Mark of the Wolves/ Ranma 1/2
Quiet Control Chapter 3
"The Mindset"
"What's this you got going?" Enquired Terry as he looked over Rock's shoulder. Young Howard turned a look of distain towards his guardian for the invasion of his privacy, to which Terry backed up waving his hands in a defensive manner.
"Hey! If it's that important to ya...."
Rock just let out a sigh as he turned away from the laptop given to him by his adoptive Uncle and Aunt, "It's nothing, just playing chess against some guys online."
"Ah, sounds fun..." replied Terry, before he caught note of what his young charge just said, "you say 'guys'?"
"Uh, yeah, my Dad.... um, I was taught to play chess since I was told that it would help better organize how I think," Stated Rock, oblivious to the true question the older Bogard brother was asking.
"How many games you got going right now?" asked Terry, deciding on the direct approach.
"Four, if you include the one I just won."
"Just won? I take it the guy wasn't that good? Huh," enquired Terry, still prodding for more info.
"He wasn't bad, some guy Southern Germany a bit older than you."
"I take it these arn't speed Chess matches," Terry asked as Rock switched to another chess window and made a move almost immidiatly after surveying the board.
"Nope, though I don't see the point in waiting all day for a move," stated Rock as he switched to another window and made his move on that, which was immidiatly followed with a "Check" banner.
"Don't this get confusing? I mean four games is a little much at once."
Rock just turned back to Terry with a slightly puzzled look, which he relaxed before replying, "Not really, kinda got used to it after a while when I was still living with Da... with him."
Terry considered this thoroughly and decided that it may be interesting to test this 12 year old boy's ability, "Well, we're gonna need to start training here in a bit, now that we've fattened ourselves up from Christmas Dinner here. Why don't I go see if I can get May and my brother to work with us?" Rock nodded and turned back towards the online chess games, oblivious to what Terry had planned...
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Akane would have gasped if she could, but she was still fighting to get her breath back from having the wind knocked from her. She had never recieved that stare before from anyone, not even Kodachi or Cologne could make it seem so hard and harsh. Rock's glare was completely that of no tolerance, yet she could tell by the blow that he was in complete control of his power, and knew how hard she could be hit. For once in her life, Akane was shown the meaning of restraint before Fury.
Before he thought about it, Rock pulled his right shoulder foward, allowing a punch by Ryoga from behind to glide past him, than ducked and rolled to his left as Ranma's flying Dragon Stamp kick barely missed the small of his back. Rock vaulted himself immidiatly to his feet and instantly assessed the abilities of the fighters who were recovering from their missed blows and aggressing towards him.
Rock saw them both tense for another attack, but knew that the one with the yellow and black striped bandanna would be the one to attack first, sure enough not to dissapoint, Ryoga brought forth another haymaker that Rock was forced to duck under, the blow looked heavy, and even though Rock could block it, he would be put too far off balance for an attack from the one called Ranma.
Rock sensed a presence behind him and spun on his axis as a series of lightning fast blows were forced to graze around Rock, and force Ranma into Ryoga's path. Ryoga staggered a bit from Ranma's Kachu Teshen Amaguriken technique, as Ranma looked slightly flustered from missing his attack and turned around to follow where the blond haired foreigner was.
Ranma almost missed Rock leaping over him and turning his foward air summersault into a half gator as he swung his right leg down in a jacknife, catching Ryoga in the top of his head and sending him flat onto the ground. Ranma was attempting to leap back to get some boxing range distance between him and Rock, but as he was leaning back, the other young man moved as quick as Ranma was able to, leaning forward and grabbing Ranma's ankle. Ranma saw an opening and attempted a jacknife himself with his free leg, but felt himself snapped into the air like a whip.
The pig tailed martial artist attempted to regain his bearings in the air, but the way he was thrown left him no possible way of doing so, something about the technique that made it that way. Rock Howard drew his arms in a wide circle as if drawing a yin-yang sign as Ranma landed on the small of his back and neck from an arc that allowed little of the shock to be lost as Ranma rolled with the fall as much as he could, finding it did little to relieve himself of the pain of landing so unceremoniously.
