey, learning to soar,
and to seek and ride the thermals, the rising columns of air that could
lift him high into the sky. He also learned to employ the curiously
disjoint vision of the eagle, the normal sight surrounding a little
circle of magnified vision. He learned to spot movement on the ground
far far below him, and enter a dive that would take him straight to that
point, before snapping back out into a strong upward climb.

His ki forms, on the other hand, were vastly more powerful than the
traditional forms. He never took dragon form around Alana again, fearing
to cause her pain, but he studied it, and learned to fly with it. He
discovered that he could not take just any form with this technique.
There seemed to be something peculiar specifically about tigers and
dragons. He supposed this wasn't unexpected, considering the place they
held in Chinese mythology, symbolizing the yin/yang duality.

Unfortunately for Arkus, Ranma had mastered these mere two forms, and
moved on with his studies by the time his new mirror was obtained, and a
basin installed for water based scrying.

The time passed quickly, now that there was no more need to go on long
journeys. The masters started changing faster, staying with him for only
two months, then just one month, before telling him that they could
teach him no more, and moving on.

Between the masters, and with the help of a few of them, Ranma learned
ot fight in his animal forms, to adapt his art to their capacities, and
in turn, learned new moves for his normal form based on the natural
fighting patterns of the animals he became, a process with overall
reminded him of some of the varieties of Kung Fu he had learned.

---

In his tenth year, Ranma again faced the Mage Tower challenge. This time
only the Masters and students of the Mage Tower were in attendance.
Ranma walked easily through the male doors, but focused on using magic
on the female doors. Instead of using his ki, or his strength to get
through the female doors, he used his magic to destroy the spells. It
was an impressive spectacle, but nothing on the scale of what had
happened his ninth year.

He spent considerable time in front of the last door, and was able to
weaken the chains, and undo a few knots, and push the doors open using
only his strength, the Neko-ken, and the Juushin Jisei, not bothering to
transform. This was enough of a victory that he willingly joined the
celebration afterward.

Alana, having fewer options now, in terms of skilled masters, or new
arts, managed to find a theme for the year's masters that greatly
appealed to Ranma. These were masters of martial arts based on various
extremes, mostly extreme natural environments, and they took advantage
of his powers, to have him bring them to remote places, to train in
those extreme conditions.

This also marked a year of constant activity on the part of Arkus,
though indirectly. He had successfully summoned a powerful demon. To
avoid the restrictions his Lady had placed on him, and delighting in the
appropriateness of the boy's choice of training regimens, he summoned a
demon capable of summoning elementals, spirits from planes of elemental
extremes, and binding them to natural elements, and set him to torment
the boy, and destroy him if possible.

---

Ranma sat in lotus position before a large basin of water, across from
Master Tufi, a small man with a long blue beard, and blue hairs, and a
constant aura of cold about him. Master Tufi was peering into the water,
and describing his requirements, as Ranma guided the view, searching for
a location that would fit the needs of this Master of Winter-Elemental
Martial Arts.

"Mountains are good, yes, but what I am really looking for, young
teishi, is a good glacier..."

"What is a glacier, sensei? I am unfamiliar with the term," replied
Ranma, momentarily releasing his control of the scry, so that the view
stilled.

"A massive sheet of ice, teishi, sometimes a mile or more thick. Look
for a more northern range of mountains, rather than a mountain alone,
and perhaps we'll find one."

Ranma nodded, and resumed his concentration, as the view in the scry
blurred and stilled in a constant cycle, as the search continued.
Finally, it settled on the edge of what looked like a thick crinkled
wall of ice. "Is that a glacier, sensei?"

"Yes, very good, teishi. Now, find a cave in the mountainside near the
upper rim of the glacier somewhere."

Master Tufi was grateful for long experience in schooling his
expressions, when a few minutes later, after locating a cave meeting
Tufi's requirements, Ranma casually opened a doorway leading onto the
sheet of ice. Ranma hefted both packs, his own and the Master's, and
Tufi led the way through the opening, out onto the sheet of ice.

