Summary: Xander's pops flogs him off at a young age.
Crossover: Ranma 1/2
Disclaimer: I own nothing! You can prove nothing!
Feedback: Rein of the Coalm
Pre-fic Comments:
As before, "* blah *" indicates foreign speech. Translations get put in curly braces after foreign speech if it's in the original foreign speech.
I need extra strong tea...
Has anyone in NZ got an old Corvette or Camaro they wanna junk? Seriously. I'd get off my duff and go for my Restricted if I had a car at all.
* * *
"No!," Ranma said defensively. "Xander did it!"
The tiger rolled it's eyes. Sure, it seemed to say. Suuuure.
"I'm sure there's a logical, scientific explanation for this," Mr Rosenberg said faintly. "I'm sure I saw something like this on Beyond 2000. Yes. I believe I'll go back to having breakfast."
Ranma wandered after the older man, hands in his pockets. The grumbling Xander-tiger shook himself dry, then wandered after his friend. Willow reluctantly followed.
"I-Ira," Sheila said quietly, "you do know that a /tiger/ followed you? Willow, dear, call the zoo would you?"
"Daijoubu," Ranma said. "Xander picked up an ancient Chinese curse while we were training."
Willow poured the hot boiling water over Xander, who scrambled for a blanket to cover himself.
"Sorry about this," Xander said quietly.
"Oh," Mrs Rosenberg said intelligently. "You'd better hope the tiger breeding programs don't hear about you, Xander."
"We could just tell them about where he got the curse," Willow said, academic mind chewing over the idea.
"Speaking of which," Mr Rosenberg began, having gained strength as Xander regained humanity, "where did you acquire this... curse?"
"The Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo," Xander said. He put on a very bad imitation of bad Chinese-accented English. "Tragic story of tiger who drown nearly two thousand year ago."
Ira's eyes grew steely. "There's no such thing as magic! This has to be a new form of physics, or chemistry, or something!"
Xander and Ranma traded a look, then both shrugged. The man could be right -- they didn't know enough either way to say for sure.
While they had not gone into complete denial, the two Rosenberg parents had somewhat repressed the incident almost ten minutes gone. Sheila brought over a few slices of toast.
"Now," she said, "you two boys are to stay awake in class and pay attention, or else!"
"Okay," Xander grumbled, while Ranma muttered something that could be construed as an affirmative.
* * *
Ranma stared blankly at the blackboard.
He understood the English alphabet. He had a pretty good English vocabulary -- at least, he had /thought/ he did. He could understand each word the teacher had written down individually.
It was just together that they made no sense at all.
"Oi," he said, poking Willow. "What's a verb?"
"Yeah," Xander said. "She might as well be talking into a black sun for all we understand."
Willow looked at the two boys with pity. "You honestly don't know what verbs are?"
Ranma scowled at the girl. He wasn't stupid! "Bakayarou! Stupid tomboy! The last time we went to school we were nine!"
"Hey!," Willow protested. "I'm not a tomboy!"
"Miss Rosenberg," Mrs Kerbopple said from the front, "are those two annoying you? Because I can move them if need be."
"No," Willow said. "They're just way behind, because apparently they've missed years of school."
The teacher chalked Willow's figure of 'years' up as hyperbole due to mental aggravation by the two over the last twenty four hours. The normally cheerful girl was somewhat frazzled at the moment.
"I'm sure you could help them," she said. "Now, most people parse a question starting with 'don't' as 'do', which--"
The teacher was interrupted as one of the walls to the room exploded, chunks of non-flaming rubble scattering all over hapless students. A most physically... blessed Chinese girl jumped through the hole, pointing a large mace at Xander.
"You!," she commanded peremptorily. "Where girl Ranma?"
"Who, hi--," Willow began before Ranma clapped a hand over her mouth.
The Japanese youth laughed nervously. "Hehehe, there ain't no girl Ranma here, uh, so... yeah."
The Chinese girl frowned cutely. "Shampoo must find girl Ranma and kill! Short, red hair, bigger chest than /her/, where she?"
"Ain't no way I'm telling you if you're gonna kill hi-her," Xander said, catching himself on the last term.
The Chinese Amazon tried to take his head off with a broad swing of one of her maces -- 'Bonbori', if Buffy remembered Giles' lessons. Xander casually leaned back so that the heavy metal wrecking ball missed him by a hairs-breadth.
"No make fun of Shampoo!," the purple haired Chinese girl shrieked, going on the offensive immediately. "Tell me where girl Ranma is! Is matter of HONOUR!"
The purple-head swung both maces in such a fashion that Xander would have been crushed, had he not nailed her between the eyes. The Amazon dropped like a stone.
"You pig!," Buffy accused. "Hitting a girl is /so/ Neanderthal!"
Ranma shrugged. "Hey, she wanted to kill someone."
Xander picked up the girl. "Hey, anyone know where the infirmary is?"
* * *
Post-fic Comments:
Yeah. I'm sure that everyone who knows the ramifications of the last action will fill in those who don't.