Chapter 7
Defender Instincts
"Shit," he muttered after he had hung up the phone. This was not going to be a good day.
So, the plot quickens, Daniel said in his mind.
"What?"
Oh, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.
"Whatever," Ranma said suspiciously. He still far from trusted the entity named Daniel who now resided in his mind, even after the understanding they had come to. They now had a very business-like relationship. What Daniel could do for Ranma, he would for permission to come to the fore and use Ranma's body when he wanted, as long as it wasn't in an inappropriate moment. And, to hear him tell it, Daniel could do a lot for Ranma.
This is not the time to have dissention among the ranks, Daniel said matter of factly. We need to be as one in the days to come. There will be many trials and besides, I thought you hated Kodachi anyways.
"That's besides the point," Ranma said heatedly. He really hated how Daniel seemed to know too much about him and the goings on in his life.
Well, most of the major players have been introduced. Let's see, who are we missing? Ryoga probably. He'll be along shortly, if I'm not mistaken. These things always go this way.
"How do you know that?" Ramna's suspicion had returned a hundred fold. "And why d'ya keep talkin' like you've read this or somethin'?"
Trust me, my not so willing friend, you would not believe me if I told you. He sighed wearily. Why here of all places? Why here and why in your head, and not in my own flesh? Ranma could hear him shake off the momentary maudlin. No sense bemoaning that which cannot be changed. Let's get to the Nekohanten and see what the old bat wants.
*****
The Nekohanten was dark when she arrived. It's doors were closed and it's windows were all darkened except for a single light that came from the back of the common room. The door opened easily at Ranma's touch and she hurried inside out of the rain. What had started out as a simple, easy going rain had turned into a full blown storm and she was not happy about it.
She shook the water out of her hair as she crossed the room to the kitchen. Sitting around a small table in the back were Cologne, Akane and Ukyou . They're eyes bored into Ranma as she entered and immediately he was defensive.
"What?" she demanded crossly.
Akane pointed behind them and Ranma saw a tea kettle on the stove. Steam was issuing from the spout and she gladly used the scalding liquid to become male again. He dried himself off and sat the table.
"Okay, tell me what happened." Akane and Ukyou related what had happened at the school that morning and Cologne kept staring at him. He ignored the old crone's eyes and concentrated on the story. When they had finished, Daniel started chuckling.
"What's so funny?" he demanded. Cologne's eyebrows arched slightly and Ukyou looked at him strangely.
Someone knows some tricks, Daniel replied. Well, more than tricks if my suspicions are correct.
"What are you talking about?" He was losing his temper again. Before he could get an answer, he found himself sitting in Daniel's chair watching the television. Ukyou started when she saw Ranma's eyes change color and his expression change. Cologne merely narrowed her eyes.
"Tell me every minute detail of the women's room," Daniel requested. It wasn't so much a request as a command, but they didn't much pay attention to it. They started telling the story again, and he kept asking questions, which resulted in the girls remembering more details from the scene. Cologne's face grew a little more wrinkled and lined as the story finished.
"You know what it was," Daniel said to the old woman.
"What do you know of such things?" she asked quietly. The suspicion that entered her mind as details of the feelings and sounds were revealed did not bode well for anyone, least of all Kodachi.
He smiled a small cold smile. "I know more than you want me to, old woman, and less than you fear. What I know is neither here nor there. What you know is what's important now."
She looked at him coldly, and he returned the look tenfold. Ukyou and Akane looked back and forth between the two of them, at a loss as to what was going on. Finally, Cologne looked down at the table.
Daniel snorted and reached for his chest. He stopped when he remembered that he was not in his own body, and he was not wearing one of his typical shirts with a breast pocked. He clenched his fist and growled. The others looked at him sharply, and he shrugged.
"I really want a cigarette," he said by way of explanation. "The addiction is purely psychological now, but it's still there." He waved away his craving and again looked at Cologne. "Are you going to tell them, or should I?"
"I will tell them," she snapped. She cleared her throat and looked at the two young women gravely. "It sounds like it was a creature called a mirror shade." She got blank looks from Akane and Ukyou, as they didn't understand the importance of the name. Daniel nodded, and frowned, deep in thought.