Ranma covered his eyes, startled at the dazzling white glare. Tufi spun
to face him, eyes glinting with amusement. "You'll get used to it,
teishi... or go blind."

Ranma nodded in acknowledgment, and slowly pulled his hands away,
allowing his eyes to adjust. Tufi motioned toward the cave. "Come on
teishi, we'll set up camp first."

Ranma dismissed the doorway, and followed the small man. As he did so,
he focused his sixth sense, observing the ki flows in the older man,
trying to see what he was doing to adapt to the cold environment.

As they set up the tents within the protective enclosure of the cave,
after Ranma assured Tufi that he could sense no sources of ki in the
unlit depths, Ranma focused on attempting to mimic the ki flows, as well
as trying to guess the purpose behind them.

When Tufi led him back out onto the glacier to begin the lecture, Ranma
felt he was already well on his way. He had managed to mimic some of the
flows, and noted that his feet no longer felt cold. It was not that they
were warm, for if anything, even less heat was escaping to melt the ice
on which he walked, rather, it was as if the ki flows were preventing
the escape of the heat.

Tufi turned to face him. "Now, teishi, you will need a strong control of
your ki for this. What you must do..." He broke off, looking closer at
the boy, then laughed aloud. "Well, I see the Lady was right. You are
indeed a prodigy... I see you have already begun to get the idea. Very
well, teishi, start a simple kata, and I will instruct you as you do
so."

When Ranma nodded and began one of his simpler katas, one which did not
involve any of the aerial aspects of his school, Master Tufi continued.
"What you must do is use your aura to prevent the escape of heat from
your body. Most people when trying to deal with the cold, try to shield
against it, in some way, or increase their own heat. This is the way of
foolishness, teishi. The way of wisdom, is to recognize that cold is the
absence of heat, and that it is the flow of your heat into the chill
that surrounds you that causes you to feel cold, not the cold invading
from outside. Seek not to prevent the cold's entrance, but to prevent
your heat's exit, and you will succeed."

Tufi watched, and made occasional comments, as Ranma sought to perfect
the technique. Whenever he erred, he could almost feel the heat rushing
to leave him, and several times he slipped when an accidental wave of
heat through his feet melted the ice below.

Tufi was considering the next step in the training, when the demon
summoned by Arkus acted. It summoned an air elemental, and sent it to
attack Ranma.

Ranma felt a tingling, and got a sense of approaching danger, but saw
nothing to concern him, up to the very moment that what felt like a
massive and powerful fist slammed into his chest, sending him rocketing
across the ice to slam into the rocks by the side of the cave.

He rose unsteadily to his feet, and extended his senses to get his
bearings. He sensed no attacker, no ki, even as he was hit with a
powerful uppercut, that sent him twenty feet into the air, and slamming
back onto the ice, cracking it where he hit.

This one was more expected though, and he had had time to focus his ki
into his limbs, and so was able to leap directly to his feet. Invoking
his mage sight, he looked about him again, and this time he was able to
make out the movements of the indistinct figure in the air.

Tufi was moving quickly towards the wall, away from the fight, unable to
sense what was attacking his student, but not yet willing to intervene.

Ranma tensed as it approached, then fired a three-punch combination that
led into a spin-kick. He hit nothing, and in the middle of the kick
received a blow to the leg that increased his rate of spin, nearly
causing him to lose his balance completely. He recovered, and focused
again until he could once more perceive his attackers approximate
location.

Remembering the dragon form's peculiar ability to see air currents, he
focused the Neko-ken, and drew up the magic into himself, swelling into
his tiger form, then past it into his half-dragon form. The first thing
he noticed was that he was suffering no heat loss, though he had been
forced to allow that flow of ki to lapse to summon the Neko-ken.

Not questioning his good fortune, he eyed the enemy, and was shocked to
see that it seemed in fact to be composed of air currents. He had
expected to perceive it by the air it displaced, not to discover that it
was air itself.