Rock *almost* relaxed a bit before he anticipated the sound of six flat shaped objects cutting through the air to the left of him and darted quickly backwards as six razor sharp spatula made thunking sounds as they stuck into the wooden Dojo floor. The girl with the spatula was talking way too fast in Japanese for Rock to understand her, but knew it was obviously a threat as he braced himself for another opponent....
"You, You! HOW DARE YOU TREAT MY RANCHAN THAT WAY!" Yelled Ukyo as she lept after Rock with her battle spatula raised to flatten it's target. "He actually flattened Ryoga AND Ranchan without breaking a sweat," thought Ukyo to herself, "if he's good enough to do that..."
Ukyo's spatula decended after Rock, and the Blond boy dashed in closer to Ukyo at the last second, maneuvering into her guard where her spatula's range would be a hinderance and shoulder charged her. Instead of Ukyo going backwards so she could recover from the charge, to her dismay she felt herself being carried upwards into the sky, blows being rained upon her as if she was in a blender with the blades blunted.
Shampoo came out of her daze from watching the yellow haired boy perform a move she had only seen a few times before, the one her great grandmother called with no little amout of respect "the Raising Tackle", and brought forth her bonbori maces for her turn, as strong as this boy was, she could not let him get away with harming her beloved.
Rock barely recovered from the landing of his Rising Tackle when he heard the battle cry. Rock turned and ducked a colorful spherical object heading for his head, then faded to his left as another identical one came rushing at his chin in and uppercut motion. Finding himself forced back to the right and realized he was being maneuvered to go straight back, no doubt into a wall. Rock felt his heel tap against the back of the Dojo wall as he saw an unhealthy (for his benefit) gleam in the purple haired girl's eye as she sent a bonbori straight at his chest.
Rock turned away from the blow rolling against the wood wall as Shampoo put a hole through where he was last positioned. The Blond boy kept rolling against the wall as Shampoo kept pivoting around to meet him, placing a new hole in the wall with each turn. Rock, rolling against the wall to his left while Shampoo continued to pivot to her right, moving to her right for seven more holes when Rock darted to his right as he saw a yellow and black shiruken stick into the area he was about to go into. Also Shampoo had anticipated where he would be at that point, her bonbori landing where his head woulda been if he continued. Rock shot his left fist out and broke Shampoo's Bonbori handle in half, than hooked it back into the Amazon's shoulder to send her to the side. As she cleared out of the way, Rock was slightly dismayed as he saw the girl with the large spatula, the guy called Ranma, and the guy Ranma called 'P-Chan' charging after him, none of them looking very happy.
"This is getting too out of hand," thought Rock to himself, "they don't even care about the damage they're doing to this place, better get them outside." Ukyo and Ranma saw Rock blur for a second than vanish, both coming to a stop as they felt a quick breeze race by them kicking up their hair from the draft.
"Wow, too fast!" Ukyo gasped, then felt another breeze race by her as she saw Ranma turn into a black and red streak in pursuit of Rock out of the Dojo door. Ryoga unfortunatly in his rage did not notice Rock was not in his way and crashed through the wall, looking around in fury before starting foward looking for his target.
"He's THIS way, you Jackass!" Ukyo cried out, earning Ryoga's look of rage in her direction, nonetheless he complied and followed her back through the sizable hole in the dojo and out the dojo's true exit.
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If it didn't seem like a life or death situation, Rock would enjoy this fight. But as it is, it was as if these four were trying to do more than just kill him. Rock was rather suprised to see Ranma catch up to him after he had used his Rage Run to put some distance between them. But instead of showing his suprise, he only flexed and tightened his guard, expecting another volley of those high speed punches Ranma started off using against him.