"What's a mirror shade?" Ukyou asked.
"It is a creature that lives between this world and another," Daniel said before Cologne could answer. "It dwells in the place between images in a reflection. In that one heartbeat between images in a mirror, you can glimpse the world of the mirror shade. It is a place of terrible beauty, where our image reality is warped and twisted like light through water. Summoning one is not so difficult, but getting one to do your bidding is another thing entirely. The summoner must have offered it something valuable indeed. The simple fact that the summoner knew enough to summon one is bad enough, but that he had something the shade wanted enough to do something like this abduction is quite," he paused, "ingenious, actually."
That did not go over well with the three of his listeners. Cologne kept silent as the young women started verbally abusing Daniel. They asked how he could be so mean to say something like that, and whatnot. He pretty much ignored them. Cologne, though, wondered how he knew so much of them, and where he found that information in the first place.
Daniel was staring off into space as the two continued their tirade. His eyes were unfocused, and a looked of confused contemplation crossed his face. He pondered something for a moment, then shrugged and looked at Akane and Ukyou. They had paused long enough to catch their breath, but they were ready to start in again.
"Oh, I am sorry," he said. "Were you two saying something? I was not listening." His grammatically perfect grasp of Japanese lessened the sting of his comment somewhat, but it still had the same affect he wanted. Akane looked like she was ready to throttle him, and Ukyou's hands were twitching for her battle spatula. Cologne, though, surprised them all, then. She laughed. Even Ranma, locked away in Daniel's room, laughed at Akane's and Ukyou's expressions.
Further conversation was interrupted when the front door opened and a duck with a small cat on it's back waddled in. The duck was dragging a white bundle that clanked loudly, and the cat seemed to be flexing it's claws frantically into the duck's back. The oddest part, though, was that the duck was wearing very, very thick glasses. Ranma started gibbering in terror when he saw the cat, and Daniel turned the TV off.
Cologne clucked disapprovingly and headed for the kitchen. She came back out with the still steaming tea kettle. She pour the water over the duck, and Daniel stood up to watch intently for any sign of the actual transformation. There was none, he found out. The transformation either happened in a nanosecond, or there was no actual transformation. Between one eye blink and the next, the duck was gone and a nude Mousse appeared.
He hurriedly got dressed, took the kettle and went to pour the water on the cat. Unfortunately, the cat had other ideas. The cat had spied Akane shortly before Mousse's transformation, and had immediately gotten pissed. It laid it's ears back, and got low to the ground, hissing. When Mousse went to pour the water on it, it leapt through the air directly at Akane.
Ranma's instincts and Daniel's took over. As the cat neared Akane, Daniel's hand shot out towards the cat. His intent was to grab it's head and break it's neck, but Ranma knew it was only Shampoo, and so Daniel's hand missed it's intended mark. Instead of it's head, he grabbed it's left foreleg. He immediately broke that leg in a couple of places, and threw the cat at the nearest wall, where it broke another leg. The cat fell to the ground with a soft thump.
All of it took place in the space of a few seconds, but the four spectators, trained martial artists all, followed it from it's beginning to it's end. Cologne started trembling in rage. Akane stared at Daniel as if he'd grown a second head. Ukyou sat there, stunned. Daniel stood there looking rather miffed that he hadn't killed the cat. Mousse, though, Mousse was the wild card. Daniel knew he'd go in one of two directions. Either violence, or he'd collapse in a blubbering heap.
"SHAMPOO!" Mousse screamed into the silence. He stood there, looking at the cat lying so very still on the ground. He turned his gaze on Daniel, and his expression hardened, became angry, almost hate-filled.
Daniel, again thanks to Ranma's "protect innocence" instinct, kicked the table over behind him, knocking Akane and Ukyou over. Knives thudded into the table that was between the girls and Mousse. The girls looked at the tips of the knives and knew that things had gone from horrible to deadly.
Daniel looked down at the knife that was stuck into his forearm curiously. It hurt, to be sure, but the pain was disconnected from him. It was abstract, there but not truly there. It had to be because it was not truly his body that had gotten wounded, he figured. It was a useful piece of information. It would definitely make fighting a lot more interesting knowing that he wouldn't feel the pain of the injuries, but on the other hand, he would have to be more careful. He didn't want to find out what would happen if Ranma's body died while he was still in it.