Grinning, he thought of a technique that would probably have an impact,
and when it approached again, its fist driving forward, he punched as
fast as he could, cracking the air, and sending a series of compressed
shockwaves through the air towards the creature. Indeed, its advance
halted, and it writhed, as if in pain, then rose up, coming down towards
him from above.

He dove out of the way, and as he rolled, he released the Neko-ken,
banishing the dragon form. Useful as the sight was, if the dragon form
was immune to the cold, he would not be learning what he needed to learn
here by fighting in it. He leapt back to his feet, and wove a quick
skein of magic to give himself dragon sight in his natural form.

He focused on it again, just in time to receive a heavy blow to the
face, followed by a strike to the chest that slammed him into the large
slabs of rock that jutted up through a portion of the glacier, which
actually were the tip of a rocky spire the glacier had flowed around.

He felt a chill creeping into his limbs, and groaned as he rose,
realizing that he had neglected, on releasing the transformation, to
reinstate the protective ki flows. He did so, but still felt cold.
Realizing that he had lost too much body heat, he focused on pulling
heat from the air, to replace what he'd lost. After all, if his heat had
escaped into the air, then there must be heat there to be regained, he
decided.

The air elemental, irritated that this mortal shrugged off its powerful
blows, began stirring the air, creating a vortex that drew up snow off
the surface of the ice, creating a visible white funnel, then directed
it at the mortal.

Ranma was distracted from his concentration on the ki technique
necessary to regain his body heat when he was suddenly surrounded by
swirling ice crystals. Contrary to the air elemental's intent, the
driving snow did not draw any heat from Ranma, for his protective
Tainetsu Hoon Shiirudo, or Body Heat Insulating Shield, was still
active.

It did serve to confuse his senses. With the swirling air all about him,
he could not detect the elemental... but nor could it attack him, for
though it could form the funnel easily enough, it had no desire to fight
through it.

Ranma stumbled forward, but the funnel remained with him. An idea hit
him, and he shouted, "Juushin Jisei Senpuu!," as he used the Juushin
Jisei techniques to spin his body about his own center of gravity in the
opposite direction of the funnel. His body blurred into the tight spin,
countering the force of the wind, and negating the funnel. When he
released the spin, the snow had all fallen about him, in a tight circle,
and he could see the air elemental coming towards him.

Deciding the technique might work as well on a creature of air, as on
the air itself, when it approached, he shouted again "Juushin Jisei
Nekki Senpuu!" He flared his ki aura as he spun this time, to provide
the Nekki, or Hot Air, portion of the whirlwind. The air spun about him,
and as it picked up his heat, it began to melt the ice beneath him,
drawing it up as water, that froze again into snow as it reached the
upper regions of the swirling wind.

All the watchers, Ranma included, were surprised at the result. Given
the intense cold of the air around, the rising hot air from around Ranma
cooled quickly, and fell again to the outside of the rising hot air, to
be sucked in again at the bottom. The effect was more of a horizontal
convection cell than a whirlwind, a cell that was watery in the
interior, and swirled with snow at the outer edges, while the center air
around Ranma, when he stilled, was calm. The air elemental was trapped
in the cell, spun about and torn by the snow and water. Intruiged, Ranma
studied the flow of air with his dragon sight, and began flaring his
aura again, as he recognized that the mass of air would continue its
behavior as long as it had a heat source in the center.

He continued to flare his aura until the air elemental disappeared from
within the cell. He switched, immediately to the new technique he had
been trying to use just before the elemental had attacked again, what he
was thinking of as the Hainetsu Kyuuin, or Waste Heat Absorption move.
With his ki built up, he found the missing link in his attempt, and in a
mere instant, the heat from around him was sucked in.

He was not ready for the speed of the technique, as he had been focusing
a greater amount of ki to try and get it to work. When he finally hit
the right focus, that mass of ki acted much more quickly than he was
expecting, and he felt a great rush of heat through him, and fainted
from the exertion, not even noticing the peculiar half-torus of ice with
which he was now surrounded.