Ranma didn't use his Amaguriken this time, opting for power in the overall hits as he threw a hard cross at Rock's head. Rock pulled his head to the side and let the blow breeze by him. Ranma followed it up with a cresent kick to the mid range, giving Rock exactly what he wanted as he caught the move and took all his momentum from it and put it into a return attack. Rock's Crack Counter Jou-dan had it's impressive effect on Ranma who *almost* managed to block it as Rock used the momentum from Ranma's kick to allow him to flip foward and drop his heel onto Ranma's shoulder, bringing the pig tailed martial artist to his knees.
If Rock intended to follow up the attack, he wasn't given the chance as a mini spatula came racing by his head. Rock wasn't ready to immidiatly go against the other three just yet, so decided to up the level a bit.
"REPPUKEN!" Shampoo, Ryoga's, and Ukyo's eyes went wide as the saw the ki attack race towards them, and dashed out of the way. Rock meant the attack to scare them away and also show that they should think a bit more about attacking him as the runaway projectile crashed into a large rock and pulverized it.
"Yellow hair Boy use Ki attacks easy!" Shampoo cried in dismay.
"And he didn't even seem to put effort into it," Ryoga added with awe. Rock's plan didn't go as he hoped it would as the other three advanced on him even stronger this time, putting twice as much effort on each of their behalfs as they did before, including Ranma who recovered from the distraction Ukyo gave Rock.
"That Young man Soutome, doesn't his style look familiar to you?" Enquired Soun as he calmly observed the fight going on in his back yard that was reaching near epic proportions.
"Hmm, some of it does remind me of this one man I met in the north years ago, when me and Ranma were on our training mission," stated Genma matter of factly, "we had a friendly sparring match in which we came to a draw." Genma negleted to mention that the 'sparring match' started over Genma trying to steal the rabbits and fish the blond haired man was cooking, the match ending when both fighters found themselves too evenly matched and as a compromise to share his catches with Genma and his son, as long as they didn't eat more than their share and left some for him and his own young ward.....
Genma blinked at the memory, than realized who the boy was that was holding his own against four of Nerima's best martial artists.
Rock was holding rather well as his four attackers attempted to overwhelm him. He was in full stratagy mode now and came to a few conclusions. One they were all fighting too hard and would wear themselves out faster than he would tire (he hoped), just as long as he stayed conservative. Another thing is they weren't used to fighting as a team, and with the effort they were already putting in, they were getting in each other's way, it would just be a matter of helping them to further that problem.
Rock shifted his stance a bit as Ryoga drove a punch towards his chest, but instead of moving out of the way, Rock caught the fist with both hands and continued Ryoga's foward momentum by pulling him back with him, causing Ukyo's large spatula to crash into Ryoga's face. Rock than side kicked Ukyo away, and pulled Ryoga into an over the shoulder Kokuu Sen throw, Ryoga's dazed body landing on top of Shampoo. Rock fell with Ryoga's body then lashed out with a sweeping kick to take Ranma off balance, to no avail as Ranma only slightly lept over the attack, then came down with a mean looking dart kick.
Rock rolled out of the way, picking up one of Shampoo's bonboris out of her hand as she was fighting to get Ryoga off of her, and threw it at Ranma. Ranma pulled to the side to evade it, giving Rock the time he needed to stand up. In a sigh of resignation, Rock went back into defense position as everyone got back up and rushed after him to renew their attacks, now their expressions all matching the evil looks of Ryoga's.
Akane and Nabiki watched from the entrance of the Dojo, Akane looking extremely impressed by the fact that this guy was not only still sucking air, but BEATING Ranma, Shampoo, Ukyo, and Ryoga all at once. Nabiki had a sardonic smile at watching someone actually humbling the great Ranma Saotome and friends. Looking out towards the Dojo entrance, Nabiki saw the lime green Honda motorcycle sitting outside the gates with a sizable backpack on the ground by it, no doubt belonging to the blond haired foreigner.