He pulled the knife from his arm and tossed it over the table behind him. He grinned viciously at Mousse and charged. Mousse used the flowing, baggy sleeves of his outfit to good affect. He parried and redirected several of Daniel's attacks using those sleeves, but since it was Daniel fighting and not Ranma, the attacks weren't that good to begin with.
They went back and forth for a bit, trading and blocking blows from hands and feet before Mousse remembered that he had weapons. He jumped back and pulled from his sleeves a pair of straight bladed swords. Daniel was in a low defensive crouch, and he gave Mousse his most insane grin. It was a grin that had scared most normal people, but in Nerima, no one was normal.
Mousse came at Daniel, weaving his swords in a mesmerizing and beautiful pattern designed to mislead his opponent, but he had watched enough kung-fu movies, and had spoken with enough martial artists to know what to look at on his opponent's body. But, just because Daniel knew what to look at, didn't mean he knew what he was seeing. He turned the TV back on in his room, and Ranma watched Mousse's approach.
Left sword mid first and right sword high second with left foot forward and right slightly behind, Ranma screamed, and he knew what to do to counter.
Daniel spun low to the ground with his leg out and swept Mousse's feet out from under him. Daniel was on him in a flash, pummeling him, but Mousse was not to be underestimated. He maneuvered his legs so that he could get some leverage, and used that to hurl Daniel off of him. Mousse stood and again reached into his sleeves. This time, though, he brought forth a length of chain with a weight at the end.
If you stay at a distance, he's gonna knock the crap outta you, Ranma screamed.
Daniel ducked under Mousse's first swing and ran in fast, delivering a brutal blow to Mousse's ribs. He quickly followed it with another, and then another. On the third hit, he could clearly hear some ribs crack. He stayed low during those three punches, and Mousse rapped his arms around Daniel's ribs, forcing his head down under Mousse's arm.
Daniel didn't want that. He raised his knee and brought it full force into Mousse's groin. The blow staggered him, and he took advantage of it by leveling another brutal punch to Mousse's cracked ribs. Under that hit, they broke. Mousse screamed and staggered back, but Daniel was relentless. He followed the Chinese boy, raining blow after blow in rapid succession from every conceivable angle. He made sure to slam those broken ribs every third hit. Daniel got up close and smashed his forehead into Mousse's nose, shattering it and covering both of their faces with blood.
Mousse fell to the floor as consciousness left him, but Daniel wouldn't let up. He started kicking the boy as he lay there, defenseless. Akane and Ukyou came out from behind the table and saw the spectacle of Daniel, with blood covering most of his exposed skin, standing over the bloody and beaten body of Mousse. The boy's chest heaved raggedly, assuring them that he was still alive. Cologne sat next to the now human body of Shampoo, cradling the young woman's head in her lap. One of Shampoo's arms, and one of her legs had a two or three new joints in them, but she was definitely still alive.
"You can thank Ranma that she still lives," Daniel said to the old woman. She turned her head and leveled a baleful stare at him. He shrugged.
"When she awakens," he went on, wiping his face with a table cloth, "tell her that the next time she attacks Akane, or Ukyou, that Ranma will not stop me from killing her. And tell Mousse that next time he attacks me, I will not be so kind."
He wiped off the rest of the blood, as best he could, and then remembered that he was injured in the fight. He also noted that he had some other injuries besides the knife wound. He shook his head and sighed.
"I will go and have Kasumi look at these," he said, "and then Ranma and I must have another talk. He is screaming bloody murder right now, and it is terribly distracting." He bowed to Akane and Ukyou before he left.
Akane, Ukyou and Cologne stared after him. Cologne snapped the young women out of their states of semi-shock and had them clean Mousse up as best they could. She left the room to call for an ambulance and Akane and Ukyou shared a long look. Ukyou finally understood what Akane had meant when she said that Daniel had scared her.
They were both skilled fighters, and both of them had faced many strange opponents, but neither of them had ever seen anything like this before. To best an opponent was one thing, but to beat someone almost to death, that was completely different. With Daniel's disregard for human life, and Ranma's fighting skill, they were definitely something to be feared.