Master Tufi managed to pull Ranma from the center of the partial torus,
and drag him into the cave. He was disturbed to note that the boy had a
fever, but remembering what the Lady Alana had told him of the youth's
healing abilities, decided not to overreact. He simply sat by the boy,
feeling his forehead occasionally, waiting for him to awaken.

He was surprised when after only an hour, the fever broke, and Ranma's
temperature returned quickly to normal. The boy woke soon after, sitting
up slowly.

"That was most impressive, teishi. That was indeed the next technique I
had intended to demonstrate to you, but you must be careful with it.
You should draw the heat in much more slowly than you did, lest it
overcome you."

"Yeah," groaned Ranma, holding his head, "I kinda noticed. I didn't
really mean to..."

"Yes, I suspected as much. Rather like a tug-of-war, pulling as hard as
you could, and when the rope suddenly came loose, you fell hard, hmm?
Anyway, once you learn to draw the heat in, then you can both use it to
prevent your own loss of heat, and to recover heat that you've already
lost before starting the technique. More important, of course, is the
ability to use the gathered heat to attack."

The conversation continued as they ate the dinner Tufi had prepared
during Ranma's unconsciousness.

"Attacking your opponent with heat is one way, though of course, if
they're good enough, they'll have no problem absorbing, deflecting, or
dissipating the heat. More valuable sometimes, is using the heat to
attack the environment."

"What do you mean, sensei? Why would I attack the environment?"

"Well, for example, if you were fighting someone on the ice, you could
send a wash of heat at ground level where the enemy was standing, or
about to land. If you're quick enough... well, I once saw a fight where
one participant managed to melt the ice they were on enough that the
second landed in it up to his waist, then pull the heat back out before
the he was able to react, leaving him encased to his waist in a block of
ice."

"Then too, that technique you demonstrated a short while ago used heat
to fuel the air, didn't it? You generated that heat from your battle
aura, as far as I could tell, but if you had collected the heat already,
you could have simply used it as fuel, rather than expending so much
ki."

---

His next master took him to a desert. The first time he tried a kata on
a sand dune as his master instructed, his first leap sent him two feet
into the sand when he landed, causing a sandfall along the side of the
dune, and burying him to his neck, in the end. He had been able to lift
himself out with the Tai Chi Chuan, but his master wouldn't let him use
his Tai Chi extension to the Musabetso Kakuto Ryuu to avoid actually
landing on the sand. Instead, he forced him to learn to land on the
sand, without disturbing a single grain.

Once he had learned this, the same master suddenly had him take them to
a lake, where he showed Ranma that the same technique would allow him to
fight over the water. Ranma would land lightly and leap again
immediately. Eventually, he was able to do this while leaving only the
tiniest of ripples to spread behind him, and cross the whole lake
without getting wet.

It proceeded like this for most of the year, as he got used to fighting
under all sorts of strange conditions, including fighting a running
battle along a knife-edged ridge near the peak of a mountain, and
another aerial battle over a field of pikes driven into the ground,
point spearing upwards. He learned to fight while balanced on a live
bamboo as the master caused it to sway beneath him, and similarly on a
rope crossing a thousand foot deep gorge over jagged rocks. He fought on
the side of a volcano, as superheated jets of steam roared up from
fumaroles, and lava oozed about them. He chased mountain goats across
rocky crags, and learned to fight underwater, while avoiding sharks and
barracuda. He even spent time fighting one master on slick rocks covered
with damp stringy mosses over deep still waters while the master flung
rocks into the beehives that riddled the rocky walls about them.

Arkus found his life extremely frustrating, as the boy was put in one
hazardous, even deadly, situation after another, and survived each. But
the boy was nearly always completely alone, with no one but the master,
and sometimes Alana, near him. No one on whom he could bring his
influence to bear, while the elementals the demon summoned just seemed
to be treated as part of the boy's training.

