Raido Isa
Draft the first
Chapter 2
It was odd. Ranma had lived in Nerima for over a year. He knew the neighborhood fairly well. At least he thought he did. Everything just felt subtly different. Newer looking somehow. Whole houses weren't where he remembered them. How long had he been gone? Still, the Tendo Dojo was exactly where he remembered it. Maybe he could finally find a haven from all this weirdness. Ever since waking up in that field he had been off balance mentally and he just needed a bit of rest to catch up. After that nothing would faze him. Someone was sweeping outside the gate. She was obviously pregnant and would stop every so often to straighten up and press a hand into the small of her back. Ranma had no idea who she was.
"Umh.. Pardon me miss?" He asked gently.
"Yes?" She reminded Ranma a little of the eldest Tendo daughter.
"My name is Saotome Ranma, is Kasumi home?" He decided to be a little cautious. Maybe he was in a different area that had an exact replica of the Dojo owned by another family named Tendo. The neighorbhood had definitely looked different.
"Oh my. I'm sorry, but there's no one here by that name." She paused for a minute and looked thoughtful.
"Thanks a lot!" He waved. Well, maybe he could check with a police box and see if he was in the right area. He sprinted off.
Behind him the expecting mother leaned the broom up against the stone wall next to the gate. She patted her stomach thoughtfully. "Dear!" She called as she opened the gate and walked in side. "How about the name 'Kasumi'?"
Things were just getting stranger and stranger for the poor Saotome. Admittedly he wasn't an expert on modern technology having grown up on the road, but the make of all the cars he passed was of an older style. And they all looked new. He quickly pushed these disturbing thoughts from his head as he saw a bright red information station at the corner. Approaching quickly he tried to distract the policemen inside from his morning paper enough to ask a quick question. Then he noticed it. The date on the paper. This was 1976?!
"ULLRR!!!" He yelled. Passerby's glanced at him and hurried on whispering amongst themselves. The policeman put his paper down and gave him a heavy glance at the sudden outburst. Ranma was starting to get some of his old fire back. That darn archer must have brought him back 19 years early! He probably thought it was funny or something. People with magic things like that freaky bone always had twisted senses of humor. Well.
"Do you know if there's going to be any archery contest's nearby?" He asked the officer suddenly.
"One over in Shinjuko today I think. You alright there son?" In his experience people didn't just up and start shouting in public very often.
"Thanks." With that Ranma crouched, drew power into his legs from the earth, and vaulted up onto the rooftops.
"A martial artist. Well, that explains it." The policeman opened his paper with a snap and went back to reading his article.
Ranma's spirit lifted as he soared over the crowds below. He had a purpose now. He was sick and tired of being five moves behind and desperately reacting in a vain attempt to catch up. Lost in time or not, this was still his home ground. Here he really was almost the god that crazy old Embla seemed to imagine. Energized by the strength once again being on Japanese soil the rooftops blurred by faster and faster. As he reached the apex of a long jump between buildings he suddenly realized that he had no idea where in Shinjuko he was going. Around ten o'clock he stopped and asked for directions once more. Finally he found a dojo located next to Shinto temple at the outskirts of the ward. A large hand painted sign indicated the tournament. Scanning the crowd, Ranma quickly spotted Ullr kneeling with the contestants. Was it his imagination or did the rangy man look Japanese now? Didn't he have blue eyes before? Ranma shook his head.
The announcer drew his speach to a close and began the tournament. "Now will the contestants rise. Please form a line of six archers one half a step behind the other." In traditional style the shooting would be in waves of six with each archer acting in perfect step with the others in line. Ranma sat down to wait on the roof of the temple. He would catch Ullr after the contest. Besides it would be nice to see how the archer shot. After all wasn't it said that through a person's archery their true characters could be determined? Anyway a second man had taken the stand and was reading a story as the archer's strung their bows and checked their arrows. Ranma leaned forward to listen:
There once was a young man who wanted more than anything in the world to become a warrior. He would train for days swinging a stick weighted down with bars of steel to build up his strength. Finally, too his great joy, he was accepted as the student at a local dojo. He doubled his efforts waking up before the sun just to practice the forms he had learned the day before. Unfortunately though the boy had strong arms and a fierce determination he lacked talent. After a year of training he realized that he still could not defeat even the newest of students.