Another object caught her eye and went to go inspect it. In the spot where Ranma and the other boy were fighting, was laying a platnum debit/credit card. Nabiki's eyes widened, "so, he's obviously well off, or he stole it," Nabiki thought to herself, more deciding that it was the latter from the backpack . Nonetheless it may help to find out who he is and where he's from if she did a little background check on the card that belonged to a "Mr. Rock Howard"....
The battle time was now starting to take it's toll on Rock, as his four opponents seemed to be fueled by beserker rages or something. Rock jumped to his left as Shampoo tried another straight right jab at his back, then Rock hooked his right arm around Shampoo's still extended arm and and put his back completly against Shampoo's front, allowing her no leverage. Rock than torqued to his left, bringing Shampoo's arm still holding the bonbori forth and used it to block Ukyo's massive spatula. Rock then lifted Shampoo up so her feet were not touching the ground and swung to his right, parrying Ukyo's spatula away. Finally Rock unhooked his right arm from around the base of Shampoo's right arm, and in a fluid motion brought his right arm to Shampoo's left side, and swung her shoulder first into Ranma, who had to drop his attack attempt in order to keep him and Shampoo from tumbling over. Shampoo misinterpreted Ranma's actions as she hugged him fiercely.
That bit of distraction towards Ranma allowed Rock to concentrate a bit on Ukyo and Ryoga. Rock had determined Ryoga's attack pattern along with Ukyo's and came up with the best plan of attack to hopefully take one of them out of the fight. Feigning an attack to Ryoga, Rock rushed after Ukyo, putting her on the defensive. Rock faked an opening for Ukyo, who pressed to take advantage of it and swung outward in a horizontal arc. Rock smiled as his timing was perfect and lept straight up instead of outwards, causing the spatula to swing under him and hit Ryoga in the gut. Rock than dropped an ax kick while still in the air onto Ukyo's grip of her weapon, knocking it to the ground. Rock then followed it up by punching forth at the center of Ukyo's clavical with a ki reinforced elbow. Rock hadn't stopped moving foward with his Hard Edge attack when he felt a *painful* kick to the small of his back.
Ranma was having problems anticipating the blond haired boy's moves, but at least now he was getting the rythem of things and decided that it was time to end this. Ryoga also seemed to be at his limits as the lost boy began to charge for his own Ki attack with his anger, Ranma similarly charging his own with his confidence (now actually more arrogance). Rock recovered with a roll and felt the two twin yet opposing ki forces building up to something powerful, but not quite as powerful as what he could handle. Both Ranma and Ryoga reached the apex of their energy building and called forth their attacks, "MAKO TABAKISHA!" "SHI SHI HAKOUDAN!" But just as they did this, Rock called forth his own,
"RAAAAAAGIIIIIIINNNNNNNNG STORRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!"
Both Ryoga Shi Shi Hakoudan and Ranma's Mako Takabisha were swallowed into the seemingly unstable tempest of roaring Fatal Fury, the after shock of Rock's final attack knocking all four fighters along with Nabiki, Akane, Soun, and Genma to the ground.
Ranma climbed out of the fish pond he was knocked into, as mad as he had ever gotten, while Rock reigned in the power of his attack, his left hand grasping his right hand as if it were on fire. Akane noticed that Rock's hand seemed to be enveloped in a white/purplish flame which seemed to be causing the Blond boy aggrivation.
Finally Rock calmed down enough to will down the energy and attempted to recompose himself. He hoped pulling such a move off would completly deterr everyone from furthering this fight. Unfortunatly he never heard about the reputations of Nerima's martial artists for being 'rational'. Rock went back into a weary stance as a new opponent came towards him, some girl with red hair and a look of total murder in her eyes....
"YAMETTE"
Rock heard the Japanese word for "stop" called out, and the redhead halted in her tracks and glanced at the shorthaired girl standing at the door of the Dojo. The Female Ranma looked dumbfounded as she watched Akane jog up to the boy, and bow.
"I'm sorry," said Akane in the most sincere tone that ANYONE had heard her use in a long time....