---

For most of his eleventh year, Alana brought in ki masters, and
he learned to do ever more complex things with his ki, including
starting fires, concealing his presence, moving through solid objects
without disturbing them, and infusing any ordinary item, from a fan, to
a piece of cloth, to silverware, with ki, making it a deadly weapon.

He also learned pure ki attacks, though he never found it necessary to
do the shouting that the masters used. He learned how to use his
dominant emotions to fuel ki attacks, increasing their power, ranging
from his confidence in himself to his depression over his inability to
free the Lady. He also learned how to counter ki attacks, to draw the ki
from inanimate objects used against him, and how to use minor amounts of
ki to counteract much larger attacks.

Then they went deeper, and he learned to control the movement of his ki,
even after it had left him. He also learned to generate pure ki attacks
without the crutch of emotion, and to control their nature, so that he
could have them affect only inanimate objects, only animate objects,
deal a crushing blow, explode in flame, or slice through objects like
knives. Ranma found it particularly interesting that while it took more
willpower and concentration to use pure ki, it was less draining, and
could be used for longer periods of time with less strain than emotion
fueled ki. Later masters taught him to draw ki from his surroundings to
fuel his blasts.

Again, he came closer than the year before to releasing the doors
without destroying them, though still not close enough.

Arkus was even more annoyed this year than the year before, as nearly
every master that came along noticed his attempts to observe. One caused
his pool to fill with ink, another caused it to boil, giving Arkus
severe burns. At least once, it was the boy who noticed it, and reacted,
causing the waters to flash instantly to steam, turning his scrying room
into a sauna. Arkus was really infuriated by that one, because somehow
the steam caused bubbles to appear in his mirror's silver lining,
ruining it yet again. Arkus stopped watching in disgust. It would be
some time before he returned to the boy. He was often busy with his
Lady's work, anyway.

---

As his twelfth year approached, Alana seemed to be having more
difficulty finding masters who could train him. Shortly after his
birthday, he reluctantly agreed to take on other sorts of teachers.

Some consolation came when that year, he was invited to seal a portal.
He spent considerable time on it, focusing equally on sealing the
doorway, and on resisting any attempts to negate the spell, while hiding
its weak point deep within a web of tricky twists that would turn aside
force brought from most angles. They tested his door for strength, and
it was placed in the second to last position, a signal honor.

The rest of the year was spent learning rather peculiar things. He spent
several months learning various styles of martial arts cooking. One of
the strangest of these was the Art of Pastries, taught to him by a
Frenchman with a ridiculously large nose. Watching this man whip up a
quick batch of thick icing, throw a heavy glob of it in his air, then
slash at it with a heavy knife, his arm a blur, only to have a perfectly
formed rose land on the cake, was a real marvel. Many of the finer
pastries were formed of innumerable delicate layers, resembling sushi.
This semblance was further brought to home when the next master was the
master of Silent Sushi, not to mention a ninja.

Several months were then spent under a single master, who taught him to
play a number of instruments in the heat of battle. He showed him how to
infuse them with ki to prevent their taking harm, and make them useful
as weapons... a ki-filled violin makes an excellent bow, as long as you
have multiple bows handy, a curious attribute... as well as how to
infuse the notes themselves with ki, to carry his emotions on them.

He was taught to use this as a weapon, to bring an enemy to tears, or to
rally the spirit of his troops while striking fear into their enemies.
He found it could even carry the ki healing technique he had learned in
the Neko-ken retraining he had undergone with Sylie, radiating healing
power controlled by his music.

He could enter the garden, and control which plants were in bloom by the
tones of his music, or make the blossoms of a rose plant open and close
individually, each in tune with a single note.

He was also introduced to the power of the vibrations produced by some
instruments. He learned how to perceive the resonance frequency of a
physical object, much as he had learned to find their weak point, and
how to sustain that resonant tone on any instrument until the object
destroyed itself.