The master told him, "Son. You're dedication is admirable. But you put too much of yourself into every swing. You must learn to be delicate and flow like water. Perhaps you should try another path for awhile." The young man was crushed. His dream of being a great and noble warrior was ruined. Dejectedly he poked the ground with a thin reed at the foot of the dojo's front steps.
"You look unhappy little twig." A pleasant voice called out. The dejected student looked up. "Hello Mr. Priest." He said forlornly.
"Is there something the matter?" The kindly priest asked.
"Oh. It was just my dream to be a great warrior. But I'm no good at the sword even though I've been training every day for a year." He threw the stick down in disgust.
The wandering monk nodded sagely. "Even the greatest swordsman can fall to the sting of an arrow and sometimes dreams refuse to come true. You should follow the path that is true to your heart."
"An archer. Well I guess that might work. It's not as good as being a swordsman, but I guess I can't be choosey."
"Perhaps you should seek out the old man who lives by the waterfall in the hills. It was said that during the war he was the greatest practitioner of kyujutsu that served in his lordship's armies."
"The old hermit?" The boy asked incredulously.
"Well I must be off. Good luck to you." With that the old priest bowed, shook his eight ringed staff, and ambled on his way.
The bow took the monk's word to heart and the next day started up the path to the hermit's refuge. Always a strange sort, the old soldier had returned from the war and immediately gone into seclusion. There was a lot of talk about him in the village initially, but eventually he had just become a fact of life. He lived at the base of a waterfall up the westward mountain from the boy's home. The trees were denser this high and the path was very poorly kept. Finally he arrived. He knocked loudly on the frame of the cabin's sliding front door.
"Hey!" He called. "I'm here to learn how to shoot!" After ten minutes with no answer he knocked again louder this time. The door immediately opened. A gnarled old man carrying an empty bucked hobbled out and walked around his visitor hobbling off down the track towards the stream at the base of the waterfall. It continued this way for three days. Every time the young man would try and ask the hermit to teach him, the old man would simply walk around him and continue on as if he wasn't there. Eventually, the boy just lay down in front of the cabin's entrance and waited. On the evening of the third day the door opened again.
"What do you want?" A gravely voice asked.
Pounding his legs to get some feeling back into them the hopeful student quickly stood. "I want to learn to be an archer." He had learned that being rude was likely not to get him anywhere.
"Go ask the basket weaver in the next town for a job. Tell her I sent you. Come back in three months. Then maybe I'll think about it." With that the curious old man slammed the door in his face.
"What the hell does basket weaving have to do with archery??" He shouted. But still, what else could he do? Traveling to the next village took another two days. When he reached the basket weaver's place and sourly told her why he was there she showed him to a room full of long bamboo strips.
"Bend them into circles like this and lash them with this twine." She instructed. "Then weave these shorter strips into the frame to make the basket." She looked at him sharply. "If you want to work here I expect twenty a day."
The first one took him two hours. By the end of fourteen hours of work he had finished all twenty. His arms ached and his hands were bloody from working with the bamboo. He could now make a basket in half an hour of back breaking labor. The days stretched into weeks. It was the hardest work he had ever done. Each day was agony and he often compared his arms to the wet rice noodles he ate for dinner. Soon however he began to improve. On the second month he was making thirty the day. By the end of the third he could easily make fifty. He found that the intricate work of threading the bamboo into the frames was calming to him. He began to feel a sense of peace about him as he worked. Finally the last day arrived. He thanked the weaver woman for her kindness and traveled back to the old man's house.
This time when he knocked the door was opened immediately. "Well." The old hermit. "Show me your hands." Wordlessly the young man held out his palms for inspection. The months of hard work had left deep calluses on his fingers. "Hm." Was the only response he got.
"So? Will you train me?" He asked.