Quiet Control Chapter 3
"The Mindset"
"What's this you got going?" Enquired Terry as he looked over Rock's shoulder. Young Howard turned a look of distain towards his guardian for the invasion of his privacy, to which Terry backed up waving his hands in a defensive manner.
"Hey! If it's that important to ya...."
Rock just let out a sigh as he turned away from the laptop given to him by his adoptive Uncle and Aunt, "It's nothing, just playing chess against some guys online."
"Ah, sounds fun..." replied Terry, before he caught note of what his young charge just said, "you say 'guys'?"
"Uh, yeah, my Dad.... um, I was taught to play chess since I was told that it would help better organize how I think," Stated Rock, oblivious to the true question the older Bogard brother was asking.
"How many games you got going right now?" asked Terry, deciding on the direct approach.
"Four, if you include the one I just won."
"Just won? I take it the guy wasn't that good? Huh," enquired Terry, still prodding for more info.
"He wasn't bad, some guy Southern Germany a bit older than you."
"I take it these arn't speed Chess matches," Terry asked as Rock switched to another chess window and made a move almost immidiatly after surveying the board.
"Nope, though I don't see the point in waiting all day for a move," stated Rock as he switched to another window and made his move on that, which was immidiatly followed with a "Check" banner.
"Don't this get confusing? I mean four games is a little much at once."
Rock just turned back to Terry with a slightly puzzled look, which he relaxed before replying, "Not really, kinda got used to it after a while when I was still living with Da... with him."
Terry considered this thoroughly and decided that it may be interesting to test this 12 year old boy's ability, "Well, we're gonna need to start training here in a bit, now that we've fattened ourselves up from Christmas Dinner here. Why don't I go see if I can get May and my brother to work with us?" Rock nodded and turned back towards the online chess games, oblivious to what Terry had planned...
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Akane would have gasped if she could, but she was still fighting to get her breath back from having the wind knocked from her. She had never recieved that stare before from anyone, not even Kodachi or Cologne could make it seem so hard and harsh. Rock's glare was completely that of no tolerance, yet she could tell by the blow that he was in complete control of his power, and knew how hard she could be hit. For once in her life, Akane was shown the meaning of restraint before Fury.
Before he thought about it, Rock pulled his right shoulder foward, allowing a punch by Ryoga from behind to glide past him, than ducked and rolled to his left as Ranma's flying Dragon Stamp kick barely missed the small of his back. Rock vaulted himself immidiatly to his feet and instantly assessed the abilities of the fighters who were recovering from their missed blows and aggressing towards him.
Rock saw them both tense for another attack, but knew that the one with the yellow and black striped bandanna would be the one to attack first, sure enough not to dissapoint, Ryoga brought forth another haymaker that Rock was forced to duck under, the blow looked heavy, and even though Rock could block it, he would be put too far off balance for an attack from the one called Ranma.
Rock sensed a presence behind him and spun on his axis as a series of lightning fast blows were forced to graze around Rock, and force Ranma into Ryoga's path. Ryoga staggered a bit from Ranma's Kachu Teshen Amaguriken technique, as Ranma looked slightly flustered from missing his attack and turned around to follow where the blond haired foreigner was.
Ranma almost missed Rock leaping over him and turning his foward air summersault into a half gator as he swung his right leg down in a jacknife, catching Ryoga in the top of his head and sending him flat onto the ground. Ranma was attempting to leap back to get some boxing range distance between him and Rock, but as he was leaning back, the other young man moved as quick as Ranma was able to, leaning forward and grabbing Ranma's ankle. Ranma saw an opening and attempted a jacknife himself with his free leg, but felt himself snapped into the air like a whip.
The pig tailed martial artist attempted to regain his bearings in the air, but the way he was thrown left him no possible way of doing so, something about the technique that made it that way. Rock Howard drew his arms in a wide circle as if drawing a yin-yang sign as Ranma landed on the small of his back and neck from an arc that allowed little of the shock to be lost as Ranma rolled with the fall as much as he could, finding it did little to relieve himself of the pain of landing so unceremoniously.