He also learned, with his master's guidance, though it was new to the
master as well, to use the power of the Juushin Jisei to play
instruments without touching them. Having accomplished this, he was
encouraged to focus and meditate until he could play several instruments
at once.

Once he finally got the hang of playing the multiple instruments, he
quickly improved in his facility with them, and by the time his master
left, he could play on at least one of every instrument in a modern
orchestra in a way that would make any conductor proud, while himself
standing and doing the conducting.

After the master had left, he had taken nearly a month off of that
schedule, and worked with the Tai Chi Chuan eleventh dan, the Juushin
Jisei, exclusively. Having realized its power through the demonstration
he had given, he managed several more feats with it. He managed to cause
the air to vibrate, to produce sound. Eventually he could reproduce the
sounds of most of his instruments, without needing the instrument, a
technique he termed the Genshindou Gakki Gihou, or Fundamental Vibration
Musical Instrument Technique.

He also managed to get used to handling multiple weapons with the
Juushin Jisei, until he reached the point that he could spar against
five non-existent opponents, each wielding a different weapon.

Shortly thereafter, he realized that he had been steadily increasing
his effective weight for years on end, and consistently tying up a
larger and larger amount of ki in holding that weight.

He took his leave of the Lady, temporarily, and went to a desert, far
from any cities. There, he began to slowly ease off on the weight.
Almost instantly, his aura bloomed in size and power, and he found that
he had to stop, and bring it back under control. By the time he finished
releasing the Juushin Jisei Juuryoku's hold on himself, he realized that
his ki reserves were unbelievably huge. Nonetheless, he was able to
conceal them.

As soon as he began a kata, he discovered that he actually had to
concentrate in order to move slower than the speed at which he cracked
the air. Further, he had to concentrate in order to remain on the
ground. If he thought of other things for but a moment, he would look
down, and find himself floating above the ground. A mild flexing of the
leg muscles, and he would be hundreds of feet in the air.

He spent some time learning to fly like this, and found that he indeed
preferred it to flying with the Juushin Jisei. It seemed more natural,
and took less concentration.

Before returning to the castle, he reengaged the Juuryoku, and
weighed himself down until his available ki reserves were once again as
they had been before he had released the Juushin Jisei Juuryoku.

---

The next competition at the Mages Tower saw Ranma's door as the most
powerful holding spell in the challenge, surpassing for the first time,
the combined masterwork of two of the most powerful Mages of the Tower.
Though he still failed to open their door without damaging it, he came
much closer.

Ranma was in his room, waiting for Alana to return, so that they could
go home, and begin his training again, though he truly had no idea what
was left to learn, when someone knocked at his door.

"Enter," he said, and the door opened, and Ariana stepped in.

"Ranma, they want you in the Council Hall. Alana is there already. She
said to wear the Dragon Armor, now hurry, come on, I'll show you the
way." He nodded, and focused, reaching out to the castle with his ki,
until he found the Dragon Fang, where he had carefully stored it. He
gently released the wards and seals he had protected it with, then
called it to him, and summoned the armor. He gestured for her to lead,
then.

She led him quickly down the halls, deep within the complex, to the base
of the central tower, where they came upon heavy iron doors. The doors
were already being opened by a guard, who was standing to their right,
turning a large wheel with heavy thrusts. As it turned, it ratcheted
against a lever in the floor, and the doors shifted slightly further
apart. Within moments, they were in the hall, and the doors swung shut
with a loud ringing sound behind them.

Ranma stepped forward, looking resplendent in his armor, and saw with
surprise that Mardo was no longer sitting at the head of the U shaped
council table. He had moved to the right, and Alana stood behind the
pulled out central chair. As Ranma moved forward, Mardo stood suddenly.
Ranma stopped, as Mardo bowed to him. He was confused, and worried. The
rest of the assembled Masters then rose as well, and bowed, and then all
said as one, "Hail, ArchMage."