Defender Instincts
"Shit," he muttered after he had hung up the phone. This was not going to be a good day.
So, the plot quickens, Daniel said in his mind.
"What?"
Oh, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.
"Whatever," Ranma said suspiciously. He still far from trusted the entity named Daniel who now resided in his mind, even after the understanding they had come to. They now had a very business-like relationship. What Daniel could do for Ranma, he would for permission to come to the fore and use Ranma's body when he wanted, as long as it wasn't in an inappropriate moment. And, to hear him tell it, Daniel could do a lot for Ranma.
This is not the time to have dissention among the ranks, Daniel said matter of factly. We need to be as one in the days to come. There will be many trials and besides, I thought you hated Kodachi anyways.
"That's besides the point," Ranma said heatedly. He really hated how Daniel seemed to know too much about him and the goings on in his life.
Well, most of the major players have been introduced. Let's see, who are we missing? Ryoga probably. He'll be along shortly, if I'm not mistaken. These things always go this way.
"How do you know that?" Ramna's suspicion had returned a hundred fold. "And why d'ya keep talkin' like you've read this or somethin'?"
Trust me, my not so willing friend, you would not believe me if I told you. He sighed wearily. Why here of all places? Why here and why in your head, and not in my own flesh? Ranma could hear him shake off the momentary maudlin. No sense bemoaning that which cannot be changed. Let's get to the Nekohanten and see what the old bat wants.
*****
The Nekohanten was dark when she arrived. It's doors were closed and it's windows were all darkened except for a single light that came from the back of the common room. The door opened easily at Ranma's touch and she hurried inside out of the rain. What had started out as a simple, easy going rain had turned into a full blown storm and she was not happy about it.
She shook the water out of her hair as she crossed the room to the kitchen. Sitting around a small table in the back were Cologne, Akane and Ukyou . They're eyes bored into Ranma as she entered and immediately he was defensive.
"What?" she demanded crossly.
Akane pointed behind them and Ranma saw a tea kettle on the stove. Steam was issuing from the spout and she gladly used the scalding liquid to become male again. He dried himself off and sat the table.
"Okay, tell me what happened." Akane and Ukyou related what had happened at the school that morning and Cologne kept staring at him. He ignored the old crone's eyes and concentrated on the story. When they had finished, Daniel started chuckling.
"What's so funny?" he demanded. Cologne's eyebrows arched slightly and Ukyou looked at him strangely.
Someone knows some tricks, Daniel replied. Well, more than tricks if my suspicions are correct.
"What are you talking about?" He was losing his temper again. Before he could get an answer, he found himself sitting in Daniel's chair watching the television. Ukyou started when she saw Ranma's eyes change color and his expression change. Cologne merely narrowed her eyes.
"Tell me every minute detail of the women's room," Daniel requested. It wasn't so much a request as a command, but they didn't much pay attention to it. They started telling the story again, and he kept asking questions, which resulted in the girls remembering more details from the scene. Cologne's face grew a little more wrinkled and lined as the story finished.
"You know what it was," Daniel said to the old woman.
"What do you know of such things?" she asked quietly. The suspicion that entered her mind as details of the feelings and sounds were revealed did not bode well for anyone, least of all Kodachi.
He smiled a small cold smile. "I know more than you want me to, old woman, and less than you fear. What I know is neither here nor there. What you know is what's important now."
She looked at him coldly, and he returned the look tenfold. Ukyou and Akane looked back and forth between the two of them, at a loss as to what was going on. Finally, Cologne looked down at the table.
Daniel snorted and reached for his chest. He stopped when he remembered that he was not in his own body, and he was not wearing one of his typical shirts with a breast pocked. He clenched his fist and growled. The others looked at him sharply, and he shrugged.
"I really want a cigarette," he said by way of explanation. "The addiction is purely psychological now, but it's still there." He waved away his craving and again looked at Cologne. "Are you going to tell them, or should I?"
"I will tell them," she snapped. She cleared her throat and looked at the two young women gravely. "It sounds like it was a creature called a mirror shade." She got blank looks from Akane and Ukyou, as they didn't understand the importance of the name. Daniel nodded, and frowned, deep in thought.