Rock *almost* relaxed a bit before he anticipated the sound of six flat shaped objects cutting through the air to the left of him and darted quickly backwards as six razor sharp spatula made thunking sounds as they stuck into the wooden Dojo floor. The girl with the spatula was talking way too fast in Japanese for Rock to understand her, but knew it was obviously a threat as he braced himself for another opponent....
"You, You! HOW DARE YOU TREAT MY RANCHAN THAT WAY!" Yelled Ukyo as she lept after Rock with her battle spatula raised to flatten it's target. "He actually flattened Ryoga AND Ranchan without breaking a sweat," thought Ukyo to herself, "if he's good enough to do that..."
Ukyo's spatula decended after Rock, and the Blond boy dashed in closer to Ukyo at the last second, maneuvering into her guard where her spatula's range would be a hinderance and shoulder charged her. Instead of Ukyo going backwards so she could recover from the charge, to her dismay she felt herself being carried upwards into the sky, blows being rained upon her as if she was in a blender with the blades blunted.
Shampoo came out of her daze from watching the yellow haired boy perform a move she had only seen a few times before, the one her great grandmother called with no little amout of respect "the Raising Tackle", and brought forth her bonbori maces for her turn, as strong as this boy was, she could not let him get away with harming her beloved.
Rock barely recovered from the landing of his Rising Tackle when he heard the battle cry. Rock turned and ducked a colorful spherical object heading for his head, then faded to his left as another identical one came rushing at his chin in and uppercut motion. Finding himself forced back to the right and realized he was being maneuvered to go straight back, no doubt into a wall. Rock felt his heel tap against the back of the Dojo wall as he saw an unhealthy (for his benefit) gleam in the purple haired girl's eye as she sent a bonbori straight at his chest.
Rock turned away from the blow rolling against the wood wall as Shampoo put a hole through where he was last positioned. The Blond boy kept rolling against the wall as Shampoo kept pivoting around to meet him, placing a new hole in the wall with each turn. Rock, rolling against the wall to his left while Shampoo continued to pivot to her right, moving to her right for seven more holes when Rock darted to his right as he saw a yellow and black shiruken stick into the area he was about to go into. Also Shampoo had anticipated where he would be at that point, her bonbori landing where his head woulda been if he continued. Rock shot his left fist out and broke Shampoo's Bonbori handle in half, than hooked it back into the Amazon's shoulder to send her to the side. As she cleared out of the way, Rock was slightly dismayed as he saw the girl with the large spatula, the guy called Ranma, and the guy Ranma called 'P-Chan' charging after him, none of them looking very happy.
"This is getting too out of hand," thought Rock to himself, "they don't even care about the damage they're doing to this place, better get them outside." Ukyo and Ranma saw Rock blur for a second than vanish, both coming to a stop as they felt a quick breeze race by them kicking up their hair from the draft.
"Wow, too fast!" Ukyo gasped, then felt another breeze race by her as she saw Ranma turn into a black and red streak in pursuit of Rock out of the Dojo door. Ryoga unfortunatly in his rage did not notice Rock was not in his way and crashed through the wall, looking around in fury before starting foward looking for his target.
"He's THIS way, you Jackass!" Ukyo cried out, earning Ryoga's look of rage in her direction, nonetheless he complied and followed her back through the sizable hole in the dojo and out the dojo's true exit.
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If it didn't seem like a life or death situation, Rock would enjoy this fight. But as it is, it was as if these four were trying to do more than just kill him. Rock was rather suprised to see Ranma catch up to him after he had used his Rage Run to put some distance between them. But instead of showing his suprise, he only flexed and tightened his guard, expecting another volley of those high speed punches Ranma started off using against him.