"Huh? What?" Ranma was flustered. What were they talking about? Mardo
was the ArchMage, and had been for years. Ariana was at his elbow then,
guiding him around the table to where Alana held the chair out for him.
They pushed him to sit in it, then pushed his chair forward. Ranma just
sat there, looking stunned, until the mages cheered suddenly.

"Come now, Ranma, no false modesty. You've earned your place," Mardo
said to him, grinning.

Ranma remained a bit dazed, as the new realities of his position were
explained to him. As the ArchMage of the Mage Towers, he held a rank of
Lord in all of the Five Kingdoms, second only to their Kings. Quite
nearly the position of influence that the old Lord Fey had sought by
force, but Ranma had earned it, and it was freely given.

---

Ranma spent most of the next six months with Mardo, learning his new
duties, and meeting the other Kings, and the various Lords. He learned a
lot about weather magic, and how the ArchMages had protected the Five
Kingdoms against hurricanes, tornadoes, and other such disasters. He
also learned how to lead and guide other mages in casting. He found
that even though he could not see their spells, the female mages had no
difficulty following his lead, for nothing hid his power or spells from
them.

Arkus meanwhile spent countless hours raging at the terrible injustice
of the universe. To be thus handed the position Lord Fey had so often
sought to take by force... it was humiliating.

Ranma also learned how to act at court, how to deflect flirtatious
ladies, enamored of his power but uncaring about him, how to avoid
giving the useless, foppish, hereditary young lordlings any offense that
could be misconstrued into a reason for a duel, how to dress properly
for the court, how to eat properly in noble company, and numerous other
things. He found himself wishing dearly for more martial arts lessons,
even cooking or singing, until he discovered painting.

Cooking was considered demeaning, and the nobles detested it, and
singing or playing instruments meant constantly being invited to perform
here or there. Painting, on the other hand, was a solitary thing, though
he would have to avoid those females who wanted to be... immortalized.

Alana found him a tutor, grateful that he had found something to occupy
his time while he learned what was necessary. He learned quickly, and
found himself quite skilled at it. Wielding a brush was not that
different, he found, from wielding a sword, and a little ki in the paint
gave his art a vibrancy and life to it that was unmatched.

Alana found herself more than glad he had found something to learn, when
he gave her a beautiful painting of her sister. It showed her as a
human, reclining cradled in the paws of her as a dragon, coiled about
the canvas, one arm delicately resting on the back of the head of her as
a panther, with her castle as a backdrop. It was beautiful, and perfect
in every detail, and made her realize how impressive his memory really
was.

When they finally returned home, Ranma decided that this was an area
that he could explore further, since Alana was finding that locating
masters who could train him was getting progressively more difficult.

He went from quarry to quarry, carving out stone for his own use, paying
the foreman on site, and carrying the huge blocks of stone off on his
own back, much to their shock and surprise. With this stone, he began to
teach himself to sculpt. At first, he used tools, as the books in the
library suggested, but after a while, he switched to using a simpler,
more effective technique.

He would use his ki claws to carve, and sculpt the images. Then, when it
was carved, he would use his Juushin Jisei techniques to send sand
swirling against it, polishing it to a high gleam.

---

Shortly after his fourteenth birthday, Ranma grew tired of sculpting. He
had moved beyond simply stone sculptures, to using his ki and the
Juushin Jisei to coat them with metals, then cut and rebond them, to
form metal sculptures, and eventually to using his ki to heat and
protect his hands, so that he could work with silver and gold as if it
were putty, but he was ready to move on.

Considering, he finally hit upon something that would be well worth
learning, that was close to the martial arts, and could be made into an
art form, not to mention being an opportunity to extend his magical
abilities.

Alana found masters to train him, and so Ranma took up the art of
weaponsmithing. He learned the wood based arts first, the art of spear
straightening, of fletching and bow-making. From there he progressed to
the metals, learning how to purify them, mix them, hammer and form them.

He focused on Japanese style weapons, though he learned a few other
styles as well.