"What's a mirror shade?" Ukyou asked.
"It is a creature that lives between this world and another," Daniel said before Cologne could answer. "It dwells in the place between images in a reflection. In that one heartbeat between images in a mirror, you can glimpse the world of the mirror shade. It is a place of terrible beauty, where our image reality is warped and twisted like light through water. Summoning one is not so difficult, but getting one to do your bidding is another thing entirely. The summoner must have offered it something valuable indeed. The simple fact that the summoner knew enough to summon one is bad enough, but that he had something the shade wanted enough to do something like this abduction is quite," he paused, "ingenious, actually."
That did not go over well with the three of his listeners. Cologne kept silent as the young women started verbally abusing Daniel. They asked how he could be so mean to say something like that, and whatnot. He pretty much ignored them. Cologne, though, wondered how he knew so much of them, and where he found that information in the first place.
Daniel was staring off into space as the two continued their tirade. His eyes were unfocused, and a looked of confused contemplation crossed his face. He pondered something for a moment, then shrugged and looked at Akane and Ukyou. They had paused long enough to catch their breath, but they were ready to start in again.
"Oh, I am sorry," he said. "Were you two saying something? I was not listening." His grammatically perfect grasp of Japanese lessened the sting of his comment somewhat, but it still had the same affect he wanted. Akane looked like she was ready to throttle him, and Ukyou's hands were twitching for her battle spatula. Cologne, though, surprised them all, then. She laughed. Even Ranma, locked away in Daniel's room, laughed at Akane's and Ukyou's expressions.
Further conversation was interrupted when the front door opened and a duck with a small cat on it's back waddled in. The duck was dragging a white bundle that clanked loudly, and the cat seemed to be flexing it's claws frantically into the duck's back. The oddest part, though, was that the duck was wearing very, very thick glasses. Ranma started gibbering in terror when he saw the cat, and Daniel turned the TV off.
Cologne clucked disapprovingly and headed for the kitchen. She came back out with the still steaming tea kettle. She pour the water over the duck, and Daniel stood up to watch intently for any sign of the actual transformation. There was none, he found out. The transformation either happened in a nanosecond, or there was no actual transformation. Between one eye blink and the next, the duck was gone and a nude Mousse appeared.
He hurriedly got dressed, took the kettle and went to pour the water on the cat. Unfortunately, the cat had other ideas. The cat had spied Akane shortly before Mousse's transformation, and had immediately gotten pissed. It laid it's ears back, and got low to the ground, hissing. When Mousse went to pour the water on it, it leapt through the air directly at Akane.
Ranma's instincts and Daniel's took over. As the cat neared Akane, Daniel's hand shot out towards the cat. His intent was to grab it's head and break it's neck, but Ranma knew it was only Shampoo, and so Daniel's hand missed it's intended mark. Instead of it's head, he grabbed it's left foreleg. He immediately broke that leg in a couple of places, and threw the cat at the nearest wall, where it broke another leg. The cat fell to the ground with a soft thump.
All of it took place in the space of a few seconds, but the four spectators, trained martial artists all, followed it from it's beginning to it's end. Cologne started trembling in rage. Akane stared at Daniel as if he'd grown a second head. Ukyou sat there, stunned. Daniel stood there looking rather miffed that he hadn't killed the cat. Mousse, though, Mousse was the wild card. Daniel knew he'd go in one of two directions. Either violence, or he'd collapse in a blubbering heap.
"SHAMPOO!" Mousse screamed into the silence. He stood there, looking at the cat lying so very still on the ground. He turned his gaze on Daniel, and his expression hardened, became angry, almost hate-filled.
Daniel, again thanks to Ranma's "protect innocence" instinct, kicked the table over behind him, knocking Akane and Ukyou over. Knives thudded into the table that was between the girls and Mousse. The girls looked at the tips of the knives and knew that things had gone from horrible to deadly.
Daniel looked down at the knife that was stuck into his forearm curiously. It hurt, to be sure, but the pain was disconnected from him. It was abstract, there but not truly there. It had to be because it was not truly his body that had gotten wounded, he figured. It was a useful piece of information. It would definitely make fighting a lot more interesting knowing that he wouldn't feel the pain of the injuries, but on the other hand, he would have to be more careful. He didn't want to find out what would happen if Ranma's body died while he was still in it.