"Here." The old man tossed him a bow. "String this." It was over seven feet tall and very stiff. Only the additional strength gained by bending the slats of bamboo for three months allowed the boy to complete finally string the bow. "Now draw it back." Awkwardly the student archer brought the string back behind his ear. "Alright. Take these arrows and go shoot a thousand times a day in a field somewhere." He handed him a quiver. "Come back in three months."
"Dammit old man! Why won't you just teach me?" The hermit just slammed the door closed once again.
Three months later the young man found he could easily hit his target one thousand times a day. Sighing he returned back to the lunatic old geezer's hide out. Politely he knocked once more on the door. "You back already?" The old man asked.
"Yes teacher. Can you teach me now please?"
The master archer handed him a coin with a small hole in the middle and an empty jug. "Go fill this with water and practice pouring it through the hole. In three months you should be able to pour it through from ten feet up without missing a drop." The angry student looked at the coin. The hole was tiny.
"What the hell is this crap?" He shouted. "You keep making me do all this weird stuff – how do I even know you can shoot at all!"
"Follow me." The old man said. Taking another bow from inside his house he rested it over his shoulder and started down the path leading toward the village. About halfway down the mountain they came to a stop some distance from a cherry tree loaded down with fruit. Stringing his bow in one fluid motion the ancient hermit held it poised over his head. Taking a deep breath he drew and fired. "Try to hit a cherry." He said.
"Easy." The young man strung his bow and took careful aim striking on of the fruit dead center. "See?"
"Go get the arrows." The old man grumped. The boy easily found his arrow, a single cherry pierced on its shaft, in the grass behind the tree. It took him a long time to find his masters. When he finally came upon it he couldn't believe what was before his eyes. Ten cherries were pierced on its shaft and the bolt was sunk so deep into the trunk of a tree that he could not remove it.
"Still got a lot to learn idiot." His master shouted. On the way back the boy continued to marvel at the hermit's skill. Silently taking his bow from his shoulder he drew and shot at the old man's exposed back. "If he is good enough, he will sense the arrow and shoot it from the air." Sure enough his master spun around, strung one of his arrows into his great bow and sent it flying back to deflect the deadly missile. Without pausing the student fired again. Again his arrow was stopped. A third time he shot, but as he released he realized with horror that his master had no more arrows left with which to defend himself. Terror gripped the young boy's heart. Far from giving up, the old man quickly stripped a branch from a nearby tree, strung it to his bow and with the same exact accuracy shot down his student's arrow. From that moment on all dreams of swordsmanship died in the young man's breast and he went on to become on of his era's greatest bowman.
Legs firmly planted on the ground, chests relaxed and open, the heads turned slowly toward the targets. The long bamboo bows rose, bent and stretched. Suddenly the unified sound of "Eh", and the arrows struck the target. The archers remained still... Ranma leaned forward…forward…
Author's note:
This chapter is kind mostly a story I vaguely remember reading when I was a kid about the spirit of archery. Ullr and Ranma will be getting more action time next chapter (or maybe in a later draft of this one). Anyway tell me what you think. Okay. In the beginning of time there were three things. A land of fog and ice (Niflheim) to the north, a land of elemental fire to the south (Muspelheim), and the void between them (Ginnungagap). There's a website that says it best:
[In Niflheim was a spring called Hvergelmir from which the Elivagar (eleven rivers - Svol, Gunnthra, Fiorm, Fimbulthul, Slidr, Hrid, Sylg, Ylg, Vid, Leiptr, and Gioll) flowed. The Elivargar froze layer upon layer until it filled in the northerly portion of the gap. Concurrently the southern portion was being filled by sparks and molten material from Muspelheim.
The mix of fire and ice caused part of the Elivagar to melt forming the figures Ymir the primeval giant and the cow Audhumla. The cow's milk was Ymir's food. While Ymir slept his under arm sweat begat two frost giants, one male one female, while his two legs begat another couple.
While Ymir was busy procreating Audhumla was busy eating. Her nourishment came from licking the salty ice. Her incessant licking formed the god Buri. He had a son named Bor who was the father of Odin, Vili, and Ve. ] From