Ranma didn't use his Amaguriken this time, opting for power in the overall hits as he threw a hard cross at Rock's head. Rock pulled his head to the side and let the blow breeze by him. Ranma followed it up with a cresent kick to the mid range, giving Rock exactly what he wanted as he caught the move and took all his momentum from it and put it into a return attack. Rock's Crack Counter Jou-dan had it's impressive effect on Ranma who *almost* managed to block it as Rock used the momentum from Ranma's kick to allow him to flip foward and drop his heel onto Ranma's shoulder, bringing the pig tailed martial artist to his knees.
If Rock intended to follow up the attack, he wasn't given the chance as a mini spatula came racing by his head. Rock wasn't ready to immidiatly go against the other three just yet, so decided to up the level a bit.
"REPPUKEN!" Shampoo, Ryoga's, and Ukyo's eyes went wide as the saw the ki attack race towards them, and dashed out of the way. Rock meant the attack to scare them away and also show that they should think a bit more about attacking him as the runaway projectile crashed into a large rock and pulverized it.
"Yellow hair Boy use Ki attacks easy!" Shampoo cried in dismay.
"And he didn't even seem to put effort into it," Ryoga added with awe. Rock's plan didn't go as he hoped it would as the other three advanced on him even stronger this time, putting twice as much effort on each of their behalfs as they did before, including Ranma who recovered from the distraction Ukyo gave Rock.
"That Young man Soutome, doesn't his style look familiar to you?" Enquired Soun as he calmly observed the fight going on in his back yard that was reaching near epic proportions.
"Hmm, some of it does remind me of this one man I met in the north years ago, when me and Ranma were on our training mission," stated Genma matter of factly, "we had a friendly sparring match in which we came to a draw." Genma negleted to mention that the 'sparring match' started over Genma trying to steal the rabbits and fish the blond haired man was cooking, the match ending when both fighters found themselves too evenly matched and as a compromise to share his catches with Genma and his son, as long as they didn't eat more than their share and left some for him and his own young ward.....
Genma blinked at the memory, than realized who the boy was that was holding his own against four of Nerima's best martial artists.
Rock was holding rather well as his four attackers attempted to overwhelm him. He was in full stratagy mode now and came to a few conclusions. One they were all fighting too hard and would wear themselves out faster than he would tire (he hoped), just as long as he stayed conservative. Another thing is they weren't used to fighting as a team, and with the effort they were already putting in, they were getting in each other's way, it would just be a matter of helping them to further that problem.
Rock shifted his stance a bit as Ryoga drove a punch towards his chest, but instead of moving out of the way, Rock caught the fist with both hands and continued Ryoga's foward momentum by pulling him back with him, causing Ukyo's large spatula to crash into Ryoga's face. Rock than side kicked Ukyo away, and pulled Ryoga into an over the shoulder Kokuu Sen throw, Ryoga's dazed body landing on top of Shampoo. Rock fell with Ryoga's body then lashed out with a sweeping kick to take Ranma off balance, to no avail as Ranma only slightly lept over the attack, then came down with a mean looking dart kick.
Rock rolled out of the way, picking up one of Shampoo's bonboris out of her hand as she was fighting to get Ryoga off of her, and threw it at Ranma. Ranma pulled to the side to evade it, giving Rock the time he needed to stand up. In a sigh of resignation, Rock went back into defense position as everyone got back up and rushed after him to renew their attacks, now their expressions all matching the evil looks of Ryoga's.
Akane and Nabiki watched from the entrance of the Dojo, Akane looking extremely impressed by the fact that this guy was not only still sucking air, but BEATING Ranma, Shampoo, Ukyo, and Ryoga all at once. Nabiki had a sardonic smile at watching someone actually humbling the great Ranma Saotome and friends. Looking out towards the Dojo entrance, Nabiki saw the lime green Honda motorcycle sitting outside the gates with a sizable backpack on the ground by it, no doubt belonging to the blond haired foreigner.