He pulled the knife from his arm and tossed it over the table behind him. He grinned viciously at Mousse and charged. Mousse used the flowing, baggy sleeves of his outfit to good affect. He parried and redirected several of Daniel's attacks using those sleeves, but since it was Daniel fighting and not Ranma, the attacks weren't that good to begin with.
They went back and forth for a bit, trading and blocking blows from hands and feet before Mousse remembered that he had weapons. He jumped back and pulled from his sleeves a pair of straight bladed swords. Daniel was in a low defensive crouch, and he gave Mousse his most insane grin. It was a grin that had scared most normal people, but in Nerima, no one was normal.
Mousse came at Daniel, weaving his swords in a mesmerizing and beautiful pattern designed to mislead his opponent, but he had watched enough kung-fu movies, and had spoken with enough martial artists to know what to look at on his opponent's body. But, just because Daniel knew what to look at, didn't mean he knew what he was seeing. He turned the TV back on in his room, and Ranma watched Mousse's approach.
Left sword mid first and right sword high second with left foot forward and right slightly behind, Ranma screamed, and he knew what to do to counter.
Daniel spun low to the ground with his leg out and swept Mousse's feet out from under him. Daniel was on him in a flash, pummeling him, but Mousse was not to be underestimated. He maneuvered his legs so that he could get some leverage, and used that to hurl Daniel off of him. Mousse stood and again reached into his sleeves. This time, though, he brought forth a length of chain with a weight at the end.
If you stay at a distance, he's gonna knock the crap outta you, Ranma screamed.
Daniel ducked under Mousse's first swing and ran in fast, delivering a brutal blow to Mousse's ribs. He quickly followed it with another, and then another. On the third hit, he could clearly hear some ribs crack. He stayed low during those three punches, and Mousse rapped his arms around Daniel's ribs, forcing his head down under Mousse's arm.
Daniel didn't want that. He raised his knee and brought it full force into Mousse's groin. The blow staggered him, and he took advantage of it by leveling another brutal punch to Mousse's cracked ribs. Under that hit, they broke. Mousse screamed and staggered back, but Daniel was relentless. He followed the Chinese boy, raining blow after blow in rapid succession from every conceivable angle. He made sure to slam those broken ribs every third hit. Daniel got up close and smashed his forehead into Mousse's nose, shattering it and covering both of their faces with blood.
Mousse fell to the floor as consciousness left him, but Daniel wouldn't let up. He started kicking the boy as he lay there, defenseless. Akane and Ukyou came out from behind the table and saw the spectacle of Daniel, with blood covering most of his exposed skin, standing over the bloody and beaten body of Mousse. The boy's chest heaved raggedly, assuring them that he was still alive. Cologne sat next to the now human body of Shampoo, cradling the young woman's head in her lap. One of Shampoo's arms, and one of her legs had a two or three new joints in them, but she was definitely still alive.
"You can thank Ranma that she still lives," Daniel said to the old woman. She turned her head and leveled a baleful stare at him. He shrugged.
"When she awakens," he went on, wiping his face with a table cloth, "tell her that the next time she attacks Akane, or Ukyou, that Ranma will not stop me from killing her. And tell Mousse that next time he attacks me, I will not be so kind."
He wiped off the rest of the blood, as best he could, and then remembered that he was injured in the fight. He also noted that he had some other injuries besides the knife wound. He shook his head and sighed.
"I will go and have Kasumi look at these," he said, "and then Ranma and I must have another talk. He is screaming bloody murder right now, and it is terribly distracting." He bowed to Akane and Ukyou before he left.
Akane, Ukyou and Cologne stared after him. Cologne snapped the young women out of their states of semi-shock and had them clean Mousse up as best they could. She left the room to call for an ambulance and Akane and Ukyou shared a long look. Ukyou finally understood what Akane had meant when she said that Daniel had scared her.
They were both skilled fighters, and both of them had faced many strange opponents, but neither of them had ever seen anything like this before. To best an opponent was one thing, but to beat someone almost to death, that was completely different. With Daniel's disregard for human life, and Ranma's fighting skill, they were definitely something to be feared.