The masters who taught him were all impressed by his skill and strength,
and the speed of his learning. But all were more impressed, at least at
first, with the fact that he heated the metal with his own hands, to the
point of holding ingots in his hands until the metal melted through his
fingers to flow into the mold.

Then there was his remarkable ability to use the seventh sense to sense
impurities in the metal, and to use the Juushin Jisei to remove them
from the mix even as it flowed through his fingers. Not once did any of
his masters have to show him how to deal with flawed metal. They never
encountered any.

Dragon Fang became a golden forge hammer, and pounded weapon after
weapon, as Ranma mastered the art of folding metal to make katanas and
other blades.

Finally, a master came, who when he was finished teaching Ranma, had
sighed, and said, "Well, boy, I've taught you all I can with what we
have. It's too bad there are no more dragons, though. I would dearly
have liked to have passed on the art of making weapons from dragon scale
before I died, and I would have been proud to teach it to you."

He was quite perturbed when Ranma vanished from in front of him, and
spent some time puttering about looking for him, when Ranma returned,
holding a single scale as big as he himself was. "You mean like this?"
he asked. The old man gaped at him for a long minute, then a single tear
rolled down one cheek.

"How... how did you..." he sputtered. Dragons were dead and gone, and
dragon scale unobtainable.

"I asked the Lady's sister, and she gave me one of her scales. She's
really nice once you get to know her."

"One of her scales? She's a dragon?!?"

"Yup. Now are you going to show me how to work this, or what?"

So was forged Ranma's final masterwork. He remembered the one thing his
father had mentioned about his mother... her katana. Genma had shivered
every time he had said it, but it was the only thing Ranma could really
remember about her.

When the old man said that only dragon breath was hot enough to melt
dragon scale, Ranma nearly gave the man a heart attack by promptly
taking his half dragon form, placing the scale in a large stone
container, and melting it with his breath. "Hmmph, I guess you're
right." His voice in this form was much deeper, and seemed to carry its
own echoes.

At the master's rather timid suggestion, Ranma retained the dragon form
as he beat the cooled scale into a sword. To the master's astonishment,
Ranma proceeded to beat the sword continuously for a week, never
stopping. Ranma himself was surprised at his own stamina. The final
blade had been folded exactly forty thousand times, by Ranma's count,
and it was a thing of beauty. The old man helped Ranma forge a portion
of the remaining scale into a proper hilt.

Not knowing what else to do with the remaining scale, Ranma proceeded to
make a matching wakizashi, only this time, he studied the Dragon Fang
first, and tried to match the weave of its magic within the new blade as
he hammered it.

When it was finished, it would indeed take the forms that Dragon Fang
could, though it held always a metallic deep blue appearance.

---

In his fifteenth year, he proceeded to the next obvious step, and took
up the art of armor-smithing. He started with leather, learning to work
it, boiled and hardened, or still pliable and filled with metal studs.

He learned to make simple metal strips, and punch holes through them and
sew them together on a backing of leather to form both splinted and
banded mail.

He learned to make chain mail, to force metal through successively
smaller holes until he had a long thin bar, then hammer it around a
solid but thin round metal post, before cutting it off into rings, and
linking them together in a weave.

Then he learned to make plate. He spent much time here just studying the
different varieties. He had to learn what all the pieces were, how they
fit together, and how they were connected to allow proper movement.

He also had to learn how to properly measure the person they were being
fitted for, to properly size each piece, to insure a proper fit that
wouldn't chafe.

He had to learn all of this for each of the varieties, for partial
plate, field plate, full plate, and so forth. He also learned how to
make a variety of styles of each, and then how to make helms in a wide
variety of styles.

Finally he practiced on his dojo's masters, and his bodyguard, making
for each a customized suit of armor. He found as he prepared for this,
that by a proper infusion of ki at the right point, the armor could be
made to carry some of its own weight, making it seem light and easy to
work with.

Again he finished out the year with a masterwork, a work of dragonscale.
His dragonscale armor was full body, made for the Lord Roga, whom he
invited to come and live at the castle while it was being crafted for
him.