Another object caught her eye and went to go inspect it. In the spot where Ranma and the other boy were fighting, was laying a platnum debit/credit card. Nabiki's eyes widened, "so, he's obviously well off, or he stole it," Nabiki thought to herself, more deciding that it was the latter from the backpack . Nonetheless it may help to find out who he is and where he's from if she did a little background check on the card that belonged to a "Mr. Rock Howard"....
The battle time was now starting to take it's toll on Rock, as his four opponents seemed to be fueled by beserker rages or something. Rock jumped to his left as Shampoo tried another straight right jab at his back, then Rock hooked his right arm around Shampoo's still extended arm and and put his back completly against Shampoo's front, allowing her no leverage. Rock than torqued to his left, bringing Shampoo's arm still holding the bonbori forth and used it to block Ukyo's massive spatula. Rock then lifted Shampoo up so her feet were not touching the ground and swung to his right, parrying Ukyo's spatula away. Finally Rock unhooked his right arm from around the base of Shampoo's right arm, and in a fluid motion brought his right arm to Shampoo's left side, and swung her shoulder first into Ranma, who had to drop his attack attempt in order to keep him and Shampoo from tumbling over. Shampoo misinterpreted Ranma's actions as she hugged him fiercely.
That bit of distraction towards Ranma allowed Rock to concentrate a bit on Ukyo and Ryoga. Rock had determined Ryoga's attack pattern along with Ukyo's and came up with the best plan of attack to hopefully take one of them out of the fight. Feigning an attack to Ryoga, Rock rushed after Ukyo, putting her on the defensive. Rock faked an opening for Ukyo, who pressed to take advantage of it and swung outward in a horizontal arc. Rock smiled as his timing was perfect and lept straight up instead of outwards, causing the spatula to swing under him and hit Ryoga in the gut. Rock than dropped an ax kick while still in the air onto Ukyo's grip of her weapon, knocking it to the ground. Rock then followed it up by punching forth at the center of Ukyo's clavical with a ki reinforced elbow. Rock hadn't stopped moving foward with his Hard Edge attack when he felt a *painful* kick to the small of his back.
Ranma was having problems anticipating the blond haired boy's moves, but at least now he was getting the rythem of things and decided that it was time to end this. Ryoga also seemed to be at his limits as the lost boy began to charge for his own Ki attack with his anger, Ranma similarly charging his own with his confidence (now actually more arrogance). Rock recovered with a roll and felt the two twin yet opposing ki forces building up to something powerful, but not quite as powerful as what he could handle. Both Ranma and Ryoga reached the apex of their energy building and called forth their attacks, "MAKO TABAKISHA!" "SHI SHI HAKOUDAN!" But just as they did this, Rock called forth his own,
"RAAAAAAGIIIIIIINNNNNNNNG STORRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!"
Both Ryoga Shi Shi Hakoudan and Ranma's Mako Takabisha were swallowed into the seemingly unstable tempest of roaring Fatal Fury, the after shock of Rock's final attack knocking all four fighters along with Nabiki, Akane, Soun, and Genma to the ground.
Ranma climbed out of the fish pond he was knocked into, as mad as he had ever gotten, while Rock reigned in the power of his attack, his left hand grasping his right hand as if it were on fire. Akane noticed that Rock's hand seemed to be enveloped in a white/purplish flame which seemed to be causing the Blond boy aggrivation.
Finally Rock calmed down enough to will down the energy and attempted to recompose himself. He hoped pulling such a move off would completly deterr everyone from furthering this fight. Unfortunatly he never heard about the reputations of Nerima's martial artists for being 'rational'. Rock went back into a weary stance as a new opponent came towards him, some girl with red hair and a look of total murder in her eyes....
"YAMETTE"
Rock heard the Japanese word for "stop" called out, and the redhead halted in her tracks and glanced at the shorthaired girl standing at the door of the Dojo. The Female Ranma looked dumbfounded as she watched Akane jog up to the boy, and bow.
"I'm sorry," said Akane in the most sincere tone that ANYONE had heard her use in a long time....